Progressive Political News

Alameda County has agreed to divest from Caterpillar and other companies that directly profit from Israeli apartheid.

The controversial federal system for tracking homelessness in the United States recorded an 18% increase from 2023, breaking the record previously set last year, according to a report released Friday. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) process — which advocates and experts have long argued is flawed and results in inaccurate data…

Despite the state’s Democratic majority, more than 53 percent of Californians voted against a ban on slave labor in state prisons. Proposition (Prop) 6 would have amended the state constitution by removing a provision that allows incarcerated people to be forced to work. Though it would not ban “voluntary” work in these facilities, it would…

For decades, neoliberalism has systematically attacked the welfare state, undermined public institutions and weakened the foundations of collective well-being. Shrouded in the alluring language of liberty, it transforms market principles into a dominant creed, insisting that every facet of life conform to the imperatives of profit and economic efficiency. But in reality, neoliberalism consolidates wealth…

In response to the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, the United States, Türkiye, and Israel have all launched bombing campaigns on Syria. Shortly after the government’s collapse, Israel also destroyed most of the Syrian Navy in port at Latakia, and invaded Syria from the long-occupied Golan Heights, advancing to within sixteen miles of the capital city of Damascus.

On December 9, U.S. Central Command said its bombing targeted remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the east of the country, hitting seventy-five targets with 140 bombs and missiles. Meanwhile, Türkiye is conducting airstrikes, drone strikes, and artillery fire as part of a new offensive by its “Syrian National Army” proxy against Rojava, the Kurdish enclave in northeastern Syria.

Israel launched a much broader bombing campaign than Türkiye or the United States, with about 600 airstrikes on Syria during the first eight days after Assad’s fall. Without waiting to see what new government may emerge, Israel methodically destroyed Syria’s military infrastructure to ensure that the country would be as defenseless as possible in the face of its expanded military occupation and future airstrikes.

Israel claims its expanded occupation of Syrian territory is a temporary move to ensure its own security. But throughout the history of Israel, land grabs like this have usually turned into long-term illegal annexations, such as those in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights.

Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Russia, and the United Nations have all joined the global condemnation of this new Israeli assault on Syria. Geir Pedersen, the U.N. Special Envoy to Syria, called Israel’s military actions “highly irresponsible,” and U.N. peacekeepers have removed Israeli flags from newly occupied Syrian territory.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry reiterated that the Golan Heights is an occupied territory, and said that these actions confirmed “Israel’s continued violation of the rules of international law and its determination to sabotage Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability, and territorial integrity.”

The United States became the only country in the world to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights under the first Trump Administration in 2019. President Joe Biden’s failure to reverse Trump’s recognition of the illegal Israeli annexation is part of his disastrous legacy in the Middle East.

Israel’s actions confront the world with the age-old question of what to do about a country that systematically ignores and violates the rules of international law. At the foundation of the U.N. Charter is the agreement by all countries to settle their differences diplomatically and peacefully, rather than by the threat or use of military force.

In its “war on terror,” including its wars on Iraq and other countries, the United States flagrantly and systematically violated the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, the bedrock of post-World War II international law. A fundamental principle of all legal systems is that the powerful must be held accountable as well as the weak and the vulnerable. A system of laws that the wealthy and powerful can ignore cannot claim to be universal or just.

Today, our system of international law faces exactly this problem. The presumption by the United States that its overwhelming military power permits it to violate international law with impunity has led other countries—particularly U.S. allies, but also Russia—to apply the same opportunistic standards to their own behavior.

In 2010, an Amnesty International report on European countries that hosted CIA “black sites” called on U.S. allies in Europe not to join the United States as another “accountability-free zone” for war crimes. But now the world is confronting a U.S. ally that has not only embraced the U.S. presumption that dominant military power can trump the rule of law, but doubled down on it. 

The Israeli government refuses to comply with international legal prohibitions against deliberately killing women and children, seizing foreign territory, and bombing other countries. Shielded from international accountability behind the power of a  U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council, Israel thumbs its nose at the world’s impotence to enforce international law, confident that nobody will stop it from using military force wherever and however it pleases.

