Category: Community Contributor

James Huffman, a CAPA activist and Board and Executive Committee member, is the Hirt professor of history emeritus at Wittenberg University and has published nine books, including “Japan in World History.” The following piece appeared as an Op-Ed in the March 21st Chicago Sun-Times with the subheading: “Triumphalist rhetoric like what we’ve heard from the president makes it impossible to see things, including ourselves, as they really are. And that invites disaster, including war.”

_____

President Donald Trump loves to tell us how great America is. “There is no nation like our nation,” he said in his inaugural address. “No one comes close.” In his recent address to Congress, he said America will “forge” the “most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this Earth.”

Look more carefully, however, and it becomes clear that the exceptionalism that drives his talk is more dangerous than hopeful.

Asked to identify today’s greatest threats, many people would cite the wars in Israel and Ukraine; others would talk about climate change. But Trump’s endless boasting about our near-universal belief that America is exceptional is as dangerous as any of these. Probably more so.

Many other “certainties” have lost their hold on public thinking in recent decades: ideas about climate change, race, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights. But the belief that Americans are an exceptional people, called to lead the world, remains unassailable.

Liberals and conservatives alike still accept John F. Kennedy’s declaration in his 1961 inaugural address that we are the “shining city on a hill,” destined to defend the world against forces of evil.

One reason for the persistence of that conviction is the endless repetition of Puritan John Winthrop’s 17th century sermon from which JFK — and later Ronald Reagan — drew this image. By the 19th century, the “city on a hill” trope had taken root; by the mid-1900s, it had become doctrine.

Another reason is spiritual; it feels good to be superior. The Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote that “the United States is … a religion,” peopled by those who see themselves called by God to lift others “from their darkness.” Another British journalist told a class of mine that America is not a “country” bound together by a common past, but an “ideology,” with people united by documents like the Constitution rather than by geography or a shared past.

So how can a belief that serves so many groups so well be dangerous?

The fundamental answer is simple: Exceptionalist thinking is based on false premises, which blind us to our frailties, make it hard to understand how the rest of the world sees us and prevents clear-headed decision-making. They enable the arms industry to do its work largely undetected, or at least unchallenged, and render practical diplomacy difficult, sometimes impossible. And those very things invite serious mistakes, and war.

Simplistic policies make tough situations harder

History provides endless examples of exceptionalist beliefs causing disaster. As a historian of Japan, I shiver when I read the 1920s speeches of the military intellectual Ishiwara Kanji, who believed that because Japan was superior, the kami, or gods, had willed it to win humankind’s “final war” and usher in a millennium of global prosperity. It was a short step from that belief to Pearl Harbor.

Shortly after World War II, a similar story, with Communists as the villains, prompted the United States to support a massacre of perhaps 30,000 people in Korea’s southern island of Jeju while the media looked away. In the decades that followed, exceptionalist readings of America’s moral position led us to depose regimes in Iran (1953) and Chile (1970) and launch disastrous wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Today, the myth underlies simplistic good guy-bad-buy policies in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Asia, policies that make nuanced solutions to complex situations forbiddingly difficult. Ultimately, such thinking grows ever more likely to ignite nuclear war in any of those regions.

The point of this is not to say America should withdraw itself from the world’s danger zones, nor that it should stop being a force for good.

It is to make it clear that triumphalist rhetoric makes it impossible to see things, including ourselves, as they really are. And that invites conflicts that kill people — by the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Can the narrative be changed? Can we learn to see ourselves and others in the nuanced, honest ways necessary for peace? I am not optimistic. But the long-term survival of humankind depends on it. If we do not take up this conversation now, we may not get another chance.

Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

On October 17 of last year, CAPA was honored to award local activist Lesley Williams our “Robert Cleland Pursuit of Peace Award.” Lesley is a community advocate and activist for racial justice both locally and globally. In her hometown of Evanston she has served as president of Open Communities, a HUD-certified fair housing organization, and the Community Alliance for Better Government, which pushes for transparency and racial justice in city services. She has previously served on the boards of Family Matters in the North of Howard area, the Evanston United Way, and Interfaith Action of Evanston.

We thought it was time to share the wisdom of her acceptance speech with you.

—–

“Thanks to the committee and the board and to all the inspiring activists and advocates I’ve worked with in Jewish Voice for Peace, the Center for Jewish NonViolence, Evanston Ceasefire, Open Communities, and the Community Alliance for Better Government . I am here because of all of you.

“When I was in grad school, several of my friends used to go dancing Friday nights at a local club. Nothing fancy, just loud music, cheap beer and a big dance floor. One semester a group of very large guys (okay, they were from a frat) started turning up and commandeering the dance floor. Every week they would arrive, nod to each other and start performing a very aggressive version of the electric slide: arms pumping, elbows effectively pushing anyone and everyone who wasn’t in their group off the floor.

“People muttered a bit. But no one challenged them, including the managers. Most of the crowd would just give up and retreat when these guys arrived. 

“But I kept dancing. The guys would shout their trademark “Boo yah!” the warning for everyone to clear the floor, but I kept dancing. Elbows would fly toward my face, shoulders would be shoved into my back, but I kept dancing. At times it probably looked sort of like the Roxbury guys from Saturday Night Live, but I kept dancing, holding my space, refusing to be intimidated by a group of posturing jerks. And little by little, other folks started to come back to the floor. Other folks started to dance with me, our determination the solid rock that forced that wave of commando dancers to break. And eventually, the frat stopped coming to the club. It didn’t happen right away, it took several weeks but eventually the dance floor was open to everyone yet again.

“This for me is quintessential activism: being that small immovable rock that the waves of fascism, racism, and sexism break over. It doesn’t have to be loud and showy. It can be the quiet determination of a Rosa Parks, or the Sumud, the steadfastness of Palestinian teens dancing debka amidst rocket fire in Gaza.

“A few things I’ve learned along the way.

“Being an activist is NOT the swiftest route to popularity. Quite the opposite in fact. During my checkered career I’ve been called arrogant, ignorant and uppity. I’ve been accused of elitism, reverse racism and antisemitism. I’ve been the angry Black woman and the self-hating Jew. And I’ve been told I have no team spirit. (sigh)

“But I’ve reminded myself of two things. First, you lose a lot more battles than you win, but this isn’t a reason to stop fighting. Second, every person who has actively made a difference in the world was hated by someone at some point. And they’ve all probably thought they were failures, and that they weren’t making a difference. I know I have. Near the end of his life, Martin Luther King was one of the most unpopular people in America, not only due to his racial justice work but because he also spoke out against the Vietnam war, and was making powerful friends uncomfortable. But he knew that principles were more important than friendships, and if he had to lose friendships to stop an unjust war, then so be it. 

“Now there’s no way I’m going to compare myself to MLK, but that’s another thing I’ve learned…

“Being an activist is hard but living with oppression is harder.

“It’s very easy to get self righteous about our activism, “Aren’t we such good good people!” Aren’t we heroic! Look at our noble sacrifice!” But true activism doesn’t center activists, it centers the people being impacted. And it requires the humility to admit that sometimes we activists don’t have all the answers, and we need to listen to the people we think we’re helping. We need to admit that we make mistakes; that we make racist or classist assumptions, that we misgender people, that we sometimes talk down to people. I’ve done it; you’ve done it. True allyship demands this humility, the willingness to listen, and to make amends when we screw up.

“Most important of all we have to insist on justice in every aspect of our lives.

“This means living as though the lives of those on the other side of town, the other side of the world are as deserving as our own, that their children deserve the same care and opportunities as ours.

“There is an ethical principle in the Talmud loosely translated as “is your blood redder”. A commentary tells the story of a rabbi counseling a grieving father whose son was scheduled to be exterminated at Auschwitz. The father could bribe a guard to release the boy but that would mean another child would be selected to take his place. Was it permissible for him to do this? The rabbi merely responded “Is your son’s blood redder?” The father bowed his head and asked the rabbi to help him say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, for his beloved son.

“Admittedly this is an impossible standard. I doubt that any of us would have made the same choice as that father; I know I wouldn’t have. But we must continue to ask ourselves: when we insist on the best for our families, our communities, our country, are we dooming someone else’s children to the worst? Does our need for safety justify policing and militarization that makes others demonstrably unsafe? Does our need for faster, more sparkly technology; for more oil, and cheaper clothes, justify sweatshop labor, techno waste, and devastating chemical exposure for those half a world away? Do we truly value excellence for all or only for a few? A high standard of living for ourselves, or an end to poverty and misery for people we don’t know?

“Is our blood redder?

“Like that father we have choices. Most of us in this room are fairly privileged, and the choices we make have powerful consequences for those we may never meet. We can choose to live isolated, privileged lives, or to engage. We can choose to distance ourselves from poverty and crime and suffering, or we can work in solidarity with those whose options are limited.

“We utter a lot of platitudes about equity and compassion and peace, but really all of these come down to justice. It is unjust that those suffering most from climate change are not the ones indulging in fossil fuels and overconsumption. It is unjust that Black children living on one side of the Dan Ryan have worse schools, fewer grocery stores and shorter life expectancies than those in Oak Park. It is unjust that people with bodies that don’t match their gender identity suffer abuse and higher rates of murder and suicide. These may all seem like different issues, but they can all be addressed by demanding justice, and by creating policies that put justice first.

“This requires courage, but also honesty. It is very easy to allow ourselves to ignore injustice, to listen to the comforting cynical reassurance that “climate despair is overstated”, “these people could succeed if they worked harder”, this situation is “too complicated” “too intractable”; the solution “too inconvenient”. Change is hard; justice is hard; it requires sacrifice and commitment and persistence. We don’t like to hear that; we don’t like to hear that we may have to pay higher taxes to support other people’s children, that we have to pay full price (including shipping)! to give working people a living wage, that we need to eat less meat or limit our air travel to protect our environment. We resist giving up privileges we have come to see as rights. We prefer soothing nostrums about “individual responsibility” and organizing canned food drives rather than confronting systemic injustice.

“We need the courage and honesty to speak hard truths; to ignore those seductive little lies from colleagues and lobbyists, but also on sitcoms and at church; from friends at the country club and the neighborhood association, from Cousin Bob and Aunt Louise at Thanksgiving.

“Yes, it’s complicated. It’s always complicated . But complication is not an excuse for disengaging; it’s a call to engage more fully. Yes you may make mistakes. Yes you may be inconsistent. But it is better to be inconsistently moral than consistently cruel.

“And we have no right to give in to despair. My husband once told me that I might never live to see Palestinian liberation or the end to systemic racism or transphobia. And I have to be okay with that. Because being an activist means seeing yourself as part of the chain that keeps the struggle going forward, even if you never see the result. In his final speech, MLK acknowledged that while he might never get to the Promised Land, he had faith that we as a people would. This is not blind, candy colored optimism: this is hope, born of struggle, born of sumud, born of faith in the next generation. Keep the chain going. Breath your hope and your dreams into the future. And let’s make room on the floor for everyone to dance.”

by Sean Reynolds, CAPA activist

This past Saturday I was pleased to appear, flatteringly labeled as a “Political Analyst” (are any of us not political analysts?), in a segment on Iran’s PressTV, interviewed by journalist Ramin Mazaheri whose three brilliant, vexing books I should admit I’d benefited greatly from reading years earlier.  On CAPA’s Viewpoints page, we try not to link to state-sponsored or otherwise high-end broadcast media (and nearly all mainstream media, we’ve learned of late, does seem to be state-sponsored) but the piece is easily googleable searching Ramin’s name plus its title: “Trump Kicks Zelensky out of White House After Historic Press Conference.” It had been quite the day.

Alongside CAPA, I’d long waited, and vigorously called, for the moment that U.S. military aid to Ukraine’s Kyiv government would cease – on highway overpasses countless mornings in Chicago I’ve helped raise the banner pictured below – so that Ukraine could escape being sacrificed to the U.S.’ economic rivalry with Russia and Russia’s ally China, but also that the world might escape the unforgivable nuclear risks created by a de facto, and now blessedly ending, NATO-Russia hot war: in my final minutes of life, walking downtown to calmly meet the birth of a tiny new short-lived star, I won’t want the blood of the entire species on my hands – I trust that you won’t either – nor has their ever-more-parchmenty complexion improved at all in recent years from their incessant, inescapable dousing in Ukrainian and Russian blood.

You’ve heard it all before and I would also hope you’ve read it in books like Scott Horton’s “Provoked” or the late Stephen F. Cohen’s magisterial “War with Russia?” (maybe go find them now: also indispensable foreign policy analysis channels such as “The Grayzone,” “The Duran,” “Dialogue Works” and the goofily-titled “Judging Freedom“) …  but let me risk the bizarrely – and from a democracy perspective, terrifyingly – common objection that foreign propaganda is the type to which Americans are most susceptible (if not uniquely so), by going through it all briefly, one more time:

• In 2014 we helped orchestrate a well-funded coup ousting Ukraine’s elected president using neo-Nazi militias who, thereafter, had a strong role in preventing any peace organizing or consequential elections in the country.  The country’s ethnically Russian East found itself caught in a U.S.-instigated race war and spent eight years fighting to secede and rejoin the Russian state from which Lenin and Khrushchev had parceled it off in the Soviet era. Russia obeyed the overwhelming preference of Crimeans and more crucially its own realpolitik interests, by immediately reabsorbing the Crimean peninsula and a crucial naval port: but it spent eight years negotiating for the Donbass region to remain, with structural protections, in Ukraine, preferring to avoid a war. 
• in 2022, after two rounds of “Minsk accords” by which Ukraine, France and Germany all admitted they’d never intended to abide, Russia made a final plea for NATO to swear off expansion into Ukraine and met with blank refusal: then it recognized the breakaway Donbass provinces as sovereign states in whose aid it would move troops to repel Ukrainian occupiers.  A final opportunity for negotiation was lost after Ukrainian negotiators, under pressure of a Russian feint towards Kyiv, had penciled the “Istanbul Agreement” leaving Donbass in Ukraine but giving Russia guarantees against NATO encroachment.  Our leaders scuppered the deal demanding that our client in Kyiv fight this war to the last Ukrainian. 

And here we are!

Ukraine never had a chance of winning the war against its far better armed and more populous neighbor, but it was never meant to: NATO officials have routinely boasted of the “bargain” the West is getting, weakening their Russian, hence also their Chinese, rival with only scores of thousands of dead or wounded Ukrainians (and Russians, of course), along with Ukraine’s radically diminished future prospects, as the cost.  

So when I gave that interview, I was overjoyed at the break of relations between the new administration and Mr. Zelensky: I still am.   I’m more inclined to think, a few days after the interview, that the two American leaders might sincerely have been trying to pull Zelensky towards good-faith negotiations with Russia, with no ambush prepared beforehand as a nonetheless invaluable teaching moment for the most peace-minded U.S. citizens: but given what seems Zelensky’s fundamental opposition to any such negotiations, a brawl, planned or unplanned, is probably the best outcome that could have resulted from the meeting. U.S. support for a perpetual Ukraine war, waged to Ukraine’s and to the world’s incalculable cost, seems finally, blessedly, miraculously, to be at an end.  If only our support for (and our imperial exploitation of) Israel’s violence would follow suit!

Fascism and democracy are words that actually matter: forcing working majorities to live by, and never even criticize, the edicts of their ruling bureaucracies has become, for the more unapologetically pro-war in my own country, the very definition of democracy, whereas for many of us, including much of the nation’s more conservative half, it still sounds like the other thing.   Although, as an antiwar socialist who’s spent two daylong stints in jail protesting Israel’s Gaza genocide, I would have liked, being in a “safe state,” to vote for a third party this past November, the 2024 stakes felt, to me, too high not to make a lesser evil vote (and – I confess – even a lesser evil donation) on antiwar grounds.  

I was very grateful this Saturday that the candidate I’d helped elect a few months prior had (for motives I might not even like if it were possible to know them) begun this process of seeking survival for the species, peace for Ukraine, and a distinct lessening of war-fevered ignominy for the United States. 

This Letter to the Editor, published March 3, is from the CAPA Climate Change Working Group’s own Carter Cleland.

The editorial about the puppet at the Chicago Cultural Center opens up a new, and dangerous, conflation (“Antisemitic fears in Chicago coalesce around a controversial puppet,” Feb. 19). The Tribune Editorial Board indicates that “blood on your hands” is an antisemitic trope. I could find no instance online in which that expression was particular to Jews or Judaism.

As an non-Jewish, American taxpayer, I do have the blood of 48,000 Palestinians on my hands because I helped pay for the bombs that killed them all and that maimed many, many more.

I would suggest that the many Jews and gentiles who oppose the war in Gaza, as well as the 23 aldermen who didn’t sign Ald. Debra Silverstein’s letter, might not like being labelled antisemitic.

— Carter Cleland, Chicago

By Kerry Hall and Marcia Bernsten, CAPA Board Members

February 14, 2025

Ready, aim, fire!  This is the new mantra from the White House.  It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the pace of major actions coming from our capital.  Information overload is one of their goals.  But the very pillars of our precious democracy are under threat like no time since the Civil War and we need a plan to respond.  What is under attack and how should we respond?

The press continues to be attacked, discredited, and silenced.  The President is trying to abolish the bedrock of the 14^th Amendment, birthright citizenship.  Presidents cannot change the Constitution.  He flouts the law against Tik Toc ownership and against the proper legal manner to fire Inspector General.   He fires dedicated FBI employees who helped to prosecute him.  Our checks and balanced are being destroyed before our eyes as the President flagrantly ignores court rulings and takes over Congress’ clear constitutional power of the purse.  JD Vance is inspired by President Andrew Jackson’s brazen refusal, in the 1830s, to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed.  This list is not complete.  In fact, due to all the spaghetti being thrown against the wall, in this first draft  we had forgotten to include the pardon of police-pummeling protestors on January 6.

Since this piece was written for CAPA Viewpoints, there is no doubt more to add to this scary and growing list of threats to our democracy.  Heck, Kash Patel has been on the job for only a few days. When law breaking becomes the norm, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle.  The latest example comes from the dropping of charges made against the mayor of New York. 

The autocratic playbook from countries like Hungary, Russia, and Venezuela is being implemented, as we learn from the poignant book How Democracies Die by Ziblatt and Levitsky.  They point out that once the courts, the press, and Republicans in Congress have been cowed by anticipatory obedience, it can be much, much harder to regain the basics of our democracy.  Republicans in Congress are cowed by the threat of being primaried with Musk’s money.  May we soon not even be debating the powers of Dictator Don and King Elon. 

However, all is not lost.  Was the best action forward?  It’s tempting to be overwhelmed and put our heads in the sand.  Afterall, what power does one citizen have?  Perhaps you already contribute to a pro-Democracy cause, you already vote and stay informed, you contact your members of the House and Senate, and you attend CAPA events.

What else is there to do?  Resist!  Join a protest.  Kerry started one last week in his community, holding a pro-democracy sign by himself on a cold, snowy street corner in Wilmette.  Then, two of his friends joined.  Our numbers will grow every week.  It is invigorating and actually fun! 

Join the protest in downtown Wilmette every Saturday at 10am.  Bring a creative sign.  Or, consider starting an act of resistance in your own neighborhood.  Do your small part to save our democracy–before it is too late. 

Stansfield Smith:

[Stansfield Smith, a member of CAPA’s Foreign Policy Working Group, is a writer and organizer with Chicago ALBA Solidarity.]

Here are a few articles on USAID supporting US coup operations in a couple countries. I could take any country where the US has backed coup forces and find information on the role of USAID in coup operations. (likewise with NED, and CIA). Even Google, which heavily censors what we search for,  provides some of that. 

The CIA says it is all about collecting intelligence. And it is important to have good information on other countries. The National Endowment for Democracy says it is all about supporting democracy. And it is important to have democracy. USAID says it is all about humanitarian aid. And it is important to provide aid.

But in all three, those are just covers to put in pro-US regimes in different countries.

It would be much more appropriate if we campaigned, not to maintain USAID, but for the US government to increase US funding to United Nations relief agencies.

Granma: USAID and the deep pockets of the counterrevolution

Granma: USAID thieves in Latin America

Granma: Another USAID covert plan exposed

Washington Has Used USAID to Destabilize Governments Around the World

President AMLO Denounces US Interference in Mexico

FBI Investigates Juan Guaidó and Carlos Vecchio for Misappropriation of USAID Funds

USAID Admits to Venezuela Regime Change Fraud

‘Humanitarian’ agency USAID was ‘key tool’ for Washington undermining the Venezuelan government, official review reveals

USAID and the Dance of Thieves in Latin America

Nicaraguan Opposition Candidate Chamorro Received USAID Money

How USAID created Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus, now under money laundering investigation

USAID-Funded Coup Plots in Bolivia

Bolivia Expels USAID Because They ‘Continue to Conspire’

Stan.

Charles Johnson:

[Charles Johnson is CAPA’s Organizing Director and an activist with groups including Nonviolent Peaceforce.]

While USAID seems to be funding some helpful and life-saving programs where help is needed (for example Gaza), I agree with Stansfield Smith’s concerns about its overall motivations. In USAID’s own words: “U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America’s foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets, while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world.” Many peace-minded people worldwide take issue with this “twofold purpose.”

One question is how to move away from systems with dominant, extractive, superwealthy nations bestowing aid, moving to where people can flourish with their own systems and choices instead of dependence. How to reduce the world’s imbalance of wealth and ownership, how to make the U.S. less profit-seeking and charity-distributing, moving toward cooperation, equity, equal dignity of nations. In recognizing the great work some USAID programs and partnerships do, how could this be done more cooperatively, without a wealthy empire leading with its vision of progress…

Charles.