10 Good Things About 2019
Remembering some of the gains in the difficult year of 2019 can help inspire us for the critical struggles ahead.
By Medea Benjamin

Impeachment, Trump, impeachment, Trump. It's hard to think of this year without obsessing about the occupant of the White House. But yes, there were lots of other events going on in the world this year. Some of them were tragic, like the coup in Bolivia, but some are hopeful and move us in a positive direction. Here are ten. Please add more.

1. In January, the most diverse class of lawmakers in U.S. history was sworn into Congress, including a record number of women in the House: 102. Four of the freshman known affectionately as "the squad"-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley-have shown what a few brave women can do to shake up the DC establishment. They denounced the inhumane treatment of migrants on our southern border; pushed for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All; confronted big pharma; started paying congressional interns; refused to take the "mandatory" AIPAC trip to Israel. They changed the Congressional ecosystem and thanks to them, a lot more young progressives are now running for Congress.

2. The Democratic primaries have forced the country to talk about progressive policies like never before. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have pushed Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and policies to address this nation's horrific inequalities. Tulsi Gabbard has focused on the need to end the endless wars. And compared with 2016, all of the candidates have been more open to directly confronting the military-industrial complex, with vague but critical calls for reducing the overblown Pentagon budget. The debates and campaign rallies have been opportunities to air discussions on real solutions to our nation's ills, solutions that are not popular with big-dollar donors but are wildly popular with the public.

3. 2019 was a year of awe-inspiring environmental youth activism. The sensational 16-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden captured world attention at the UN climate summit with her call for young people to hold adults accountable for the disaster they've created. Greta's school strike (she sat in front of the Swedish Parliament instead of going to school) inspired students walkouts throughout the world. She also inspired some famous elders: Thanks to Greta, Jane Fonda brought the Fire Drill Fridays to Washington D.C., doing civil disobedience at Congress every Friday and bringing more national attention to the climate crisis.

4. While the environmental gains this year are not nearly on the level needed, there are countries taking serious actions. The New Zealand parliament passed landmark legislation to achieve zero net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The legislation establishes New Zealand as one of the few countries in the world with a legislated commitment to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. In contrast to Australia, where climate and energy policy has provoked toxic debate and scare campaigns from the far right, the New Zealand bill passed with bipartisan support. The government also established a $100 million Green Investment Fund, which will invest public funds in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; plant one billion new trees by 2028; and stop exploration for new oil and gas reserves.

5. In more environmental news, the European Union banned single-use plastic, including plastic cups, plates, forks, and straws. The ban will take effect by 2021. The change could help avoid nearly $25 billion-worth of environmental pollution by 2030. While the U.S. lags behind at the federal level, jurisdictions across the United States have instituted bans and fees on various types of plastics, like bags, carryout containers, polystyrene (Styrofoam), and straws. Eight states, including California and New York, have passed statewide bans on single-use plastic bags, while Maine has a ban on single-use polystyrene containers.

6. While Donald Trump crows about how great the domestic economy is, more and more workers are demanding a fairer share of the pie. Tens of thousands of workers across the country, from General Motors employees to teachers in Chicago, went on strike to win better wages and benefits. G.M. agreed to a path for temps to become permanent workers, and to alterits tiered wage scale. Airline mechanics, including at Southwest Airlines, won raises. The move toward a $15 minimum wage is gaining steam, with 21 states raising minimum wages in 2019 and more increases on the way in 2020.

7. For Latin America, 2019 was a year of people's power. There were advances and setbacks, but it's clear that there is a return of the Pink Tide (the name given to the wave of progressive governments in the late 1990s and 2000s). In this past year, social movements and organized people rose up against neoliberalism in Chile and Ecuador, they defeated a coup in Venezuela, they're resisting a coup in Bolivia, they rose up against a narco-dictator in Honduras, they rose up against state violence and austerity in Colombia, they took back power in Argentina, they're transforming Mexico, and, last but not least, in Brazil they organized a successful and massive international campaign to free former president Lula da Silva.