U.S. responsibility for Israel’s lawlessness is compounded by the conflict of interest in its dual role as both Israel’s military superpower ally and weapons supplier, and as the supposed mediator of the lopsided “peace process” between Israel and Palestine since the 1990s. The failures and inherent flaws of this process discredited the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the eyes of most Palestinians and led to the Hamas electoral victory in 2006. Since then, instead of deferring to intervention by the United Nations or other neutral parties, the United States has guarded its monopoly as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, and has used this position to grant Israel total freedom of action to commit systematic war crimes. If this crisis is ever to end, the world cannot allow the United States to continue in this role.

While the United States bears a great deal of responsibility for this escalating and expanding crisis, U.S. officials remain in collective denial over the criminal nature of Israel’s actions and their own instrumental role in supporting Israel’s crimes. Plus, the systemic corruption of U.S. politics severely limits the influence of the majority of Americans who support a ceasefire in Gaza. Pro-Israel lobbying groups are able to buy the unconditional support of U.S. politicians and attack those few who stand up to them. 

But everyday Americans are finding ways to call for a ceasefire and for the enforcement of both U.S. and international law. Members of CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, and various Palestinian American, Arab American, and other activist groups are showing up in Congressional offices and hearings every day; constituents in California are suing two members of Congress for funding genocide; students are calling on their universities to divest from Israel and U.S. weapons makers; activists and union members are identifying and picketing companies and blocking ports to stop weapons shipments to Israel; journalists are rebelling against censorship; U.S. officials are resigning; people are going on hunger strikes; and others have even committed suicide in protest.   

An international movement to end the genocide is making progress, but it is excruciatingly slow compared to the appalling human cost and the millions of Palestinian lives at stake. Many countries are increasingly willing to resist the political pressures and propaganda tropes that have successfully muted international calls for justice in the past. 

The U.N. General Assembly has passed resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the post-1967 Israeli occupation, and for Palestinian statehood. The General Assembly’s tenth emergency special session on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the Uniting for Peace process has been ongoing since 1997. This process permits the General Assembly to take action to restore peace and security when the Security Council fails to do so.

The General Assembly should urgently use its “Uniting For Peace” powers to turn up the pressure on Israel and the United States. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has provided the legal basis for stronger action, ruling that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories Israel invaded in 1967 is illegal and must end, and that the massacre in Gaza appears to violate the Genocide Convention. Fourteen other countries have intervened with the ICJ to support South Africa’s Genocide Convention case against Israel. 

By the time the court issues a final verdict on its genocide case, millions may be dead. The Genocide Convention is an international commitment to prevent genocide, not to just pass judgment after the fact. Since the United States is preventing the Security Council from acting, the U.N. General Assembly has the authority to impose an arms embargo, a trade boycott, economic sanctions, a peacekeeping force, or to do whatever it takes to end the genocide. 

When the U.N. General Assembly first launched its campaign of sanctions against apartheid South Africa in November 1962, not a single Western country took part. Many of those same countries will be the last to do so with regard to Israel today. But the world cannot wait to act for the blessing of complacent wealthy countries who are themselves complicit in genocide.

Fifty-three-year-old Maine resident Joyce Hauslein spent much of the last year crocheting afghans for people she will never meet: unhoused adults and children staying in temporary shelters, camping in public parks, or sleeping in the streets, in cars, or in crowded dwellings shared with family or friends.

The bed coverings were Hauslein’s contribution to the annual Homeless Memorial Blanket Project, a four-year-old campaign that provides handmade blankets and quilts to unhoused people each year on December 21—the longest night of the year. At this year’s event, organizers brought nearly 1,000 blankets from all fifty states and several countries to Philadelphia’s Independence National Park for display and distribution.

Hauslein, who works full-time as a cashier at Walmart, tells The Progressive that she has been homeless twice, first in 1993 and again in 2020 when her landlord evicted her in order to convert her beachfront apartment into a short-term vacation rental. It was during this second period of homelessness that she became involved with the Blanket Project. 

