Academic boycott of Israel and the American Sociological Association

Posted on April 17, 2026 by David S. Meyer

I don’t usually write about professional matters here, but there are all kinds of issues about protest and organizations and influence at play here. It may be of interest to Politicsoutdoors readers.

Background: So, a group called Sociologists for Palestine circulated a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel, a response to many crimes and conflicts that you already know something about. They want a membership vote on the resolution, in accord with Association (ASA) bylaws on membership petitions.

The (elected) president and executive director of the ASA refused to put the resolution on the membership ballot, explaining that the bylaws allow the membership to vote on petitions involving political stances, but that operational and fiduciary matters remain the responsibility of the elected leadership.

Sociologists for Palestine asked all candidates for ASA office to post their positions on the resolution itself, and on the decision to keep it off the membership ballot. As a candidate for the Association’s council, I responded:

It makes sense that voters want to know what candidates for office think about issues that are likely to come before them, and I’m glad to respond—even knowing that my answers aren’t going to please everyone in the ASA. I can appreciate connections with people who don’t agree with me.

The American Sociological Association, the practice of Sociology, and higher education more generally, are under attack in America, and we’re not doing that well in fighting back. I want the ASA to stand up for itself, our students, and our institutions. Our identity as a professional association, our connections to our students and employers, and our standing as scholars and teachers, offer some status and resources, albeit declining, for doing so. We must be forceful and strategic in picking battles, mindful of our standing, credibility, and our internal cohesion. We don’t need to agree on everything, and we don’t need to act collectively on everything we might agree on. But we may be able to have some influence on issues that are closest to us.

To the petition:

I oppose the academic boycott of Israel outlined in the petition, even as I respect Sociologists for Palestine’s intent to use every route available to make a statement in support of human rights and social justice. For me, this boycott question is less about Israel’s culpability and more about the likely effects of the described action. I don’t see the vote or a boycott as affecting politics in Israel or the United States in any way, but I do think both could hurt the ASA. The most likely outcome of a boycott is accelerating the marginalization of critical scholars in Israel. I think academic institutions are just about the last institution we want to boycott. It’s a political mistake.

Full disclosure : I recently served as a reader for an excellent dissertation from an Israeli university. Among other things, the dissertation addressed the violence of the radical right in the West Bank, violence alternately encouraged and ignored by the Israeli government. I’m not morally conflicted or embarrassed by my small connection to higher education in Israel; I was very glad to recognize and support this work, helping the dissertation writer graduate, and promoting the work within and beyond the host university. I don’t want to ban such activities.

The question of whether the membership should vote on whether to boycott is, oddly, somewhat simpler. In a reform of our bylaws in 2023, the membership voted to limit petition access to a ballot to “public policy positions of the Association,” reserving operational matters and fiduciary concerns to elected leaders.  The petition before us clearly calls for action that involves operational decisions and is likely to influence the finances and reputation of the Association. As I read it, the leadership of the ASA followed the bylaws by keeping this petition off a ballot. And the elected leadership of any body should be constrained by existing rules or bylaws, a point underscored by the last few years of our national politics.

Even so, these issues are dealt with poorly in our bylaws, which are less clear and helpful than they ought to be. I don’t recall a spirited and informed debate about the earlier reform, and we should have one.

I also think foregoing the ballot on this petition is the better decision. A referendum is a blunt instrument; any outcome is very likely to foster alienation and distrust within the Association. And a result that leaves even 10-20 percent of our membership angry and alienated is likely to be even less powerful. Our leadership says that the 2024 resolution cost the ASA in terms of reputation and membership.  Sociologists for Palestine counters that membership has been steadily declining for 15 years. Regardless of the explanation, this decline, and the abysmally low turnout in our elections, should be of concern to all of us.

Onward.

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One battle after another (not the movie!)

Posted on April 2, 2026 by David S. Meyer

War dominates our screens, our politics, and our brains. For a while, it crowds out almost everything else. And, more than virtually any other issue, war polarizes.

