ICE is Coming to Town: Easier Access to the Ocean, Far Far Away from Portland

Little Newport, OR, already has the makings of yet ANOTHER Gestapo Training Ground and Concentration Camp

by Paul Haeder / November 13th, 2025

Coming to a town nearby, or just right inside your city limits — Concentration Camps.

 

Last night (11/13), citizens crowded Newport City Council chambers and the nearby Recreation Center to make comments about the possibility of a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) detention facility at the Newport Municipal Airport. Each speaker had two minutes to address the City Council.

On July 13, 69-year-old Willem Van Spronsen used incendiary devices to attack a number of vehicles belonging to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. The attack came just hours after an anti-ICE protest outside of the facility. Van Spronsen was fatally shot during an ensuing confrontation with the police. He had been involved in social struggles for over a decade and actively involved in a long-standing battle against the Northwest Detention Center; he was arrested in 2018 at a protest outside of the facility while attempting to prevent police from arresting a 17-year-old demonstrator. As news spread of Van Spronsen’s death and final acts, many were appalled by his actions, while others celebrated them online. Very few, however, were surprised. Though he acted alone, his actions are part of a long collective history of struggle at the Detention Center.

The Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), built in 2004, sits about forty minutes south of Seattle, just blocks from Commencement Bay, a former superfund site and one of the most active commercial ports in the world. Amid this bustling locus of commerce, stands one of the largest immigration detention centers in the United States, generating $57 million annually for the private corrections company GEO Group.

Here, some of the comments from last night collected by Brian, with my radio station, KYAQ — Newport ICE Facility Special Meeting – an Audio Catalog of Public Comment

Listen here, and I try to yammer on around 13:13 in the video:

I mention the pigs at the end of my 2 minutes: And, remember, Willem Van Spronsen, was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.

The Tacoma Police Department said the officers responded about 4 a.m. to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings. The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.

Then try and not shed a tear for the young Latinx woman, around 17:00!

Abril Almada, 14, gave tearful testimony about how her father was detained by ICE and is now in a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. She described the difficulty this has had on her family and her own mental health.

Abril Almada, 14, giving testimony about her experience of her father being detained by ICE in September of this year.

“I did not know what was going on,” she said. “No one deserves to go through what I’m going through and my family is going through. No one deserves to get picked up. My dad was my everything. My mom has been through a lot these past weeks without my dad. My grandma died a few weeks ago and my dad wasn’t here to comfort [my mom]. Everyone is going through a lot of trauma right now.”

Almada’s testimony prompted a response from Kaplan, the mayor: “I want to repeat that this council will do everything that we can do in support and to fight this.”

“Newport is a city built on trust, diverse cultures, and shared responsibility. We will work together, thoughtfully, transparently, and within the bounds of the law to protect those values,” Jan Kaplan, mayor of Newport said.

Ahh, but jobs, man, bus drivers for the round up, wardens at the concentration camp, food services and medical providers. MONEY and HATE = GEO Group.

Private prison firms contributed more than $1M to Trump’s reelection. Now they expect a business boom

The GEO Group runs 99 facilities worldwide, including secure facilities, processing centers, and community reentry centers. As of late 2024, these facilities have a total capacity of approximately 80,000 beds and are operated in various countries, including the United States, Australia, and South Africa.

Local leaders can’t get answers from federal government

Newport City and Oregon state leaders say there is a basis to the rumors, although they have been unsuccessful in getting concrete answers from federal agencies.

Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, whose district includes Newport, said they have been able to confirm that the U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that has been stationed there since the mid-1980s has been moved to North Bend.

On Wednesday, Gomberg announced he is pushing to keep the U.S. Coast Guard’s air rescue operations at the Newport Municipal Airport, citing new information that points to plans of converting the site to a new immigration detention center.

Besides the helicopter being moved to North Bend, Mayor Kaplan said another clue that the federal government was interested in space at the airport came from a contractor inquiring about a potential lease and the ability to make changes to the site.

Through a records request, KATU identified the contractor as Texas-based Team Housing Solutions Inc.

 

Oregon Public Broadcasting was the first news outlet to name the contractor.

The vendor has held a number of federal defense contracts, mostly to build military housing.

Also, on Monday, A Lincoln County septic company got an inquiry from another federal contractor asking about costs to pump sewage from the airport area.

Somewhere around 10,000 gallons a day of human waste. Do your math: At the low end (50 gallons per person), 10,000 gallons would be produced by 200 people (10,000 gallons / 50 gallons per person).

There are also reportedly multiple hiring ads for jobs ranging from medical service to detention officers.

Trains, Planes, Buses, Vans, Paddy Wagons, Jets, Helicopters, Drones — that job you wanted man.

So, the trade off is, well, the Oregon coast has TWO fucking helicopters, Coast Guard, along this most beautiful but rugged and isolated coast?

KATU has contacted DHS to confirm all these details but has not heard back.

 

“We are still figuring out what we can legally do in terms about city land,” he said. “We are not obligated to lease city land to anyone who wants to lease. The city council has to determine whether it is in the public interest if somebody wants to lease land from us. That’s one thing that we know and we have no intention of leasing land for a facility that is going to be an ICE facility.”

Kaplan expects a battle with the federal government over the issue.

“When you get a showing like there was here tonight, someone in Washington is going to take notice,” he said. “We are small. We have a city attorney and she is talking with other attorneys looking at what our options are. We have some legalities to go to court and try to bring the helicopter back.”

Newport Fishermen’s Wives representative Taunette Dixon said

“We don’t have a lot of answers, just like everybody else.” While the Coast Guard has indicated that a helicopter would be stationed in Newport a couple of days each week, community members argue that such an arrangement is inadequate for responding to emergencies that can strike at any time.

Over the past decade, the relationship between Newport and Coast Guard stations has been marked by vigilance and open communication. The community fought to keep the rescue helicopter 11 years ago, launching campaigns and even canceling lawsuits in exchange for assurances that the aircraft would remain in Newport. New changes in policy and statements from officials, however, have left community members uncertain about these guarantees.

“There’s supposed to be a process they have to go through before they can determine that it’s safe enough to remove the helicopter,” said Dixon. This process, they explained, should involve assessing the risk to human life and hosting public forums, but many remain unsure whether the required steps are being followed. For Newport, the Coast Guard helicopter is nothing short of a lifeline. “We are a cold water fleet,” explained Dixon, noting the dangers of winter crab season and the need for immediate rescue during emergencies.

Local fleets, tourists, and even loggers depend on the fast response provided by the Coast Guard crew. “They become a part of our community… It’s so important in so many different ways.”

*****

It all comes down, folks, to White Supremacy:

You can get iced by ICE, or just plain old “never getting another job as an adjunct professor ever again” terminated!

In late September, Jessica Adams, an instructor in Indiana University’s School of Social Work, showed a slide to her class that listed acts of “white supremacy” in the form of a pyramid. At the tip of the pyramid were “overt,” socially unacceptable acts, like “hate crimes” and “swastikas.” Below that were “covert,” socially acceptable acts, like the phrase “Make America Great Again” and the celebration of Columbus Day.

Soon after, Adams was removed from the class, “Diversity, Human Rights, and Social Justice,” while the university investigates whether she violated the state’s controversial intellectual-diversity law, known as SEA 202. The law, passed last year, called on the state’s public campuses to develop disciplinary procedures for faculty who fail to foster cultures of “free inquiry” and “intellectual diversity” within the classroom, among other things. It also forced colleges to develop systems through which students could submit complaints against instructors.

Sonia Lee, another professor associated with the AAUP who has been involved in Adams’s case, said she has no doubt that the graphic could have made someone in the classroom uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean its use should be banned. Lee said many faculty and community members thought SEA 202 might end up being benign, but cases like this make her think otherwise. The student who might have been uncomfortable could have just raised their hand, she said, but the introduction of this bill gives them a nuclear option.

“I think the student could have had a genuine conversation, an intellectual debate about the validity of this pyramid,” Lee said. “But instead of actually talking and thinking about this on an intellectual level, the student knew about SEA 202 and they probably also knew about Senator Jim Banks being somebody that would probably listen to a student who did not like discussions about white supremacy. And so then they filed this complaint.”

Kapos and Stephen GLosser Miller?

And so where do we go? First Latina congresswoman from Arizona starts tenure focused on education, tribal rights and environment — plus she clears the way for an Epstein files vote.

In a speech on the House floor after being sworn in, Grijalva said it was time for Congress “to restore a full and check and balance to this administration.”

“We can and must do better. What is most concerning is not what this administration has done, but what the majority of this body has failed to do,” she said.

The seating of Grijalva brings an end to a weekslong delay that she and other Democrats said was intended to prevent her signature on the Epstein petition .

Johnson had refused to seat Grijalva while the chamber was out of session, a decision that prompted condemnation from Grijalva, a lawsuit from Arizona’s attorney general and speculation that Johnson was delaying her induction into the House to stall a vote on whether to require the Justice Department release documents related to the late convicted sex trafficker.

Grijalva had said she would join the petition from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., after taking office, giving it the 218 signatures needed. Three Republicans have signed onto Massie’s petition — Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Hedges:

Julie Brown, in her book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story,” writes that an anonymous woman, using the pseudonym “Kate Johnson,” filed a civil complaint in federal court in California in 2016, alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein — when she was 13 — over a four-month period from June to September 1994.

“I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop,” she said in the lawsuit. “Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he could do whatever he wanted.”

Johnson said she met Trump at one of Epstein’s “underage sex parties” at his New York mansion. She says she was forced to have sex with Trump several times, including once with another girl — 12 years old — whom she labeled “Marie Doe.”

Trump demanded oral sex and afterward “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of their sexual performance,” according to the lawsuit, filed in April 26, 2016, in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

When Epstein learned Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, he allegedly “attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists,” furious that he had lost the opportunity.

Trump, she said, did not take part in Epstein’s orgies. He liked to watch while 13-year-old “Kate Johnson” gave him a hand job.

Johnson said Epstein and Trump threatened to harm her and her family if she spoke of their encounters.

The lawsuit was dropped, most probably by way of a lucrative settlement. She has since disappeared.

Dictators are not content with silencing their critics and opponents. They take sadistic delight in humiliating, ridiculing and destroying them.

 

*****

Yeah, Salem, Oregon, 80 miles away from Newport.

Federal immigration agents detained at least 24 people in the Salem area on Tuesday, according to a coalition of advocates for immigrant rights, marking the highest single-day total for detentions in years.

Oregon for All said that agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement smashed the windows of a van full of people on their way to work early Tuesday morning. In a separate event, witnesses reported, ICE rammed a car on Ward Drive in Salem near a 76 gas station.

“Endless Nightmare”: Torture and Inhuman Treatment in Solitary Confinement in U.S. Immigration Detention

ICE oversaw more than 14,000 placements in solitary confinement between 2018 and 2023. Many people who are detained in solitary confinement have preexisting mental health conditions and other vulnerabilities. The average duration of solitary confinement is approximately one month, and some immigrants spend over two years in solitary confinement.

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Paul Haeder has been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

 

How Censorship and Smears Are Chipping Away at Democracy and Freedom

From Biden to Trump

by Nolan Higdon / November 13th, 2025

Do Journalists Protect or Harm Democracy?

Almost half (45%) of teens in a recent survey by The News Literacy Project said journalists harm democracy. Only 56% believed reporters value fairness and accuracy. 80% concluded that news content is subjective, and nearly 70% thought press outlets intentionally add bias to their coverage. The cynicism illustrated in the study reflects one of the extreme positions toward the press that is undermining democratic norms.

The other extreme is the blind trust that citizens have in certain news outlets. As I noted in The Anatomy of Fake News (University of California Press, 2020), history is filled with examples of journalists getting things wrong, inserting bias, or serving as mouthpieces for powerful interests. Indeed, from the Pentagon Papers to Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the news has at times spread false, baseless, and damaging narratives masquerading as truth. Yet, total rejection of journalism is equally dangerous. Some of the most important democratic movements in U.S. history—from the civil rights outcry following the murder of Emmett Till to the global protests after the killing of George Floyd—were fueled by courageous reporting that forced the public to confront injustice.

In a democracy, the citizen’s job is neither to worship nor to despise the press, but to engage critically with it—to analyze, question, and hold it accountable while defending its freedom to exist. It’s not easy work. Democracy, after all, is a 24-hour job. The alternative is authoritarianism, a system that reduces citizens to obedient, vapid vessels, their lives and futures dictated by power—not by the will of the people. The Gaslight Gazette exists to help citizens do that work—by examining journalism, exposing propaganda, and defending truth.

This mission has never been more urgent, as mounting evidence suggests that citizens are inadvertently leading the nation toward authoritarianism by choosing passive consumption over critical engagement with journalism. Indeed, the powerful know that fake news is their most effective weapon—one that turns people against democracy by sowing cynicism and distrust. Consider Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk recently claimed to have uncovered an election scandal in New York City’s mayoral race, alleging that the two candidates—Democratic Party and Working Families Party nominee Zohran Mamdani (who won the race) and Republican Party and Conservative Party nominee Curtis Sliwa—had cheated by appearing twice on the ballot, while his preferred candidate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had to create the Fight and Deliver Party because no existing party would nominate him, appeared only once. Musk seemed unaware that in New York, political parties can cross-endorse candidates, allowing their names to appear multiple times.

When misinformation spreads, it always has consequences. In Ireland, residents recently witnessed how easily fake news can trigger chaos: police were inundated with emergency calls about a supposed loose lion, only to discover it was merely a dog with an unusual haircut. Harmless, perhaps—but it illustrates how swiftly false information can spark public panic.

More dangerously, fake news can stoke prejudice and hate. Recently, Fox News Channel aired a segment about videos supposedly showing people of color complaining about losing government assistance during the 2025 government shutdown. The videos were later revealed to be AI-generated. Though Fox issued a correction, it framed the issue as the public being duped—without admitting the network itself had been spreading racist, fabricated content disguised as journalism. And it’s not just conservatives. Leftists, too, have fallen for sensational claims, such as online theories about President Donald Trump’s health based on photos of bruises and swelling, videos of him falling asleep are spun into proof of hidden medical decline.

This erosion of trust fuels a dangerous doom loop: as fake news spreads, cynicism grows, and even factual reporting becomes suspect. Truth itself becomes relative, collapsing the foundation of democracy, which depends on an informed public capable of discerning fact from fiction.

A recent Politico survey revealed that two-thirds of Americans believe the government lies to them. This widespread distrust crosses—felt by 64% of Trump voters and 70% of Vice President Kamala Harris’s supporters—suggests that people no longer see the government as a democratic institution “of, by, and for the people.” The collapse of trust became painfully clear when Trump’s former FBI Director Kash Patel announced a supposed Halloween terror plot in 2025, instantly dividing Americans along partisan lines.

The distrust extends beyond government. The public’s confidence in science has also deteriorated, partly due to disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Plandemic conspiracy documentary and missteps by figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who blurred the line between scientific research and political decision-making, fueled skepticism across the ideological spectrum. Today, such scientific denial remains strong in online spaces and contributes to growing numbers of men now reject scientific consensus altogether—a grim testament to how disinformation corrodes not just politics, but the very idea of truth.

So, do journalists protect or harm democracy? The answer depends not on them—but on us. When citizens demand accountability, truth, and transparency, journalism can be democracy’s greatest ally. But when we surrender to cynicism and stop thinking critically, even the free press becomes another tool of manipulation.

Democracy dies not when the press lies, but when the public stops caring to find the truth.

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Nolan Higdon is a Project Censored national judge, an author, and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Read other articles by Nolan, or visit Nolan's website.

 The Quiet Plot to End Progressive Government in Honduras

by John Perry / November 13th, 2025

Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean grabs the headlines, while quieter moves to destabilize other progressive Latin American governments go unnoticed by corporate media. A key case is a plot that would create chaos enabling a neoliberal candidate to be declared victor, with Washington’s connivance, in Honduras’s elections on November 30.

At stake is four more years of progressive government or – otherwise – returning to the neoliberalism that prevailed after the US-backed military coup in 2009. The electoral defeat of progressive parties in Ecuador and Bolivia earlier this year, and the uncertain chances of progressive candidate Jeannette Jara in Chile’s elections this month and next, mean that Honduras is a crucial test.

Honduras has a history of rigged elections since the overthrow of Manuel Zeleya’s left-leaning government in 2009. The left was fraudulently denied power in 2013 and 2017, only winning in 2021 because Xiomara Castro’s majority was overwhelming. Although popular, Castro is constitutionally limited to a single term.

Now that her successor, Libre party candidate Rixi Moncada, has only a narrow poll lead, the opposition sees a new opportunity to seize power by manipulating the election results.

In theory, it should be no contest for Moncada, given the achievements of incumbent President Castro. Moncada is closely linked to her, having been the minister of finance and then defense in her administration.

After inheriting broken health and education systems and soaring poverty in the wake of the Covid pandemic, President Castro has succeeded in reducing poverty levels from 74 per cent to 63 per cent in four years. In an unprecedented program of public investment, her government has built eight new hospitals and renovated over 5,200 schools. Not long ago Honduras was one of the world’s most dangerous countries, but in four years her government has cut the homicide rate to its lowest since 2013. Poor inner-city barrios, long afflicted by gang violence, now cope with thousands of returning migrants, fleeing US repression and needing jobs: Castro quickly created centers to give them government help.

Honduras is still a country where Washington’s influence is very strong. While Castro has had a progressive foreign policy, cultivating China’s support, aggressively challenging Israel’s genocide in Gaza and building strong relations with the region’s progressive governments, she has had to be aware of the US embassy’s continuous efforts to undermine her.

President Castro has also faced a divided congress and hostile mayors in many municipalities. The highly militarized police forces and the army have strong ties to the US. Further, a corrupt legal system and the abiding influence of Honduras’s oligarchic, very wealthy families who control much of the country’s industry, commerce and agriculture challenge popular rule. That Castro has secured her many achievements under all these constraints is remarkable.

However, the opposition forces have come together in an attempt to deny a Moncada victory. Leaked audio recordings, which appear to be genuine, showed a leading member of the National Election Council conspiring with an opposition leader and a senior army officer to interfere with the transmission of election results during the likely heated atmosphere on the night of the count.

By focusing on early results which would appear to indicate Moncada’s defeat, the plan is to repeat what happened in 2017. Then a premature announcement of the US-backed candidate’s victory was immediately endorsed by the US embassy. While supposedly independent election observers might call this out, some of them appear to have been planted by the opposition, and there are urgent calls for the observers themselves to be “observed.”

A prequel of what might happen on the night of November 30 occurred on November 9, when the electoral council held a trial run of its system to collect and transmit voting tallies. The trial partially failed, leading to justifiable accusations from the Libre Party that a repeat of this failure on election night would create exactly the circumstances the opposition needs to execute fraud.

The context of the US imposing its hegemony over Latin America is critical. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, in an interview about Trump’s massive military build-up in the Caribbean, notes that regime change is a “core tool of US foreign policy.” The overt military attacks on Venezuela and the more covert ones planned for Honduras are part of the same imperial game plan.

Trump’s main target, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, has been designated a narco-terrorist, with a $50 million bounty on his head. A possible secondary target, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro and his “cronies,” have just been sanctioned by the US for failing to curb drug trafficking. Needless to say, the allegations are a flimsy justification for Trump’s warmongering.

An attack on Venezuela would further damage Cuba, long supported by Venezuela. The Trump administration is also considering imposing 100 per cent tariffs on US imports from Nicaragua, spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The irony, if regime-change were to be successful in Honduras, is that it would likely restore the narcostate that existed prior to Castro’s presidency. This led to the notorious former president Juan Orlando Hernández being extradited to the US where he is serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking offences. The casualness with which electoral interference is being considered is just one of many examples that show up Trump’s war on narcoterrorism as a sham.

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John Perry is based in Masaya, Nicaragua and writes for several independent media. Read other articles by John.

Who Was Eugene Debs?

by Michael K. Smith / November 12th, 2025

Zohran Mamdani’s quoting of Eugene Debs in his recent victory speech (for mayor of New York City) should awaken interest in the man who gained a name for himself as “Mr. Socialism.”

For seventeen years Debs was the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, starving himself of sleep to bone up on politics, economics, and history. With painstaking effort he made himself into a manager’s worst nightmare: an educated union man who could unravel the knots of capitalist contradiction, making the need for revolution plain for all to see.

Unable to ignore workers’ constant pleas for help, he went everywhere he was called, never managing to get his suitcase unpacked. In bad years he donated up to $900 of his $1500 salary to keeping the union and its magazine afloat, steering the workers through strikes, depression, and looming bankruptcy.

Night after night he went tramping through railroad yards, where his constant agitation got him thrown out of the roundhouse (a circular building used for servicing and storing trains) and ejected from trains.

He became a magnificent popular speaker, eventually making socialism as American as the Liberty Bell.  He praised the fighting spirit of the workers and heaped scorn on the mining companies and “cockroach” small shop capitalists who exploited them.  Even those who had heard it all before couldn’t resist his spell. When he rehearsed his speeches at home his neighbors came out onto their porches to eavesdrop.

By the time he ran for president for in 1904 (the second of five attempts, the last one from a prison cell), socialism had elbowed its way onto the national political scene. Schoolteachers warned of its growing menace; workers jammed meeting halls to hear of its glowing promise.

Debs was the unanimous choice to represent the Socialist Party that year. In the wake of a dizzying spate of corporate mergers, three hundred firms controlled more than forty percent of the industrial capital of the country and monopoly quickly emerged as the dominant issue of the campaign. Selling out auditoriums with paid admissions, Debs ridiculed Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting schemes for their failure to realign class power, and scoffed at the notion that a state dominated by gigantic private corporations could ever alleviate the workers’ distress: “Government ownership of public utilities means nothing for labor under capitalist ownership of government,” he thundered.

With muckraking journalists continuing to expose the profit system’s massive fraud, waste, and abuse, more and more people inclined to the belief that capitalism was doomed.

The socialist Appeal to Reason boasted a readership of half a million, educating a huge mass of farmers, factory-workers, and railwaymen in the Mid-West alone. Its December anti-trust issue that year piled up three million advance orders, the largest edition of any newspaper in American history. In New York City, The Call was a staple of every working-class neighborhood while red-covered pamphlets of Marx and socialist brochures circulated in the millions throughout the country. Teddy Roosevelt warned that socialism was “far more ominous than any populist or similar movement in times past.” Radicals and reactionaries alike saw the Socialist Party as the future opposition party of the United States.

An army of Debs volunteers solicited contributions, rang doorbells, sold newspapers, talked up strangers, and shouted the political heresy of justice for workers from soapboxes and courthouse stairs, delivering four hundred twenty thousand votes for Debs, quadrupling his support of four years before.

Conceding that charity had a claim on private conscience but strenuously rejecting any worker entitlement to monopoly profits, Teddy Roosevelt rode a tsunami of corporate cash to victory at the polls.

Refusing to be stopped by rheumatism, lumbago, or chronic headaches, Debs ran for president again in 1908.

Touring the country by train in his “Red Special,” he drew huge crowds yearning to see the burning eyes of a prophet and feel the glow of solidarity from a real man of the people. For sixty-five consecutive days he addressed five to twenty rallies a day all across the country. The New York Times called his sold-out appearance in New York’s Hippodrome the greatest political meeting ever held in that city.

As vulgar smears and incendiary slanders failed to stop the rising socialist tide, a note of desperation crept into the voices of Democratic and Republican officials scheming to “Stop Debs.”

Republican William Howard Taft spoke for free at the Music Hall in his hometown of Cincinnati and could barely fill the seats; Debs charged a dime admission at the same hall to poor workers and had to turn many away.

In a spirit of fair competition the socialists proposed that Taft address their rally for twenty minutes in exchange for Debs speaking to the Republican audience for the same length of time. The Taft campaign quickly rejected the offer.

Known among workers as the “father of injunctions” for his success in quashing strikes by court order, Taft won the White House on the strength of vast corporate campaign donations via the National Association of Manufacturers.

Unable to crack the capitalist monopoly of political power, labor’s influence continued to grow in subsequent years through popular organizing and education. Finally, in 1917 it was dealt a decisive blow by Woodrow Wilson, who drafted workers into the industrial slaughter of modern warfare and sent them into Europe’s killing fields (WWI). Rejecting appeals to “patriotism,” Debs refused to go along, and was jailed for obstructing the draft. His speech at sentencing was a masterful appeal for socialism.¹

Given ten years in an Atlanta penitentiary, he befriended all his fellow inmates, in the end winning over even his jailers with his unfailing kindness and sincerity.

Only one heart was too hard for him to reach – Woodrow Wilson’s. In his waning days in the presidency the Great Idealist refused a customary Christmas pardon for Debs, whose conduct actually lived up to Wilson’s high-minded rhetoric, which merely rang hollow in the president’s mouth.

Finally released by Republican Warren Harding on Christmas Day 2021, Debs enjoyed the rare privilege of being able to say farewell to his fellow prisoners when the warden waived regulations for the occasion.

As Debs proceeded down the walkway leading away from the jail, a huge roar went up behind him from two thousand of society’s forgotten and despised. Turning to say goodbye, Prisoner 9563, who always refused special privileges and treated them as the men they were, took in the ovation, tears streaming down his face.²

ENDNOTES:

• 1
  “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
  
  “I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions . . . Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change – but if possible by peaceable and orderly means. . .
  
  “I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
  
  “In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child – and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity …
  
  “I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned – that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all …
  
  “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
  
  “This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth….
  
  “Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.”
  
  — Eugene Debs, 1918
• 2
  Sources:
  
  Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 3 – The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor 1900-1909, (International Publishers, 1964) p. 306, 349, 356-7
  
  Joseph Freeman, An American Testament: a narrative of rebels and romantics, (Farrar & Rinehart, 1936, p. 36)
  
  Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs, (Rutgers, 1949)  p. 226, 230-3, 281-2
  
  Mathew Josephson, The President Makers: The Culture of Politics and Leadership in an Age of Enlightenment 1896-1919, (Harcourt, 1940) p. 168-9
  
  Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America,  (Chelsea House, 1958) p. 128-33
  
  Howard Zinn, Eugene Debs and the Idea of Socialism, August 8, 2022, www.rethinkingschools.org
  
  Debs speech at sentencing quoted from Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour, p. 107-9

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Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire. He co-blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com. Read other articles by Michael.

Zohran Mamdani Will Follow the Path of AOC, Bernie, and Brandon Johnson

by Stansfield Smith / November 13th, 2025

The disenfranchised, cast aside people of the US find hope when an AOC, Brandon Johnson, Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders campaigns and wins public office. These campaigns overcame corporate backed opponents, relying on people power not corporate financing, organizing many thousands of our fellow working people to participate. Yet, possessing public office does not change the economic and class structure of this country, where the real ruling power lies. Our country’s system, on the local, state, and national level, is a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

The public offices they won are one cog in an entrenched economic and political structure, and changing this has little relation to winning office. Once elected the AOCs, Brandons, Bernies and Mamdanis can be easily swallowed up by the system run by billionaires. The billionaires have one thousand and one weapons to neutralize any progressive measures and make them compromise. They began as outsiders fighting the system, but step by step, they become its representatives.

Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, political kin to Mamdani, was elected mayor of Chicago in April 2023, so gives a glimpse of Mamdani’s future as mayor. Mamdani made a name for himself by speaking out for Palestine. Mayor Johnson cast the deciding vote to pass the first Gaza ceasefire resolution in a big city. While Brandon’s campaign inspired progressives and the left, and many thousands volunteered, his platform was mild compared to the Great Society programs of LBJ and Nixon. He declared, “everyone in Chicago deserves to have a roof over their head,” and called for increasing the real estate tax on properties over $1 million to provide housing and services to the homeless.  But, two and a half years later, taxes on the rich have not been raised. He called for childcare for all, now forgotten. He campaigned on replacing lead service lines to the 400,000 Chicago houses, eliminating a major source of lead poisoning. Chicago replaced 5,100 leadlines in 2024 and aims for another 8,000 this year.

Brandon campaigned on increasing summer youth jobs to 60,000. The number has reached 31,199 in 2025, half, but still a 55% increase since he took office. He campaigned on reopening all 14 mental health centers; two and a half years later, three were reopened.

Johnson campaigned on combating police abuse. Given a boost before he took office in 2023, voters elected community representatives in 22 Chicago Police District Councils, with the power to hold police accountable, said Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression. Yet PBS reports slightly more police abuse. Moreover, in 2024 Chicago taxpayers spent at least $107.5 million on police misconduct lawsuits, the highest total in over a decade. In 2025, “Through May alone, the City Council has already approved at least $145.3 million in taxpayer payments to settle lawsuits involving the Chicago Police Department, a record number that dwarfs sums from past years.“ Where is the change?

Johnson’s program committed to free public transit for public school students. Today only the first day of school is free. It committed to reduced or eliminated fares for seniors, those with disabilities, and residents living below the poverty line. Today, there are reduced fares, though Chicago had free fares for the first two groups from 2008-2011 under Mayor Daley; still no reduced fares for the poor. Even if all were free, this is but a minor progressive change.

Brandon became mayor of Chicago, a city $29 billion in debt, in a state $223 in debt. His progressive platform morphed into overseeing cuts to manage the debt. Brandon’s new budget would cut Chicago Public Library funding for new books and materials in half – quite stunning for a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. We elected a progressive to do that?

Brandon Johnson did not betray his program. He, like the others, campaigned on wishes he could not keep, given real decision-making power is not in his hands. In this era of slow US economic decline of their system, the billionaire elite who lord over us reduce progressive agendas to moderating cutbacks to services provided the people. Once in office, these progressive Democrats face a power structure that boxes them, making their campaign commitments pipedreams.

What could Brandon, or AOC, or Bernie do? The rich with their vast wealth, control government, own the print media, TV, radio, social media, own the all-powerful banking system, business and factories, the food industry, real estate and housing market, educational institutions, the courts and legal system, and the police forces. All major institutions of society do their bidding.

The rich can buy members of the New York or Chicago city council, control state legislatures, dictate interest rates on city loans, launch hostile media campaigns, stymie the mayor through the city bureaucracy. They can use control of the police to let crime worsen, manipulate a city union to go on a disruptive strike, inflate or reduce real estate and home prices, cause business and jobs leave the city, block bank loans to the city, cut state and federal funds for city programs, and so on. Their control gives them endless tools.

As Susan Kang writes in Truthout that “analysts have rightly noted that a grassroots movement to reshape state-level politics and take on Wall Street will be necessary to realize Mamdani’s campaign promises.” Mamdani had 104,000 volunteers working on his election campaign. Bernie must have had the names of millions from his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Block Club Chicago noted, How Grassroots Organizing Fueled Brandon Johnson’s Victory: ‘It Was 100-Percent People Power’ The people’s desire and commitment to fight for serious social change is real.

The only way to institute the (mildly) progressive programs Brandon or Mamdani ran on is to challenge the control by the rich, to educate, organize, and mobilize people in the streets, massively, repeatedly, to counter every attack by the ruling rich with a mass popular response. The only way to combat corporate control is to build an alternative center of organized power among the people, a popular power beyond the control of the two corporate parties.  Otherwise, people like Mamdani will be neutralized, co-opted, swallowed up, reduced to administering the government apparatus for the ruling rich. Like AOC and Bernie do today.

This is the only feasible route to take. The Bernies, AOCs, Brandons and Mamdanis would have to explain to people how the rich control the government and the world we live in, explain to the people that their organizing and mobilizing does not end with the election victory, it is the first baby step. A long journey of trials would lie ahead, where the real organizing, mobilizing, and political education taking on the rich who run this country is essential.

But none of these candidates, now officials, call for building a people’s political force independent of either of the two corporate parties. They discourage it. They push the movement into the Democratic Party, and this party only serves to derail the movement into ineffectual protest channels. Seven million turned out for the Democrats’ No Kings Day, and just three weeks later the Democrats are surrendering to Trump’s social budget cuts.

In effect, the great hope of an AOC, Mamdani or Brandon Johnson ends the day they take office. No longer it is a campaign for the people to take over government. Rather, we watch the people’s hope turn into a government clerk for the rich.

When new progressive leaders build an election campaign and movement independent of the two corporate parties, as Bernie had advocated before his capitulation, then we will witness a profound breakthrough in the system.

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Stansfield Smith, ChicagoALBASolidarity.com, stansfieldsmith100@gmail.com. Stan has been involved in anti-war organizing for 45 years, and has written a number of articles about Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, as well as previous articles related to the subject here. They have appeared in Monthly Review online, Orinoco Tribune, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, and others. Read other articles by Stansfield.