Americas

Now is the time to envision truly progressive Clinton Administration policies on health care, immigration, student debt, and climate change. And movement leaders are gearing up.

The global scene has been miserable for the last decade at least, if not longer. The world is inundated by wars, big and small, that seem both unending and unendable; by horrendous cruelties about which their perpetrators boast; and by deliberate attacks on so-called safe zones. In this hell on earth, there has been only one bright light. What was called since 1948 la violencia in Colombia seemed to be coming to an end.

In 2007, Abu Wa'el Dhiab (aka Jihad Diyab), surrounded by other prisoners on hunger strike in Guantánamo, decided not to join. He had refused to eat at other times (once because guards flushed the Koran down the toilet), but this time, he wasn't ready. With his fellow prisoners nearby wasting away, he requested to be moved. Permission denied.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to peace wasn’t the obstinacy of the “No” camp. It was cynicism and apathy. We cannot say half of Colombia was for peace and half was against because over half of Colombia did not vote at all.

From the Force Science Institute in Mankato, Minnesota to the ecological reserve outside Rio de Janeiro that houses Condor Non-Lethal Technologies’ police training center, the “use of force” industry has grown into a worldwide marketplace.

If 42 is the number of life, perhaps 43 is the number of life lived on through others. Today, Mexicans are chanting “Ayotzi lives, the struggle goes on” as they mark two years since the 43 teacher-students in Ayotzinapa were disappeared.