Who Should Get a Presidential Pardon but Won’t!

by Charles Pierce / December 11th, 2024

President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, after having repeatedly promised that he would not.  Biden justifies this act based upon his presumption (likely accurate) that Hunter’s denial of a plea deal was on account of political opposition from Trump Republicans.  Nevertheless, Hunter’s consideration for a lenient plea deal was undoubtedly influenced by his status (white privileged son of a prominent politician), whereas such leniency would be far less likely to be considered for a poor racial minority person guilty of similar crimes likewise motivated by the stresses of drug addiction.  Similar favoritism for family members manifested: with Bill Clinton’s pardon for his half-brother’s drug-crime conviction, and Donald Trump’s pardon for his son-in-law’s father’s conviction of tax evasion and witness-tampering.  Both Presidents Bush gave pardons to close political associates.  In fact, who does or does not receive leniency (including pardons) is determined almost entirely by class privilege or lack thereof.

Abuse and impunity.

Especially concerning, in the Hunter Biden case, is that said pardon preemptively covers all possible federal crimes with which Hunter could possibly be charged, if committed at any time during the past 11 years.  And there are unresolved questions concerning his shady business dealings during Joe Biden’s Vice-Presidency.  Moreover, unlike Biden, previous Presidents (including Trump) had (with the exception of the political crimes of one ex-President) always followed precedent by limiting their pardons to crimes for which the accused had been actually prosecuted.  Biden now sets a corrupt example which Trump will almost certainly copy as he (Trump) pardons those whose yet-to-be-charged crimes (including violent ones) were perpetrated by his supporters.

Meanwhile, crimes perpetrated by Joe Biden and other US government decision-makers against people of color in other countries get, not lenient treatment, but absolute impunity.  Among their never-to-be-prosecuted crimes, Biden (and Harris) are full participants with the fascist settler-colonialist state in its genocidal mass murder, rooted in their de facto embrace of the proposition that Zionists are entitled to treat the resistant indigenous population of Palestine as white American expansionists had treated the indigenous nations of this continent.

As for the liberal left, they (being more concerned over possibly somewhat increased repression of liberal dissent in the US than over actual US-backed fascist repression and mass murder elsewhere) shelved their anti-racism and anti-imperialism as they campaigned for the center right Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton ticket.  Left liberal fervor to elect the Democrat ticket was despite: Biden-Harris and other centrist Democrat politicians’ complicity in the existing domestic repression of pro-Palestine and other anti-imperialist dissent, as well as their decision to obstruct access to due process for most migrant and asylum-seeking people of color.  Thusly the liberal left has given its allegiance to centrist Democrat politicians, whose opposition to racism and repression is, like that of Trump, entirely expedient and selective.

Will Biden provide clemency for US prisoners who are not of the privileged class?  Consider the US political prisoners, unjustly convicted in rigged political trials, victims who have languished for decades in US prisons!  As these were prosecuted on account of their having acted in opposition to the regime to which Biden et al are committed, it is very unlikely that Biden will pardon them.  Three current examples follow.

[1] Extraordinary prosecution: Ricardo Palmera

Context.  Colombia has been almost continuously torn apart by civil war since 1948 when Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (the populist Liberal Party candidate for President) was assassinated by a lone gunman.  As a proponent of land reform and with a history of advocacy for workers’ rights, Gaitán had incurred the enmity of the ruling elites and of US-based transnational capital.  At the time of his assassination, he was opposing the US project for the formation of the Organization of American States which would be a tool for facilitating US domination and for suppressing “Communist” influence in Latin America.  The assassination provoked armed civil conflict among political factions.  Eventually, rightwing forces gained control of the Liberal Party which then entered into a ruling coalition with the Conservative Party.  The conflict then evolved into one between:

• the central government (controlled by the oligarch-dominated ruling coalition and relying upon police, armed forces, and right-wing paramilitaries); and
• leftist guerrilla armies.

The latter eventually consisted mainly of:

• the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] which had begun as an offshoot of the Colombian Communist Party, and
• the National Liberation Army [ELN].

Both sides in this civil war had engaged in practices which were widely condemned as human rights violations: the FARC for ransom kidnappings and extortions; the government (and its rightwing paramilitary death squads) for brutal repression, torture, and assassinations of peasant and labor leaders and other noncombatant left-leaning activists.  The two sides had sometimes engaged in peace talks.  While a negotiated truce was in effect from 1984 until 1987, leftist groups (including the FARC) formed the Patriotic Union [UP] to seek social and political reforms thru peaceful political processes.  In the 1986 elections UP candidates achieved victories in many of the local contests.  The ruling oligarchs became alarmed, and over the following years some 4,000 to 6,000 UP members (including its 1986 and 1990 Presidential candidates) were murdered (with near-universal impunity) by rightwing paramilitaries backed by oligarchs.  The US has actively intervened (since 1964) with material assistance to the armed forces of the central government.  In 2004 the US targeted FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera.

Ricardo Palmera (a.k.a. Simón Trinidad) had worked as a professor of economic history and had participated in the 1986 UP election campaign.  As the death squads assassinated leftist leaders and activists with impunity, Palmera decided (in 1987) to join the FARC.  He rose to a position of leadership and served as a negotiator for the FARC during the 1998 to 2002 peace process.  He went to Quito, Ecuador (in 2004 January) to meet with James Lemoyne, a United Nations special advisor on peace processes to facilitate a prisoner exchange.  At the behest of the CIA, the Ecuadoran government arrested Palmera and turned him over to the Colombian government, which then conspired with the US (which had no charges against him at the time) to invent a case for his extradition for trial in the US.

The case.  The US DoJ [Dept of Justice] then subjected Palmera to four illegitimate trials on inappropriate charges.  Specifics follow.

(1) The US misclassified FARC revolutionaries as “terrorists”; but, under international law captured participants in a revolutionary civil war are entitled to prisoner-of-war [POW] status.  By prosecuting Palmera for participation in the armed conflict, the US has violated his right to POW status.

(2) The prosecution charged complicity in hostage-taking based on the FARC’s shoot-down and capture of three US contractors on a reconnaissance mission over FARC-held territory in 2003.  Thus, the prosecution misrepresented a legitimate act of war as being a crime.

(3) Even if the capture and detention of the contractors were a crime, the US had no jurisdiction over the area where the event occurred.  Moreover, Palmera had no command authority over the relevant FARC forces or advance knowledge of their operations.

(4) The prosecution charged complicity in “narco-trafficking”, but US government sources had determined: that, although it taxed operators profiting from cocaine production, the FARC did not engage in or control Colombian drug trafficking; and that, meanwhile, many of the rightwing paramilitaries opposed to the FARC were employed by the drug traffickers.  In four trials the DoJ was unable to get a conviction on this accusation.

(5) In the first trial (2006) the jury deadlocked on all charges.  At its conclusion the judge illicitly questioned the jurors in order to obtain information to help the prosecution obtain convictions in the next trial.  Consequently, a new judge had to be found for the subsequent trials.

(6) In the second trial the jury told the judge that they were at an impasse and unable to agree upon a verdict.  The judge required them to continue deliberations until, after another four days, they consented to a guilty verdict on one of five counts – conspiracy to hold three US citizens hostage.  However, there was no evidence of any act by Palmera that involved the capture or detention of the three US citizens.  Consequently, this conviction could only be a verdict of guilt-by-association.

(7) The third and fourth trials on narco-trafficking charges ended with deadlocked juries, and the prosecution then dismissed those charges.

(8) In 2008 Palmera was sentenced to 60 years in prison.  He has been held in solitary confinement with very limited access to his lawyer for nearly all of his 20 years in US detention.

[2] Repressing resistance in the First Nations: Leonard Peltier

 Historical context.  The US government has a long history of atrocious abuse of the indigenous nations and their peoples throughout its territory.  These abuses include: genocidal wars, ethnic cleansings, coerced assimilation with suppression of the native languages and cultures, forcing their peoples into conditions of degrading poverty, imposition of fraudulent and inequitable treaties, subjugation as subordinate nations, routine violations of treaty rights, corrupt governance, theft of their land and resources thru outright seizures and thru imposition of inequitable leases to US capitalists, and so forth.

