The world’s first Nuclear weapon, dropped upon the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan, by the US in 1945, erased humans from existence. American journalist, John Hersey, wrote an early report.

Steve Villano

Apr 07, 2026

(With the unhinged American President hallucinating about “sending Iran back to the Stone Age” or of wiping out Iranian civilians, and civilization, in “one night”, the terrifying possibility of the use of nuclear weapons against innocent human beings has become very real, for the first time in my 77 years of life. Having written and researched this subject extensively for over five decades, the prospect of the use of nuclear weapons against humans once again, must be exposed for the utter insanity—and international war crime that even the threat of committing such a genocide—constitutes.

It was 81 years ago this summer, when the United States dropped two nuclear weapons on the Japanese population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three days apart, wiping out nearly 200,000 humans going about their everyday lives. (The first bomb, dropped on Hiroshima had more power than “20,000 tons of TNT,” far and away the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare,” up until that time.

American journalist & author John Hersey wrote one of the earliest accounts of the horrific effect on human life of the dropping of the first of the two ”Atomic” bombs upon ordinary, non-combatant Japanese citizens. Originally planned to be published as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1946, the publication devoted its’ total issue of August 31, 1946, to publishing Hershey’s entire story of “Hiroshima.”

Later published in hardcover book format by Alfred A. Knopf publishers of New York, in 1946, Hiroshima, has gone on to sell more than three million copies. Owning one of those original copies, has given me a deep sense of duty to read and share Hersey’s words over and over again, so that no such intentional mass torture of fellow human beings is every contemplated again.

This week, in my most recent re-reading of Hiroshima, as the madness of American threats against Iran have escalated to genuine Genocidal proportions, the simplicity and clarity of Hersey’s writing struck me as pure as a poem, demanding that we pay attention to the kind of terror we are, once again, threatening to inflict upon the innocent. The vision and observations in this version I’ve entitled “Hiroshima, Revisited”, are all Hersey’s; the extraordinary words of John Hersey’s are bracketed by quotation marks; other transitional words or phrases are mine; the selection, editing and emphasis of them are mine. The responsibility to prevent this crime against humanity, and war crime, from happening again, is all of ours.)

HIROSHIMA, Revisited.

A normal workweek began with a noiseless flash;

Clerks at their desks, nurses with patients,

Clergy at their best, families paying rent.

The windows of their offices,

Hospitals, churches and homes

Welcoming the morning light, one last time.

“A tremendous light cut across the sky;

It seemed a sheet of sun.”

The Reverend reacted in terror,

His instinct was to run.

“He threw himself between two big rocks in the garden,

Bellying up very hard against one.”

“He pushed his face against the stone, eyes shut,

Feeling a sudden pressure, and then splinters

And fragments of tile fell on him.

When he dared, the Reverend raised his head,

And thought the bomb fell directly on his neighbor’s house,”

And left him dead.

“Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud,

The day grew darker and darker.” It was 8 am.

The mother, a soldier’s widow, watched

“Everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen.

Her mother’s reflex set her in motion toward her children;

She took a single step when something picked her up

And she seemed to fly into the next room over the raised sleeping platform,

Pursued by parts of her house.”

“Timbers fell around her as she landed

And a shower of tiles pommelled her.”

“Everything became dark, for she was buried.

She rose up and freed herself;

She heard a child cry, ‘Mother help me,’

And saw her youngest—the five year old—

Buried up to her breast, and unable to move…”

She “started frantically to claw her way toward the baby,

She could here nothing of her other children.”

The Medical Doctor saw the flash.

“Startled, he began to rise to his feet;

The hospital leaned behind his rising, and

With a terrible ripping noise

Toppled into the river.”

An entire hospital, with patients and nurses; gone.

“The Doctor was alive, squeezed tightly by two long timbers

In a V across his chest—like a morsel

Suspended between two huge chopsticks.”

“Wounded people were hurrying across the bridge

In an endless parade of misery;

Many of them exhibited terrible burns

On their faces and arms.”

The Doctor “saw a nurse hanging in the timbers

Of the hospital by her legs, and then, another

Painfully pinned across the breast.

He thought he heard the voice of his niece for a moment,

But he could not find her; he never saw her again.”

“Of 150 Doctors in the city, 65 were already dead, most of the rest, wounded;

Of 1,780 Nurses, 1,654 were dead, or too badly hurt to work.”

“Wounded people supported maimed people;

Disfigured families leaned together.

Many people were vomiting.

In a City of 245,000, nearly 100,000 had been killed…

Or doomed at one blow; 100,000 more were hurt.”

“The eyebrows of some were burned off, and

Skin hung from their faces and hands.

Others, because of pain, held their arms up,

As if carrying something in both hands.

Some were vomitting as they walked.

Many were naked, or in shreds of clothing..

Those who were burned moaned,

Mizu, Mizu! Water, Water!”

“No country except the United States,

With its industrial know-how,

It’s willingness to throw 2 billion gold dollars

Into an important wartime gamble,

Could possibly have developed”

The largest bomb—an Atomic bomb—used,

In the history of warfare.

The morning after the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,

The Reverend went to “fetch water for the wounded

In a bottle or teapot he had borrowed…

There were many dead in the garden.

At a beautiful moon bridge, he passed a naked, living women,

Who seemed to have been burned from head to toe…”

When the Reverend had given the wounded water,

“the woman by the bridge was dead.”

On his way back with the water,

As he looked for a way back through the woods,

“He heard a voice ask from the underbrush:

Have you anything to drink? He saw a uniform.

Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with water.

When he penetrated the bushes,

He saw there were about 20 men, and they were all in the same

Nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned;

Their eyesockets were hollow;

The fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks..”

Why would ANY God listen to prayers to kill some of God’s own children?

Steve Villano

Apr 04, 2026

(Photo by Steve Villano, taken in Assisi, Italy, birthplace of St. Francis (1181-1226) and a major Catholic pilgrimage site.)

100 years ago, when the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, when hooded-haters marched through the streets of Washington, DC, cloaked in their white sheets, 50,000 strong, and wrote the Xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Asian, anti-Italian Immigration Act of 1924, they despised Catholics as much as they hated all non-Christians and and non-Whites.

Messianic Nationalist & violent Christians who dominated the Klan, crusaded against the 1928 Presidential Candidacy of NYS Governor Al Smith, the first Catholic candidate to run for President. Their campaign against Smith was vile, and its very viscousness and vituperative attacks upon people of one specific faith, set the stage for Adolf Hitler’s genocidal attacks against the Jews just a few years laters. In fact, Hitler and Nazi lawyers in the 1930’s acknowledged that it was American Jim Crow laws in some 30 States—crafted by the KKK against Black people—which were their model for the discriminatory Nuremberg Laws against Jews.

Fast forward to today, when the KKK-hatched Immigration Act of 1924 is still the Bible for Stephen Miller and modern-day American Nazis, and when the first Secretary of Defense (or War) in 250 years of US History has held Messianic, Nationalist Christian prayer services on Federal, tax-payer paid for land, at the Department Defense (or War), and pointedly excluded Catholics–carrying forward the KKK’s continuing hatred of 1.3 billion fellow Christians.

At the same time, few Popes of the world’s 1.3 BILLION Cathollcs have been as Progressive and devout followers of the universal teachings of love–and the humanitarian actions–of Jesus Christ as the last two, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo–both of whom have been insanely vilified by Far Right Messianic Nationalist Christians, in the US and abroad.

Pope Leo has directly challenged the crimes vs. humanity committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza, and aimed at Christians & Muslims in Lebanon, and has strongly opposed the US/Israel War in Iran. He has directly chastised Trump, US Secretary of Defense (War)Pete Hegseth, and other Messianic, Nationalist, KKK-Christians for justifying the War as a Holy War of Christians & Jews vs. Muslims–and praying to their God to “kill” some of God’s own children. Whose God would sanction such slaughter?

What could possibly go wrong when Messianic, Nationalist and Violent Kahanist Jews, team up with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent KKK-loving Christians and go to war with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent Muslims?

Pope Leo has been fearless & relentless in exposing and criticizing this insanity and perversion of religion, and in making clear that the Christ he follows in his acts of humanity, kindness and compassion, must never be used as justification for War and/or Mass Murder.

It’s why Hegseth, and his fraudulent , Nationalist, Far Right KKK-Christians are waging their Jihad against anyone who actually follows the teachings–and actions–of Christ, and has intentionally excluded Catholics from prayer breakfasts–even on Good Friday.

Tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Christian Calendar, maybe the KKK-Christian Nationalists will see a glimmer of the Light. I doubt it, since their violent hatred–especially of Catholics going back more than acentury, or of humane members of any faith who disagree with them–thrives in darkness, feeding upon itself and the corpses of others.

Easter Sunday may be a celebration of rebirth and Resurrection for devout Catholics and other Christians, but for the ultra-nationalist, Messianic KKK-Christians, it’s simply another day in their continuing crusade to crucify anyone different, who honors love ahead of hate, or peace ahead of war.

For millions of us Jews around the world, this may be the most stressful Passover of our lives, since we are praying for the freedom & dignity of our fellow human beings Israel is oppressing.

Steve Villano

Apr 01, 2026

Each Passover, over the past dozen years or so, I’ve written an original Haggadah for my granddaughters, emphasizing freedom, equality and humanity above all.

Each year during their lifetimes, as the Extreme Right Wing Fanatical government of Benjamin Netanyahu has jettisoned the beauty and universality of Judaism in favor of a narrow-minded nationalism that demonizes and destroys non-Jews, the challenge to tell the story has become more acute.

The first Haggadah I wrote was when our oldest granddaughter, now nearly 17, was almost 4 years old, and her younger sister was 2. Their youngest sister would be born in 2015.

I decided to write my own Haggadahs for my granddaughters since I found all pre-published Passover stories for children to be harsh, foreboding and sadly lacking in even the barest attempt to capture the attention and imagination of young children, without talking down to them. I scoured Jewish bookstores, on-line offerings, and even Jewish museums. Bupkus. Everywhere I turned: Bupkus.

I tried adjusting the standard Passover story with a few flourishes, but it just didn’t work. I wanted my granddaughters to feel the same passion for the story of freedom against all odds that I felt, as a convert to Judaism, and to absorb such lessons of humanity and Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) into their lives.

I agreed with the social commentary of Jon Stewart at the time, himself a Jew, that we Jews were utter failures when it came to “marketing” our own holidays for our children and grandchildren. We had to be more creative to compete with a plethora of presents under a glittering Christmas tree, or oodles of colored eggs to emphasize Easter—a masterful sales pitch for Christians to sell death, rebirth and resurrection.

Everyone of our holidays, it seemed—Passover, Purim, Hanukkah—revolved around fighting for survival and killing others to gain our freedom from oppression, from Pharaohs, or Hamens or other demented dictators, who hated us simply because we were not like them. The story of Jewish history, was not only one of resilience in the face of such constant threats, but the constant challenge and struggle to continue to exist.

The challenge, and struggle, I did not see coming, was how to tell the story to my granddaughters now, when we Jews had become the oppressors of others, and the anti-democratic totalitarians advancing nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, or ever worse, ethnic and religious Genocide. What if we became our own worst nightmares?

Each year, I paid close attention to what was of greatest interest to my granddaughters, and wrote and enacted a personalized Passover story true to Jewish history, yet tailored to their young interests to make it even more riveting for them: Faery princesses, or Shopkins, or She-roes (from a TV show), or Cats, or, Puppy Pals. More recently, with the active and delightful participation of our youngest granddaughter—who declared our Passover “puppet-shows” to be her favorite holiday—we’ve added such new favorite themes like “Axolotls” in 2024, and “Rainbows” in 2025.

Those newer themes were a relief for me— coming in the two years after the October 7, 2023, mass murder of 1200 Jews by Hamas, and Israel’s extremely disproportionate counter-attack upon Gaza, which has grown into the Genocide of tens of thousands of non-combatant Palestinians—including some 20,000 infants and children.

In addition to being of great interest to our youngest granddaughter, now 10, those themes carried the blessed benefit of being able to focus on the remarkable “regenerative” powers of the Axolotl to overcome certain death, and on the resilience, diversity and humanity, represented by Rainbows, and not on the monstrous morphing of the Israeli government and armed forces into becoming, themselves, the awful oppressors we have battled throughout our history. We had become our own Amalek, the essence of all evil. How would I explain that twist in the Passover story to a 10-year old who loves the holiday—and whose loved for it I helped nurture—and whom I adore?

What makes the struggle even more wrenching this year—5786 in the Judaic Calendar, or some 5709 years before the creation of the State of Israel—is that the governments of both Israel and the United States have gone stark-raving mad. They’ve abandoned democracy and any semblance of respect for international law or any law; justify the slaughter of innocent non-combatants, in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon as “pre-emptive self-defense;” violate state sovereignty by reducing to rubble every part of any country they want to conquer; and commit campaigns of political assassination and abduction of world leaders they consider to be in their way.

Such paranoia can be used to justify the slaughter of anyone perceived to be different—precisely the kind of paranoia present in every Passover story, and used, throughout history against us Jews and of civilization. Only now, the Pharoahs are Jewish and American, and the targets of their state-sponsored violence and aggression are everyone else who is not, or who does not bend to their will. The symbolic Red Sea has become the Mediterranean, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Litani River in Lebanon.

Our 17-year old granddaughter is fully aware of this enormous gash in the universe, which has tipped our earth out of orbit, creating a new axis of evil, and a new level of inhumanity toward others. Her questions are acute, and reflected by the Jewish Voice for Peace:

“Why is this Passover different from other Passovers?: Genocide. The unique scale, and devastating brutality is still being measured; the dead are still being counted, while the death toll continuously climbs. At this very moment. Israel is dropping bombs on Iran, on Tehran, on Lebanon, on Beirut; while Palestinians in Gaza try to retrace their spiraling Exodus back to what? As we, Jews of conscience, try to go retrace our spiralling back to ritual, back to Passover, back to what?

We ignore those questions of this new generation of Jews, of exquisitely sensitive human beings, at our own peril. War is peace; lies are truth; the inhumane is humane. Everything has been turned on its head, and they know it.

In the Introduction to an alternative Haggadah entitled “ Next Year in Safety & Liberation: Fighting Fascism & Genocide in the Jewish Tradition,” Liv Kunins-Berkowitz writes:

“As we gather for Passover, modern day Pharoahs are rising to power all over the world. In the United States, a fascist government is using the guise of fighting antisemitism to punish those who speak out for Palestinian freedom. This Passover gathering is an act of refusal. We will not allow our tradition, history, and identity, to be fuel for authoritarian crackdown”

Throughout all of this, our 10-year old granddaughter and I are undaunted, driven by our joy in creation, our love for others, and our endless reserves of hope and optimism, that things can be better.

Two years ago, when we wrote of Axolotls—the indefatigable amphibian found in a small lake in Mexico City—we wrote that:

“Little did the Mean King know,

That Axolotls can grow and grow.

Cut off a leg, they’ll grow it back!

Poke out their eyes, they’ll pop right back!

Even if the whole sky turns to black, you foolish Pharoah,

Axolotls NEVER lose hope—

They have that knack!

And so, we rallied again, inspired by the little creature that could.

Last year, in my despair over the utter destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of Palestinian children, our “Rainbow Passover,” lifted us out of darkness:

“The Rainbow People were free at last;

Their days as slaves, now long past.

Their differences, valued;

Their diversity, a blessing;

Each with a dignity that left no one guessing.

They had made it to the Promised Land,

With each giving the other a helping hand.”

No matter the destruction and devastation, we would continue our efforts, no matter how small, to repair the world. As Jews, we have an obligation to do so; as humans, there is no alternative.

So this year, this Passover, gives us another chance to imagine an alternative universe— beyond the bombed out schools and deaths of 175 children at their desks in Iran, or the intentional destruction of a civilian apartment building in Lebanon, crushing all inside; beyond the death by malnutrition and starvation of another 18,000 babies and children in Gaza, intentionally denied bread, water and medicine by the fanatical Pharoahs of our time.

This year we’ll include olives on our Seder Plate, to symbolize the rows and rows of Olive trees, sustainer of life, destroyed by fanatical Far Right West Bank settlers, on the small parcels of land farmed by Palestinian families for decades. To uproot such a farm, is to uproot a family’s history and it’s future.

For weeks, we’ve crafted a new story of Passover, this year influenced by the eternal optimism of Pokemon—and of my granddaughter, a glowing light in a dark valley.

This year, our Passover Haggadah is a work in progress and is as old as a humanitarian Judaism, Islam and Christianity—where all children are cherished and equal; and all, not just some, are “chosen” to be loved, protected, nourished, fed, and housed, raised far from bombs, and cradled in our arms of peace.

The 1st “NO KINGS” day was on the Porcine Emperor’s 79th Birthday, when five million of us marched for Democracy; than, 7 million more a few months later; now, no bullies nor bullets will stop us.

Steve Villano

Mar 28, 2026

(The Emperor has no clothes, no brain, no allegiance to the US Constitution, no respect for democracy, no heart, no conscience & no soul. But he has spawned the largest pro-democracy, pro-America demonstrations in the nation’s 250 year history.)

For Donald Trump’s 77^th birthday, almost 3 years ago—before he stole billions of our tax dollars for himself, his family and friends, the grotesque grifter was given the gift of a 37-count criminal indictment, with 31 of those charges pertaining to blatant violations of the Espionage Act, including spilling—or selling— Nuclear secrets.

His actions are similar to the 70+ year old case that resulted in execution by electrocution of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg for violating the Espionage Act, and allegedly passing national security secrets to the Russians. It’s so serendipitous, and certainly poetic, that, in the end, the lives of Trump and the Rosenbergs are intertwined, yet again, this time, without the repulsive Roy Cohn as the intermediary. Trump has transformed into his own stinking stain, exceeding the extraordinary evil of Roy Cohn.

A few years back, on the anniversary of the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly providing valuable, top-secret information to the Russians about nuclear weapons designs, radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines, the WashingtonPost broke an explosive story headlined: “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”

Now that we have physical evidence that boxes and boxes of highly classified US secrets—including Nuclear plans, and plans of how best to attack the US—were left in Trump’s bathroom, in a public ballroom and strewn about in closets and storage rooms, Trump’s illegal violations of the Espionage Acts are veering into Ethel and Julius territory. He’s already be behind bars if a Florida-based judge, jonesing for a future Judicial appointment, hadn’t improperly dismissed the airtight Espionage case against him.

As we’ve witnessed everyday in Trump’s incessant Smash, Destroy, Grab & Grift 2nd Administration’s frenzied fever to snort up every dollar and put everything in the U.S. up for sale—or put his own name on it—the prospect of Trump selling highly classified nuclear documents to Vladimir Putin or the Saudis for billions of dollars—or of his recklessness of his mishandling top secret documents he should never have had–has become increasingly plausible, thanks to documents accidently leaked this week to Congress by the Department of Justice, led by another Trump-kept Florida judicial officer, Pam Bondi.

This adds an entirely new, and dangerous, dimension to Trump’s reign of terror and massive error, including the possibility that Russian spies or foreign agents from anywhere, could have photographed these top secret military documents, while using the bathroom at Mar-A-Lago, or that Trump is still monetizing similar top secret, classified information—even while he is President.

Like Trump’s friend, mentor, role-model and lawyer Roy Cohn—lionized in the movie, “The Apprentice,” as Trump’s primary tutor—I grew up thinking that only alleged “communists” or “communist sympathizers,” spilled nuclear secrets to the Russians, and our enemies, not Presidents.

After all, it was Roy Cohn who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for violating the Espionage Act. My devotion to the law, and faith in the US Justice system has been completely undermined over the past several years, but especially because Trump hasn’t been treated exactly the same way as Ethel & Julius, or as his best-friend Jeffrey Epstein, for abusing young girls. It is so unfair, as Trump himself would say.

And, since the geopolitical grifter Trump has not been treated the same way the Rosenbergs were, as a Jew, I believe the actions vs. the Rosenbergs were blatantly Anti-Semitic. It’s so on brand that Trump and his team of hatemongers —like Stephen Miller, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth—have doubled-down on the phrase “Cultural Marxists,” a slur popularized by Adolf Hitler to demonize progressive Jews.

After I devoured the brilliantly researched and written 49-page criminal indictment of Trump which lays out not only his continuing theft of top secret classified documents over two years, but his willful obstruction of the Justice Department’s efforts to retrieve them, visions of Ethel Rosenberg, played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, began dancing on my brain. “Angels” is being produced again at a local theatre in my neighborhood later this Spring.

Quickly, I ran to get my printed and signed copy of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play.

I turned to the page where the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up at Roy Cohn’s bedside, as he lay dying of AIDS. Cohn, who was Donald Trump’s personal role-model and fellow Studio 54 partier, as well as his attorney and the attorney for major organized crime families in New York to whom he introduced Trump, had hounded Ethel and her husband Julius into electric-chair executions three years after her arrest in 1950.

ETHEL: They won, Roy. You’re not a lawyer anymore.

ROY: But am I dead?

ETHEL: No. They beat you. You lost.

(Pause)

ETHEL:

I decided to come here so I could see if I could forgive you. You who I have hated so terribly. I have borne my hatred for you up into the heavens and made a needlesharp little star in the sky out of it. It’s the star of Ethel Rosenberg’s Hatred, and it burns every year for one night only, June 19. (June 19, 1953, was the day Ethel and her husband Julius were executed. Ethel had to be electrocuted three times before she finally died.) It burns acid green.

I came to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Hoping I’d get to see you die more terrible than I did. And you are, ‘cause you’re dying in shit, Roy, defeated. And you could kill me, but you could never defeat me. You never won. And when you die all anyone will say is: better he had never lived at all.”

Will the same thing be said of Trump? Is Trump destined to become his own Roy Cohn? Will as Cohn did, die in his own shit, babbling baby-talk about ballrooms and ballpoint pens and stripped of everything he ever knew?

The only President in all of American history to be twice impeached (and working on a three-peat) twice indicted of crimes, and twice arrested (so far), Trump’s recklessness, carelessness and flagrant disregard for any and all laws—domestic or international—have surprised even those of us who have long pegged him as a criminal cipher, a con, a fraud, a liar, and a mob-boss wannabe.

Is he capable of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians or the Saudis, or the highest bidder? Is he capable of forgiving the Qataris of funding the single biggest act of violence and terror vs. the U.S.—committed 25 years ago this September 11— and accept gilded planes, gifts and billions of dollars in bribes from them and the Saudis?

Would Trump sell pardons to the highest bidders or the facilitators of such bribes, as he did with Michael Flynn, and then reward them with taxpayer-funded payouts for being prosecuted for crimes to which his handmaids pleaded guilty? Would Trump white wash the most heinous sex crimes committed against children in U.S. history, in which he participated, according to testimony given to the FBI? Would the porcine Pedofile protector profer a pardon for the female Sex Trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, who facilitated and participated in those crimes in exchange for her silence about his involvement?

Perhaps, the only appropriate eulogy that could be given for Trump’s lawless, truthless, soul-less half-century headlong flight from accountability of any kind for every crime he ever committed, and his unending drag show of distraction in public, is a variation on the theme expressed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg—thrice electrocuted– over Roy Cohn’s deathbed:

“Better he never had never lived a public life at all.”

Since Donald Trump started his Second Reich in 2025, all the wrong people are dying.

Steve Villano

Mar 22, 2026

(From Iran’s Anadolu Agency, pictures of some of the schoolchildren killed by U.S. bombs in Iran on the first day of the War.)

All the wrong people are dying;

If there’s a God, she’s not even trying

To even the score,

And maybe, just maybe a bit more.

Bob Mueller died this week,

And, before Rigor Mortis arrived,

Trump vomited through his teeth,

That he was glad our hero died.

Are you there God?

That’s your target.

Not Mueller, nor Jesse Jackson,

Nor Virginia Roberts Giuffre,

Nor 168 children in a classroom in Iran.

God, how could you let this happen?

All the wrong people are dying.

But, still breathing and lying,

Are Hegseth, Miller, Trump & Vance,

And anyone who’ll drop their pants

For a few million bucks or strokes or bribes,

Or anything that cleanses the human tribe.

Are you there, God?

They’re your target.

Not the Reiners,

Nor Catherine O’Hara,

Nor half the population of Gaza,

But men in suits, or wearing jackboots,

All the wrong people are dying.

Venality still high-flying

In the form of vampires

Like RFK and Kushner Jr.,

Witkoff, Dumbkopf and Lutnick’s liver;

Bibi, Marco & the terrorist, Ben-Gvir,

Surely you can make them slither,

And pay for the pain they’ve all delivered.

Are you there, God?

They’re your target.

Not Jane Goodall or Country Joe,

Willie Colon or the Dead’s Bob Weir,

Nor anybody Trans or Queer,

Beaten to a pulp by Trolls

Utterly deformed by fear.

When needed most, God, why aren’t you near?

All the wrong people are dying.

If there’s a God, she must be hiding—

Averting her eyes & ears to wailing and crying.

Taking Risa, and Rocco, Pretti & Good,

And Caroline Kennedy’s daughter.

Withholding food, medicine & water,

From babies within our own borders,

And Lebanese children, tagged for slaughter.

Are you there, God?

Those innocents are NOT your target;

Unless you are gathering the best around you,

Creating Hell’s Tenth Circle of evil here, on earth,

Governed by ghouls, pedophiles and thieves,

Teaching the rest of us who want to believe,

That justice only comes to those of us who grieve

The good already gone from us.

The news about Cesar Chavez & Dolores Huerta took my breath away.

Steve Villano

Mar 18, 2026

(The Napa County, CA., Sculpture of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, by Napa sculptor Mario Chiodo. Photo by the Napa Valley Register)

I woke up the morning I learned the news and couldn’t catch my breath.

No, it wasn’t because of my age; it wasn’t because almost daily now, I hear of another old friend or former colleague getting a debilitating disease or disability, or dying.

It wasn’t because another school full of young, innocent Muslim girls was obliterated, or a high-rise residential apartment tower in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon, blown to bits by Israeli terrorists—masquerading as a government—with each floor pancaking upon the one below it, crushing into dust any humans still inside.

It wasn’t because something bad had happened, God forbid, to one of my granddaughters or my son or my partner of 54-years. Those are a steady drumbeat of worries, which always come in bunches, and not as single spies. That is the background music to my life; a constant hum.

And, no, it wasn’t because of another all-too real series of night terrors of mine, where I raced against time to prevent a bomb from going off, or spent the darkness loudly cursing out Trump or Bondi or Bibi or Hegseth or a long litany of monsters, until my shouts awakened others to how conscious my unconscious had become.

What made me gasp for air this time, was a headline in the on-line New York Times confirming disturbing rumors we heard about Cesar Chavez, the day before, but tried to dismiss because there no credible sources for those rumors, and we know how anything can be made up by anyone, anywhere at anytime and become what passes for fact, instantly.

Only this morning, the source could not be more credible: it was Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ co-leader of the United Farm Workers union, and, at 96, the living heart and soul of the movement for social & economic justice for more than 65 years.

There was the New York Times headline: “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.” And there were the sources: Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas—two women raped by Chavez when they were young girls in the 1970’s; and Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ most prominent female ally in the Farm Workers Movement, and a labor-movement icon in her own right.

Dolores Huerta, 96 years old, who suffocated a secret for 60 years, of having been raped by Cesar Chavez, on more than one occasion, resulting in two pregnancies—which she hid—and the birth of two daughters, whom she gave away to be raised in more stable family settings. This was Cesar Chavez. This was Dolores Huerta. Two pillars of my life from my early years of college; two symbols of the urgency of struggle to bring about sweeping social change; two working-class heroes.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Melinda Henneberger was eloquent in her excruciatingly painful description of the torment which Huerta had hidden for six decades, in her Substack column entitled Kansas City Stack, headlined: “Why did Dolores Huerta wait 60 years to accuse César Chávez of rape? I hope I know the answer:

‘Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing’

From the Times story:

“Ms. Huerta said he abused her not only physically but emotionally. Union records document an argument at La Paz between the two of them over missing financial receipts during a board meeting in 1979. Ms. Huerta demanded respect and pushed back against his suggestions that she had stolen money. Mr. Chávez responded by shouting at her with curses and insults, repeatedly calling her a stupid bitch, according to the audio recordings of board meetings The Times listened to.

Ms. Huerta struggles to reconcile the César Chávez she knew, who inspired so many and achieved so much, and the man who assaulted her and publicly humiliated her. She said she was unaware of any sexual abuse of teenage girls. Moments after some of that abuse was described to her, Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing.”

Hennenberger: “That made me want to wail, too. According to the story, both times Chávez abused Huerta resulted in a pregnancy she said she concealed “by wearing baggy clothes and ponchos.” She gave birth both times, too, to baby girls, “and then arranged for them to be raised by others.” In her statement today, she said that even though she’s been able to stay close to those children, who know her other children, “no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.” That’s so enormous, for everyone involved, that there’s no way to overstate it.”

If that’s what happened, every single piece of this — being raped by your boss and work partner, whose brother later became your life partner — and then having to hide two children you could not raise or tell how they came to be — is so painful that if only those who’d walked that mile could judge, no one would.”

I re-read the New York Times investigative report on Cesar Chavez several times in disbelief. How could all of us not know that Cesar Chavez was Jeffrey Epstein before there was a Jeffrey Epstein? How could this God-like man rape little girls? Exactly because he wasn’t a God.

Henneberger and I did the same thing: ran to an authority we both knew on the Farm Workers Union and Cesar Chavez, the journalist/historian Miriam Pawel, who wrote two books on the union and Chavez. Melinda seized upon a telling paragraph written by Pawel:

“As Miriam Pawel relates in her authoritative biography—the second of two books she has written about the UFW’s rise and fall—Chavez’s personal obsessions, combined with his sudden fame and power, and some of the more malign elements of America’s culture in the 1970s, gradually caused him to turn narcissistic and to encourage a cult built around him.”

Perhaps because of my professional background as a labor organizer for national teachers unions—which I was practicing at the very same time that Chavez and Dolores Huerta were organizing Farm Workers—I was drawn to another powerful passage written by Pawel in : “The Union of their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement,” Bloomsbury Press, NY., NY, 2009:

“Those who once dedicated their lives to Cesar Chavez’s crusades now wince when they drive past farmworkers, hunched over rows of vegetables or trimming grapevines in the bitter cold. Once so certain they could change that world, the UFW alumni rue their failure. They applaud each other’s individual accomplishments, but lament the lost opportunity to collectively achieve even more. The memories still cause pain.”

Now, the pain is multiplied, and much, much more profound than the failure of a union or an organization or a government or a leader to live up to its, or his or her, promise, and our hopes. Those of us who have worked for unions, or non-profit organizations, or socially conscious corporations or good-government Administrations have all known that deep level of disappointment and disillusionment when things do not turn out the way we wanted.

But, the rape of young children, and of co-workers, and the decades long destruction and those lives, is something far more devastating, and damaging, than mere disappointment and disillusionment.

It’s enough to make all of us “break down, sob and wail,” and gasp for air.