For these reasons and others, presidents in political trouble often turn their gaze abroad, and demand that Americans get in line behind them. After all, politics stops at the water’s edge–a debate-killing maxim.

Historically, presidents have enjoyed a bump in public support when they send troops into combat, a “rally round the flag” effect. (I first learned this from John E. Mueller’s book, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion.) The surge of support erodes over time, as the costs and horrors of war become visible.

But Donald Trump’s leap into war with Iran didn’t produce any spike in public opinion, so the anticipated decline in support is from a smaller base from the start. Maybe it’s because Trump has done an abysmal job of building support for his effort; he doesn’t even seem to be trying. This, despite his shameless capacity to dissemble even more than his most egregious predecessors. (Pick any war mongering lying president for example.) And it’s hard to ignore that this war is particularly ill-conceived and badly planned.

One challenge is how to fit this awful war in the litany of grievances animating the resistance to the Trump administration. Offenses and provocations abound: ICE abuses, a war on science and American universities, restricted access to health insurance, environmental despoilation, evisceration of the federal government–and civil service protections, and and and. The list is far too long, and it includes so many lesser offenses: renaming or destroying buildings and putting the Trump visage on coins. And recall that the attacks on policy are all larded with corruption, Constitutional offenses, incompetence, racism, bad taste, and bad manners.

Issues and activists compete for attention. Thus far, the Iran war is just another one. The Bannon/Trump strategy of “filling the zone with shit” works to blur focus on anything but the Trump persona which provides a tight focus for Trump’s defenders. The conflict about climate policy becomes a battle about Trump, just the same as a debate about health care subsidies. This is just dandy for a target with a bottomless appetite for attention, but it’s paradoxically difficult to get political traction.

Still, Trump’s demonstrated incompetence in conducting the war undermines faith and fear of his efforts on other issues. Recognition of the Trump team’s damage to the Middle East and the global economy undermines faith among his strong supporters and fear among his more tentative acolytes; it will stiffen the spines of his opponents and offer them newly attentive audiences. Some challenges are a little less daunting: It’s an odd paradox that unfolding horrors in the Persian Gulf may end up saving some of the sight lines in the nation’s capital.

In this moment, everything dovetails into Congressional elections still nine months away. As the costs of war become more clear and dramatic, organizers face the challenge of forging connections among an increasingly diverse collection of groups and individuals with a wide range of grievances and mobilizing meaningful political action. This is no easy matter. At the moment, however, Trump seems determined to help them do it.

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The last Cesar Chavez Day (2026)

Posted on March 26, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Thanks to the California state legislature, the last Cesar Chavez Day was in 2025. March 31 will mark the holiday this year, renamed Farmworkers Day. Given the revelations of the past few days, this is a necessary move. The Farmworkers’ movement and the creation of their union were always a collective effort, engaging many committed leaders. Chavez was always an imperfect stand-in for the larger movement, as any individual icon would be–and a little bit more. Below I post an edited version of my annual commemoration.

We often use individuals to stand in for broad movements and collective efforts. They’re portable symbols and far easier to depict in statues or prose. And start with the assumption that every single heroic figure has feet of clay, or problematic or difficult character traits or histories. We want to be clear about the purpose we want to use a historic figure for: Barbara Johns for leading a student strike against segregation; Thomas Jefferson for writing the Declaration of Independence; Abraham Lincoln for preserving the Union, and so on. At some point, the weight of history and evidence can outweigh any noble purposes, and statues must come down: e.g., Robert E. Lee representing Southern traditions…Thomas Jefferson owning hundreds of human beings?

The day is a chance to reflect on Chavez, the movement he led, which continues, and the issues he and that movement addressed. (It also seems to be a good opportunity to return to writing here, with the chance to repost, reconsider, and update writing from past years.) Recalling his career, organizing and mobilizing a mostly migrant Latino workforce, is particularly important now…just when the Trump administration wants to purge all the details from public notice.

There are now very credible allegations that Cesar Chavez assaulted and abused women he worked with, including raping teens, who came forward testifying to assault and damages. When Dolores Huerta, a living icon, affirmed the charges, adding that Chavez sexually assaulted her twice, public doubt disappeared. And it was all detailed in a thorough investigation published in The New York Times. Those who knew him best had seen his autocratic and self-centered behaviors as well as visionary and heroic action; they believed the women. It’s particularly disturbing that Huerta and other victims, never lacking in bravery, did not come forward because they believed–with very good reason–that opponents would use the charges and Chavez to discredit the Farmworkers movement.

Image result for edna chavez speech, stephon clark

In 2018, less than a week after Edna Chavez, the charismatic then-seventeen year old high schooler from South Los Angeles, electrified a national crowd with a demand to end gun violence, Californians celebrated the legacy of another Chavez.

On my campus, we commemorated Cesar Chavez Day on Friday, rather than Monday, March 31 (his birthday), by closing. The state established the holiday in 2000, and six other states have followed suit.  In California, the legislature calls upon public schools to develop appropriate curricula to teach about the farm labor movement in the United States, and particularly Chavez’s role in it. Now, across the United States, school districts, universities, and local governments are busily renaming buildings, schools, and programs. Raping children is a dealbreaker.

A campaign to establish a national holiday has stalled so far (The Cesar Chavez National holiday website seems to have last been updated in 2008), but at one point President Obama issued a proclamation announcing a day of commemoration, and calling upon all Americans “to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

That feels like a long time ago.

It feels like an even longer time ago in 2026, and it’s hard to imagine anyone would want to use Chavez as a symbol of a large movement for justice.

Political figures have many reasons for creating holidays, including remembering the past; identifying heroic models for the future; recognizing and cultivating a political constituency; and providing an occasion to appreciate a set of values. Regardless of the original meaning, the holidays take on new meanings over time.  Columbus Day, for example, is celebrated as an occasion for pride in Italian Americans (e.g.), and commemorated and mourned as a symbol of genocide and empire (e.g.).

Cesar Chavez’s life and work is well worth remembering and considering, particularly now.  His career as a crusader was far longer than that of Martin Luther King discussed (here and here) and he was far more of an organizer than Fred Korematsu (discussed here). Chavez’s Medal of Freedom was awarded shortly after his death in 1993, by President Clinton, but many of his accomplishments were apparent well before then. And unseemly, unwise, and some abusive elements of his leadership were also apparent dating back to the 1970s. (See Nathan Heller’s report in The New Yorker, from 2014!) Still, after his death, a campaign to turn him into an icon for the movement developed, streamlining a long and complicated story.

As a young man, Chavez was an agricultural worker; by his mid-twenties, he became a civil rights organizer, working for the Community Service Organization in California.  With Dolores Huerta, in 1962 Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.  Focusing on poor, mostly Mexican-American workers, Chavez’s vision for activism was right at the cornerstone of racial and economic justice.  Establishing an organization, however, is a long way from winning recognition and bargaining rights as a union.

Chavez was a tactician, a public figure, a charismatic, and something of a mystic. Modeling his efforts after Gandhi’s successful campaigns, Chavez was an emphatic practitioner of active nonviolence. He employed boycotts, strikes, long fasts, demonstrations, long marches, and religious rhetoric in the service of his cause.  He also registered voters, lobbied, and worked in political campaigns. He was a tireless and very effective organizer.

But holidays are best celebrated with an eye to the future, rather than the past.

On Cesar Chavez Day this year, we can think about the large and growing Latino community in the United States. The 2020 Census reports that Latinos now comprise 18.7% of the population nationally. This is the youngest and fastest-growing population in America today, and they are severely underrepresented in the top levels of politics, education, and the economy.  The civil rights map is at least as complicated as at any time in American history, but not less important or urgent. The future of American Latinos is very much the future of America.

And Chavez saw the civil rights struggle as a labor issue.  When Chavez and Huerta started

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez,' by Miriam Pawel - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/books/review/the-crusades-of-cesar-chavez-by-miriam-pawel.html

their campaign, nearly one third of Americans were represented by unions.  The percentage now is now less than 10 percent, and even less in the private sector. Donald Trump has issued an executive order, banning collective bargaining for many federal employees. This probably isn’t legal.

And public sector workers, even if represented by unions aren’t doing so well.  In 2018, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Janus vs. AFSCME,that undermined the capacity of unions to organize and represent members by allowing workers to opt out of membership and paying dues.

Still, organizers and some observers find some encouragement in unionization campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks. Still, the larger picture is dark. In the moment, the Trump administration is vilifying teachers and firing other government workers

We need to remember that you can’t attack teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters without hurting the people they serve: us.

Or should I say, US?

We commemorate the past to help guide the future. Edna Chavez, working in an urban setting far from Cesar Chavez’s organizing, carried the legacy forward, and adds more.

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Twin Cities Redux: What a Resistance win looks like

Posted on February 12, 2026 by David S. Meyer
https://therealnews.com/minneapolis-teachers-parents-denounce-federal-agents-assault-at-roosevelt-high-demand-ice-leave

ICE is retreating from Minneapolis, but this time it’s not because of climate change. Instead, it’s a victory–albeit a very costly one–for the resistance to the Trump Administration and its migration policies.

Like virtually all social movement victories, this one is partial, one that leaves a lot of work to be done. But it’s important to recognize the influence that protest campaigns sometimes exercise–as well as the costs and limits.

Tom Homan, just recently tasked with managing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “surge” in Minneapolis, didn’t credit (or blame) resistance protesters with affecting his decision to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “surge” in Minneapolis, but their influence is unmistakable. Thousands of ICE agents will be leaving Minnesota as the Trump Administration looks to rework its prescence.

Of course, authorities virtually never credit protesters with influencing their best judgment or policies. Activists have to claim the credit that their opponents will always deny them. Without the protesters, things could have been even worse.

You’ll recall that the enforcement surge, featuring bands of masked federal workers roaming the streets to find people who looked foreign, was an effort to demonstrate Trump’s power in the streets. Facing overwhelming and disruptive resistance in larger cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, the Trump Administration picked a smaller and whiter locale where ICE forces would far outnumber the local police force.

It didn’t work out so well.

Minnesotans turned out in the cold to protest, vigorously and visibly; they had the right spirit and the right clothes. Building on dense civic networks, they set up ICE patrols to keep tabs on where the beefy men in tactical vests were going. And they ran small errands (groceries, kid transport) for neighbors who felt unsafe going outdoors. (See Margaret Killjoy’s substack for details. Thanks to Pam Oliver for the reference.) They drew attention from local and national media to the city and to ICE conduct, making for publicity and pressure.

ICE forces didn’t handle the spotlight very well. To be sure, it’s harder to do a job when strangers are watching (I’m alone now as I type), recording, and maybe even chanting or cursing. But law enforcement officers are supposed to be trained to deescalate. This means that the hard work of policing includes focusing on self-control and discipline even when protesters may hold up their phones and say nasty things. ICE overreacted to modest provocation, and agents recklessly shot and killed Renee Good, and then, a couple of weeks later, Alex Pretti. Administration officials dissembled and denied the facts of each murder, but local activists and media had captured the details on cell phone videos.

When Trump loyalists grew weak-kneed at the Administration’s explanations and justifications, the White House moved to deal with the immediate public relations problem. This meant quieting, at least for a while, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and disappearing Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino. Homan, presenting as the embodiment of the tough cop, was a clear step toward moderation.

Bolstered by the public reaction, institutional politicians issued demands: body cameras and identifying badges on ICE agents, rather than masks; changes in training and the rules of engagements; and just less. At this writing, funding for DHS remains in dispute in Congress, which means ongoing attention to provocative and unpopular policies. Democratic legislators and candidates for office are taking advantage of the moment.