In mid-20th century, Amerindian resistance grew and produced a number of activist organizations.  The American Indian Movement [AIM] (founded in 1968) adopted a militant posture and gained nationwide prominence.  The poverty and lack of opportunity on reservations had induced many Amerindians to move to urban areas where they concentrated in urban slums and suffered the afflictions common to other disadvantaged racial minorities.  AIM responded by starting remedial projects: health programs, education and job training programs, legal rights centers, and so forth.  In 1969 AIM joined Fred Hampton’s original revolutionary Rainbow Coalition.  During the next few years AIM brought public attention to Amerindian grievances thru participation in a series of militant protest actions including: the occupation of Alcatraz (1969—71), the Thanksgiving Day occupation of the replica Mayflower (1970), the occupation of Mount Rushmore (1971), a brief occupation of US Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] headquarters (1971), the “Trail of Broken Treaties” cross-country caravan and protest which included the occupation of the BIA offices (1972).  The US Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] and DoJ decided that AIM was a “threat to national security” and set out to destroy it.

Repression on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  Tribal members on the (Oglala Lakota) Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota had formed the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization [OSCRO]:

• to seek justice for Oglala victims of racist attacks in neighboring off-reservation communities where the white perpetrators were routinely given impunity or biased leniency, even in murder cases; and
• to seek reform of tribal government then ruled by a corrupt and autocratic tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, who engaged in blatant favoritism, with respect to jobs and other benefits, for his relatives and cronies.

In 1973 some tribal councilors brought misconduct charges against Wilson (who held the chairmanship from 1972 until 1976), and the tribal council then voted 11 to 7 to suspend him, but he managed to have his impeachment trial stopped.  Wilson had already organized his own private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation [GOONs], which he illegally paid with tribal funds and used to suppress his political opponents.  When several hundred Oglala gathered to protest the quashing of the impeachment trial, the BIA sent in a force of the US Marshals Service [USMS] to sustain Wilson’s position.

A few days after the foiled impeachment trial, some 200 local protestors and AIM activists occupied the remote Reservation village of Wounded Knee (site of the 1890 massacre of over 200 Lakota men, women, and children by a trigger-happy US Cavalry Regiment).  Using the action to publicize Amerindian grievances, the occupiers demanded: the removal of Wilson, and negotiations to address US violation of its treaty obligations.  USMS, FBI, and other police cordoned the area thereby creating a standoff with frequent shooting from both sides.  After 71 days the occupiers ended the occupation and withdrew.  One FBI agent, two occupiers, and one visitor had been killed; and 13 individuals wounded.

During and after the Wounded Knee siege, the Wilson regime and his GOONs intensified repression of his political opponents of whom more than 60 were killed during the following 3 years, while the Reservation’s homicide rate grew to 17 times the US average.  Meanwhile, the DoJ indicted 185 individuals for alleged crimes involving their actions in occupying Wounded Knee; these included: arson, theft, assault, and interfering with federal officers.  Numerous trials followed, the most prominent being the government’s 1974 show trial of AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means.  This (8 ½ month) trial ended when the judge ruled that the prosecution had committed such egregious misconduct, including withholding of evidence and use of perjured witness testimony, that dismissal was the only appropriate outcome.  Nevertheless, the DoJ persisted in its persecution of AIM leaders.

From the start of the conflict between Dick Wilson with his supporters and his opponents (including OSCRO and AIM), the federal agencies (BIA, FBI, USMS, and DoJ) naturally sided with the Wilson regime which leased tribal lands to nearby white ranchers and politically influential American capitalists under inequitable contracts deemed unfair to reservation residents.  The FBI provided Wilson’s GOONs with intelligence on AIM activists and other opponents of the Wilson regime and looked away while the GOONs assaulted, terrorized, and murdered Wilson’s critics.  The FBI also perpetrated warrantless no-knock assaults on homes as it used the Pine Ridge Reservation to train its first militarized commando (i.e. SWAT) teams.  Meanwhile, the FBI and DoJ targeted AIM members and supporters for prosecution on any and every possible charge.  This hostile environment created the tension which eventually erupted into the shootout at the Jumping Bull Ranch.  The DoJ ultimately obtained a fraudulent murder conviction against Leonard Peltier.

Subject events.  In 1975 June 26, two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, in unmarked cars were following a red pickup truck which they believed belonged to an Oglala alleged to have stolen a pair of cowboy boots.  As they entered the Jumping Bull Ranch (where several AIM members were camped) shots were fired, and a shootout then ensued between the feds and the AIM activists.  There were more than 30 people at the ranch including women, children, and other non-belligerents.  By the end of the confrontation, the ranch was surrounded by some 150 armed agents (FBI, BIA, local police, and GOONs).  Which side fired first is in dispute.  Casualties: the two FBI men were wounded by fire from the AIM side and then killed execution-style by person unknown; AIM member, Joe Stuntz, was killed by a government sniper.

FBI investigators and DoJ prosecutors, embarrassed by their failures to obtain convictions of AIM leaders involved in the Wounded Knee occupation, responded by pursuing only prominent AIM members, the objective being to convict some AIM leaders on charges of having murdered the two FBI men.  For this purpose, they indicted three prominent AIM members who had participated in the shootout, namely: Leonard Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Darrelle Butler.

Trials.  In September Butler and Robideau were arrested.  Peltier fled to Canada, where he was arrested and extradited to the US (1976 December).  While Peltier was not yet in custody, Robideau and Butler were tried and acquitted (1976 July, with Judge McManus presiding) when their jury concluded that, with the level of violence and government intimidation on the Reservation, they could plausibly claim to have acted in self-defense during the exchange of gunfire.

Peltier was extradited and subjected to a rigged trial (in Fargo, ND in 1977) before an all-white jury which convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder.  The judge then sentenced him to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.  The improprieties in the legal proceedings were as follows.

(1) The FBI coerced one, Myrtle Poor Bear, to allege in a signed affidavit that she had been Peltier’s girlfriend and had seen him kill the two FBI men.  In fact, she had never met Peltier and was not present at the shootout.  The FBI then used this false affidavit to obtain Peltier’s extradition from Canada.

(2) Ms Poor Bear recanted her allegations against Peltier, but the judge refused to permit the defense to present her as a witness (claiming: that she was too mentally unstable to provide competent testimony, and that exposure of the FBI’s extradition fraud would prejudice the jury against the prosecution).  The judge also refused to allow the defense to present evidence of other cases where the FBI had been rebuked for tampering with evidence and witnesses.

(3) An FBI agent changed his story by testifying at trial that the vehicle, which the two agents had pursued and whose occupant had fired at them, was Peltier’s red and white van.  In fact, the two FBI agents had identified the pursued vehicle as a red pickup truck, and it was red pickup trucks which the FBI first sought and searched after the shootout.

(4) The prosecution alleged at trial that the two FBI agents had been killed by Peltier’s AR-15 rifle.  The prosecution also asserted that Peltier’s AR-15 was the only one present, but it was later compelled to admit to the appellate judge that several other AR-15 rifles were present in the area and possibly present at the shootout.  An FBI ballistics expert testified that extractor marks on a shell casing found at the scene matched Peltier’s rifle; he also testified that a more accurate firing pin test had not been performed because of damage to Peltier’s gun.  Some years after Peltier’s conviction, a FOIA request produced documentation of a pre-trial FBI ballistics test on the firing pin which proved that the shell casing had not been fired by Peltier’s AR-15.  The DoJ had withheld this crucial exculpatory evidence from the defense during trial.

(5) No trial witness identified Peltier as the person who killed the FBI men.  And during Peltier’s appeal (in 1986), the prosecution admitted that it had no real evidence to establish who fired the fatal shots.  Nevertheless, the appellate court refused to overturn the conviction based on the prosecutor’s new assertion that the jury had found Peltier guilty of “aiding and abetting” the murders, notwithstanding that the prosecution had never actually pursued that issue at trial.  Moreover, this allegation would have applied equally to Robideau and Butler, whose jury (having heard all of the defense case) had acquitted them.