“I spent the first five months of my most recent homelessness in my car,” she says. “I then went to a shelter for thirteen months. While there, I constantly crocheted; I gave the afghans I made to people as gifts when they left the facility. Many of them told me it was the only blanket they had.”

While Hauslein is now housed, she remains deeply concerned about those who are not and describes making blankets as a tangible way to pay it forward. It’s also a way, she explains, for her to thank the shelter workers and counselors who listened to her and helped her navigate the bureaucratic process of obtaining a home. Furthermore, she feels making blankets is a way to offer encouragement to those who are tenuously housed or who remain unsheltered, noting, “I know what it feels like to think no one cares about you.” 

Lastly, it’s a way to help unhoused people stay warm,  an estimated 700 of whom die from hypothermia every winter, sleeping outside in cities and towns throughout the United States. Not surprisingly, this includes Philadelphia where public radio station WHYY reports that twelve unhoused Philadelphians died from cold-related exposure in 2023, down from more than two dozen the previous year. 

While that seems like good news, advocates fear that the number of unhoused Americans in cities like Philadelphia will continue to skyrocket. 

In fact, Project Home reports that Philadelphia’s homeless population jumped 38 percent between 2023 and 2024, owing at least in part to the city’s 22.7 percent poverty rate, skyrocketing rents, and dwindling supply of affordable apartments.

Lutheran pastor Matthew Best, who co-directs the Blanket Project, stresses that this spike is an intentional effect of public policies that ignore the needs of the poor. “Allowing people to be unhoused in the richest country in the history of the world is a political choice,” he tells The Progressive. “The hundreds of quilters who donate these bed coverings are actually doing more to help the homeless than most of our policymakers.”  

Despite his frustration, Best describes the Blanket Project’s evolution since its founding in 2021 with pride. “We initially intended it to be a one-day thing,” he says. “But over time, it has become a beautiful, viral effort that keeps extending. We received a blanket from Australia this year. We have no idea how this person heard about the project but it has been amazing, incredible really, to think about the hundreds of people who are sewing, knitting, and crocheting these blankets and spending their time and money to make something special for a complete stranger.”

“Too often we speak about the unhoused as a category,” says Marsha Roscoe, assistant to the Bishop of the Lower Susquehanna Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which co-sponsors the Blanket Project. “The project gives a face to the unhoused since we know that every blanket will be given to an actual person in need. It recognizes that everyone wants to feel seen. Our hope is that every person who receives a blanket understands that they are loved and valued.”

This message is especially important for unhoused youth, a staggering 22 percent of whom were unaccompanied by family in 2023.  

It’s a reality that Rebecca Nicholas, the McKinney-Vento liaison at Boys Latin of Philadelphia, a sixth to 12th-grade public charter school, often sees. She works with middle school males who were given a chance to draw designs and write uplifting messages on cloth panels that were later sewn onto blankets. “The Project allows students to share their empathy, love, and creativity,” she tells The Progressive. 

“Most if not all of our students have witnessed homelessness or have been homeless,” she says. “The [Blanket] Project shows them that you don’t need millions of dollars to promote social change or show someone you care about them.”

Similarly, Nola Martin, an outreach assistant at four public K-12 charter schools in West Philadelphia, distributed numerous handmade blankets to students whose families have been burned out of their homes, evicted, or forced to move because of domestic abuse.  “When people lose their homes they typically feel completely alone,” she said. “Knowing that someone took the time to make a blanket for them, as a gift, reminds them that they have not been discarded or abandoned by the community.”

 It may also mean something more.

“Receiving a present like this tells the recipient that they deserve beautiful things,” Pat LaMarche, Project co-director and founder, said. “Handmade quilts are expensive and when an individual or family is given one, it tells them that they are worthy.”

The next Homeless Memorial Blanket Project display and distribution will take place in Denver, Colorado, on December 21, 2025. Information about ways to participate and support the Blanket Project’s ongoing work can be found on its website.