This was quite a year for me, and I’m guessing for everyone!
At the end of a year, I like to consider all the things “I gave myself” last year. Using that phrase reminds me to be grateful. I often do this process with loved ones — and so I’ll share a few with you!
I gave myself a trip to Tucson to visit friends and family and to attend the Alliance for Global Justice conference “All The Walls Must Fall.” The poster at the top of this blog, UN MUNDO SIN FRONTERA — A World Without Borders — was drawn by a child at a school we visited on the Mexican side, after crossing the hostile border wall.
I gave myself a Controller 2022 campaign that was satisfying in that I was part of the Left Unity Slate of candidates from both the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party. I am grateful that the campaign was supported by a few hundred thousand people through votes, and fully funded by donations, not from corporate persons that fund the Titanic parties’ candidates, but rather from many wonderful real persons. Thank you all.
And, on a totally personal note, I gave myself a new love, and the realization that “feeling like a teenager” isn’t reserved just for teenagers.
This next section was intended to be a very short piece, maybe even a P.S. Due to the enormous lack of balance on this subject, I found it impossible to be as concise as I wanted! I hope you find it useful.
“So, Laura, what do you think about Ukraine?”
People ask for my thoughts about Ukraine. I sure wish I had a few magic words to provide some balance and counteract news coverage that is delivering a steady (though often too subtle to recognize) drum beat toward war, not toward peace. People far more knowledgeable and eloquent than I have been trying to provide that balance. The one simple thing I can say is this, “Let’s take responsibility for our own government. Imagine what the world would be like if the U.S. government stopped intensifying hostilities, and kept its agreements — agreements about such major issues as nuclear weapons, climate, Native American treaties, NATO, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights?”
I hope you have time to check out these informative news sources, as listed in last month’s blog and recopied here. One example is theAnalysis.news, including a recent interview with Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. Other examples include The Real News Network (where you can find Chris Hedges after media censorship closed down his show in March 2022); Black Agenda Report; Lee Camp; and Popular Resistance. For Latin America, see also Resumen and Alliance for Global Justice with its NicaNotes.
In an interview which is well worth listening to or reading in its entirety, Paul Jay of theAnalysis.news discusses the long, lingering effect of McCarthyism in squelching alternative viewpoints, as well as thwarting any possible recurrence of a New Deal-style program. The intensified concentration of ownership has added to the problem.
Paul Jay says that during McCarthyism, “Thousands and thousands of people lost their jobs. Maybe there wasn’t a Siberia to send people to, but it was as bad, almost as bad, at least as any purge that happened in the Soviet Union. It puts a tremendous chill in the media. Also, in terms of the way the media hired people, they were very careful to hire people that would stay within the lines of what was considered patriotic. […] So it’s not that anyone has to even go and say to a journalist, ‘don’t do this, do this.’ People know how to self-censor. They know the lines to stay within.”
Unfortunately for us, Paul Jay’s analysis applies to media ranging all the way from Fox to PBS.
I hope the above is useful for you, and that our new year is healthy and peaceful.