John Funiciello

Across the political spectrum and across the world there has been condemnation of the slaughter of Palestinians and the wounding of so many hundreds more, but that will not stop future slaughters of people who are demanding what is rightfully theirs, return to their homes and what were once their villages. It will happen as long as the likes of Trump officially condone and support such actions.

There have been charges of “wage slavery” for many years, but the demands of private prison corporations that imprisoned immigrants work for pennies is the most glaring example of wage slavery, bordering on outright slavery.

As Americans, the new embassy in Jerusalem sends a clear message from the Trump administration: the Israeli government can do whatever it wants. Snipers, blockades, legal assaults on basic rights, ongoing expansion - there’s evidently nothing this administration won’t sign off on. It’s never been more clear that change in U.S. Israel/Palestine policy is only going to come from the grassroots.”

He does not seem to know (as he is ignorant of so many things) that the immigration into the U.S. peaked about a decade ago. But, as in so many “decisions” of this president, the decision seems to have been made on the spur of the moment, without consultation with anyone who has an iota of knowledge of walls or immigration or foreign policy. So, he just plunges ahead, taking his lead from his favorite news source, Fox News.

In Charleston, the workers were up against the same kind of relentless pressure from union-busters and politicians alike. It's no accident that South Carolina is the state with the lowest union density. That is, the lowest rate of unionization in the U.S., at about 2.6 percent. It has made a fetish of its status as a union-hostile state.

A new CCC would have to be different, of course, including both young men and women, but the idea would be the same: Lifting those who have been left behind intentionally or as part of the process of marginalization, a very real, but unspoken part of a corrupt and ailing system of government.

The strike, which closed the schools across the state, was not the kind of strike that would have been expected to be organized by an industrial union in the heyday of unions decades ago. This one was more like an explosion of anger by teachers who have been abused for most of their working lives and weren’t going to take it anymore.