Without the demonstrations and protests and without the local support for neighbors, we wouldn’t see ICE at work, and the Administration wouldn’t have had the public relations crisis to manage. Democratic spines would not be so strong, and public attention would wander…even more. This is what a protest win looks like.

But remember that this victory is partial and provisional. The Trump Administration, including Homan, has reaffirmed a commitment to mass deportations, and is constantly looking for more ways to flex power and back down opposition. For the moment, Caracas is a more congenial setting for the Administration than Minneapolis, but only as long as Americans continue to defend their rights and those of their neighbors.

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More songs from Minneapolis

Posted on February 2, 2026 by David S. Meyer

I last wrote about the Springsteen song about ICE in Minneapolis. My hunch is that such songs provide the first bit of political education that lots of people get. Certainly, the protest songs of earlier eras provided the first bit of my education about politics and protest.

But I don’t do such a great job of keeping up with everything. The exceptional Minnesotan sociologist, Chris Uggen, was kind enough to point me to a much longer list of songs from Minneapolis.

Here’s the link:

‘Streets of Minneapolis’: 32 protest songs inspired by the Twin Cities’ ICE resistance

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Protest songs, poetry, and political influence

Posted on January 30, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Long ago, I was seduced by Shelley’s Defense of Poetry, which concluded with a bold claim: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

At some point, I became skeptical of that notion, and came to think that poets were justly unacknowledged in political affairs. I ended up in graduate school.

I overreacted. Obviously.

The right song at the right time draws attention to a grievance and to a movement. It can unite a campaign and provide some sustenance to people trying to change the world–or at least a little part of it. Listeners can learn about an event and the cause, and the song can push them to dig a little deeper. It can become a touchstone for a movement.

Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song, Streets of Minneapolis, in response to the ICE murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Right below, you can see a professionally produced music video featuring images of protest and of ICE abuse.

Springsteen also posted a live performance of the song.

As music and poetry, it sounds a lot like Springsteen, detailed poetic images, although maybe a little more on the nose than most of his stuff. (Sometimes it takes heavy hands.) Choreographing multiple rhymes with Minneapolis is a creative challenge on short notice.

As a timely response to unfolding tragedy, it evokes Neil Young’s Ohio, written just in the wake of the deaths of four students at Kent State University in May, 1970. National Guardsmen had opened fire on an antiwar protest, killing two protesters and two students cutting across campus on the way to classes. (Read more about it here.)

Young enlisted bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young to record and release the song quickly. And it sounds like Neil Young, with spare lyrics and a hard edge guitar lead supported by very high harmonies. It circulated everywhere quickly, which meant a lot of radio play. It became a touchstone for the antiwar movement.

Digging around, I found another style of protest song, Jesse Welles’s satirical take on ICE’s aggressive recruiting effort, dropped a couple of months ago.

I’ve stumbled across Streets of Minneapolis more than a few times over the past few days. Students, who feel compelled to tell me that Springsteen usually isn’t on their playlists before announcing how much they like the song. They appreciate the Boss weighing in, and want musicians of their age to follow along. The lyrics have been reprinted, and the quick release has kept a cultural and political focus on ICE in Minneapolis. Politicians, including those at the White House, have been peppered with questions about it, sometimes feeling compelled to run it, and Springsteen down, as in this White House statement. It’s a bad look.

It’s also part of a story about how movements work.

Not by themselves and not always very quickly, but by drawing attention to problems, offering prospective solutions, and assembling a large enough following to give incentives to others to sign on.

Hard work, and time-consuming, but it all matters.

For a bit of humility, listen to Tom Lehrer’s Folk Song Army. Lehrer had a brief and brilliant career at the piano as a satirist on the way to a long career teaching Math at the University of California.

Tom Lehrer, “Folk Song Army”

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Repression in Minneapolis backfires (2)

Posted on January 25, 2026 by David S. Meyer
Federal agents keeping the peace (?) in Minneapolis after killing a demonstrator. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/politics/second-ice-shooting-minneapolis.html

Repression is risky for everyone.

