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Save the USPS
On February 6, the Postal Service announced that Saturday first-class mail delivery is scheduled for elimination at the beginning of August—the latest and deepest in a series of cuts that threaten to so undermine the service that it will be ripe for bartering off to the private delivery corporations that have long coveted its routes. As John Nichols has written, this matters because the USPS continues to provide a vital public service with many post offices serving as de facto community centers and with the mail becoming a critical prescription drug delivery system.
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Open Letter on Academic Freedom From 'The Nation' to New York Elected Officials
We note that on February 6, seventeen of the nineteen signatories to the letter from Representative Jerrold Nadler & Co. released another letter thanking president Gould for her "leadership," affirming the right of the college to hold such panels and standing strongly against official defunding threats (though they did not apologize for misrepresenting the college's co-sponsorship of the panel as official endorsement of its speakers' views, or for their false allegations that the college had excluded alternative views). The two names missing from the follow-up letter? Assemblyman James Brennan and former Comptroller Bill Thompson. Earlier in the day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a far less tepid defense of Brooklyn College, saying, "If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea." We also note that the far more threatening and vicious letter from Lewis Fidler & Co., which had ten signatories, is still extant, though two of the original signatories, Council Members Letitia James and Stephen Levin, have withdrawn their names from it.
The Nation supports the right of Brooklyn College to sponsor a panel discussion with Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti on BDS. We urge Brooklyn College President Karen Gould to resist attempts by those who have attempted to intimidate CUNY into canceling, changing, or withdrawing its sponsorship for the panel. We are especially concerned that members of the New York City Council have threatened to withhold further money for CUNY if it does not either cancel the event or withdraw its sponsorship. This is a grave threat to academic freedom and sets a terrible precedent.
Stop the Keystone Pipeline, Once and For All
In the new issue of The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard reports on how the climate movement is trying to appeal to both President Obama’s visionary and pragmatic sides with stopping the Keystone Pipeline being the first order of business.
TO DOOne Billion Rising Seeks an End to Violence Against Women
Recent horrifying statistics show that one in three women globally will be raped, beaten or severely violated in their lifetime. That's 1 billion women. And that’s how the One Billion Rising campaign got its name, its impetus and its focus.
TO DODemand Meaningful Gun Control
Horrified by the shooting at Sandy Hook and frustrated by congressional inaction, the Nation Builders—a group of supporters of the magazine—decided to act. While President Obama signed his executive action and Governor Cuomo tightened restrictions in New York, the Builders worked together to create a collective open letter imploring politicians to support meaningful gun control legislation on the federal level.
TO DORepeal the Hyde Amendment
As Nation Editors wrote in looking at the landscape of reproductive rights in the days leading up to the 40th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, a decades-long anti-choice campaign has resulted in a patchwork system where the legal right to abortion applies, in practice, only to those women lucky enough to live in certain states or to be sufficiently affluent to be able to travel for the procedure.
TO DOPresident Obama: Pardon Weldon Angelos
The story of Weldon Angelos, recounted by Sasha Abramsky in the new issue of The Nation, speaks volumes about the unfairness of mandatory minimum sentencing.
A rap artist from Salt Lake City, Angelos was ensnared in an undercover marijuana purchase that reeked of entrapment. In 2003, more than a year after he had been arrested, Angelos was found guilty on several counts. Because of mandatory minimum statutes, the presiding judge—a Bush appointee named Paul Cassell—was left with no discretion at sentencing. After asking the prosecuting and defense attorneys to advise him on the constitutionality of the sentence, a distraught Cassell handed down a fifty-five-year term, a punishment he called “unjust, cruel and even irrational.” He urged then-President Bush to pardon the young father of three and right a clear judicial wrong. Bush didn’t pardon him. Neither has President Obama—despite pleas on Angelos’s behalf from several ex-governors, dozens of ex–federal prosecutors and judges, and four US attorneys general.
Fix the Filibuster
Since Democrats retook control of the Senate chamber in 2006, Nation editors recently wrote, GOP obstruction has made a mockery of the very American principle of majority rule, and of the equally American principle of respect for the minority. Republican abuse of the filibuster has been a central tool in thwarting popular resolutions, nominations and legislation, debates and votes.
TO DORestore VAWA
Despite an eleventh-hour effort by Vice President Joe Biden, House Republican leaders failed to advance the Senate's 2012 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that would have extended domestic violence protections to 30 million LGBT individuals, undocumented immigrants and Native American women. As Erika Eichelberger writes in The Nation this week, by refusing to reauthorize VAWA, Congressional Republicans are leaving rape victims with few options.
TO DOStop the Violence
Gun control advocates should not be intimidated: the political winds at their back are strong. It’s clear that Obama would sign gun control legislation passed by Congress and, as Nation editors write this week, the focus should be on making that happen.
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