Blog / Our America

Nakba Day 74

May 17, 2022 - By Michel S. Moushabeck

Today I am beyond outraged and I can’t breathe. Palestinians the world over are weeping and mourning the loss of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Her brutal murder by Israeli Defense Forces, with a bullet to the face while clearly wearing a PRESS vest, shook me to the core. Dedicating her life to reporting the truth and exposing the horrors of the ongoing Israeli occupation, Shireen represents the best Palestine and humanity has ever produced. But outrage and heartache do not come close to describing what I am feeling right now for what my brothers and sisters in Palestine have been through—and the daily systemic abuse and suffering they continue to endure—at the hands of the evil apartheid regime in Israel.

What happened this past week—...

Between Worlds

May 2, 2022 - By Marya Zilberberg

It wasn’t my choice to leave Odesa. My father decided, my mother agreed, and so it happened. In 1976. We were lucky to get out, lucky to avoid the fates of refuseniks and political prisoners in the Gulag, lucky that my father—who lost his job immediately upon applying for an exit visa—did not get arrested for parasitism, lucky that I would be able to live my life in the relative freedom of America. But part of the bargain was leaving forever and letting others contend with the insatiable cannibalism of the Soviet machine.

How do you put into words what it’s like to know you can never go back?

Think of it this way. You know how it is when your friend has been trying to get a hold of you, and you say to yourself, Well, I’ll get back to them...

Don't Let Racism Divide Us

March 7, 2022 - By Michel S. Moushabeck

Like many of you, I’ve been glued to the news this past week following Putin’s senseless, illegal, and immoral war on neighboring Ukraine. Our eyes are filled with images showing the horrors of Russia’s invasion. We stand in solidarity with the people of the Ukraine and our hearts and thoughts are with all those affected by this tragic war.  

As a Palestinian whose family was displaced and exiled, it is easy for me to identify with the suffering of the people of Ukraine and feel their anger towards the invading Russian army. The fear, the indiscriminate bombardment, the destruction, the scenes of women and children taking refuge in subways and underground shelters, and the ensuing massive refugee crisis are all too familiar to me. 

War sets...

A Fascism for Our Time

January 6, 2022 - By Harry Harootunian

Editor's Note: First posted precisely one year ago, we can think of nothing more appropriate to revisit on this dark anniversary than Harry Harootunian's chilling and incisive diagnosis of our world today.

(Image: Ben Shahn, Walking Figures: circa 1960, silkscreen.)

Abstract

“A Fascism for Our Time” focuses on how the accidental convergence of global capital and the COVID pandemic, by traveling the same route, has inadvertently unveiled unraveling circumstances in our political, economic, and social life that easily point to the possible formation of a fascist political imaginary in the...

Happy Veterans Day

November 11, 2021 - By Doug Anderson

(Children and teachers in the Village of Dong Loc, Vietnam, where there are memorials to children and road workers killed by American bombing. Photo by Doug Anderson.)
 

Happy Veterans Day, brothers and sisters, especially those of wars that turned out to be unjustified and incompetently led.

I speak from the Vietnam generation of vets. We were young and dumb and following our parents—inhabitants of the “Greatest Generation.” It was in our cells, and the pull to serve overpowered whatever reflection we might have been capable of at that time. Some refused to serve, some went to Canada. I also consider them brothers, veterans not only of a war but of a historical moment we should have...