(6) Other apparent violations of Peltier’s rights to a fair trial include: the arbitrary and never-explained replacement of the originally assigned judge (McManus) by another judge (Benson) more disposed to exclude evidence favorable to the defendant, an undisclosed FBI pre-trial meeting with trial judge Benson, infiltration of FBI informants into the defense team, the presentation of coerced testimony by juvenile witnesses who had been intimidated by the FBI, and the DoJ use of tactics to frighten and bias the jury by always transporting them to and from court under escort by a SWAT team.

Evaluation.  Many organizations and individuals have examined the case and concluded: that the DoJ and federal courts violated Peltier’s right to a fair trial, that he was targeted and convicted for his political associations, that the government has no evidence that he committed the murders for which he was convicted, and that he should be immediately released from prison.  These include: Amnesty International, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Robert F Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, European parliament, Belgian parliament, Italian parliament, several Nobel Prize winners, and many other well-known advocates for human rights.

Frame-up in Milwaukee.  2 ½ years prior to the 1975 shoot-out, AIM activist Leonard Peltier, was sitting in a Milwaukee restaurant where 2 off duty cops (in 1972 November) picked a quarrel with him.  Then, as he was leaving, the same 2 cops jumped and beat Peltier.  They then arrested Peltier on a charge of attempted murder (of themselves) with what was later shown to be a nonfunctional gun.  Fearing that he would be killed or railroaded to prison on perjured police testimony, Peltier obtained release on bond and then fled.  In 1978, while in prison following his frame-up conviction for the premeditated murders of the two FBI agents, he was finally brought to trial on this “attempted murder” charge.  At trial the girlfriend of one of the two cops testified that her cop friend had shown her a photo of Peltier prior to the incident and had told her that “he was going to help the FBI get a big one”.  Thus, it became clear that the entire incident had been a set-up and fraud.  The prosecution’s case then collapsed, and the jury acquitted this “notorious AIM felon”.

Sources

[1] Wagner & Lynch PLLC: Wounded Knee – the Massacre, the Incident, & the Radical Lawyer (© 2023).

[2] International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee: Facts (accessed 2024 Dec).

[3] FOIA Documents – U.S. v Leonard Peltier (CR NO. C77-3003): Post-Trial Actions – Criminal (© 2015 Dec).

 [3] Criminalizing Muslim charities

The Holy Land Foundation [HLF] was the largest Islamic charity in the US in 2000.  It distributed charity (food, clothing, healthcare services, et cetera) thru established local zakat [charity] committees in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.  Because it provided charitable relief to victims of Israeli persecution, HLF was targeted first by American Zionists and then, at their behest, by the US government.

Islam in Palestine.  90% of Palestinian Arabs are Muslim.  Naturally, they vary widely in their devotion to religious prescriptions.  Until the PLO’s capitulation and corruption cost it most of its popular sympathy, Hamas had the allegiance of only a small minority of Palestinian Muslims.  Hamas, which is a political and social force within Palestinian Muslim communities, was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the (Islamist Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood [MB].  Until 1987, MB in Palestine maintained peaceful relations with the Zionist state, and its leaders had met regularly with Israeli officials.  Because said MB was hostile to the secular and leftist Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], the Israeli state: had happily encouraged the former as a potential alternative Palestinian leadership to that of the PLO, and had refrained from interfering when MB Islamists perpetrated violent attacks against secular groups aligned with the PLO.  However, violent Israeli repression impacted all Palestinians (including MB adherents) in the occupied territories; and overwhelming Palestinian support for the First Intifada (1987—93 civil disobedience campaign) finally induced Palestinian MB, reconstituted as Hamas, to embrace the resistance to Israeli occupation.  When Hamas responded to Israeli violence by forming a military arm to retaliate with its own violent counterattacks upon Israelis, the Zionist state branded it as a “terrorist” organization.  In 1995 the US accommodated its Israeli ally by also branding Hamas as a “terrorist” organization.

Target.  Although a Hamas fundraiser, Musa Abu-Marzuk, had provided financial support at its founding (in 1989), HLF was not an affiliate of Hamas, and its actual activities had nothing to do with violent resistance to Zionist oppressions.  Nevertheless, Zionist groups targeted HLF with smears and demands for revocation of its tax-exemption.  HLF continued its charitable work until 2001, when the US government used the 9-11 Al-Qaeda attacks as pretext for a so-called “war on terror” which became largely an attack upon civil liberties with widespread targeting of (mostly innocent) Arab-American activists and US-based Islamic institutions.  One such target was HLF.  The federal government (in 2001 December): seized its assets, shut down its operations, and branded it as a “terrorist” organization.

Prosecution.  In 2007 the DoJ brought the HLF and five of its principal officers (now known as the Holy Land Five) to trial on allegations of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization (meaning Hamas).  In this trial (which included violations of the defendants’ due process rights), the jury acquitted on some counts and deadlocked on the others.  A more egregiously rigged retrial in 2008 resulted in convictions on all remaining counts.  Specific violations of due process follow.

(1) The prosecution contended that, by providing charity to needy Palestinians thru the local charity committees which the prosecution alleged were controlled by Hamas, HLF was bolstering Hamas’ popularity and thereby providing material support for “terrorism”.  Thus, the prosecution sought conviction of the accused based upon guilt-by-association.

(2) The prosecution’s classification of the local charities as agents of “terrorism” was baseless.  The relevant facts: (1^st) the local committees were independent entities devoted to charitable purposes, and their leaders included individuals with no ties to Hamas as well as those who were members or sympathizers with Hamas; (2^nd) immediately after the US had listed Hamas as “terrorist”, HLF had sought advice from the federal government as to which, if any, of the charities were deemed unacceptable; (3^rd) none of the charity committees was listed by the US as a terrorist organization; (4^th) the US (thru its USAID program) had provided funding for many of the same local charity committees until 2006 (for five years after the HLF had been shut down); and (5^th) the prosecution acknowledged that none of the funding of the charities was used for acts which the US deemed to be “terrorist”.

(3) The prosecution was permitted, over defense objections, to present two unidentified Israeli state security agents as “expert” witnesses for the purpose of tying the charity committees to Hamas.  The anonymity of these “experts” prevented effective defense cross-examination to challenge their credentials and the validity of their assertions thereby violating the defendants’ 6^th Amendment rights to confront and rebut their accusers.

(4) In the retrial the only significant change in the prosecution’s presentation was its move to bolster its case by introducing additional “evidence” which consisted of untestable assertions, hearsay, and irrelevant material, all of which served only to prejudice the jury against the defendants.  The appeals court (in 2011): ruled this additional “evidence” inadmissible, then astonishingly asserted that its use did not affect the outcome, and finally refused to overturn the convictions.

(Ω) The Holy Land Five are: Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mohammad El-Mezain.  Their prison sentences were: 65 years for each of the first two, 20 years for the third, and 15 years for the remaining two.

Source

For more on Hamas, see Pierce, Charles: Gaza War: Palestine, Zionism, imperialism, Hamas, previous wars, atrocities. What are the relevant actual facts?.

 Conclusion

For 3 reasons (their liberal capitalist indoctrination, their attachment to their own privileges and entitlements, and their dependency upon their capitalist campaign funders), governing centrist Democrat politicians are incapable of providing: equal justice in law enforcement, or consistent enforcement of the civil rights of opponents of their imperial and capital-serving policies.  Moreover, any concessions (reforms) which they offer, in support of greater social justice, will always be limited to what does not seriously impinge against the interests of powerful factions of the ruling class

Charles Pierce is a soal-justice activist (since his youth in the early 1960s), a former/retired labor activist (union steward & local officer), and currently a researcher and writer on history and politics. He can be reached at cpbolshi@gmail.com. Read other articles by Charles, or visit Charles's website.

