Author: Common Dreams

Amid rising fears of the threat posed by the GOP’s mobilization of out-and-out fascists and its intensifying assault on democracy, lawmakers and intelligence officials are voicing concerns about a September 18 U.S. Capitol rally that far-right extremists organized to demand “justice” for those facing charges over their role in the violent insurrection on January 6 of this year. Citing unnamed people familiar with federal intelligence, it was reported that “extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend” the rally, which “comes as a jittery Washington has seen a series of troubling one-off incidents —...

Out of 3.4 million farmers working in the United States, fewer than 50,000 are Black, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture taken in 2017. That disproportionately small number is due in large part to historic racial discrimination in federal farm programs—and now efforts to address that history are themselves being attacked as discriminatory. Black farmers, most of whom work land in the South, suffered yet another blow from the U.S. government earlier this summer when a federal judge halted $4 billion worth of debt relief that was targeted to Black and other disadvantaged farmers through the American...

Hundreds of families and educators in Waukesha, Wisconsin are calling on the city’s school board to reverse a decision it made earlier this year to opt out of a federal meal program that was introduced at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, offering free food to students regardless of income. As the Washington Post reported on August 27, Waukesha is the only school district in the state to reject funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Seamless Summer Option program, which was praised by economists and beneficiaries alike for destigmatizing the need for public assistance and eliminating red tape....

The maudlin news coverage of how the U.S. botched the exit from Afghanistan will go on for months, maybe years. It will do as much good as rubbernecking a wreck on the side of the road to prevent it from having happened. The awkward exit from the country should not be confused with the loss of the War, and it is the loss that needs to be weighed. To understand that loss and what we might learn from it, we have to go back to before the time when the U.S. was even a country. It is there that...

Civil rights activists marched, were jailed, and sometimes killed in their efforts to achieve equal rights and voting rights for all Americans, including pressuring Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Meanwhile, segregationist Klan members marched in hooded robes and lynched black people in an effort to terrorize the civil rights movement. Simultaneously, their Dixiecrat allies in Congress like Strom Thurmond filibustered for weeks to try to prevent the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act from being passed. Fortunately, they ultimately failed. Now, John Roberts and his right-wing judicial...

As the Biden administration faces criticism for not doing enough to assist those fleeing Afghanistan, an analysis released on August 16 showed that the roughly $19 billion the Pentagon budgeted for the U.S. occupation of the country in 2020 alone could cover initial resettlement costs for 1.2 million refugees. Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project estimated that the $18.6 billion the Pentagon allocated for its 2020 operations in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is in the process of retaking power after two decades of deadly U.S. occupation, could pay up-front refugee relocation costs of $15,148 for the more than...