After the election

I think it’s safe now to start planning for what happens beyond the election. It seems likely that Hillary will win. She might even have a supportive congress, which would open her up to considerable pressure to abide by the platform that she and Bernie worked out. We should think about where to focus our efforts. Criminal justice reform would be my number one. Reduce the prison population by half in the next 3 years. Pardon all the nonviolent drug convicts. Force her to deliver to the Black community what she so generously promised. To move in this direction, all we need to do is get behind Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives and follow their exceptional leadership. The second thing would be the wars in the middle east. We’ve come to understand that the elected government doesn’t have much influence over this, that foreign policy is in the hands of the national security state (the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about). But that secretive community is not monolithic. There seems to be a consensus strategy of fomenting chaos in the middle east, but there are differences as how far to go against Russia. It’s hard to know whether the new Russian scare is designed to bolster Clinton’s chances in the election (don’t change horses in midstream), or whether there is real danger of war. One place to draw the line in the sand is no U. S. soldiers should be fighting in Syria, nor Special Forces, nor CIA. How about advocating for a People’s Summit on Peace in the Middle East? Invite people from all countries, hold it in Dubai or some neutralish country, maybe Al Jazerra could help organize it, but do it over social media. Kind of like those World Social Forum held a few years back in Seattle and Brazil. NGO’s, grassroots folks, anyone who wants peace in the middle east. We do need to be prepared to resurrect the peace movement worldwide. I think we need to start talking about complete world disarmament. Pie in the sky, you say? Yes, but the little halfway measures around the edges aren’t working. Let’s start with the damn nuclear arsenals.