PELTIER ILLEGALY ARRESTED IN VANCOUVER BC BY RCMP
AND HANDED OVER TO THE FBI

Biden's 'last hurrah' on grocery merger may snowball even after Trump steps in: analyst

Matthew Chapman
December 12, 2024 

One of the biggest priorities for President Joe Biden during his lame duck period is the confirmation of several dozen federal judges still awaiting a vote in the full Senate. Now, one senator Biden has been counting on says he's all-in on judicial confirmations. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

One of the Biden administration's final acts will be securing a legal prohibition on the merger of two of America's largest grocery chains, Kroger and Albertsons — a deal that, had it gone through, would have created a combined company with more locations than Walmart and eliminated a major source of competition that keeps food prices stable.

The case, brought by outgoing progressive Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, will likely be her last major action before she is ousted in the Trump administration. Khan stands to be replaced with a far-right, pro-merger commissioner who has vowed to focus more on fighting "DEI," "wokeness," and internal dissent against Trump than corporate misconduct.

But that may not matter long term, wrote Stacy Mitchell for The Atlantic — because the new precedent against megamergers could be hard to reverse.


"The rulings offer the clearest proof yet that the new antitrust movement is breaking through," wrote Mitchell. "This merger, which sparked fears of higher grocery prices and closed supermarkets, captured public attention in a way that few antitrust cases have. Judges are people too, and they are aware of the debates about corporate power and competition that have been taking place over the past decade."

This is in some ways a return to form, she noted, because grocery stores were long prominent in historical antitrust action, with mergers being blocked and grocery chains being broken up frequently from the 1930s to the 1970s. But after that, conservative economists and scholars convinced federal agencies to leave grocery stores alone, leading to heavy consolidation in the industry that has led to Kroger and Albertsons as they currently exist.

For instance, "Kroger is not just Kroger; it’s also Harris Teeter, King Soopers, Fry’s, Ralphs, Smith’s, and more. Albertsons is Safeway, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Shaw’s, Acme, and others" — and consumers suffer as the combined mega-company has control over prices.

Khan challenged this status quo, for the first time in decades pushing the government to actually challenge supermarket mergers — and won, with the result that there is a new precedent for requiring a higher standard of competition in this industry.

With Trump's cronies at the helm, Mitchell continued, "For at least the next four years, major federal merger challenges might be scarce."


"Still, states will almost certainly continue advancing the ball on their own," said Mitchell. "In the long term, the door to revived competition enforcement has been decisively cracked open — and it won’t be so easy to shut."

The simple fact, she wrote, is that "Too many people — including judges and the voting public — are looking at the issue with fresh eyes," with over 100,000 people filing comments on the Kroger-Albertsons merger with the FTC, and "labor unions, small businesses, and farmers" uniting against it. Already more such cases are moving at the state level, with New York investigating the Capital One-Discover credit merger.

"The Kroger-Albertsons ruling might be the last hurrah of Lina Khan’s FTC tenure, but it probably will not be the last victory for the movement Khan represents," Mitchell concluded.

Albertsons abandons $25 billion merger with Kroger after judge blocks deal #shorts

RIGHT TO LIFE
South Carolina GOP bill would allow death penalty as punishment for abortions: report

Erik De La Garza
December 12, 2024 


Planned Parenthood protesters (Shutterstock, Rena Schild)

A proposed South Carolina bill would extend homicide laws – including the death penalty – to cases of abortion.

The "South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act" was pre-filed in the South Carolina Legislature last week by an ultra-conservative group of Republican lawmakers, HuffPost reported Thursday.

The bill seeks to amend the state’s criminal laws by broadening the definition of a “person” to include “an unborn child at any stage of development,” according to a summary of the bill. It would enforce the same laws in place, with limited exceptions, equivalent to killing somebody under state law.

But while the bill will make its way to the judiciary committee when the Legislature convenes next month, it is unlikely to become law, according to the HuffPost report.

ALSO READ: The reckoning: Plenty of hurts coming for the people who didn't care about their country

"If passed, this bill would effectively enact a total abortion ban because it considers all abortion, starting 'from the moment of fertilization,' to be homicide," the report said.

South Carolina already has a strict six-week abortion ban in place.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican State Rep. Rob Harris, ignited a national firestorm last year when he introduced the same legislation. The backlash caused several Republican co-sponsors to withdraw support before it failed to move forward in the state House, according to HuffPost.

“It’s very unlikely that the bill will go anywhere this time around,” the publication said. “The current version has six co-sponsors, including Harris, all of whom are white men and members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, part of the more extreme sector of the Republican Party.”


Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s director of public affairs Vicki Ringer told HuffPost she thinks the bill will be “dead on arrival.”

“I think the majority of people, even the most strident Republicans, would say the death penalty bill is not where we want to go with abortion,” Ringer told the publication. She added: “I don’t know who is getting equal protection, but it appears in South Carolina that only fetuses and embryos get equal protection. Women and trans people do not.”

Pope Francis makes Jubilee year appeal to end hunger, debt woes and death penalty

(RNS) — The pope’s appeal was made for the World Day of Peace, coinciding with the launch of the 2025 Jubilee year.

Pope Francis arrives to pray in front of the Marian monument of the Column of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Rome on the day the Catholic Church celebrates the Holy Mary, Dec. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Claire Giangravé
December 12, 2024


VATICAN CITY (RNS) — In the year 2000, then-Pope John Paul II appealed to leaders of wealthy nations, asking them to forgive the debt of poorer countries in the spirit of the Catholic Church’s Jubilee year — a time the church sets aside for forgiveness of sins and debt. Meeting prisoners in Rome, John Paul asked that the death penalty, which he called “an unwor­thy pun­ish­ment still used in some coun­tries, be abol­ished through­out the world.”

Twenty-five years later, the church is preparing to celebrate another Jubilee in 2025, but the goals laid out by John Paul continue to seem as distant as ever — nearly 30,000 people are currently on death row around the world, and according to the International Monetary Fund, at least half of developing countries are facing a debt crisis or are on the verge.

Anticipating the World Day of Peace on Jan. 1, Pope Francis renewed John Paul’s appeals earlier this month, asking for the forgiveness of foreign debt, elimination of the death penalty and creation of a fund aimed at eradicating world hunger using money allocated for armaments.

“I urge the international community to work towards forgiving foreign debt in recognition of the ecological debt existing between the North and the South of this world,” Pope Francis wrote in a Dec. 8 statement. “This is an appeal for solidarity, but above all for justice.”

The pope said the death penalty “not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation.” He said a global fund drawn from money currently allocated for armaments could “eradicate hunger and facilitate in the poorer countries educational activities aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change.”

Francis has often called attention to weapons manufacturers as the chief example of an industry that values profit over human lives. The global arms trade amounted to an estimated $138 billion in 2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Jubilee years, patterned on an ancient Jewish custom, were introduced into the church in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, and today occur every quarter-century. The 2025 celebration, which officially begins Christmas Eve 2024, is expected to bring over 30 million pilgrims to the Vatican in search of spiritual replenishment or forgiveness of sins.


FILE – Cardinal Michael Czerny meets the journalists at the Vatican press hall, in Rome, on March 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

The pope’s appeal, titled “Forgive us our trespasses: Grant us peace,” is directed especially to those who don’t have hope for the future. “We need to work at eliminating every pretext that encourages young people to regard their future as hopeless or dominated by the thirst to avenge the blood of their dear ones,” Francis said.

Speaking at a Vatican news conference presenting the pope’s message on Thursday (Dec. 12), Cardinal Michael Czerny, who heads the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, said he hopes people will heed Francis’ message to “disarm our hearts.”

In the pope’s message, he said that abolishing international debt would require the creation of a global financial charter founded on justice and fraternity. Czerny recognized that with a growing portion of the debt in private hands, the issue is more complex today than it was 25 years ago.

Francis has spoken out against the death penalty on several occasion, most recently during his Sunday prayer in St. Peter’s Square on Dec. 8, when he directed his pleas to the United States. “I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” the pope said. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed.”