8. In the Middle East, people also rose up in a massive repudiation of neoliberal policies and corrupt governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people. In what has been dubbed the Autumn of Discontent, there were uprisings from Iraq to Lebanon, from Iran to Egypt. The repression against activists has been savage, with hundreds killed. In Lebanon, the protests led to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri but their goals are broader: They are demanding an end to corruption and mismanagement that results in blackouts and piles of garbage in the streets, as well as the crony sectarianism that enables it.

9. In Sudan, where the nation suffered for years under the murderous dictatorship of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who had been in power since 1989, people poured into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. After months of courageous protests in which scores of Sudanese were shot, Abdalla Hamdok took office as prime minister in a power-sharing deal between the armed forces and the pro-democracy movement. the movement won a commitment for a three-year transition leading to elections, and Bashir was sent to prison for corruption. People are still in the streets demanding justice for the people killed in protests. "The victims have the right to truth, justice and reparations under international law," say the protesters.

10. While Trump didn't fulfill his promise to end our endless wars, and he actually sent 14,000 MORE troops to the Middle East, at least he didn't start any new wars! Why? The American people have had enough. That hasn't always been the case. After the 9/11 attacks, for example, most Americans supported both the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But no longer. They want to get out of the wars we are in and don't want to engage in new ones. When the U.S. accused Iran of a spectacular attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities, the hawks in the Trump administration wanted to respond with a military attack. But polls showed a miniscule 13 percent in favor. This has been a restraining factor for Trump and his warhawks. And let's remember, this year also marked the downfall of the biggest warhawk of all, Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton.

In the coming year, those of us in the US will face one of the most important elections of our lifetimes. Four more years of Donald Trump will be devastating for our nation and our world. No matter what happens with the impeachment process in the Senate, we must mobilize to defeat Trump and build a more effective progressive movement. Remembering some of the gains in the difficult year of 2019 can help inspire us for the critical struggles ahead.

(c) 2020 Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection. Her previous books include: Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide). Follow her on Twitter: @medeabenjamin

William Greider Knew What Ailed The Democratic Party
...and how to fix it. We will miss him.
By John Nichols

Born in the year of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's greatest electoral triumph, William Greider was in so many senses the last New Dealer. His death on Christmas Day, at age 83, represents a stark loss for American journalism. His honest diagnosis of our political crisis distinguished him from his contemporaries as he covered politics across six long decades. Now, it forms a legacy that is essential to understanding a 2020 election campaign that could finally see the emergence of the more humane and progressive electoral project that he identified as necessary-and possible.

I knew Bill as a quick-witted comrade in the press corps of too many campaigns to count, a generous mentor, an ideological compatriot, and an occasional co-conspirator. He taught me to see politics not as the game that TV pundits discuss but as a high-stakes struggle for power in which the Democrats foolishly, and then dangerously, yielded far too much ground to increasingly right-wing Republicans.

This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal-style response to the financial meltdown of 2008, explaining after the devastating Republican victories of 2010, "When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson."

And, anticipating the rise of Donald Trump, he counseled that the void left by Democrats who pulled their punches would be filled by Republicans who would not hesitate to practice the crudest divide-and-conquer politics.

Bill's frustration with what he referred to as "the rightward-drifting Democrats" ran deep. While his books often explored economic themes-with particular brilliance in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) and Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987)-he was at his finest when he wrote about the awful intersection of money and politics, in books such as Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy (1992).

Bill believed Wall Street money was corrupting American politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Decades ago, during the Reagan interregnum, he warned that if the Democrats did not renew the robust commitment to economic justice that characterized FDR's tenure at its best, then surely right-wing populists would seize the opening. As always, whether he was writing for The Washington Post, Rolling Stone or The Nation (where he served as the ablest of all national affairs correspondents), Bill was right.

More than 30 years ago, he recognized that "the two-party rivalry is not nearly as significant as it's made to appear" and counseled that:

The power arrangement resembles a shared monopoly, in which two companies have tacitly ceded territories to each other to avoid costly competition.

Furthermore, the permanent hierarchy of both parties is dominated at the top by a network of pricey Washington lawyers and lobbyists who represent business interests and collaborate with one another on lobbying the government-while pretending to be opponents. These inside players channel their corporate clients' money to the elected politicians. In effect, everyone is on the same side.

(c) 2020 John Nichols writes about politics for The Capitol Times. His book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, is published by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising.

When I Was A Republican
By James Donahue

My father was a strict Republican. When he went into the poll booth I am sure he was one of those guys that just put an X on the party box at the top of the ballot. I never knew how my mother stood politically because in our house, if you didn't agree with Dad it was best to keep silent about such matters. Grandfather Andrews on my mother's side was a factory worker, a union member and consequently was a strict Democrat. When Grandpa and Dad got together the house timbers sometimes rattled when they yelled politics.

I grew up and worked in a strong Republican area in Michigan. I always considered myself an independent voter because I never liked some of the people the Republicans and Democrats put up as presidential candidates. For example, I loved Kennedy, liked Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and didn't like Lyndon Johnson. I strongly disliked Nixon, was not happy with Reagan or Clinton and really disliked George W. Bush. One year I was so angry at the party candidates I voted for George Wallace.

Sanilac County, where I worked as a bureau reporter, was so strongly Republican that nobody dared to run for office as a Democrat and expect to win. At least until I was reporting the news. We had a woman that ran as a Democratic Party candidate for County Commissioner who was extremely bright and was so superior in the way she conducted her campaign, and maybe because I gave her fair and even coverage in our newspaper, she actually won the office. She turned out to be such a good and hard working commissioner I believe she won a second term.

By-and-large, the Republicans dominated the political scene in Sanilac County. They held county conventions that were heavily attended and politically charged. The Democrats held caucuses that drew perhaps 50 or 60 people. I covered them both, but rarely got much of a story from the Democratic meetings.

One very hot political year while present at the Republican county convention, there was a call for people to volunteer as delegates to the looming State Party convention in Cobo Hall, Detroit. Those were the days before delegates were elected for these jobs. The people showing up at the county conventions just picked the ones they wanted to attend from those present at the gathering. By that time I was so well known among all of the county elected people, Republicans all, and because I was present at the county convention, they seemed to forget that I was there as a reporter and picked me as an alternate delegate for the state convention.

My first inclination was to refuse the appointment. But I was tempted to go just to find out what went on behind closed doors at state conventions. I called my editor the next day to talk it over. He was open-minded about the whole thing. We joked about the opportunity and in the end he gave me his permission to go, but cautioned me about getting too involved in the politics. As an alternative, if I was lucky enough, I would get to be no more than a fly on the wall watching things that few news reporters ever get to see. When it was time, we car-pooled our way to Detroit and shared rooms in some of the high-priced downtown hotels.

The convention was a grand experience. I saw state and national political figures giving rousing speeches, met with delegates from all over Michigan, listening to them hammer out resolutions declaring issues to be put before the entire body before the end of the week. Some of the issues involved small, local matters, while others involved such matters as dealing with housing, unemployment, and all of the other things that political figures use for platforms when seeking public office.

While I do not remember now what they were, the Sanilac County delegates had certain issues that they strongly wanted put on the table. But to get this done, they had to make back-room deals with delegates from other Michigan counties. We agreed to support their issue if they voted for ours. Sometimes compromise agreements were established in some of those cloak-room meetings. In the end, nobody got all that they wanted out of the convention, but everybody walked away with something they could take home with them Watching the inner workings of that convention gave me a very clear picture of all of the shenanigans that are constantly going on in state capitals and the U. S. Capital. The larger the level of government gets, the more complex the kind of deal making that goes on, I suspect. One thing we did not have to deal with at Cobo Hall was lobbyists trying to buy our votes.

On the final day of the convention, everybody gathered in one large meeting hall where we put the issues up for votes and drafted the party campaign platform for the next state and federal election. Then we voted to approve the final document. Finally we listened to a speech by the party's state chairman and then the governor. I believe that year it was James Blanchard. How soon we forget stuff like that.

I returned to my bureau office, wrote a broad personalized story of my experiences in Detroit, and that was that. For a while after that I actually thought of myself as a Republican. I did until the Republicans did something really lame. As I said I liked Gerald Ford, a Republican who replaced Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, a Democrat that followed Ford. I think it was Reagan who began converting me back to being an independent.

After Bush I swung to the extreme left and became a Democrat. Now with Trump in office, and after watching the chaotic goings on among the Democrats I am totally undecided as to where I will cast my vote in 2020.

(c) 2020 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles.