Like many, we wonder why KPFA exists anymore. It was supposed to be about anti-war and to be about promoting voices that were not heard elsewhere. But despite many of us gathering in the Bay Area on Sunday to stand for peace, we were no where to be found on KPFA's Sunday evening news. Please note, they did have time to cover the re-release of THE WAR AT HOME. That Vietnam-era film is coming back and you can spend your money -- CONSUMERISM! -- and buy tickets. But they couldn't even tie this into what Bay Area residents were doing earlier that day.
SPUTNIK wasn't in the Bay Area but they were in DC covering the main event, the Women's March on the Pentagon. And Alex Rubinstein spoke with Cindy Sheehan.
Alex Rubinstein: Is the march primarily addressing US wars overseas as a women's issue?
Cindy Sheehan: Women around the world are being occupied by US imperialist forces or countries that the US are supporting, [like] Israel and its genocide against Palestinians, in Gaza, particularly. We know that the United States is supporting Saudi Arabia and its absolute horrible, incomprehensible, destruction of Yemen where tens of thousands of of people are dying and millions are starving at this moment.
[. . .]
We don't like Trump, but we don't like Trump for the same reason that we didn't like Obama and Bush. They are representative of the most evil, violent, racist and sexist [people] in [the US] empire, if not in history. When Trump was first elected, my first thought was, ‘well, maybe the movement will be revitalized,' even though I feel that the movement was very hypocritical because they were against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan while Bush was president but not against those wars when Obama was president, or his destruction of Libya or further incursions into Africa, Syria, Somalia and not ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In DC on Sunday, many gathered to review where things stood.
2012 and 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein declared, "You know there's not a lot of democracy out there right now because they've got this new McCarthyism thing going. We've got another name for it. We call it Maddowism after its latest cheerleader because this era of political opposition or I should say political censorship and war mongering and the suppresion of political opposition is back big time."
Maddowism is a good description of the crap that's crept into KPFA. Naming it is the first step to confronting it.
But what else do you do?
Some would say vote.
BLACK AGENDA REPORT's Bruce A. Dixon noted that in his district in Georgia you could vote for the Republican who was responsible for disenfranchising 100,000 or so people or you could vote for Lucy McBath who seemed confused about the office she was running for.
Bruce A. Dixon: We caught Lucy McBath in a place of worship where she came trolling for votes recently and we asked her about the 800 military bases that the United States has around the world. You know what she said to us? Lucy? Oh, oh, Lucy McBath is known for having, unfortunately -- not unfortunately, tragically, criminally, her son was gunned down in Jacksonville, Florida in 2012. Anyway, we asked her about the 800 military bases and she told us, "Well, you know what, I'm going to have to study up on that." That's what she told us. You know, it would be one thing if that was a one-off. But, at BLACK AGENDA REPORT, we took a quick look at Democratic Party Congressional candidates supported by the three organizations that are giving aid to so-called progressive Democrats -- that would be Justice Democrats, A Brand New Congress and Our Revolution. Those guys were responsible in large part for the success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City and some other stuff. Anyway, they've got about 30 Congressional candidates around the country. 22 of them have no positions whatsoever on foreign policy except for support of the state of Israel. Now, damn, what does that tell us about our Democratic friends? And not only are some of them our friends, for God's sake, some of them are our families, so let's be real, alright? I'm not talking about the folks who draw a salary for doing this, I'm talking about the folks who actually have these choices put before them as voters and are not consulted before or after. You see, that -- that's the problem. We talk on the left about holding their feet to the fire, but in the real world, I'm afraid that, there ain't no real mechanism under the law for us to hold their feet to the fire. If only there was. We as a movement are going to have to come up with something new. We're going to have to come up with something creative. It's going to have to violate norms of conduct and the rule of law. It's going to have to. I don't know what it's going to look like. I'm an old man. But I'm going to stick around a few more years to see what it looks like.
In the meantime?
Organize, speak with your friends and neighbors. Jill Stein recommended supporting 3 candidates for peace: Pat Elder (Maryland's 5th District), Diane Moxley (New Jersey's 7th District) and Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey in the US Senate). Find other candidates who are worth supporting but, most of all, start getting real about how we hold people's feet to the fire.
Our thoughts on the first step? Don't take the blame. Don't be the s**t eater for their crappy candidates that you can't support. A Hillary loses? Too damn bad. But the problem is not the voters, the problem is the candidate. Don't let them blame the voters.
Call out the media today.
KPFA is a joke. KPFK is a bigger joke. On Sunday's MIDDLE EAST IN FOCUS, they focused on how the Kavanaugh hearings were bringing Gitmo to the US. That's got nothing to do with the Middle East. But it did give us two blathering idiots proving just how useless they were and that they couldn't find Cuba on a map . Thanks, gals!