Human Rights

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How to really STOP Trump’s horrible nominees

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Trump keeps throwing HORRIBLE, CORRUPT, and DANGEROUS nominees at us, one after another. Democratic U.S. Senators think it is sufficient to merely vote “no” to one Trump nominee after another. That is NOT ENOUGH!  We and the Senators need to actually MOBILIZE PUBLIC OPINION to PUSH BACK! Senators have a “bully pulpit” that almost all of them fail to use.  They should use their “bully pulpit” and take other actions to PUBLICLY EXPOSE the nominees’ corruption, cruelty, and horrible track records, in order to MOBILIZE PUBLIC OPINION TO PUSH BACK AGAINST TRUMP and the Republicans! Until Democratic Senators push back […]

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Smart insights to distinguish “conflict” from “abuse.”

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Someone sent me an e-mail expressing support for “Conflict is Not Abuse” from Sarah Schulman.  I searched for information about the book and found this very insightful article.  It offers smart, practical and compassionate ways out of the traps that many people — especially progressives — get into regarding how we deal with social justice issues at an interpersonal level. Rather than try to summarize her helpful insights here, I encourage you to read this information about her book: https://www.thestranger.com/books/2017/01/10/24792575/sarah-schulmans-conflict-is-not-abuse-is-a-guide-to-keeping-the-peace      

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Obama ALSO broke up immigrant families and deported many. Democrats failed to object.

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Nowadays Democrats and decent people strongly object to Trump’s cruelty in breaking up immigrant families and deporting many family members.  Actually, Obama did that too — in record numbers much higher than George W. Bush had done — but Democrats did not object when a Democratic president did. People nowadays are right to criticize the Trump regime for its extreme cruelty.  In order to be credible, we must also criticize Obama and the Democrats for their cruelty too.  Let’s stand firm on the principles of human rights, and let the partisan chips fall where they may. Pages 48-49 of the […]

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Universal Single-Payer health care is the real solution! Debunk the myths and lies about it.

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S. is virtually alone among rich modern democracies in failing to provide decent health care for all of its people.  The U.S. ranks low among these nations in many indicators of health (life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths from preventable diseases, etc.). A major reason is that while other nations regard health care as a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, the U.S. pretends that it is a COMMERCIAL COMMODITY for private profit. The real remedy — UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER health care — is explained in the “Health Care” part of my blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org.  I encourage you to read several posts about it. Please […]

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Impeachable offense: Trump kidnaps children and imprisons families without due process.

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

U.S. law and international law recognize the rights of refugees and persons seeking asylum, but Trump deliberately violates those laws. Trump continues to COMMIT CRIMES that are IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES, but Congress does not seem to care. Separating little children from their families is yet one more kind of child abuse that Trump is committing.  The Trump regime has lost track of many, many of the children that he has kidnapped. Kidnapping anyone is a federal felony.  So is transporting kidnapped victims across state lines.  It is a felony to unlawfully imprison someone. Trump is denying people their constitutional right to […]

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U.S. needs immigrant workers because we disable our troops and underfund education

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Savvy people have been recognizing that the U.S. economy really needs immigrant workers. We do not have enough native-born workers for many jobs. And I don’t mean only working on farms and in restaurants. The U.S. imports a great many skilled workers: nurses, doctors, computer programmers, and so forth. For many decades the U.S. has been sending our troops to fight totally unnecessary wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Only recently has the government been admitting that many troops become disabled through PTSD and other physical and mental disabilities. Actually, the numbers are much, much higher than the government […]

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“A New Dawn for Guatemala?”

July 14, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The August 2018 episode of “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” informs us about an interesting and inspiring community in Guatemala where refugees from the previous dictatorship have settled into a new community. These people are empowering themselves at the grassroots to meet their needs for education, clean water, social justice and democracy. About 300-400 people live in Nuevo Amanecer, the Spanish words for “New Dawn.” The community was founded in 1998 by refugees who had fled the genocide and “scorched-earth” campaign of the 1980s and 1990s. The U.S. funded and trained Guatemala’s brutal military to commit those crimes. Now the “New Dawn” […]

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To protect immigrants, let’s de-polarize the U.S.’s political culture.

June 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many problems that are plaguing the U.S. are rooted in various kinds of polarizations.  Oppressors use a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to disempower ordinary people so the oppressors can grab more power and enrich themselves financially.  They polarize us by pitting race against race, religion against religion, straight people against LGBTQ people, and native-born people against immigrants. They also polarize us by emphasizing nationalism, so they pit nation against nation.  They promote wars and nuclear weapons. All of these polarizations draw from the same roots.  In order to protect immigrant rights — and all people’s rights — and in order to prevent […]

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Great home-made signs from immigrant rights rally

June 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

On Saturday June 30 a huge crowd — certainly more than one thousand, and perhaps two thousand — attended the immigrant rights rally at the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia WA.  The initial focus was “Keep Families Together,” because the Trump regime has kidnapped more than 2,000 children (including toddlers and infants) from their immigrant parents because their parents had crossed the U.S. border without the necessary documentation.  Trump was holding those children as HOSTAGES in order to pressure their parents to “self-deport” and pressure Congress to pass a cruel law against immigrants.  The Trump regime has lost track […]

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Abolishing nuclear weapons would help immigrants’ rights.

June 28, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

To protect immigrants, STOP POLARIZING PEOPLE IN ANY WAY: Stop dividing people by nationality, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, economic class, etc. The problems we face are huge, deeply rooted and interconnected. Because these problems are linked, we can make progress toward solving any of the divisive problems by starting with any one of these problems and showing how it connects with the other problems. The problems already existed before Trump made them worse. Nationalism and racism polarize “us vs. them.” For more than 70 years nuclear weapons have expressed the nationalism that is one root of anti-immigrant feelings. […]

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To Achieve Social Justice, We Must De-Polarize Our Society

June 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Oppressors often use a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to keep populations divided so the oppressors can dominate them.  This has been happening in the U.S., as it has in other countries. The remedy is for people to recognize and expose the oppressors’ scheme — and to bring all demographic groups together to de-polarize our society. Unfortunately, some people who are oppressed buy into the polarization and get angry and vengeful against other demographic groups that have been set up by the oppressors as polar opposites.  These people unwittingly serve the oppressors’ interests in keeping the population divided. The real remedy is to […]

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Several ways to vigorously reform our criminal justice system

June 3, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S.’s criminal justice system — like so many other aspects of American society — is profoundly dysfunctional, cruel, and wasteful. Thoughtful people have been urging humane reforms for many years.  More and more people are advocating positive changes.  Here are some reforms we really need now.  Grassroots organizing can help to accomplish them.   In order to change the system, we need to change how we talk about it.  Some commonly used words and expressions keep us trapped in the unjust status quo.  Here are five ways to improve our effectiveness when we talk about criminal punishment and mass […]

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9 Ways Authoritarianism Is Taking Hold Under Trump

May 31, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

As you know, I read a huge amount of information.  Thom Hartmann’s article at the link below consolidates much solid information into CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT information that the American people need to understand. Trump and Trumpism are imposing horrible authoritarianism upon the U.S.  This is an extremely serious — actually existential — danger to American freedom and constitutional democracy. Trump’s authoritarianism abuses many aspects of American society. The article below connects many of the issues we care about, including peace, social justice, environment/climate, economics, and so forth.  The article ends with a call for nonviolent organizing to rise up against Trump’s […]