‘Letter to the Editor’ Archives
My Last Words to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
Counterpunch Editor”'s Note: News came Nov. 10, 2014 that Tomas Young, 34, an Iraq war vet turned anti-war activist, had passed away in Seattle. He enlisted in the Army two days after 9/11. After Ft. Hood, Texas training he was deployed to Iraq and paralyzed five days into the tour after being shot through his spinal cord. Many CounterPunchers may remember Tomas from the excellent Body of War documentary film by Phil Donahue about Tomas”' struggles following his return from Iraq. RIP Tomas Young. We promise to carry on your fight. ”“ Joshua Frank * Reprinted from Counterpunch by TOMAS YOUNG I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am [...]
COMMENTARY Obama Can”'t Do it Alone: Your Vote is Important This November
By Donna Pususta Neste I remember the fall of 2008 when I got in the longest line to vote that I had ever seen in Phillips Neighborhood. Everyone was excited. We all knew that the whole country was sick of Bush and the Republicans. Obama won by a landslide and for the first two years of his presidency much was accomplished. However, the Republicans had taken back the House of Representatives in the following mid-term election and because of some very creative gerrymandering, they have owned it ever since. Since 2010 their strategy has been to block everything that benefits those who are struggling to get by, which is most of Phillips Neighborhood. President Obama and the Democrats have introduced bill after bill over the past six years that, if passed, would have put our nation squarely back on its feet again, but nothing moved in Washington because Congress refused to budge. If you are eligible to vote, please do. This up-coming election is as important as any presidential [...]
Phillips, Mpls, America Awake!!!
by Jim Graham, Ventura Village Discrimination against Native Americans really is an issue for Phillips, as well as a Minneapolis as a whole. Minneapolis, and in particular the Phillips Community of Minneapolis is home to the largest coherent Urban Indian Community in the Nation. It is the birth place of AIM and the Indian Civil Rights Movement. The City of Minneapolis even has been forced to formally acknowledge the historical institutional discrimination of Minneapolis against Native people in a formal document. And in a formal MOU with the Indian community promised to stop doing so and redress the past institutional discrimination. That institutional and individual bias in Minneapolis unfortunately continues. It continues even in what is supposed to be E-Democracy. This is particularly true with the Minneapolis Issues List where the discrimination continues. The “powers” at the Minneapolis Issues List of E-Democracy have continued this institutional bias by [...]
