Hi friends,
We’re in some dark days of violence.
Although the Israeli government has neither confirmed nor denied their role in the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that have killed more than a dozen people in Lebanon, including four children, it appears that this terror campaign has Israeli fingerprints all over it.
Terrorism is not okay when directed at Israelis. It’s not okay when it’s directed at anyone.
And there is context, of course. We are less than a year from the October 7 attacks. The Hezbollah, Lebanon’s paramilitary group, has been warring with Israel in the north. The Hezbollah have pledged to fight until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. And yes, this is a necessarily brief summary.
Some deeper context: At the beginning of this century, during what is known as the Second Intifada, a bombing in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood in Jerusalem killed eleven Israeli civilians.
That horrific event was used as justification for the Israeli military to reoccupy the West Bank and parts of Gaza. Try to breathe.
During the second attack on Wednesday, explosions could be heard during the funeral of four people killed the previous day. Unconfirmed reports indicated that solar panels and ATMs detonated during the attacks, too. People across Lebanon have said they are afraid to use any electronic devices.
It is hard to maintain hope for peace. We know what the Israeli government did after an attack of a similar scale. What will the Hezbollah do?
Israeli attacks on Gaza continue. Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders told fellow senators:
“Netanyahu’s policies have trampled on international law, made life unlivable in Gaza and created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history. … The simple fact is that we must end our complicity in Israel’s illegal and indiscriminate military campaign, which has caused mass civilian death and suffering.”
Call your senators and tell them to block the sale of more weapons to Israel. This quick action is from Jewish Voice for Peace.
Moira Donegan has called the “large-scale, organized violence” against the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio a pogrom.
How did we get here? The lies that originated on Facebook were amplified by JD Vance and Donald Trump.
Vance is creating a story in which Haitians who entered the US with Temporary Protected Status — a program created by Congress to protect people from deportation to more than a dozen countries — are “illegal aliens.” He is claiming that US law is illegal because he opposes it.
This is very dangerous, on many levels. It demonstrates a reckless relationship to the rule of law. The immediate danger, however, is to a vulnerable group of immigrants who came to the US to escape violence.
Tell the Senate to censure J.D. Vance for his racist lies. This quick action is from Free & Fair Democracy.
ProPublica reported this week on the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who sought to terminate their pregnancies with abortion pills. Both women required dilation and curettage, or D&C, a procedure common after spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) or those induced by pills, to remove remaining fetal tissue.
Thurman and Miller were both mothers already. Thurman sought care at a hospital, while Miller was too afraid to do so. Thurman’s death was ruled preventable by a state maternal mortality review board.
Miller, who had a variety of underlying health issues, tried to self-manage her abortion, in spite of having had a very difficult third pregnancy, from which her sister said she never fully recovered.
The state maternal mortality review committee did not find that the abortion pills were the underlying cause of Miller’s death. They noted the significance of the fact that Candi Miller did not feel safe seeking medical care.
While some state bans explicitly say women can’t be prosecuted, Georgia’s ban leaves open that possibility. In 2019, a district attorney on the outskirts of metro Atlanta called abortion “murder” and said women “should prepare for the chance that they could be criminally prosecuted for having an abortion.”
The Dobbs decision and the state abortion bans that it made possible have created a dangerous landscape for people seeking and providing abortion care. There will be more deaths. There have likely already been more deaths.
Thurman left behind her partner and one young son. Miller left behind her husband and three children.
Tell your Congressional rep that abortion is a human right! This quick action is from Win Without War.
Today, abortion care is safe and legal in New York. This could change with the political winds unless we secure constitutional protections.
Prop 1, which will be on our November ballots, would add an encompassing Equal Rights Amendment to New York’s constitution. Help spread the word!
Join a phone bank with Planned Parenthood and BK Forge to educate voters about Prop 1.
When it feels as if we are going backward, as it does today, it is important to look up and take steps — however small — in the right direction.
with love,
L