Independent since 2002 Issue No. 1102 Week of November 7, 2026 Get the free email dispatch →

Columnist

John Funiciello

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Contact Mr. Funiciello and BC.

446 pieces

Commentary

China Ahead of U.S. in Race to “DO Well by Doing Good?”

By John Funiciello Columnist

As the new U.S. president and ruler, Trump is crashing about the world, moaning about how the entire world has taken advantage of his country and how he intends to change that.

For many years, it has been the rule that advocates of the independence of Third World nations have viewed with alarm the “land grabs” that have…

Continue reading 9 min

Commentary

Justice Comes Slowly for Native Americans and Black Farmers

By John Funiciello Columnist

For Trump, all bets are off and human rights and the environment be damned. He seems to see nothing on earth as anything but the means to make money, for himself and others of his economic class.

If it comes at all, justice for Native American farmers and black farmers comes in excruciatingly small drips in the form of court decisions that barely…

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Commentary

If You Don’t Hear or Read About It, Is It Really a Hunger Strike?

By John Funiciello Columnist

In the case of Israel and the most recent hunger strike of Palestinians, even though few might be paying attention in the world press, they do not want the strikers dying in their custody. So, there was at least one report that Israel might seek foreign doctors to force feed the prisoners, as necessary to keep them alive.

When Bobby Sands started a hunger strike in protest of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland in 1981, it was given wide coverage in newspapers and broadcast…

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Cover Story

Indigenous Peoples are Threatened – Those Most in Peril are in Africa

By John Funiciello Columnist

If an aroused citizenry in the U.S. can’t succeed in stopping a couple of pipelines, imagine the near impossibility that indigenous Africans face, when they have little or no support in protecting their lands and territories.

Indigenous people are in trouble all around the world and it’s something that does not make it into the news very often, but a new report…

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Commentary

May Day Takes On a Different Flavor – Unity

By John Funiciello Columnist

Participants were in many cities, sometimes in great numbers, from many groups and sectors. After generations, they seem to be in the process of learning that they must have unity, solidarity, if they are to assert the right of the people to determine their own destiny.

This past Monday, May Day, there were marches and rallies across the U.S., with participants proclaiming opposition to the politics of the day and, especially, against…

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Commentary

Trump, Schumer Ignorant about the Most Basic Industry: Farming

By John Funiciello Columnist

What should be clear to anyone, especially Schumer and Trump, that it is not so much what Canada has done to the farmers of Wisconsin and New York State. It’s what the government, at the urging and demand of global corporations and the lobbyists of giant agribusinesses, has done to America’s small farms.

In a statement last week, Donald Trump displayed a remarkable ignorance of one of the most basic enterprises in American life, farming, when he apparently was…

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Commentary

In All the Bombing, What about Afghanistan’s Farmers?

By John Funiciello Columnist

Imagine further, the good that could come from the millions that are spent on bombs, if they were spent on the people.

For most Americans, the dropping of a nuclear-sized, non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan was a ho-hum affair. Since the U.S. drops so many bombs in so many…

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Commentary

El Salvador Takes a Giant Step in Protecting its People

By John Funiciello Columnist

the culprit was OceanaGold, an Australian-Canadian corporation and the fight the big boys put up was a classic. They tried everything to thwart Salvadorans in their fight to protect their water, which was threatened with pollution of a very toxic nature and gold mining is especially toxic.

El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly has passed a law that bans all metal mining projects and, by doing so, has saved the nation’s water that is vital…

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Commentary

Right-Wing Republicans in Congress are Outdone by Rep. Virginia Foxx of N.C

By John Funiciello Columnist

Foxx does not believe that unions need exist at all, because, she claims, the laws of the country already take care of workers and their welfare and safety on the job.

The U.S. Senate has driven the last nail in the coffin of the rule that allowed cities and counties to create their own retirement savings accounts…

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