HAPPY BIRTHDAY WOODY GUTHRIE

Harry Targ

Woody Guthrie wrote verses, often unsung, for the unofficial American anthem, “This Land is Your Land?”

 

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

 

For a discussion of Robeson, Seeger, and Guthrie and the cultural front see:

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2012/09/legacies-of-musical-cultural-front_7925.html

 

 

 

NATO IS AN INSTRUMENT OF IMPERIALISM AND INCREASES THE POSSIBILITY OF A NEW COLD WAR

Harry Targ 

(As James Goldgeier wrote over twenty years ago on a Brookings Institute web page: “The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.’ Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.” James Goldgeier, Brookings Institute, “The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO: How, When, Why, and What Next?“, June 1, 1999). 

    

                                        Code Pink

During World War II an “unnatural alliance” was created between the United States, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union. What brought the three countries together, the emerging imperial giant, the declining capitalist power, and the first socialist state, was the shared need to defeat fascism in Europe. 

Rhetorically, the high point of collaboration was reflected in the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, in February, 1945 three months before the German armies were defeated. At Yalta, the great powers made decisions to facilitate democratization of former Nazi regimes in Eastern Europe, a “temporary” division of Germany for occupation purposes, and a schedule of future Soviet participation in the ongoing war against Japan. Leaders of the three states returned to their respective countries celebrating the “spirit of Yalta,” what would be a post-war world order in which they would work through the new United Nations system to modulate conflict in the world. 

                                            source:apprend.io

Within two years, after conflicts over Iran with the Soviet Union, the Greek Civil War, the replacement of wartime President Franklin Roosevelt with Harry Truman, and growing challenges to corporate rule in the United States by militant labor, Truman declared in March, 1947 that the United States and its allies were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “International Communism.” 

The post-war vision of cooperation was reframed as a struggle of the “free world” against “tyranny.” In addition to Truman’s ideological crusade, his administration launched an economic program to rebuild parts of Europe, particularly what would become West Germany, as capitalist bastions against the ongoing popularity of Communist parties throughout the region. 

Along with the significant program of reconstructing capitalism in Europe and linking it by trade, investment, finance, and debt to the United States, the U.S. with its new allies constructed a military alliance that would be ready to fight the Cold War against International Communism. Representatives of Western European countries met in Brussels in 1948 to establish a program of common defense and one year later with the addition of the United States and Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. 

The new NATO charter, inspired largely by a prior Western Hemisphere alliance, the Rio Pact (1947), proclaimed that “an armed attack against one or more of them…shall be considered an attack against them all…” which would lead to an appropriate response. The Charter called for cooperation and military preparedness among the 12 signatories. 

After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb and the Korean War started, NATO pushed ahead with the development of a common military command structure with General Eisenhower as the first “Supreme Allied Commander.” After the founding of NATO and its establishment as a military arm of the West, the Truman administration adopted the policy recommendations in National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) in 1950 which declared that military spending for the indefinite future would be the number one priority of every presidential administration. 

As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, and fueling the flames of Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe). 

During the Cold War NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. NATO thus provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of first-strike attack. 

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989, and finally the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be. In the next twenty years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance tripled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined. 

NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S. led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. 

An official history of NATO described the changes in its mission: “In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture.” The post-Cold War mission of NATO combines “military might, diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.” 

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” 

                                        Source: twitter.com

The 21st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism. 

Reviewing this brief history of NATO, observers can reasonably draw different conclusions about NATO’s role in the world than from those who celebrate its world role. 

First, NATO’s mission to defend Europe from aggression against “International Communism” was completed with the “fall of Communism.” 

Second, the alliance was regional, that is pertaining to Europe and North America, and now it is global. 

Third, NATO was about security and defense. Now it is about global transformation. 

Fourth, as its biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. 

Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21st century military instrumentality of global imperialism.

And finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

THE MILITARIZATION OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY

 Harry Targ ( a current interview and a repost)

(In this November 15, 2025 interview William Hartung below discusses the trillion-dollar military budget and how the economy and universities have become centerpieces of the wasteful and dangerous military/industrial complex. And the material that follows is a 2024 update about Purdue and the military.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/11/14/war_machine?fbclid=IwY2xjawOEbbNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe2ZAB7nwx2A668rwFSXnAOxefp-5tmqpv8moWHqftSV5wcjpch3Pd1_oxzro_aem_h5harpaMo2nJ3PfhBskAMA)

Here Come Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, and Military Studies in Liberal Arts to Purdue University

Harry Targ

The Raytheon Technologies Corporation reported that “Raytheon Technologies is working with the University of Arizona, Texas A&M University, Purdue University, the U.S. Air Force Academy and other academic institutions on hypersonic research and testing, to include the use of wind tunnels to emulate flight conditions and accelerate development.”

Raytheon, one of the five largest defense contractors in the world, sold more than $64 billion in military hardware in 2021. Raytheon profits will be higher in 2022 because of the war in Eastern Europe. Recently, Gregory Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon and a Purdue University graduate who was given an honorary doctorate by Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, predicted that the war in Ukraine will be good for his company’s business.

[Source: twitter.com]

As researchers William Hartung and Julia Gledhill put it: “The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin–produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.” https://tomdispatch.com/the-new-gold-rush/

Another military contractor with ties to Purdue University is the Rolls-Royce Corporation which, according to “Purdue Partnerships at Purdue,” signed a research and development program in 2016 “to create the next generation aircraft agreement with Purdue University.” The partnership resulted in a $33 million jet-engine research and development program to create next-generation aircraft propulsion systems.”

In addition, on April 20, 2022, the company announced a $204 million project to expand one building and two test facilities in the Purdue Discovery Park. Shortly thereafter the West Lafayette government granted the Rolls-Royce Corporation a five-year tax abatement for the construction of facilities in Purdue’s Discovery Park.

·                 

[Source: purdue.edu]

Also, the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University has established a “Forces Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems” which is designed to help “shape long-range and global military, political, and organizational decision-making for a just, stable, and secure world.” Faculty affiliates include a member of the ROTC program,  a military historian, a political scientist, a “peace researcher,” and a Library Science professor who has published on the F-35, and in military studies journals. https://www.cla.purdue.edu/research/forces-initiative/index.html

 

Andrew Bacevich, the Quincy Institute, has referred to a “permanent war economy” which was established in 1945 and still exists today. Presumably, it has been revitalized since the book first appeared in 2010 by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the stagnating U.S. economy and the leadership in institutions of higher education who seek greater resources from the Department of Defense and military contractors. Bacevich in Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, “forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives … He rips into what he calls a postwar American dogma ‘so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness to have all but disappeared from view.”

In the past, liberal arts programs, described and explained what was and is American history, culture, politics, and philosophy. Now it seems,  the Liberal Arts will serve the “postwar American dogma” for which Bacevich refers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Bass-t.html

 

 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2023

UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEW COLD WAR (Original essay posted on August 6, 2019)

Harry Targ, 

Research and development and  production of weapons is intimately connected to foreign policy. And as President Eisenhower warned a long time ago the military/industrial complex would be penetrating, shaping, and distorting every institution and policy in the United States. And, as the essay below suggests, this penetration includes universities and local communities. 

**************************

 

“Purdue is advancing a broad defense innovation capability, distinguished by its depth, breadth, and speed, with the goal of contributing to our nation’s third offset strategy of innovation by integration of existing strengths and forming new partnerships. The depth in quality and creativity of Purdue research centers is, and will remain, our strongest asset. The breadth responds to the need expressed by multiple DoD customers for a ‘total package’: new, integrated solutions (technologies, transition), new talent (graduates highly trained in relevant problems), and new modes of knowledge access (personnel exchange, training, distance education)."

Purdue University researchers conducted over $40M of sponsored research in the 2014-2015 academic year and, in doing so, educated hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students in cutting edge technologies.” https://www.purdue.edu/research/defense-innovation/

 “NDIA, in partnership with Purdue University, will host a comprehensive program on hypersonic systems. Together with government, industry, and academia, NDIA will present the technical foundations of hypersonic systems, the current approach to rapidly developing hypersonic capabilities, and the warfighter, policy, and acquisition perspectives on delivering a sustainable operational capability” "2019 Hypersonics Capabilities Conference," NDIA 100,  ndia.org.

The National Defense Industry Association NDIA is an association of defense industry contractors who lobby for increased military expenditures. Its members are described as “informed opinion leaders” dedicated to improved national security.

 And Now:

 Purdue University is launching a center to advocate for Taiwan as a trusted partner and encourage US investment in the nation, former US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment Keith Krach told a news conference in Taipei yesterday

Krach, chairman of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, first announced plans for the establishment of the Taiwan Center for Innovation and Prosperity before his arrival in Taiwan on Wednesday for a four-day visit.\

The center would be a partnership between public and private sectors in the US and Taiwan to “advocate for Taiwan internationally and attract more global partners,” the institute said.

Purdue launching center to advocate for Taiwan

o     By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/08/12/2003804626?utm_source=sfmcPT&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=230815PurdueToday&utm_term=Purdue+launching+center+to+advocate+for+Taiwan&utm_id=773245&sfmc_id=0038c00003HUJYnAAP

******************************************************************

Purdue’s Discovery Park launched in 2001 with a grant from the state of Indiana and expanded by a $25 million Lilly Endowment as a nanotechnology center. Today it is a $1.15 billion research and learning complex that combines Purdue’s expertise in science, engineering, technology, and biology, with connections to the corporate world. As its website suggests: “Leveraging Lilly Endowment’s investment, Discovery Park has created an innovative environment where major global challenges are examined objectively, generating new ideas and directions for future generations.”

One of Discovery Park’s core strengths is “Global Security.” Key research on this subject is designed to respond to security threats, global instability, defense needs, terrorism, nuclear deterrence and proliferation, basically responding to “the most pressing security and defense challenges facing the nation and the world.”

Chief Discovery Park scientist, Professor Tomas Diaz de la Rubia posted an essay entitled “The New Future of Warfare” (Purdue University Discovery Park Vice President’s Blog, (October 1, 2018). In it he addressed the emerging salience of new military technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) and war. De la Rubia speculated that future wars will not be fought on battlefields but rather in cities or in cyberspace. New AI weapons of war in the hands of presumed enemies could constitute an existential threat to the survival of the United States. Discovery Park, he indicated, is already engaged in vital research on biomorphic robots, automatic target recognition for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, automatic targeting for drones, and other technologies. In short, a core Discovery Park mission includes the preparation for and implementation of war. And this is necessary because as Professor de la Rubia argued:

“It has become apparent that the U.S. is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the dance card that is the future of war. In order to maintain military superiority the focus must shift from traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely on A.I.-based weaponry. The stakes are just too high and the prize too great for the U.S. to be left behind. All the more reason to call upon Purdue University and its inestimable capacity to weave together academia, research, and industry for the greater good. We’re stepping up to secure our place in the future of our country, and there’s much more to come!” He warned that China had announced that it would overtake the US by 2030 in the global artificial intelligence market.

 Recently, the NDIA and Purdue University hosted a conference on “hypersonics,” the development of high speed weapons systems, stimulated by a $2.4 billion allocation in the 2020 defense budget. According to a Purdue press release, the university has one of the most comprehensive hypersonic research capabilities. University President Mitch Daniels declared that the university was “…ready to establish itself as the ‘university hub’ of hypersonic research and development.” 

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb declared that “Hypersonics systems are our state’s number one defense priority, and I’m glad we can bring industry leaders together at Purdue University to showcase what Indiana can offer.” (“NDIA, Purdue Launching Inaugural Hypersonics Capabilities Conference to Advance Transformational Military Capabilities,” Purdue Research Foundation News, July 29, 2019).  Some comments suggested also that this new military research agenda would lead to greater economic development in the Greater Lafayette area. One particularly bizarre spokesperson justified the Purdue commitment to high speed warfare by referring to the mission of the Morrill Act of 1862 establishing land-grant universities (Dave Bangert, “Purdue ‘Doubling Down” on Military Research on Hypersonic Flight, Weapons,”  Lafayette Journal and Courier, July 30, 2019).

These statements illustrate that Purdue University, a large land-grant university, increasingly is committing its skills to research, development, training, and the production of the instruments of war. Such commitments have been made with little discussion in the broader university community. 

 Important theoretical questions are not being raised. For example, is war inevitable? Are other countries a threat to the United States? Should we conceptualize the world in the twenty-first century as one in which the United States and China are competitors and threats to each other? Should the United States commit itself to remaining the number one power in the world, however that is defined? 

Or should research prioritize human development and conflict resolution rather than “security? Is there a relationship between poverty, hunger, environmental devastation, the spread of weapons and war and violence? One wonders if more of government and corporate resources should be allocated to these many issues, rather than to ill-conceived, notions of national “security.” And, finally, do collaborative efforts between universities, such as Purdue, with defense contractors and the Department of Defense best serve the needs of national security, conflict reduction, research, or education? And, in the end, does not this collaboration between the military, the university, and industry constitute a huge robbery of the wealth of society at the expense of social and economic development, ecological survival, and the prospects of peace?

President Eisenhower in 1960 warned about an unwarranted growth of the influence of the military/industrial complex in American society. Today he would characterize the danger as the military/industrial/academic complex. It includes the shifting of the research and education missions of higher education away from human development to war-making. 

These qualitative changes in university priorities are being made largely in non-transparent decision-making ways. But when challenged, the military/industrial/academic complex tends to defend its existence by claiming war is inevitable. And to secure support, when questioned, self-identified experts construct narratives of enemies; whether they be the Communists, the terrorists, China, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, artificial intelligence, or all of the above. As Andrew Bacevich so compellingly has argued, ever since the end of World War Two, the United States has created a “permanent war economy.” Given the increasing financial challenges universities face in the twenty-first century, collaboration with this permanent war economy becomes attractive to university administrators.

 

 

The Corporate Media Did Not Cover the New Poor Peoples Campaign Rally Last Weekend!

 https://www.commondreams.org/news/poor-peoples-campaign-voters?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1TanhrQrKsUtftxhGxv1dgwaNjrAXiVR0SuYv8IlDo5CD29F7ldxMtOWc_aem_obT2dFdZYQYeuw0jJv10SA

Originally Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2022

CONNECTING FOREIGN POLICY TO DOMESTIC NEEDS

Harry Targ

As the tragedy of the Russian invasion and the devastation of Ukraine unfold, the war machines (policymakers, arms manufacturers, educators, media propagandists) of various countries-Russian, NATO alliance partners, and the US-ramp up their calls for more war. These advocates for more violence, more nuclear threats, and more great power chauvinisms increasingly take center stage. Rumors of “back channel” negotiations are demeaned. Feelers for negotiation articulated by key leaders are ignored.  And hints of negotiations and compromises and concessions are ridiculed. Finally, any suggestions that China, an “authoritarian state” could play a role in deescalating the crisis are condemned.

And, in the midst of the escalating tensions and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the significant Biden program of substantial social, economic, and environmental changes has been allowed to flounder and die. Now Congress and the Administration eagerly legislate more money for the military and more money for our beleaguered Ukrainian ally (the latest over $40 billion) and increasingly remind the population that China, the real enemy, is lurking in the global background. Biden’s efforts this week to resuscitate an Asian trade bloc and warnings about the US commitment to defend Taiwan are the most recent examples. Health care, debt relief for students, shifts to a Green Jobs Agenda, tax reform, raising the minimum wage all need to be put off for another day.

Last year the New Poor Peoples Campaign showed in an informative flyer how money projected for the military could be used for human needs. 

https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PPC-BBB-fact-sheet.pdf

And elsewhere the NPPC pointed out that:

“Since Vietnam, the United States has waged an ongoing war against diffuse enemies, siphoning massive resources away from social needs. Out of every dollar in federal discretionary spending, 53 cents [go] towards the military, with just 15 cents on anti-poverty programs.”

 

Many of us remember the dramatic policies proposed, some implemented, of the Great Society. And twenty-five years earlier, during World War and before “the Great Society,” Henry Wallace, spoke of the the prospect of creating the “Century of the Common Man,” the absence of war, social and economic justice, and freedom. President Roosevelt called for a “New Economic Bill of Rights,” in 1944 embodying economic security and justice for all, and even Harry Truman advocated for a national health care system.

And what happened every time, the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and now-threats of war, demands for preparations for war, escalating military expenditures. The tragedy of how war and the mythology of its inevitability is vividly reflected in the defeat of the Great Society programs.

In sum, since the establishment of the permanent war economy in the 1940s millions of proclaimed “enemies” have been killed and seriously injured, mostly in the Global South. Permanent physical and psychological damage has been done to U.S soldiers, predominantly poor and minorities as they too are victims of war.

In addition, military spending has distorted national priorities and invested U.S. financial resources in expenditures that do not create as many jobs as investments in construction, education, or healthcare. And, as Andrew Bacevich, Seymour Melman and others have called it, “the permanent war economy” has created a culture that celebrates violence, objectifies killing, dehumanizes enemies, and exalts super-patriotism through television, music, video games, and educational institutions.

There is no doubt that there is an inextricable connection between war-making abroad and human suffering at home. Now is the time for peace and justice movements to act on these connections.

 

Debate Lies Concerning Covid Remind Us of the Rightwing Threat to Democracy and Well-being

Orignally posted on Thursday, May 7, 2020

REFLECTIONS ON ASPECTS OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC

Harry Targ

There are political, economic, ideological dimensions about how the pandemic is playing out in American life. First, the crisis is being framed in diametrically opposed ways. One frame says the crisis is really former President Obama’s fault and current President Trump, coming into office in the face of errors, is now rectifying the situation. He is in the process of saving the lives of thousands of Americans as the pandemic winds down. The legacy of the Obama era, Trump argues, is magnified by the incompetence or duplicity of the Chinese.

A second, and more accurate frame, is that the Trump administration is riddled with incompetence. As a result he ignored the early warning signs of crisis, fired experts on pandemics, and bungled efforts to ameliorate the worst effects of it. Governors, burdened with rising numbers of victims of the virus in their states, are desperately establishing health and safety rules, purchasing necessary equipment for first responders and citizens, and  trying within limits of interest and ideology to provide for the social welfare of  citizens.

These state policies pit the governors against a federal government that regards the playing out of the crisis as part of a political drama. For the president, the crisis, his denigration of responses in the states to the pandemic, and criticisms of those who call for more concerted action to reverse the incidences of the disease, is all about him. Ultimately for Trump, much more than his opponents, policy decisions are shaped by the upcoming elections.

Second, while 2020 politics shape the policy decisions during the crisis so do economics and ideology. With the spread of disease and death Trump was forced to accept modest but necessary state policies that sequestered people to slow the dramatic increases in those affected by the virus and deaths resulting from it. However, these policies have brought the economy to a halt. And as of May, the public debate has been  shifting from “is the crisis real” and “do we have to employ radical measures to reduce the incidence of the virus” to “when should we reopen the economy.”

Most of the scientific evidence points to the need to continue the social and economic lockdown of the nation. But Trump, the rightwing sectors of the capitalist class, and the gun-toting base of Trump’s support are advocating an end to the policies of quarantining. Many mainstream politicians, CEOs and administrators of public institutions (for example university presidents) have indicated that the risk of not returning to economic activity as usual is more important than the risk that the pandemic might continue and grow. Concretely, among significant sectors of the ruling class, profit takes priority over public health.

Third, the ideological justification of the profound danger to the survival of society as we know it comes down to arguments about the “magic of the marketplace” versus “government intervention” and  “governments’ trampling on personal freedom.” As the godfather of this ideology, Ronald Reagan, said: “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.” And, to the extent that public policies have been based on science, science as an enterprise is being subjected to scorn and disbelief.

In addition, some specific elements of this drama worth mentioning are:

--Rightwing racists and militias are mobilizing to defend Trump while others party in public, refuse to wear masks, and in other ways show their defiance in the face of health risks

--These public manifestations of protest against governmental efforts to mute the worst effects of the pandemic are being promoted with money, propagandizing, and staffing  by rightwing sectors of the ruling class. Most prominent in these prompts to mobilization are organizations well known by now: Charles Koch funded organizations such as ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network, and the Heritage Foundation, and the NRA. Protests are not just spontaneous uprisings of ill-informed workers but well-planned efforts to reverse public policies designed to protect the health of the population. And they are targeted against those politicians Trump himself has attacked.

But it is important to remember that vast majorities of those polled believe that the policies of reducing public activity and business as usual should be continued, Most Americans reject the calls for ending “government interference.” They accept the conclusions of scientists that the pandemic remains life-threatening.

--Public policies that have passed to mute the growing economic pain and suffering of average citizens, workers and small business persons, have redistributed enormous wealth to the largest corporations in the United States. Much needed bailout packages passed by Congress have not addressed enough the healthcare, food, housing, and other needs of the American people.

--This critical moment of the political, economic, and ideological struggle requires serious attention. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the outcome of this crisis will determine the future of the United States and perhaps the global political economy. The forces of the libertarian right, sectors of neoliberalism, and white nationalism are working to return the United States to the Gilded Age, when the accumulation of wealth and the immiseration of the masses was extreme,  Jim Crow was law in the South and racist social practices predominated throughout the United States.

Alternatively, the pandemic has made clear to all that the capitalist economy and the US political system are broken. It is this awareness that could trigger the mobilization of masses of people to create another world: a world of democratic socialism.  This is the project that more and more people in the US and around the world are embracing. The time for rebuilding our mass movements and our left political parties in unity and expanding international solidarity is now. Another World is Still Possible.