This Oct. 9, 2014, file photo shows the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

Catholic Mobilizing Network, which works for fairness in U.S. legal and justice systems, has asked President Joe Biden, a Catholic, to commute the sentences of 40 federal death row inmates before the end of his term in January.

“Pope Francis asks for our firm commitment to respect the dignity of human life, namely the elimination of the death penalty in all nations,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the group’s executive director, at the news conference to present the pope’s message. She described capital punishment as a “structural sin” on the books in 55 nations. In the United States, 27 of the 50 states still have the death penalty.

Vaillancourt Murphy said that accepting the pope’s call would amount to “an act of profound hope in our day.”

RELATED: Faith leaders, activists, the pope urge Biden to empty federal death row before Trump term

Also appearing at the news conference was Vito Alfieri Fontana, who ran a company that makes land mines before he experienced a personal conversion in the mid-1990s and joined the global fight against the arms trade and land mines especially. “Those who work in the arms sector strive to offer clients quick and efficient solutions for war,” Fontana said. “Instead, wars quickly drown in the mud of trenches and last for years. Perhaps there lies the trick, to continue an endless supply and multiply sales, lest ‘the front collapses.’”

Fontana, who spent decades removing his former company’s land mines from the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, criticized the decision to introduce land mines in the Middle East and in Ukraine. In November, the U.S. authorized the supply of antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine.

“It’s a useless and stupid homicide, a weapon of vengeance,” Fontana said. “We shall remove all the ones they place,” he said, adding “the important thing is to end this damn war!”

Biden administration releases strategy for fighting Islamophobia

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a press release Thursday saying the strategy was “too little, too late.”

(RNS) — The 67-page strategy was released one month before Biden leaves office and amid heightened tensions with the Muslim American community over the administration's steadfast support for Israel in its war in Gaza.

Islamic Center Of America in Dearborn, Mich. 

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons)

Yonat Shimron
December 12, 2024


(RNS) — With one month left in office, the Biden administration has released a 67-page strategy to fight Islamophobia and counter discrimination against Muslims and Arabs.

The policy, released on Thursday (Dec. 12), is modeled on a similar strategy to counter antisemitism that was released in May 2023. But unlike that strategy, it comes amid heightened tensions with the Muslim American community over the administration’s steadfast support for Israel in its war in Gaza.

The first-of-its kind strategy includes four area priorities: increasing awareness of hatred against Muslims and Arabs, improving safety and security, tackling discrimination and building cross-community solidarity. Among its recommendations are tools to combat “doxing,” or sharing people’s home addresses online; “swatting,” or reporting a false incident to send emergency personnel to a home; and other hoax threats against Muslims and Arabs.

The strategy also seeks increased training on nondiscrimination and religious freedom at all levels of government.

It opens by invoking the death of a 6-year-old Chicago-area boy who was stabbed to death one year ago, allegedly because his mother is Palestinian. The death of Wadee Alfayoumi, on the heels of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, made combating violence against Arabs a national priority.

RELATED: How an anti-terror bill could strip Muslim social justice NGOs of nonprofit status

The document also cites the shooting of three students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont, and the stabbing of a young woman near a college campus in Texas.

Recognizing that the strategy may not be implemented fully, Biden wrote: “And although we may not immediately achieve all the change we seek, this Strategy is a critical step in identifying the challenges we face and identifying solutions that civil society and state, local, and national governments can implement over time.”

The Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has included $22 billion in military aid to date, has soured his relations with many Muslims and with Palestinians living in the U.S. Many have expressed despair at the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 44,000 of its residents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and said that Biden could have done more to rein in the violence. They were also disappointed in Kamala Harris after no Palestinian was allowed to address the Democratic National Convention in August, a sentiment reflected in mass defections from the Democratic Party in November’s election.

“Although American Muslims, from an Islamophobia perspective, welcomed this,” said Haris Tarin, vice president of policy and programming at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, “there was definitely a hesitation from the American Muslim community to work on the strategy very closely.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a press release Thursday saying the strategy was “too little, too late.”

“ … if President Biden truly cared about the safety of Muslims or reducing the threat of Islamophobia, he would make major changes to federal programs that perpetuate anti-Muslim discrimination, like the federal watchlist, and immediately stopping enabling the biggest driver of Islamophobia: the US-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza,” the CAIR statement said.

Work on the strategy began with a White House interagency policy committee created in December 2022 that focused on countering antisemitism, Islamophobia and related types of discrimination.

Tarin, who worked for the Department of Homeland Security before joining the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said he was consulted about the strategy there.

He said it was particularly important to tackle Islamophobia within the various departments and agencies of the U.S. government.

“Since 9/11, the government has actually been complicit in advancing Islamophobic policies, especially in the national security sector,” Tarin said. So while he thought the strategy was imperfect, he said it was a welcome first step and one that he hoped departments such as Homeland Security, Justice and the Treasury would take seriously.

“We will be calling on the Trump administration to adopt the strategy,” Tarin said.

The strategy notes that the majority of Arab Americans are not Muslim, and the vast majority of Muslim Americans are not Arab. The strategy contains more than 100 executive branch actions and more than 100 calls to action.

U$A

Why Christians should demand the establishment of the ERA now

(RNS) — Safety and dignity are fundamental to Christianity, and Christians must answer the call.

University Christian Church in San Diego celebrated Advent last Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, with its congregation writing postcards to President Joe Biden, calling on him to make the Equal Rights Amendment the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. (Photo courtesy of University Christian Church)
Mark Sandlin and Caleb Lines
December 12, 2024

(RNS) — The United States Constitution rightly secures protections for Americans whatever their race, religion and ethnicity. But not gender.

Any rights and protections based on gender — equal pay for men and women, equality in marriage, freedom from workplace discrimination and sexual harassment and from gender-based violence — are rooted in laws that may be repealed or modified by legislatures according to political winds and whims. There is no guaranteed enforcement of gender rights.

The Equal Rights Amendment can change that. President Joe Biden has the authority to make the ERA the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution before he leaves office. The ERA was approved by Congress in 1972 and reached its ratification requirement with Virginia in 2020. Indeed, in the opinion of the American Bar Association, “the ERA has satisfied all constitutional requirements to become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Protecting human rights, safety and dignity is fundamental to Christianity and aligned with how Jesus lived and what he taught. The ERA would provide much-needed foundational protections against discrimination and violence. Christians can answer the call by demanding that the president push the ERA across the finish line.
RELATED: On women deacons, the Catholic Church has to remember its own history

Importantly, the amendment will also protect against some of the most radical elements of Project 2025, a proposed agenda for the incoming Trump administration put together by some of President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers. Items on this agenda include restrictions on contraception, a national abortion ban, overturning marriage equality, gutting assistance programs, denying health care and other measures that would put women and families at risk and strip LGBT people of their dignity and humanity.

Jesus’ words made clear he deeply valued all people, including women for their strength, wisdom and leadership. They played a central role in his ministry. Women were by Jesus’ side when he preached, as he suffered on the cross and when he was resurrected. In the Gospel of John, he chooses the woman at the well as an evangelist, and the only example we have of Jesus learning from someone comes in the Gospel of Matthew, when a mother desperately seeking healing for her daughter reminded Jesus to live out the lessons he was teaching — namely, to treat everyone equally. He obliged.

Women also helped lead the early church. The New Testament names Phoebe, the deaconess, and Chloe, Nympha and Apphia. Paul was impressed with Junia; Priscilla was a church planter. In the Book of Acts, Tabitha leads a ministry and Philip’s four daughters each became prophets. The gifts of the Spirit — wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues — are all poured out to men and women equally. Paul put women in ministry roles, and Galatians makes it clear all are equal and worthy.

The Bible is also filled to the brim with patriarchy, reflecting ancient times when women were often seen as not much more than possessions. But these are no longer ancient times. Today, gender equality is included in 168 countries’ constitutions, but not the United States’. For its part, the United States tied with Syria in 2018 on a list of the most dangerous countries in the world for women, where women were at greatest risk of sexual violence, harassment and coercion into sex. The U.S. ranked sixth that year for domestic abuse.

Still, women continue to lead. Allyson McKinney Timm is a human rights lawyer, scholar and faith leader who founded Justice Revival. She’s been mobilizing Christians to support the ERA for many years. According to longtime human rights lawyer and ERA activist Kate Kelly, “I think that women are realizing that nothing that we have is permanent. Nothing is too sacred to be rolled back, and things that we have taken for granted in the past are now up for grabs.”

The bar for any new constitutional amendment is rightly high. It must pass both houses of Congress with a two-thirds majority, and three-quarters of the states (38 states) must ratify it. One mom was determined to see that happen. Kati Hornung, who credits her kids for “reigniting her passion for equality and fairness in our Constitution,” led the successful effort to make Virginia the 38th state to ratify the ERA.

That was in 2020 and — no surprise — politics got in the way. Hornung is now executive director of VoteEquality and is working alongside an ambitious alliance created in the wake of the ugly misogyny that surfaced during this recent election. Renewed vigor around the ERA has also attracted numerous faith-based organizations.

The goal is clear: Get the ERA onto Biden’s desk. Given the grave uncertainties around the corner, Biden has not just the authority but the moral obligation to act before he leaves office.

RELATED: ‘A Well-Trained Wife’ unpacks life in Christian patriarchy

And that is why he needs to hear from you.

We need the faith voice — especially the Christian voice — to help flood the White House with postcards and letters calling on Biden to make the ERA the 28th Amendment. (There are also petitions, protests and plenty of online actions — lots of ways to engage can be found here.) But there’s nothing like finding a personal note in your mailbox. So Take Back Christianity invites you to pull out those magic markers and get creative. Get your church involved. We did! Biden needs to hear from you because 170 million women and girls who deserve better are waiting to hear from him.

(The Rev. Mark Sandlin is a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister in Greensboro, N.C., and the Rev. Caleb Lines, affiliated with United Church of Christ and the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, serves in San Diego. They are the founders of Take Back Christianity. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

For feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, activist devotees adorn Mary with Palestinian symbols

(RNS) — The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast day falls on Dec. 12, has emerged as a symbol among Latino activists and artists in the U.S. and Mexico of their support for Palestinians in Gaza.

An individual scales a building after hanging a banner depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe with a sign reading “My son is Palestinian” in Spanish, on a parking garage facing the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Chihuahua, Mexico.

 (Photo by Raúl F. Pérez Lira/Raíchali)

Alejandra Molina
December 11, 2024

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — In mid-October, the day before the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel, activists in Chihuahua, Mexico, strung a banner bearing a pro-Palestinian message from a parking garage to the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Chihuahua.

In Spanish, the words “My son is Palestinian” were emblazoned in bold red letters below a depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the brown-skinned virgin and patron saint of Mexico, wearing a black-and-white kaffiyeh and a cloak decorated with tiny watermelons, both symbols of Palestinian resistance.

To one of the persons who created the banner, who asked to remain anonymous, there was no better way to evoke reaction than by communicating through the Virgin of Guadalupe. “We wanted to reach people’s hearts. The Virgin is a figure of authority. It’s as if she’s saying, ‘My children, don’t be indifferent,’” said the activist.

As Israel’s war in Gaza continues, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast day falls on Dec. 12, has emerged as a symbol of Palestinian support among Latino activists and artists in the U.S. and Mexico. More than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the war that began after Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250 others on Oct.7, 2023.

RELATED: Our Lady of Guadalupe documentary to run in theaters across the US

A variety of Palestinian-themed Virgin of Guadalupe artwork on the “Where’s Lupita?” Instagram. (Screen grab)

The art features traditional and interpretative images of the Virgin of Guadalupe fused with watermelons and kaffiyehs, symbols that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Many of the illustrations are featured on the Instagram known as “Where’s Lupita?,” which tracks global Virgin Mary iconography.

Some illustrations appeared on Instagram as fundraising efforts for UNRWA USA, a nonprofit that raises funds and supports the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

Gustavo Martinez Contreras, creator of Where’s Lupita?, said artists using Guadalupe’s image in support of Palestinians are continuing a tradition of Chicanos who harnessed the Virgin as a symbol “in defiance against the system.” To Martinez Contreras, these depictions symbolize Guadalupe as “caring for the marginalized.”

Daisy Vargas, a professor at the University of Arizona who specializes in Catholicism in the Americas, sees this artwork as “important interpretations for this particular political and cultural moment,” noting that artists are drawing parallels between the current violence in Gaza and the biblical narratives of Mary as the Palestinian mother of Jesus “who is experiencing the violence of empire in an occupied land.”

Vargas also sees a connection to the story of the apparition in Mexico. “These are symbols that are important within the context of people who have experienced a history of colonial and imperial violence and displacement from their own homelands,” Vargas said.

The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe marks the Catholic Church teaching that the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego, an Indigenous Mexican, on a Tepeyac hill in present-day Mexico City in 1531. The Virgin Mary took the form of a mixed-race woman who spoke Nahuatl, the language of the people that had been recently colonized by Spain, writes art history professor Judith Huacuja.

Daisy Vargas. (Photo courtesy of University of Arizona)

In the 19th century the Virgin was invoked during the Mexican independence movement, when images of the Virgin were emblazoned on banners protesting the Spanish occupation. Today, the Virgin has been used as a symbol of resistance against housing displacement and as a protector of migrants.

“Artists are using the symbol of the Virgin because it’s a powerful symbol of Latinidad,” said Vargas, using a Spanish word referring to Latin identity. “It’s a powerful symbol of Christianity. It’s a powerful symbol of maternal love. … It really asks people to consider what is happening in Gaza, and how it (connects) to their own identity and their own faith traditions.”

“Virgencita Palestine,” by Ernesto Yerena, an artist and printmaker in Los Angeles, juxtaposes the iconic image of the Virgin of Guadalupe against a kaffiyeh-patterned backdrop in red and green, the colors that appear on both the Mexican and Palestinian flags. Yerena sold the prints in January to raise money to fund and distribute “Free Palestine” posters at pro-Palestinian rallies.

“I would say a lot of people who identify as Latinos, Latinas, they would dig this image. They would feel it’s representative of the way we feel,” said Yerena.

Though he grew up Catholic, Yerena said he isn’t religious and he rebukes what he sees as a disparity between the Catholic Church’s wealth and charity work. The Virgin of Guadalupe, however, “has a warm place in my heart because of my grandmothers, my mom. They love the Virgen,” he said.

“I’ll always feel connected to it even though I don’t identify as Catholic,” said Yerena, who identifies as Chicano and Indigenous. Among his great-grandparents, he said, were Yaqui, and Indigenous Mexican people, and a Sephardic Jew.

Yerena learned about “oppressed peoples” solidarity movements with Palestine in his 20s, he said, and soon after began creating art in solidarity with Palestinian people, drawing inspiration from political posters of the Organization in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He said he has been called antisemitic for his work, which he finds ironic, given his family history. “I’m proud of my Jewish heritage,” he said.


A banner depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe with the words “My son is Palestinian” in Spanish hangs from a parking garage facing the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Chihuahua, Mexico. (Photo by Raúl F. Pérez Lira/Raíchali)

Catholic Church leaders have been criticized for allowing a Nativity scene featuring a Christ child in a kaffiyah — since removed — in the Vatican’s Christmas display in St. Peter’s Square, and other antisemitism watchdog groups have objected to efforts to merge Palestinian and Christian imagery. (Martinez Contreras, founder of Where’s Lupita?, was fired from his job in 2021 for writing a misogynistic and antisemitic caption that he said was accidentally published by the newspaper he was working for.)

Lizett Carmona, an artist based in Chicago, created a Virgin of Guadalupe draped in a black and white kaffiyeh, with the words “juntos por palestina” (together for Palestine) displayed above the Virgin’s image. With her piece, she’s petitioning for protection of Palestinians.

