The U.S. and the Holocaust

 

A new documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein

Underwritten by the Public Broadcasting Service, 2022

A critical review by Steven Halpern

I have seen several so-called documentaries organized by Ken Burns. On the one hand, these documentaries introduce viewers to aspects of our history that few people are aware of. This is important since the American History courses in high schools expose us to a version of history that was summarized in James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me. So, if we are to have a meaningful future, we need to have a clear view of what happened in the past. 

However, there is a striking flaw to literally all of Burns’ so-called documentaries. Clearly if Burns reported on our history in a way that was rational, he would never have received funding for his projects. This flaw consists of the fact that Burns never asked the basic question: What are the forces that drive the political economic system of capitalism?

The capitalist system consists of a social relationship between workers and capitalists. The working class of the world has produced literally every commodity that was ever sold on the market. Yet for each of those commodities, capitalists have the power to control the work environment, and they profit from the sale of each and every commodity. Saying this, we can conclude that the working class has interests that are antagonistic to the interests of capitalists. 

So, what does all of this have to do with the so-called documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust? To answer that question, first we need to look at the political orientation of this work.

The U.S. and the Holocaust

The information in this documentary is not new. David S. Wyman’s book The Abandonment of the Jews – America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 was published in 1984. That book covers the same ideas as Burns’ documentary and even goes into more details. 

Then, in the year 1998, a book was published by the news reporter Tom Brokaw titled The Greatest Generation. That book argued that the generation of those who experienced the depression and participated in the defeat of the Nazis in Germany was the “greatest generation.”

Clearly there are outstanding individuals as well as criminals in every generation. However, Ken Burns’ documentary is a clear polemic against Tom Brokaw’s argument.

The Burns’ documentary reported on how the persecution of Jews in Germany was known in the United States even in the early years of the Nazi regime.  In spite of this knowledge, the United States government made a concerted effort to keep Jews out of this country who were attempting to flee from that persecution.

Burns also reported that these were the years of the economic depression. Many people in this country opposed allowing Jews to enter this country for fear that they would take the few jobs that were available. Even after the war, when the full horror of the holocaust became common knowledge, the U.S. government opposed allowing increased numbers of Jews to enter this country. 

Burns also documented how racist attitudes also contributed to the refusal of the government to allow Jews to escape the holocaust. In fact, Adolf Hitler made it clear that he was not the only one who believed in the insane idea of a “superior race.” He argued that just as the United States went to war against Native Americans in the western part of this country, he was going to go to war against the Slavic people who lived to the east of Germany. 

When Hitler came to power in Germany Jim Crow segregation was the law in the United States. Black people were prohibited, by law, from using the same restaurants, hotels, bathrooms, or parks as people who considered themselves to be “white.” Hitler argued that his policies reflected the same kind of institutionalized discrimination that existed in the United States since the defeat of radical reconstruction in 1877.

The Burns’ documentary also reported that the United States government, as well as capitalists in this country like Henry Ford, worked to appease and support the Nazis. For about a year, all films in Hollywood needed to be approved by the Nazi representative in Los Angeles, California. Capitalists in this country also liked the fact that the Nazis effectively destroyed the German labor movement.

Understanding these facts, we can clearly say that Tom Brokaw’s argument of The Greatest Generation was absurd.

What are the facts?

In order to put this history in perspective, we can start with the question: Why is there anti-Semitism in the world? Abram Leon’s book The Jewish Question – A Marxist Interpretation gives a clear answer to this question.

Leon was born in 1918 in Warsaw, Poland. In Poland Leon experienced routine discrimination because he was Jewish. Initially he and his family were attracted to the Zionist movement that advocated for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. His family briefly visited Palestine, but then returned to Poland and eventually settled in Belgium. The Nazi regime murdered Abram Leon at Auschwitz when he was twenty-six years old. 

In his book Leon argued that the idea of Zionism is no solution for the anti-Semitism in the world. The Israeli persecution of the Palestinian people is clear proof that Leon knew what he was talking about.

In his book The Jewish Question, Leon argued that in feudal societies the Jewish community was protected by monarchies. In those years, Jews were the merchants and money lenders, fulfilling an important role useful to the royal families.

Then, with the emergence of capitalism the royal families went into a period of decline and found it difficult to pay off their debts. The emerging capitalist class was predominantly composed of Christians. However, the royal families used the Jewish community as scapegoats for their problems. As a result, several European nations forced the Jewish communities to leave and hostile attitudes targeting Jews emerged where capitalism was taking hold.

