After Rahm Emanuel announced he would not seek another term as Chicago's mayor, the field of would-be replacements seemed to grow by the day. Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who had never held elected office, often seemed an afterthought in a mounting list of prominent names. Yet on Tuesday, voters sided with Lightfoot by an overwhelming margin, handing her a resounding victory as she prepares to become the first African-American woman and first openly gay person to serve as Chicago's mayor.
Ministers of foreign affairs from NATO countries are attending events and holding meetings in Washington, DC, Wednesday and Thursday this week in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the alliance's founding. The NATO anniversary also coincides with the 51st anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who stood for peace and nonviolent resistance. It is also the 52nd anniversary of his "Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence" speech, in which Dr. King decried "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism." The Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases joins in the calls to action made by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), World BEYOND War and Black Alliance for Peace, and urges movements to come together to protest and educate the public about the destructive nature of NATO and call for a just, peaceful and sustainable world. Most people who know anything about NATO see it as a benign peacekeeping organization. Created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. The Coalition calls for a mass mobilization to protest the meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planned for Thursday.
A recent article in MintPress News, "Saudi Siege of Yemen's al-Durayhimi as Devastating as WWII Siege of Leningrad," states, "At least 7,000 civilians remain trapped in Southern Hodeida's al-Durayhimi district by Saudi-led Coalition forces, in what has become a de facto eight-month siege amid Yemen's broader humanitarian crisis. Conditions in al-Durayhimi are dire, as civilians endure an acute shortage of food and the spread of disease and epidemics. Without humanitarian corridors, local authorities, humanitarian organizations, and ambulance crews have been left unable to evacuate the wounded. The roads leaving al-Durayhimi are rife with danger thanks to the seemingly endless barrage of coalition rocket and artillery attacks, making it difficult to smuggle food and medicine into the district." Will the US Congress reclaim their power through the War Powers Act and cease the US aid to the Saudi-led Coalition?
GUESTS:
Melanie Campbell — Executive director and chief executive officer of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization based in Washington, DC.
Netfa Freeman — Host of Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM. Pan-Africanist and internationalist organizer intimately involved with political prisoners' causes, from Mumia Abu Jamal to the Cuban Five, and an organizer with Family & Friends of Incarcerated People.
Elisabeth Myers — Editor-in-chief of Inside Arabia.
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