“I wanted to show solidarity and find some interconnectedness … between me, someone of Mexican descent, and someone from Palestine,” said Carmona.

Her work touches on themes of migration and liberation and features images of police cars on fire and of children selling candy at the border.
RELATED: Chronicling Los Angeles’ iconic Virgin of Guadalupe street art

Carmona, an agnostic who considers Catholicism integral with her culture, thinks of Guadalupe as “the product of colonialism.” “But then I think a lot of our identity, we are byproducts of colonialism. It’s just not easy to make those rigid lines,” she said.

Her response for critics who accuse her of using Catholic symbols to promote her ideology?

“Of course, that’s what I’m doing,” Carmona said. “This is propaganda. I’m a propagandist. I want you to reflect. I want you to question.

“Not only do I think of (the Virgin of Guadalupe) as a symbol of Catholicism, I think about it as going outside seeing her on tienditas (convenience stores), on graffiti, or on a tattoo of a person. It’s just an image that pertains to so much more of our culture than the religion itself,” Carmona said.

Indigenous dance and mariachi: New York celebrates Our Lady of Guadalupe

NEW YORK (RNS) — The events highlighted the cultural, as well as the religious, importance of Our Lady of Guadalupe among the city’s diverse Latin American communities.

People process with a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe from St. Bernard Church to St. Patrick's Cathedral during Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe festivities in New York City, early Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024. (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)
Fiona Murphy
December 12, 202

(RNS) — Thousands gathered in New York City over the past two days to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, the beloved patron saint of Mexico and a powerful symbol of unity and Catholic faith across Mexico and Central America.

The festivities began Wednesday evening (Dec. 11) with mariachi music and traditional Mexican folk dance, followed the next morning by a miles-long procession, or “carrera,” and a Spanish-language Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The events highlighted the cultural, as well as the religious, importance of Our Lady of Guadalupe among the city’s diverse Latin American communities. People of Mexican descent make up one of the largest subgroups of Latino residents in New York City, according to 2022 data from the CUNY Center for Latin American Studies

Our Lady of Guadeloupe “is a symbol of our faith,” said the Rev. Jesus Ledezma, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in San Bernardo Church in Lower Manhattan. “Even if you are not Catholic, you can still be considered ‘Guadalupano.’”


Procession Photos
By Fiona Murphy · December 12, 2024


In December 1531, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Juan Diego, an Indigenous man, on the Tepeyac Hill, now in Mexico City. The shimmering figure, often described as having dark brown skin, revealed herself as a compassionate mother and left a miraculous image on Diego’s tilma, a cloak made of cactus fibers.

“At the time, Mexicans were waiting for the arrival of the fifth sun god, but when Lady Guadalupe came, she told them this is the true God,” said Rodolfo Nestor, a procession volunteer and student studying the history of the Lady of Guadalupe at St. Ignatius Church in Manhattan. “It was the beginning of the new world.”

The image on Juan Diego’s tilma incorporates Indigenous colors, and the flowers on her dress, the stars on her mantle and her position atop the moon blend Aztec iconography with Catholic motifs.

“The image is written in a code Indigenous people could understand,” Nestor said.

People pray at The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Bernard prior to a Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe procession to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, early Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024. (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)

On Thursday morning, people gathered at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Bernard on 14th street in Manhattan to participate in the procession, emulating their Indigenous ancestors who, according to tradition, “ran” to the hill where Juan Diego saw Mary.

“The procession is growing every year,” said Ledezma, who has led the church since 2020. “We had 1,700 people come last year and now more than 2,100 from 19 different parishes including from the Bronx, Yonkers, Mount Vernon and more upstate. It’s very exciting.”

Nearly every participant wore clothing adorned with a symbol of the Virgin Mary and a rotating group carried a large devotional statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. With a mariachi band leading the way, the procession started off for St. Patrick’s, on 51st Street.

“My legs are tired,” a woman carrying a bouquet of roses exclaimed as she climbed the stairs of the church around 10 a.m.

At St. Patrick’s, Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan and the Auxiliary Bishop Francisco Figueroa Cervantes, who flew in from Mexico specifically for the day’s festivities, celebrated a Mass.

“Traditional Mañanitas” Photos
By Fiona Murphy · December 12, 2024


The cathedral floor was still strewn with rose petals left from the previous evening’s “traditional Mañanitas,” a high-energy celebration of Mexican culture and devotion. Despite the December cold and persistent rain outside the cathedral, about 400 people gathered to enjoy mariachi music and traditional dance representing various regions of Mexico.

The first high trumpet note rang out from Mariachi Tapatío de Álvaro Paulino, a band of 10 musicians based in New York. The crowd quickly pulled out their phones, and Brenda Nunez, joined by her sister Elvira, began singing along to the music. The Academia de Mariachi Nuevo Amanecer also performed mariachi tunes.

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“My sister wanted me to wear a more traditional Mexican dress like hers,” Brenda said, motioning to her sister’s white cotton dress embroidered with pink and orange designs. “I have one in red, but I am just coming from work so I didn’t want to wear it.” Brenda said some of her family would be walking in the procession on Thursday morning, but she would be home watching the children. “It’s very early,” Brenda said.

Rosalía León Oviedo, a singer from Mexico City, sat in the front row of the choir with her friend Rosa Maria Tellez, both in shawls embroidered with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. “This is my first time here,” León said. “It’s an expensive flight, but my friend (Rosa) lives in the city and invited me, and I couldn’t refuse.”

Rosalía León Oviedo wears an Our Lady of Guadalupe shawl while attending “traditional Mañanitas” at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Dec. 11, 2024.

 (RNS photo/Fiona Murphy)

Traditional folk dances were performed by the Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Nueva York, along with the Tecuanes Quetzalcoatl, which showcased a young boy dressed as a fierce jaguar sauntering down the cathedral’s long central aisle and snapping a bullwhip, symbolizing the Indigenous tradition of jaguar hunting.

The evening concluded with the entire congregation singing “Las Mañanitas,” a popular Mexican song, and participants offering personal dedications to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which sat atop the altar, surrounded by blood-red roses.

SANCTUARY VIOLATED

Faith leaders express dismay amid report Trump will allow immigration raids at churches

(RNS) — ‘I have 30 kids in a Sunday school class — I don’t know who is documented and undocumented,’ said one Latino pastor.

In this July 8, 2019, file photo, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain a man during an operation in Escondido, Calif. 

(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Jack Jenkins and Yonat Shimron
December 12, 2024

(RNS) — Faith leaders are reacting with concern to a report that President-elect Donald Trump plans to rescind a long-standing policy that discourages immigration officials from conducting raids at churches, schools and hospitals.

According to a report from NBC News on Wednesday (Dec. 11), the incoming Trump administration plans to do away with a policy outlined in an internal 2011 U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement memo by then-ICE director John Morton. The policy discourages government agents from making arrests at or near “sensitive locations,” such as houses of worship.

The news comes amid Trump’s campaign pledge to enact the “largest deportation” in U.S. history, which he has said could begin soon after he assumes office, and suggested in an interview over the weekend that U.S. citizens could be deported with undocumented family members.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request to confirm the president-elect’s intent to change the policy, but the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said in a statement that news of the policy change was “sending a deep chill down the spine of the Latino evangelical church.”

The Rev. Gabriel Salguero. (Photo courtesy of The Gathering)

In a separate interview, Salguero noted he recently completed a “know your rights” training with 82 Hispanic evangelical bishops, many of whom have immigrants — undocumented and otherwise — in their congregations. He called the proposed change “a fear-based policy” and voiced concern about whether it will respect religious liberty.

“How are they going to execute these raids? In ways that respect religious liberty and in ways that do not strike fear into children who are worshipping in Sunday school? I have 30 kids in a Sunday school class — I don’t know who is documented and undocumented,” Salguero said.

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and one of Trump’s evangelical advisers, maintained in an email that the policy change is more narrow in intent and that he is “convinced the incoming Trump administration will focus on criminal illegal immigrants.” He insisted the policy “serves as a warning” to undocumented immigrants who engage in criminal activity, such as “sex, human, and drug traffickers” or “rapist, gang members.”

“I do not foresee in any way, the administration targeting or going into schools or churches, pursuing God-fearing law abiding immigrants who have been here for 15 years or more, and whose children were born or raised here,” Rodriguez said.

But other faith leaders are not as sure, such as those who participate in the New Sanctuary Movement, a faith-based effort that began under President Barack Obama’s administration and expanded greatly during Trump’s first term. Participants in the movement, which includes members of many faiths, allow undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation to take up residence in houses of worship, hoping to pressure immigration officials into dropping their deportation orders. Some immigrants have lived in churches for years, until eventually leaving after deportation orders were rescinded or changed.

Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh was one of a half dozen North Carolina churches that sheltered undocumented immigrants during the first Trump administration. The Rev. Doug Long, former pastor of Umstead, now retired, suggested he wasn’t entirely surprised by the proposed change, which activists feared would occur during Trump’s first term.

“If they are making that announcement, I think it brings some clarity because we assumed it was already gonna happen,” Long said.

When former North Carolina-based sanctuary leaders met last month, he added, the activists concluded that churches wanting to help undocumented immigrants would need to pursue new avenues.


Doug Long, left, former pastor of Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh, N.C., in 2017, with Eliseo Jimenez, who took sanctuary at the church. (RNS photo by Yonat Shimron)

“It’s a very different situation than it was five, six years ago,” Long said.

Still, liberal-leaning church leaders said they did not expect to retreat from their commitment to protecting undocumented people, a position they said is grounded in the scriptural call to love the stranger.

“When Jesus told us to love our neighbors, he didn’t also tell us to make sure that they were documented,” said the Rev. Isaac Villegas, a Mennonite, whose church, the Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, gave sanctuary to an undocumented immigrant during the first Trump administration. “He just said love and care for your neighbors. Full stop. Not, oh, check their documentation status while you’re at it.”

Longtime immigrant rights advocate the Rev. Noel Andersen, a United Church of Christ minister and national field director at Church World Service, a group that helps resettle refugees, expressed outrage over reports of the policy change.

“The right for all people to find safety, refuge and rest in houses of worship is fundamental to our nation’s history of religious freedom and our longstanding values,” he said in a statement. “No one should face fear of deportation when going to houses of worship, seeking medical care, social services, at public demonstrations or taking their kids to school. Regardless of what policy the Trump administration rescinds or puts forth, faith communities will continue to look to our sacred texts and centuries of tradition to live out our faith by welcoming immigrants and protecting the most vulnerable among us.”

Andersen added: “We must lead with compassion and love instead of cruelty or fear to keep families together and to ensure that all people are treated with their God given dignity.”

Other religious groups appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the news.

Chieko Noguchi, spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement the group of prelates is “aware of the various proposals being discussed with regards to immigration, and are preparing to deal with a range of policies, and will engage appropriately when public policies are put forth by the office holders.”

Representatives for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a denomination that declared itself a “sanctuary church body” at its 2019 Churchwide Assembly and whose members taped “9.5 theses” expressing their concern for immigrants to the door of an ICE building in Milwaukee, declined to comment.

The New Sanctuary Movement is an extension of an earlier effort that occurred in the 1980s, when churches along the U.S.-Mexico border opened their doors to an uptick in migrants, especially those fleeing El Salvador and Guatemala, whom the government largely denied requests for asylum. The ICE memo did not exist at the time, and in 1986, the FBI infiltrated the movement and indicted 16 activists before ultimately convicting nine. The movement is credited with pressuring President Ronald Reagan’s administration to do more to help Guatemalans and Salvadorans.

Religious activists associated with the movement also pushed San Francisco to pass a “city of refuge” ordinance in 1989 that ended local cooperation with federal immigration officials. The law change was the first example of a “sanctuary city,” a movement that expanded during Trump’s first term — and that he has repeatedly condemned.

As for reports of Trump ending the “sensitive locations” policy, Salguero said he was especially troubled that the news came amid the Christian season of Advent, the lead-up to Christmas. Jesus Christ, he said, was a “refugee fleeing violence.”

“During the highest of our holy days, now we have to talk to our families about this,” Salguero said.

Even so, he remained steadfast in his desire to aid immigrants.

“For us, this is not a political thing,” he said. “This is not a partisan thing. We have to do what Christ has called us to do.”

Donald Trump Supports ILA Leadership in Fight Over Port Automation

REAL 'UNION BOSSES' 

WITH 'DA BOSS'

Trump issued a statement support the leadership of the ILA in its fight over port automation (Trump/Truth Social)

Published Dec 12, 2024 7:03 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

President-elect Donald Trump has joined with the leadership of the International Longshoremen’s Association in support of the union’s fight against automation in U.S. ports. The incoming president issued a statement backing union leadership in its contract negotiations with the international shipping lines and terminal operators and the current stalemate over automation.

With a month to go till the new deadline established by extending the contract as part of the settlement of the October strike, the debate over automation and its role in ports on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast continues to heat up. The ILA has taken a firm stance against automation or semi-automation and blamed the U.S. Maritime Alliance’s looking to expand the use of semi-automated rail-mounted gantry cranes (RMSs) for causing the negotiations for the master contract to break down.

Trump in a posting on his Truth Social media site wrote, ”I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.” He wrote this after meeting with ILA President, Harold Daggett, and Executive VP, Dennis Daggett, and released a photo with the union leaders.

 

 

Trump concludes by saying of the USMX and the shipping companies, “I hope that they will understand how important an issue this is for me.”

The union has reiterated its intent to go on strike for the second time if there is no agreement before the January 15, 2025 expiration of the contract. It would come just five days before Trump’s inauguration and threaten to impact the planned agenda of the new president who ran on improving the U.S. economy.

USMX quickly responded to Trump’s posting saying it looks forward to working with the new president and his administration. USMX was also pressured by the Biden administration during the October strike with President Joe Biden, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg all pressing for significant wage increases for the longshoremen. The ILA and USMX agreed to a 61 percent wage increase for the new six-year contract but left automation to be resolved.

“This contract goes beyond our ports – it is about supporting American consumers and giving American businesses access to the global marketplace – from farmers to manufacturers, to small businesses and innovative start-ups looking for new markets to sell their products,” USMX said in a statement tonight responding to Trump and the ILA. “To achieve this, we need modern technology that is proven to improve worker safety, boost port efficiency, increase port capacity, and strengthen our supply chains. ILA members’ compensation increases with the more goods they move – the greater capacity our ports have and goods that are moved means more money in their pockets.”

Earlier this week, the ILA’s Dennis Dagget called the media reporting on automation and port efficiency “inaccurate and irresponsible.” In a long message posted online, he contends U.S. ports are among the most efficient in the world noting they handle one of the highest volumes of cargo. He criticizes the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence Survey for comparing U.S. full-service ports with transshipment ports. 

“The scale and complexity of these operations far exceed the operations of most transshipment ports,” writes Daggett. He says the World Bank uses criteria such as turnaround time which does not consider the challenges of clearance, moving containers between ships and other modes of transport, and safety and security protocols mandated by U.S. law.  “Ignoring these facts distorts the efficiency ratings,” contends Daggett.

“The ILA and its members are ready and willing to be part of this progress, particularly when it comes to adopting technology that promotes efficiency without replacing the critical role of a human performing that task. However, we will not stand for reckless mischaracterizations of our industry and our work,” wrote Daggett.

He also raises the impact of outdated infrastructure on U.S. ports. He says of things such as highways, bridges, rail systems, and dredging operations, “these critical connections to the ports are decades behind the needs of modern commerce.”

USMX and the ILA are at a stalemate over automation and semi-automation which the union says threatens to cause another coastwide strike. Harold Daggett calls it a fight for survival while the USMX says progress is needed to increase efficiency and advance safety while expanding the capacity of U.S. ports to keep up with global demand.
 

HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH