Ronald Reagan

PATCO Strike: Reflections On An Ominous Anniversary

August 15, 2021 Joseph A. McCartin, Working Class Perspectives. Educate! PATCO, Ronald Reagan, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

This week marks the 40th anniversary of an illegal strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) that was decisively broken by President Ronald Reagan. That strike began on August 3, 1981, when more than 12,000 air traffic controllers employed by the Federal Aviation Administration went on an illegal strike after their negotiations with the administration failed to produce an acceptable contract offer. Within hours, Reagan appeared in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis and Attorney General William French Smith. If the strikers did not return to work within 48 hours, he announced, they would be “terminated,” fired and permanently replaced.

How ‘Big Ag’ Ate Up America’s Small Farms

March 8, 2021 Bedabrata Pain, Times of India. Educate! Big Ag, Farming, Ronald Reagan, United States

The roads were icy and the wind biting cold as we started our 10,000-km journey through the heart of America one January morning. Sristy Agrawal, Rajashik Tarafder — young physicists pursuing their PhDs — Rumela Gangopadhyay, a theatre artiste, and I wanted to witness the state of farming in rural America, the quintessential “Trump country”. Shooting in the frigid weather amid a pandemic was gruelling, but the warm welcome we got from farmers — Republican or Democrat, black or white — made up for it. We were surprised to learn that the American farm landscape, like India’s, is dominated by small farmers. They make up 90% of all farms, but produce only 25% of the market value. This was our first clue to America’s rural crisis. In the last decade, income of small farms has consistently been in the red.

El Salvador: The Rise Of The US Christian Right And US Imperialism

October 18, 2020 Danielle Parada, Medium. Educate! Christian Right, El Salvador, Ronald Reagan, US Regime Change

Since the late 1970’s, the Christian Right is a consistent and influential voting block for the Republican party. They also helped fuel government violence and destruction in El Salvador. When people think of Christians in politics, most think of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and the start of the “pro-life” movement. However, the rise of the political influence of the Christian Right actual begins in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. After the landmark win of Brown vs. Board of Education in the Supreme Court, schools receiving federal funding were required to desegregate.

The Scourge Of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan To Trump’

January 4, 2020 Staff, Jackrasmus.com Educate! History, Neoliberalism, Ronald Reagan, Trump Administration

At 272 pages, Dr, Jack Rasmus’s new book “The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Trump” is a big little book. To understand its importance a comparison to another big little book by John Maynard Keynes entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace, “Economic Consequences” is helpful. Economic Consequences grew out of Keynes’s participation in the post-World War I peace negotiation as an English representative. When Keynes discovered the extraordinary punitive nature of the peace being imposed upon Germany he walked out in protest. His book explains why.

Reagan Documents Shed Light On U.S. ‘Meddling’

October 1, 2017 Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! CIA, Imperialism, Regime Change, Ronald Reagan

By Robert Parry of Consortium News. “Secret” documents, recently declassified by the Reagan presidential library, reveal senior White House officials reengaging a former CIA “proprietary,” The Asia Foundation, in “political action,” an intelligence term of art for influencing the actions of foreign governments. The documents from 1982 came at a turning-point moment when the Reagan administration was revamping how the U.S. government endeavored to manipulate the internal affairs of governments around the world in the wake of scandals in the 1960s and 1970s involving the Central Intelligence Agency’s global covert operations.

What Grassroots Organizing By Women During Reagan Teach For Trump

January 16, 2017 Elizabeth Schulte, www.socialistworker.org Organize! Donald Trump, Grassroots, Ronald Reagan, Women

By Elizabeth Schulte for Socialist Worker - AN ANTI-abortion Republican in the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court within one vote of overturning Roe v. Wade, and anti-choice zealots attacking women's clinics--in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the stakes were high for women's right to choose abortion. And the battle was taking place in the streets of many U.S. cities, after hundreds of anti-abortion protesters descended on clinic facilities, determined to shut them down. Randall Terry, leader of the extremist anti-choice organization Operation Rescue, claimed the crusade used the peaceful disobedience tactics of the civil rights movement in the interest of "saving unborn children."

US Seeking Nuclear Domination, Increases Dangers Of Nuclear War

January 1, 2017 Jonathan Marshall, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons, Ronald Reagan, Russia, United States, Wars and Militarism

By Jonathan Marshall for Consortium News. “My bottom line is that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War,” declares former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry. A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953. A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953. If a new Trump administration wants to peacefully reset relations with Russia, there’s no better way to start than by canceling the deployment of costly new ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. One such system went live in Romania this May; another is slated to go live in Poland in 2018. Few U.S. actions have riled President Putin as much as this threat to erode Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Only last month, at a meeting in Sochi with Russian military leaders to discuss advanced new weapons technology, Putin vowed, “We will continue to do all we need to ensure the strategic balance of forces."

In This Election, I Hear Echoes Of The Past

November 19, 2016 Michael Eisenscher, www.PopularResistance.org Organize! Civil Rights, Donald Trump, Joe McCarthy, Racism, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Steve Bannon

By Michael Eisenscher for Popular Resistance. The Trump administration has no mandate. If we do our work well, the people will be with us. Our job is to help transform popular discontent into a political force – a movement that demands that the nation live up to its highest ideals. A majority of Trump voters are not reactionary ideologues, virulent racists, rabid nativists or crude sexists. They voted their pain, anger, fear and hopelessness. They voted their cynicism about an economic system that has left them behind and a corrupt political system that privileges the rich and well connected while treating them as patsies. But whatever individual motivations may have led them to vote for Trump, there can be no doubt that their votes for Trump gave racism and sexism a pass and have emboldened the most racist, xenophobic, misogynist and homophobic forces. And if the outcome of the election were not sufficient, Trump has put his personal stamp of approval on the forces of reaction by appointing Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon – a virulent racist, sexist, homophobe and anti-Semite – as his top White House counselor. Hate crimes, which increased throughout the campaign, have begun to spike following the election.

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