Racial hatred across continents and generations can have sinister, cruel and inhuman consequences when coupled with money, power and lack of conscience.
(“Below the Bread Line,No. 4”, photo by Ernest Cole, taken in 1960, during South African Apartheid).
In what may be one of the most credible, powerfully written and delivered speeches in recent times, Caroline Kennedy calls on the US Senate to reject RFK,Jr’s nomination as HHS Secretary.
Caroline Kennedy urging the US Senate to reject the nomination of her cousin, RFK Jr., for HHS Secretary. The link below is to her entire 6+ minute speech delivered on social media.
Time for the National Democratic Party to pick two co-chairs whose very existence shouts “Respect for the Rule of Law,” to vividly contrast it to the violent MAGA felons.
Police Officer Harry Dunn (top photo) & Police Officer Michael Fanone.
It’s past time for the National Democratic Party to stop wringing its collective hands over Trump’s election and his Gestapo-like roll-out of Project 25—which he repeatedly lied about –and pick two authentic American Heroes to be the new Co-Chairs of the Democratic Party: Capitol Police Officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn.
Yes, I know they are not “official” candidates, nor do they have long-standing Democratic operative “bonafides” to run the Party. That’s what makes them so freakin’ perfect.
The more the Democratic Party retreads the same old faces of pols or political cronies who have been around forever and making peoples’ eyes glaze over for just as long, the more Trump and his made-for-television MAGA-monsters will clean our clock. Now is the time for all creative, law-loving out-of-the box thinkers to come to the aid of our Country.
Just think of how the selection of Fanone and Dunn would frame the fundamental respect for the Rule of Law issues facing this country for the next four years: “Democrats Defend the Law; MAGA Mauls It.” Videos of the Violence of January 6, 2021, could be put on a permanent loop on Tik Tok and YouTube, to underscore the urgency of our time. Fanone’s and Dunn’s faces would be everywhere, and they’d be the new face of the Democratic Party.
By selecting Fanone and Dunn as National Democratic Party Co-Chairs the result would be immediate and electrifying (not like the illegal MAGA Stun Guns used against them) and could instantly change the whole national political—and legal—ballgame. Overnight, it would be toxic for a Convicted Felon in the White House to pardon convicted felons who attacked—and caused the death of—police officers.
Fanone and Dunn’s positions atop the Dem Party would scream out the message loud and clear: Democrats are the Party For the Law. Every time either one would speak in public, on TV or Social Media, or attend any event, the very sight of them would shout: “WE’RE FOR THE LAW, AND THEY ARE NOT.” Imagine their power to communicate to Police unions, Law Enforcement organizations and Veterans groups.
Just looking at Fanone & Dunn would be a constant reminder that the criminally violent January 6 MAGA attack on the US Capitol and on both of them, and their colleagues, really did happen—despite the recidivist Trump’s White House attempts to whitewash it.
So think about this Democrats, while you are in process this week of culling through the line-up of the boring, “officially” declared candidates. Yes, I know that neither Fanone nor Dunn have any “administrative” experience. Did that stop Trump and MAGA from picking Pete Hegseth to run the $800 billion Defense Department with 3 million employees? To quote, Trump’s new, wily Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, “that’s what staff is for.”
There are plenty of Democratic political operatives who’ve run party organizations before, or national campaigns, and they can handle the day-to-day operations of the National Democratic Party.
But there is only ONE Michael Fanone, and ONE Harry Dunn.
The message their selection to lead the Democratic Party—the Party For The Law– into the future would send would be clear and unmistakable. It would forcefully flip the tables on the many MAGA felons whose only connection to the men and women in Blue, is when they violently attacked them, making them black and blue, under the direction—and pardon power protection– of a Convicted Felon in Chief
Fanone and Dunn would be a constant reminder of that, forcing people to decide if they are on the side of the law, or the lawless.
Trump’s Advance Team prepared the way, 4 years ago for his return to power as a Convicted Felon.
On January 6, 2021, violent supporters of Donald Trump broke into and vandalized the U.S. Capitol Building. They smashed windows to take over the Capitol Rotunda, where they proceeded to defecate and urinate throughout the national historic site.
On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump will be sworn into the the office of President on the very same site where his supporters defecated and urinated 4 years earlier, preparing the way for Trump’s return to power, as convicted Felon.
Here’ s a complete video of the January 6, 2021, violent takeover of the Capitol Rotunda:
Sometimes, there’s a much deeper, hidden explanation for how people behave.
(“Hedwig & the Angry Inch” was the brilliant stage musical of 1998—turned into a film three years later—written by the talented actor John Cameron Mitchell, with music and lyrics written by Stephen Trask. It’s the story of a Queer performer whose life took a different cut then they expected. The unique musical and film were the inspirations for this poem).
Zuckwig and his Insecure Inch,
Ungrateful for his billions, like a Grinch.
Nevermind he bought half of Kauai for swimmin,’
He measures his worth by how he trashes women.
A college flunky who couldn’t ask for dates,
Zuckwig is consumed with piles of vile self-hate;
Makes an App to anonymously give girls a rating,
Saving him from their sneers and nerd/weakling hating.
“I’ll show them” says Zuckwig,
“I’ll become very rich.”
“I’ll make them like me,
Not give me the ditch.”
So, he sprinkles some Winklevoss dust on their photos,
And vows not to look like some creepy Quasimoto.
Training his voice to sound like Theranos’ Lizzy Holmes,
Zuckwig vows to stop being a gnarly little gnome.
He takes martial arts, testosterone too,
Wears $900,000 watches, such a masculine brew.
He feels Joe Rogan’s biceps, hardens his rump,
Then schleps his little ass, to bow before Trump.
In with “Masculine Energy,”
Out with “Toxic Masculinity,”
Shouts the Artificial Hunk,
Who only ‘virtually’ lost his virginity.
Zuckwig declares war on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,
And considers “All-Gender” banos to be too much of an intrusion.
His Tiny Little Inch, feeling suddenly insecure—
Suppose a Trans Man came in, with something not so demure?
On the National Day of Mourning for President Jimmy Carter, a reminder that humanitarian work, to repair the world, is needed now, more than ever.
(President Jimmy Carter convenes the opening meeting of the first Presidential Commission on Hunger in 1978. Harry Chapin, who persuaded Carter to create the first—and only—Hunger Commission of it’s kind in US History, is the bushy haired guy pictured in the top right of the photo. Bess Myerson, former NYC Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, is seated in the white jacket, in the center of the photo.)
Tomorrow is the National Day of Mourning for President Jimmy Carter who died just before 2025 began, at 100 years old.
Over the past several years, as he endured brain cancer, the death of Rosalyn, his wife of 77-years, and long-term hospice care, Carter has quietly, often silently, been teaching all of us a daily lesson on the dignity of dying after living a deeply purposeful and humanitarian life.
The National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter, will be attended by world leaders and ordinary citizens who had great admiration for his life of self-less service, and it comes in one of history’s most jarring juxtapositions, on the day before President-elect Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions will be affirmed by a Court, making him the first Felon ever elected to the Presidency, and the most self-serving individual to ever occupy the Presidency.
The contrast between moral good and evil—fundamental values in which Carter, a devout Christian, believed deeply—could not be more clear. Even many of the white, fundamentalist Christians who supported both Carter and Trump will have to sit up and take notice.
While we all love the later years of Jimmy Carter, I was never a big fan of his as either a candidate for President, or as President.
With the exception of his commitment to renewable energy, and his brokering of the Camp David Peace accords between Israel and Egypt in 1977, Carter was too politically conservative for me; too much of an incrementalist; not the kind of tough, crusading advocate for justice, human rights and the Rule of Law that many of us craved, following the corrupt times of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and Watergate.
Post-presidency, Carter would grow into a towering international human rights leader, and as a Jew uncomfortable with Israel’s lurch into right-wing fundamentalism, I applauded his early and courageous conclusion that the Israeli government’s deprivation of equal rights for Arab-born Israelis and Palestinians, amounted to Apartheid. Other Jews condemned Carter for his candor.
Years later, he would rail against the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, as heralding the establishment of the United States as an oligarchy, for sale to the highest bidder. Trump’s 2024 election, with a quarter-of-a billion dollar campaign contribution from the world’s richest man who does billions of dollars of business with the federal government, only proved Carter to be prophetic once again.
But, back in 1974, Democrats, across the country swept into near veto-proof power in Congress in the mid-term elections, adding 49 new seats in the House, giving them a commanding 291-seat majority; in the Senate, Democrats picked up 4 seats, producing a filibuster-proof majority of 61.
With the rise of progressivism in Congress few Democratic activists wanted a milquetoast candidate for President in 1976, even if the candidate was a Washington outsider with a winning smile who promised he’d never lie to us.
Many in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wanted a tough, populist champion like Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma, or Rep. Mo Udall from Arizona to lead the Democratic National ticket in 1976. To many, Jimmy Carter was just far too cautious.
Even singer/songwriter Harry Chapin, who would later persuade Jimmy Carter to create the nation’s first and only Hunger Commission, and himself served on that unique Commission from 1978-1980, had his doubts.
Chapin was a delegate to the 1976 Democratic National Convention for the fiery liberal and environmental advocate Rep. Mo Udall, who advocated breaking up Big Oil and enacting National Health Insurance. Udall finished second to Jimmy Carter in six presidential primaries.
A few years back I interviewed social activist Bill Ayers, a former Catholic priest in the great social justice tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and the Berrigans.
Ayers, a NYC-area radio DJ and an authentic “radical priest”, co-founded World Hunger Year (WHY) with Harry Chapin in 1975. It was the team of Bill Ayres, Harry and Sandy Chapin and former Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, which brought the idea of creating the very first US Hunger Commission to the newly-elected President Carter.
Harry Chapin’s family—with ancestors like his grandfather Kenneth Burke, the literary giant and semanticist, and his great-aunt Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Workers movement, was far more radical on social issues than many fans of Harry’s music were, and much more of an ardent advocate for change than Jimmy Carter, who, oddly, liked the lyrics of many of Bob Dylan songs for social change.
Chapin was determined to “do something” with his life—in addition to his music—and was eager to use his celebrity to alleviate hunger and suffering.
In my 2018, interview with Bill Ayres, Harry’s hunger-fighting partner, Ayres told me that:
“ What Harry didn’t like about Carter for one thing, was that he stacked the Pres. Hunger Commission with a whole bunch of people who were not the people who were going to solve hunger. But, the people that were on from the Congress were people we knew—Leahy, being the primary one, Rick Nolan (from Minnesota), the other Dem; Ben Gilman, the Republican, and Bob Dole. Dole grew up in Kansas during the Great Depression, when farmers were losing their farms. We (WHY Hunger) honored him and Senator George McGovern one night. Dole told me that “my Republican friends have never forgiven me for allowing food stamps to be free.”
Among the Commission members for whom Chapin had little patience was it’s Chair, former Xerox Corporation Chairman Sol Linowitz who, Harry believed, was watering down this historic Hunger Commission’s final report and only paying “lip service” to the underlying causes of hunger. Chapin and two other progressive members of the Commission—Senator Leahy and Rep. Nolan—were frequent dissenters on key sections of the Presidential Hunger Commission Report.
In one notable dissent of the report, published 45 years ago, Harry and his two colleagues protested:
“The most glaring issue not addressed is the most important—the interrelationships between our economic and governmental policies and hunger…
Only through expeditious action emanating from the highest levels of policymaking can we hope to map out an integrated program identifying the near-term, intermediate and long-range components of a comprehensive strategy to alleviate hunger…Poverty, not hunger, constitutes the central strand in the web of underdevelopment.”
Many of the Commission’s corporate members were not willing to push the envelope that far, nor did they share Harry’s single-mindedness of purpose for immediate action.
Bill Ayres described it this way:
“Harry never missed a meeting. (Despite a crushing performance schedule).I wentto some of meetings with him. I listened. A whole bunch of people that Carter had chosen. Some good, some not so good. Bess Myerson never came.”
By the summer of 1980, after the final Hunger Commission report was published and put on a shelf, and Jimmy Carter’s attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran failed, Chapin began to get disillusioned. He saw Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for President, as an uncaring & opportunistic charlatan, and Carter as a decent and well-meaning human being, but an ineffective public official.
Harry was passionate about federal action on poverty as essential to tackling world hunger, and became frustrated by the lack of urgency coming from others.
Bill Ayres summed it up well:
“Yes. And part of that was– let’s go to Washington and shake the tree! So the presidential hunger commission was a real breakthrough. Nobody had done that before. Again, that was Sandy’s idea. And it was a Presidential Commission on WORLD Hunger, so it was not Domestic Hunger so much. The Commission’s work went from1978-1980, when they finished their work and put out a document. The document didn’t go anyplace because Reagan got elected.”
“ Harry and I watched the 1980 election results together and we cried, and I said, “Shit. 3 years down the drain.” But he didn’t see it that way. He said, “Nope. We got to get back again and fight the bastards some more!” He wasn’t giving up.”
Harry Chapin never did give up; nor did Bill Ayres, the Chapin family, WHY Hunger, or any of the Harry Chapin Food Banks around the country…nor did Jimmy Carter. Some 45 years after the creation of the only Presidential Hunger Commission in US history, and five decades after the creation of WHY Hunger, the work of fighting hunger, poverty and powerlessness envisioned by Harry and Sandy Chapin and Bill Ayres continues, assisting thousands of families struggling to survive, and increasing food security for millions more.
Carter and Chapin came from dramatically different families, cultures and backgrounds, with sharply different personalities and approaches to social and political change. Yet, their lives’ work and legacies intertwined during Jimmy Carter’s Presidency, and beyond.
The year after Carter lost the Presidency, Harry Chapin lost his life in a tragic car crash at the age of 39. But Chapins’ work of reducing food insecurity and empowering the hungry lives on, as does Jimmy Carter’s extraordinary international efforts in advancing public health, ensuring democratic elections abroad, and his undaunted domestic work through “Habitat for Humanity,” still providing housing security for many of this country’s most vulnerable families—many of the same families who have come to rely upon the Harry Chapin Food Banks for their next meals.
Harry Chapin and Jimmy Carter were an unlikely, but powerful, ticket for long-term, structural change, and their lives, and legacies, are instructions for all the good that decent human beings can bring into this world, despite enormous challenges.