Most of the Jews who had been expelled from Spain ended up in Turkey and were protected by the Turkish royal family. At that time, the Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled much of the Middle East as well as North Africa. 

So, these anti-Semitic attitudes spread throughout Europe and the United States. I happen to be Jewish, and a hotel manager refused to rent a room to my father because he was Jewish. This is just one example of how pervasive the anti-Semitic attitudes were in this country. 

So, when we begin to understand what the root cause of anti-Semitism was, we can understand why Abram Leon argued that the capitalist system gave birth to the hostility against Jews. 

The Great Depression

The Burns’ documentary argues that the sentiment opposing Jewish immigration to this country stemmed from the fact that in the years of the depression jobs were extremely difficult to find. However, the documentary doesn’t ask the question: Why did the Great Depression happen? 

Before answering that question, we might think about the fact that before and after the depression there was relatively full employment. So, why were millions of people thrown out of work during the depression?

Capitalists do not make investments to fulfill human needs. Capitalism effectively dictates that investments will almost always be made to generate corporate profits. Because of the natural functioning of the system there is an absolute need to sell more and more commodities. This explains why corporations invest about $200 billion in advertising every year. For them, increasing sales is more important than ensuring that everyone has enough food to eat.

The problem is that while sales are increasing, corporations are also driven to cut their costs. So, increasing sales and cutting costs eventually is the recipe for disaster. That is what happened in 1929 and this is what is beginning to happen today.

Daniel Guerin wrote a book titled Fascism and Big Business. In his book, Guerin reported on the facts of how German corporations gave massive funding to the Nazis. Without that immense financial support, it is highly unlikely that the fascists would have been able to take power. My review of Guerin’s book can be seen at Fascism and Big Business. 

Immigration

Anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence will see that one of the grievances of the colonists were the British laws that limited immigration. The colonists wanted unlimited immigration and many of the soldiers in the revolutionary army were born in other countries.

All four of my grandparents were Jewish and were born in Eastern Europe. They immigrated to this country before the depression and had no serious problem in becoming citizens.

During the 1960s the corporations of the United States and Europe went on international drives to attract workers to fill jobs. Today working in the United States means working with people who were born in nations all over the world.

Yet, the Ken Burns’ documentary argued that the United States government was adamant in their refusal to allow Jews to immigrate here. Immigrating to this country might have saved millions of Jews from the holocaust. So, why are there times when immigration has been encouraged, and other times when politicians are vehemently opposed to immigration?

The capitalist system is like a roller-coaster. The economy goes up, but then it routinely comes crashing down. When the capitalist economy is relatively strong, the government encourages immigration. When corporations eliminate jobs because their profits are low, then politicians argue against immigration and even favor deportation. This reality explains how attitudes against immigration shift with corporate profitability.

Splitting up families

The Burns’ documentary reported on several families who managed to get one family member into the United States. Other family members were murdered in the holocaust. Here we saw how Jewish immigrants to this country were obsessed with finding a way to get their families the necessary papers to come here. Those family members were met with routine indifference and hostility of government officials. 

Well, for the past few decades, democratic and republican Presidents have had a routine policy of splitting up immigrant families. Thousands of immigrants are parents of children who were born here. When the parents are deported, their children usually end up in foster care. After the deportation, these children might never see their parents again. 

We might also consider the fact that immigrant workers are an essential part of the corporate drive for profits. Immigrants are farm workers, meat packers, health care workers, housekeepers, as well as research scientists. The drive to deport immigrants is about making the day to day lives of immigrants more difficult. If the government worked to deport all of the twelve million immigrants in this country, the economy would be much worse than it already is. 

Zionism

The Burns’ documentary argued that the United States government, at one time, demanded that Jews who attempted to escape the holocaust needed $5,000 in order to be accepted here. Thinking about that horrendous policy, we might also think about the fact that since 1948, the United States government has been giving the state of Israel billions of dollars in aid literally every year. That aid has been used to militarily repress the Palestinian people and was used in wars against neighboring Arab nations. 

So, why would the United States government require $5,000 to immigrate here, and then give billions of dollars to the state of Israel every year? As I mentioned before, when there are economic downturns, capitalist governments make immigration difficult. Today, the state of Israel supports imperialist interests in the Middle East. So, both these policies support capitalist interests. 

In the year 1933, there was a massive demonstration of perhaps 50,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City protesting a fascist rally held inside the Garden. Then in 1936 the Cable Street demonstration took place in London, England protesting a fascist demonstration there. These and other demonstrations were clear evidence that a mass movement could have been organized demanding that large numbers of Jews be allowed to immigrate here. 

Clearly the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s effectively forced the government to do away with the Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights. Many of the Jim Crow politicians were anti-Semitic and opposed Jewish immigration.

However, the Zionist movement and the American Jewish Congress had another priority. This is what David S. Wyman had to say about the priorities of the American Jewish Congress:

“An unavoidable conclusion is that during the Holocaust the leadership of American Zionism concentrated its major force on the drive for a future Jewish state in Palestine. It consigned rescue to a distinctly secondary position.”

Even today, government officials in Israel do not view the struggle against anti-Semitism in the world to be their priority. However, Israeli law states that any Jewish person living in the world has a right to Israeli citizenship. Clearly Palestinians, who trace their heritage to that area for thousands of years do not have that same right.

The Labor movement and the Second World War

The Burns’ documentary makes the following argument. Clearly the United States government was wrong in refusing to allow Jewish people to immigrate to this country during the years of the Holocaust. However, the film also argued that the war against Nazi Germany was necessary. 

This documentary reported on the determined effort of the Nazis to murder literally every Jewish person in Europe. While racist discrimination was and is institutionalized in the United States that was not the case here. So, the Burns’ documentary argued that the Second World War was necessary and brought peace to the world. 

The problem was that after the war, revolutions erupted in Algeria, Kenya, Korea, and Vietnam. The French, British and U.S. government ordered armed forces to murder millions of people in those wars. 

Today the United Nations reports that 30,000 children die of preventable diseases every day. Half of the human race lives on a salary of two dollars per day. So, the defeat of the Nazi regime clearly did not bring peace in the world.

Farrell Dobbs was a leader of the Teamsters Union in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was one of the leaders that organized a strike that forced employers to recognize the union in 1933.  This strike was one of three strikes that transformed the labor movement prompting millions of workers to join unions in the 1930s.

Dobbs and his co-thinkers in the Socialist Workers Party argued that the primary opponents of the working class are the employers and the government that serves their interests. Federal troops had been used against the teamsters’ strike, as well as in several other strikes during the Roosevelt Administration.

In 1967 the National Guard came to my hometown of Newark, New Jersey and murdered 24 people. This was in response to a rebellion protesting the routine racist police brutality in the city. In all, about 180 people were murdered by National Guardsmen in Newark, Detroit, and in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The U.S. armed forces also carried out genocidal wars against Native Americans for over 100 years. President Roosevelt also ordered 110,000 Japanese who lived in this country to be sent to concentration camps. 

For those reasons, Farrell Dobbs and other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party opposed U.S. participation in the Second World War. The socialist Eugene Debs opposed U.S. participation in the First World War. Debs served three years in prison because he gave a speech opposing U.S. participation in that war. Dobbs was one of eighteen members of the Socialist Workers Party who served eighteen months in prison for their opposition to the Second World War. 

Also in the year 1967, Martin Luther King gave a speech in New York City where he opposed the U.S. war against Vietnam. In that speech he argued that the United States government was the “greatest purveyor of violence” in the world. He went on to say that the Vietnamese people might see the armed forces of this country as “strange liberators.” 

Conclusion

When we look at the forces that drive the capitalist system, we see that this system will move to a complete economic collapse. Karl Marx wrote a three-volume analysis of the capitalist system titled Capital. His analysis makes it clear that for numerous reasons the system needs to go in a direction where capitalists will simply refuse to invest in the economy. 

In Germany, the Nazis dealt with the collapse of the German economy by putting in place a fascist government. That government made scapegoats out of Jews, Gypsies, as well as anyone who got in their way. The democratic rights that German people thought they had, vanished. Questioning the Nazis could have fatal consequences.

This is the election time of year. The Democrats and Republicans are begging us for our votes. None of those candidates thinks it is a problem that 42 million people in this country do not have enough food to eat, while four individuals each have over $100 billion in assets. In fact, those statistics represent the essence of what the capitalist system is. 

Clearly there is another way. A workers’ government could begin to advance a system where human needs would take priority over corporate profits. That government could work towards establishing lifetime rights for everyone. Those rights would include, food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to all forms of culture.

That government could eliminate poverty, as well as discrimination in the world. A workers’ government would make it their priority to work in harmony with the environment. Imagine how transport in the cities could be transformed from the insane and dangerous traffic jams, into highly efficient mass transit systems.

The outstanding revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg argued that we will have “socialism or barbarism.” The Ken Burns’ documentary gives us a glimmer of what barbarism would look like. However, if a fascist government emerges in the world today, that government would have atomic bombs.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued in their Communist Manifesto, “Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to win.”

Inside the Second Wave of Feminism – Boston Female Liberation, 1968-1972, An account by participants

 

Organized by Nancy Rosenstock

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Most books about our history are written by the so-called “historians” who study events of the past by reading books as well as the original information. Rarely do we see books written by the actual people who participated in the making of historical events that have influenced our lives. Inside the Second Wave of Feminism is a series of interviews with the participants of the feminist movement in the years 1968-1972. 

I was an acquaintance of Nancy Rosenstock, as well as several of the women interviewed in this book when we were members of the Socialist Workers Party. Today none of us supports the politics of the SWP, although we all continue to support the international movement to liberate the working class. 

The first wave of feminism culminated in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that gave women the right to vote. As with the Second Wave of Feminism, the first wave required women to organize in demonstrations just so they could win the right to vote. Alice Paul, as well as several of the suffragettes served time in prison merely for demanding that basic right.

In order to begin to appreciate what the Second Wave of Feminism was, I believe we need to think about other movements that have erupted in the history of this country. In those movements, there were periods of anger that evolved into rage against unjust conditions. Then, events took place that caused what I call a tipping point. Those tipping points turned the rage against injustice into a mass determination to struggle for basic human dignity. 

In 1970, I believe there was a tipping point with respect to the struggle for women’s rights. Clearly there were other tipping points that began to galvanize social movements in this country.

The Labor Movement

In the year 1934 this country was in the midst of a depression. Jobs were almost impossible to find. Most of the available jobs didn’t have wages that could provide for enough food to feed a family. So, in that year there was a generalized sentiment that things needed to change in a profound way. 

So, in the year 1934 three strikes erupted that won tremendous support. I will call the year 1934 a tipping point for the labor movement. After tenacious battles took place, employers finally recognized union representation. Then, millions of workers joined unions and continued the struggle to improve their living and working conditions. By the end of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike and won significant concessions.

The struggle for civil and human rights

After the Civil War, Black people won rights they never had before. They won the right to vote. Millions went to school and learned to read. During the years of slavery, the government as well as enslavers viewed most Black people as nothing more than property.

Then, in the year 1877, the federal government withdrew their support of the reconstruction governments. This action effectively gave political power to organizations that had the politics of the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, racist forces murdered thousands of Blacks in lynchings and Black people effectively lost citizenship rights where Jim Crow segregation was the law. Things weren’t much better in the northern states. 

Then, in December of 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of a bus so a white passenger could have that seat. This was another tipping point that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For 385 days Black people in Montgomery refused to travel on the busses in the city. By the year 1964 and 1965, the civil rights movement forced the federal government to outlaw Jim Crow segregation in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Why did women want to be liberated?

The following quotation from the introduction of Inside the Second Wave of Feminism summarizes the routine discrimination against women in employment in the year 1963.

“Women seeking employment outside the home found job listings for men and women. In 1963, the commission on the status of Women released a report revealing that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned. Black women made roughly 40 percent of what white men made. In 1970 only 43 percent of women participated in the workforce, to a large extent in occupations of service, such as secretarial work, teaching, waiting tables, and nursing. Five times as many Black women worked as maids and household cleaners compared to white women in 1972. When employed, restrictions on clothing were common—women in offices were expected to wear a dress or a skirt with nylons, not pants. Opportunities for career advancement were limited. Avenues were not open for most women who wanted to be architects, engineers, welders, plumbers, carpenters, or other jobs that were considered at the time to be jobs only for men.” 

These are a few more quotations from the introduction that give us an idea of the reality women faced in the past.

“Sexual harassment in the workplace was barely recognized. Domestic violence was a real part of many women’s lives, and fighting it was not an easy option. Rape was often not reported because doing so subjected a woman to further harassment and humiliation from the police and often from the male abuser.” 

When women asked bank officers for credit they were asked, “Are you married? Do you plan on having children? Many banks required single, divorced, or widowed women to bring a man along with them to cosign for a credit card. Getting a divorce was often difficult.”

Today women are mobilizing in protest of the Supreme Court decision to take away women’s right to decide if and when they become mothers. Ginny Hildebrand reported on the laws that prohibited women from even attaining contraception.

“Contraception was illegal in Massachusetts unless you were married or had a medical reason for it. The laws were very reactionary. It was illegal to display the pill. You had to go to a gynecologist, either you had to say that you were married, or they had to say they would give it to you to regulate your menstrual cycle. That’s how we got birth control. This was unacceptable from both a practical and feminist point of view.”

Many women who experienced these conditions were aware of or participated in the civil rights movement. These women began to see how mass movements had the potential to make basic changes.

Then, in the year 1968 the Vietnamese people launched their Tet Offensive. Before this offensive, the commander of the United States armed forces in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, argued that his forces were winning the war. The Vietnamese Tet Offensive began to convince people all over the world that there was no way the United States was going to win that war. 

The movement protesting the war against Vietnam started with small demonstrations. After the Tet Offensive, those demonstrations mushroomed to millions of people protesting all over the world. By 1973, the U.S. government understood that they had been decisively defeated, and they withdrew their forces from Vietnam. 

Women viewed all these events and began to see that their time had come. So, on August 26, 1970, women marched in New York City as well as in ninety cities across the country demanding women’s rights. This was the tipping point transformed the movement. 

Women’s attitudes begin to change

The women interviewed for this book were members of a Boston based organization called Female Liberation. Jean Lafferty explained why this organization called itself Female Liberation and not Women’s Liberation.

“It might be more sensible to question the word ‘woman,’ which has more social implications and innuendos. It often implies to fulfill the requirements of one’s sex is an achievement rather than a given biological fact. Somewhere in the process of striving for the rewards offered to ‘good women’ we became aware of our humiliating role as men’s willing victims, and that to be a woman meant to dress and act the part of a clown. How then could the simple biological designation of ‘female’ be more embarrassing than the social definition of ‘woman’?

Nancy Williamson gave her thoughts on how damaging the word “ugly” has been for women.

“In consciously deviating from the Hollywood—Madison Avenue—Playboy norm, we have indeed affected a studied ugliness. Many of us have cut our hair and chosen to wear loose-fitting pants. Shirts with high necks, sturdy shoes, rather than tight short skirts and dresses and flimsy, fall-apart shoes for several reasons: It is more comfortable. It causes less attention on the streets. It is less abasing. It is less expensive, less time-consuming. 

“Any woman who has walked down the street in a miniskirt and lowcut blouse and high heel sandals knows that this attire is not only less comfortable than blue jeans and an ordinary shirt, but that it attracts far more catcalls, hooting, and leers. Leering and catcalls though humiliating, are sometimes interpreted as flattery. If they look at me that way, I must really look beautiful today, we often think. Though this is degrading behavior on the part of men is physically harmless, it is humiliating and physically damaging to women to be subjected to it day after day, wherever we go.”

Maryanne Weathers had this to say in an article she wrote in 1969 titled An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force. This article appeared in the journal No More Fun and Games.

“Any time the white man admits to something, you know he is trying to cover something else up. We are all being exploited, even the white middle-class, by the few people in control of this entire world. And to keep the real issue clouded, he keeps us at one another’s throats with this racism jive. Although whites are most certainly racist, we must understand that they have been programmed to think in these patterns to divert their attention. If they are busy fighting us, then they have no time to question the policies of the war being run by the government. With the way the elections went down, it is clear that they are powerless as the rest of us. Make no question about it, folks, this fool knows what he is doing. This man is playing the death game for money and power, not because he doesn’t like us. He could care less one way or the other. But think for a moment if we all got together and just walked out. Who would fight his wars, who would run his police state, who would work in his factories, who would buy his products?

“We women must start this thing rolling.”

Maryanne Weathers had this to say about why Black women need to have the right to decide if and when to become mothers.

“This then adds still another cause for pain in the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy. What will my Jesus say? What will my family say? Will this make them angry? Will this force me even deeper and further away? The obvious answer, after four hundred years of heavenly, paternal and maternal pronouncements, day in and day out, is HELL YES! But we are finally beginning to see that if He hasn’t done anything about anything else, He probably isn’t going to make any sudden moves at this late date about a step towards practical reality and survival. As far as the family is concerned, they are neither eager or able to take on the added expense of an extra mouth to feed and body to clothe.”

When we think of what it means when women do not have the right to decide if and when to become mothers, this article by Nancy Williamson on Abortion: A Feminist Perspective gives us a glimmer of what life used to be for women who wanted to terminate unwanted pregnancies. This article appeared in the Second Wave, vol 1, no. 3 in 1971

“Seven thousand or more women die each year from botched illegal abortions. 350,000 more end up with serious complications. The incidence of reported child abuse in New York City went up 549 percent in the past five years. That’s a hard figure to assimilate, but if you’ve talked to a nurse or a doctor or a social worker, or [have] been one yourself and seen children who’ve been beaten with instruments ranging from bare fists to baseball bats, children burned over open flames, gas burners, strangled or suffocated with pillows or plastic bags, drowned, then it’s easier to understand what the statistics mean. These are unwanted children. These children are usually born into poverty—60 percent of battered children are from poverty homes.”

These statements underscore the fact that the oppression of women is linked to the natural functioning of the political economic system of capitalism. Many of the women in Female Liberation became active socialists.

In fact, Frederick Engels one of the authors of the Communist Manifesto also wrote a book titled The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State. In that book Engels reported that the family, as we know it, was created for capitalism. In the family, children learn to do what they are told in preparation for their time when they will do what they are told by an employer. 

Engels also reported that in the so-called primitive societies this was not the case. In that era, women did some of the most important work and they had real political power. Evelyn Reed gave a comprehensive history of the lives of women in those societies in her book Women’s Evolution from Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family.

Delphine Welch had this to say about what her participation in Female Liberation meant for her life.

“I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I had not embraced feminism and Female Liberation. I believe that our activities have made life better for the young women today. Now it’s their turn to take up the fight!”                         

The struggle against police brutality and murder

Well Delphine, I think that we can say loudly and clearly that young women today are taking up the fight. I will end this review by reporting on new tipping points that are erupting today. 

Elizabeth Hinton wrote her book America on Fire about hundreds of rebellions that took place in this country protesting police brutality as well as murders by the police. These rebellions took place between the years 1965 and 1984. 

Then, in the year 2020 police officer Derick Chauvin murdered George Floyd. That murder was captured on video and seen around the world. This appeared to be another tipping point in the history of this country.

In June of 2020 I was one of about 100,000 people who demonstrated in front of the Art Museum in Philadelphia protesting murders by the police. This was in the midst of the pandemic, before vaccinations were available. 

The keynote speaker at that demonstration was Eugene Puryear who argued that racist victimizations by the police and racist mobs have a long history in this country. He argued that we need to get rid of the system that allows for this vicious racism to continue. Puryear’s remarks received an enthusiastic response. About ninety percent of the demonstrators appeared to be under thirty years of age.

Then, I attended several demonstrations in Philadelphia demanding that women continue to have the right to abortion. These demonstrations are showing me that today young women and men are continuing to take up the fight. 

Women and the Liberation of Humanity

 

By Steve Halpern

They played a crucial part in every

human advance in the history of the world.

Yet, the media routinely portrays them

as sexual objects, who need the protection of men.

They have given birth to every

human being in the history of the world,

Yet politicians argue that they should not

have the right to decide if and when to become a mother.

Their inner beauty has inspired

humanity all over the world.

Yet, advertisers invest billions of dollars

in an attempt to make women feel insecure about their appearance.

Yes, corporations are driven to take

trillions of dollars from women

who purchase jewelry, cosmetics, mascara,

and extravagantly expensive clothing.

For all their many contributions,

the emotional and physical abuse of women

is a continuing fact of life

in the world today.

So, while women only receive

70% of the wages of men,

the most affluent people living in the world,

have more money than they could use in 100 lifetimes.

Then, there are governments that argue

that we need to go to war

and destroy entire nations,

so they can pretend to defend democracy in the world.

Some of those who make these arguments

happen to be women.

Yes, there are affluent women in the government,

and on the boards of corporations.

So, now you might have an idea why there are many women

who don’t like this situation.

Now you might understand why   

there are women dedicated to changing this relationship.

There was Mother Jones

who organized the movement

to end child labor

for all time.

There was Ida Wells,

who organized to stop the murder

or lynching of people

who happened to have a dark skin color.

There was Celia Sanchez

who helped organize the Cuban Revolution,

so all the Cuban people will have their own government,

with the right to education and health care.

Yes, women represent a potentially

explosive force in the world today.

Sooner or later women will unleash that power,

and the world will learn the true beauty of half of the human race.