June 2018 - Page 5 of 6 - Toward Freedom

A Mile in Their Shoes: Afghans Walk 400 Miles to Demand End to 17-Year US War

Kathy Kelly June 12, 2018 Kathy Kelly

This past Friday in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, Hazara girls joined young Pashto boys to sing Afghanistan’s national anthem as a welcome to Pashto men walking 400 miles from Helmand to Kabul. The walkers are calling on warring parties in Afghanistan to end the war. It seems likely that ordinary Afghans, no matter their tribal lineages, share a profound desire to end forty years of war. The 17-year U.S. war in Afghanistan exceeds the lifetimes of the youngsters in Ghazni who greeted the peace walkers.

The Colonization of Palestine: Rethinking the Term ‘Israeli Occupation’

Ramzy Baroud June 10, 2018 Ramzy Baroud

It is often argued that Israel is an Occupier that has violated the rules of Occupation as stated in international law. This would have been the case a year, two or five years after the original Occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the Occupation has turned into long-term colonization.

Infinite War: The Pentagon’s Gravy Train Rolls On

Andrew J. Bacevich June 10, 2018 Andrew J. Bacevich

On not so great wars, theirs and ours.

What Senator Jeff Merkley Saw at an Immigrant Detention Center for Children

Joan Walsh June 7, 2018 Joan Walsh

Source: The Nation

“The tiniest kid at the front of the line, he was knee-high to a grasshopper. He was 4, maybe 5 years old.”

When Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley tried to visit a detention center for child immigrants in Brownsville, Texas, last weekend, he was turned away. The Facebook Live video of his journey through the bureaucratic shadows went viral. In the 20 hours after it was shared, it was viewed 1.1 million times.

As viral videos go, it was rather low-drama: it mostly featured Merkley standing around in the hot Texas sun for almost a half hour, waiting for a supervisor of the nonprofit Southwest Key shelter to come tell him why he could not enter the facility. One high point was when the senator inadvertently shared his personal cell-phone number with his million-plus viewers, trying to get someone in authority to return his call. read more

Anarchism in Latin America: Striking and Dreaming from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana

Benjamin Dangl June 5, 2018 Benjamin Dangl

Anarchism in Latin America provides a panoramic view of anarchism across fourteen countries in the region, from general strikes in Chilean ports to worker-theorists in Cuban tobacco factories. It offers a rich window into nearly one hundred years of anarchist organizing and agitating, and amplifies the voices of anarchists long gone, who were writing on the docks and factory lines, reading their manifestos from the barricades, striking and dreaming from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana.

Maria Soto and other Ixil women celebrate on May 11, 2013 after former Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide against the indigenous Ixil people. Trócaire's partners had fought for almost 30 years for justice for the Ixil people. (Photo credit Elena Hermosa).

The New Colonization: UN Expert Urges Guatemala to End Structural Racism Against Indigenous People

Heather Gies June 5, 2018 Heather Gies

“In the end, the [mining] company is a new form of colonization and exclusion,” Sister Maudilia López Cardona, who works with the Catholic parish in her western Guatemalan community, told Toward Freedom. “The system has worked to erase the historical memory of our people and teach us not to think,” she continued. “These thoughts, these ideas, these preconceptions have soaked into our people’s bones … We have to work to return our hearts to their place.”