It works for authorities when most opponents are deterred from taking visible action. But repression can also provoke greater resistance and undermine support for the repressive agents. Repression polarizes, and how well it works depends upon how many rush to each side of the conflict.

The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) surge in Minneapolis IS creating tremendous disruption, and has certainly intensified and mobilized opposition to the Trump Administration’s massive deportation project. It’s generated a great deal of conflict wherever ICE goes; it’s also responsible for another murder.

On Saturday morning, Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked in Intensive Care for the Veterans’ Administration, was one of many many many Minnesotans working to deter and monitor ICE activities. Armed with the camera in his phone, Pretti was recording ICE actions.

Note that documenting and projecting unlawful, unpleasant, and unpopular actions is a key social movement strategy. Long ago, documentation was through testimony and journalism. (Look up Ida B. Wells for explanation and a little inspiration.) Words and pictures spread much faster and further now. (Look up Darnella Frasier for an example and a little inspiration.) Observing and documenting law enforcement is a first amendment right, but it comes with risk. (See Nicole M. Bennet’s excellent explanation.)

Alex Pretti was advancing with his phone to help another protesting videographer–ICE had sprayed her with some kind of chemical agent. Video shows ICE agents pushing him back. A scrum of agents overwhelmed Pretti, pushing him to the ground. In the process, they found the other weapon he was carrying, a concealed handgun. (He had a permit.) Agents took the gun and then shot him to death. Over the next few days there is sure to be much more video and a final count of how many shots ICE fired into the man they’d just disarmed.

The Department of Homeland Security’s leader, Kristi Noem, followed the “no angels” trope, blaming Pretti for coming to the protest armed. He was, she said, a “domestic terrorist.” As evidence, she cited his presence at the demonstration. Many Republicans fell in line behind her, but not quite so many so quickly as following ICE’s murder of Renee Good. A few stayed silent, and a few others have issued statements calling for investigation. A federal judge ordered the Federal Department of Justice not to shut local authorities out–as it had for Good’s death. The court also ordered DOJ not to destroy evidence.

The fact that Pretti was armed (legally) has actually helped break and (maybe) build new coalitions. The National Rifle Association issued a statement calling for an investigation and emphasizing the 2nd amendment right to bear arms. Gun Owners of America, a somewhat smaller and more vigorous guns rights organization, condemned the shooting, and also called for an investigation. Advocates for gun rights rarely wind up on the other side of the Trump administration.

(Let’s note that Pretti’s gun didn’t protect him from jackbooted government thugs, a central argument for gun rights fundamentalists. No doubt, guns in the hands of protesters can make policing scarier for law enforcement, but ICE didn’t see the gun until they had Pretti on the ground.)

And there’s more: The US Senate is scheduled to vote on funding the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday: $64.4 billion for DHS, including $10 billion for ICE. Responding to the shooting, Democrats have promised to stall the bill until, at least, some limits on ICE action are included in the legislation. This could mean another government shut down.

The Trump Administration has made martyrs of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, stiffening resistance at home and abroad. There will be more protesters; let’s hope for no more martyrs.

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Repression backfires in Minneapolis (1)

Posted on January 24, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Federal agents seem determined to kill anti-deportation protesters, at least enough of them to kill the resistance. It’s not working–at least not yet. Minnesotans are fighting back.

Who guessed that Minneapolis, Minnesota would become the front line of the civil war the Trump administration is working to start?

I didn’t.

Trump deployed large numbers of National Guard in larger and more conspicuously liberal cities like Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon, all the while eyeing and threatening New York City. But efforts were widely seen as ineffective and extremely wasteful. Troops were met with local resistance and adverse court orders. Minneapolis represented a new opportunity and new strategy for repressing the growing opposition to the Trump administration and its

At the start of 2026, Trump used ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to surge 2,000 federal agents to enhance its deportation efforts, highlighting the effort with conspicuously racist commentary about Somalian migrants legally in the city.

The surge was meant to be a demonstration of power, and Minneapolis, smaller and whiter than DC, LA, Chicago, or New York, appeared as an easier target for domination. Organized repression works by setting examples. The message: resistance is futile, and you could get hurt. The Trump administration set out to make an example of the city, and of any Minnesotan who might try to announce opposition to the execution of mass deportation.

So ICE agents were aggressive in picking up people who might be immigrants or like immigrants or know immigrants. Always armed, often masked, they projected force. And provoked opposition.

On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, who was unarmed and sitting behind the wheel of a car with the motor on. Three shots to the head, and the car took off, jumping the curb and hitting another car. The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration immediately issued statements: Good was a paid protester; Good was a terrorist; Good was a lesbian with a troubled past; Good threatened the lives of ICE agents. The trope was familiar to anyone who’s noticed what happens when police are caught killing a Black man: Good was no angel.

Increasingly, attacking the victim isn’t a very effective strategy. First, video of the killing poured onto the Internet (some deceptively edited) which undermined the the Administration’s story. Given how much Trump’s administrators lie, it’s surprising they aren’t better at it. Analyses of the video record didn’t line up with the Administration’s story, and it was far too easy to see that by looking at the videos. Second, the Administration didn’t even try to present evidence about Good’s terrorist commitments or efforts to threaten the ICE agents.

Repression works by scaring people into submission, isolating and marginalizing the resistance. Not this time. Trump’s Department of Justice announced that it would not investigate the shooting or the agent who killed Good (and cursed at her afterward), but would commence investigating Good’s widow. A half-dozen federal prosecutors resigned in protest. ICE’s repressive efforts and the conspicuous efforts at coverup from the Administration began to fracture Republican unity.

And it extended and intensified the efforts of resistance. Minneapolis merchants announced that they didn’t want to serve ICE agents, and closed their doors. Residents with warm clothes and cameras on cell phones came into the cold to protest and to document ICE abuse and dangers. On Friday, residents staged a general strike, signaling their vigorous opposition and suggesting a tactic to allies across the United States.

But things would get worse for everyone (continued).

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Martin Luther King Day 2026 (repost plus)

Posted on January 19, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Commemoration is very much a salient issue at the moment. Donald Trump, president, is rewriting the history of the Capitol Hill invasion and American history more broadly. It’s no surprise that the most conspicuous efforts (e.g., the simultaneously Disneyfied and profane walk of presidents, re-renaming military bases after Confederate generals, slapping the Trump name on government properties, etc. etc. etc.) are crude and tacky.

But it’s surely worthwhile, especially at this moment, to revisit a commemoration directed to a broad movement as well as an individual.

There is still the holiday, which matters. It surely offers an occasion for politicians to misquote or misinterpret King. But even a quick dip into the real history of a brave and committed man will resurface issues that must remain on the political agenda.

N. B. King is constantly reinterpreted and appropriated for a range of causes. For a much fuller consideration, keep an eye out for Hajar Yazdiha’s award-winning book, The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

Here I repost a slightly edited version of an older post on the holiday.

Statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a light snow-covering

On the eve of the Martin Luther King Day holiday not long ago, the president of the United States announced, emphatically, that you can’t find anyone less racist than he is. He’s back, and if you’re suspicious of such proclamations, perhaps it’s just that you’ve learned to distrust people who laud their own honesty, their color-blindness, their respect for women, or concern for the poor. Like the salesman who claims the nickname, “Honest,” Donald Trump never succeeded in fooling most people, just enough to sell the next condo or secure the next loan. Then some large number of elected officials and voters who knew better chose to look the other way, and Trump won the 2016 election. It’s somewhat more disturbing that Trump really won the 2024 election. https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?id=b0488081-61a1-446e-b300-80362bc38f5d&gid=108379A9-3701-4049-ABB5-0F178044536F

The office of the presidency, however, starts with obligations to all Americans, and it doesn’t end there. Trump is hardly the first US president to harbor racist thoughts or sentiments, but he’s displayed less worry about revealing them to large audiences, often through words, and consistently through deeds.

It’s worth considering the resources and possibilities Martin Luther King’s memory gives us in combating those who would restore what he fought against.

One of the hard-won achievements of the civil rights movement was the establishment of King holiday, which came decades after King was killed. The long campaign to commemorate the man and the movement generated useful memories, good debate, activism, and at least one popular song (by Stevie Wonder, below). The battle for a holiday reinjected the life and its meaning into American politics.

The national holiday allows Americans to expect any president to pay respects to the man, and even more, to the movement. Tradition really is powerful, and activists are wise to attend to establishing new ones.

If Donald Trump displays less appreciation or enthusiasm for the King holiday than, say, pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys, that’s no mystery or surprise.

Each holiday event is a moment, unlikely to capture much attention in the White House during the rest of the year.

For the rest of us, however, the King Day reminder is an alert. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many many others, put work behind their words on social justice, often facing great risks and paying serious penalties. Their heirs continue today.

Martin Luther King died young enough and dramatically enough to be turned into an American hero, but it was neither his youth nor his death that made him heroic.

To Build a Mature Society: The Lasting Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “Beyond Vietnam” Speech — The Gotham Center for New York City History

In his rather brief public life, beginning in Montgomery at 26 (1955), and ending with his assassination at 39 (1968), King consistently displayed rhetorical brilliance (on the podium and the page), strategic acumen, and exceptional moral and physical courage.

The effort to honor Martin Luther King with a holiday commemorating his birthday started at the King Center, in Atlanta, in the year after his assassination.  States began to follow suit, and by 1983, more than half celebrated King’s life with a day. That year, Ronald Reagan signed a bill making Martin Luther King day a national holiday, while expressing ambivalence, acknowledging that it was costly, and that King may have been a Communist.

The King holiday was about Martin Luther King, to be sure, but it was meant to represent far more than the man.  King stands in for the civil rights movement and for African-American history more generally.  I often wonder if the eloquence of the 1963 “I have a dream” speech winds up obscuring not only a man with broader goals, but a much more contested–and ambitious–movement.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr._Memorial

The man and the movement are ossified into an iconic image, like a statue, which locks King and the movement into the politics of 1963-1965.  We accept King’s dream, that little children will play together, and that people will be judged by “the content of their character” (a favorite phrase on the right).

The image, like a statue, is available for appropriation to advocates of all political stripes, and the establishment of the holiday itself represents an achievement of the civil rights movement, winning the holiday if not broader economic and social equality.

Before the transformation of the man into an icon, King transformed himself from a pastor into an activist, a peripatetic crusader for justice.

But the pastor didn’t disappear; rather this role grew into something larger, as King himself transformed himself from a minister into a an Old Testament prophet, one whose primary concern was always the people on the margins, the widows and orphans, the poor and hungry. In standing with those on the margins, King courageously used–and risked–the advantages of his privilege, pedigree, and education.  He also knew that he risked his safety and his life.

In his writing, King used his education and his vocation to support his political goals.  In the critically important “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the activist and minister cited both the Constitution and the Bible in support of Federal intervention in local politics to support desegregation and human rights.  (We know that other activists now use the same sources to justify pushing the Federal government out of local politics.)

King explained that he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, because he had nonviolently defied local authorities in the service of higher laws, the Constitution and the Gospel.  This was not like making a provocative statement on one’s own [profitable] radio or television show.  There were real costs and severe risks.

King was never less than controversial during his life, under FBI surveillance during his political career, and vigorously criticized by opponents (for demanding too much and too strongly) and allies (for not demanding more, more vigorously).

When he was assassinated outside a Memphis motel in 1968, he was standing with sanitation workers on strike, straying from a simpler civil rights agenda.  He had also alienated some civil rights supporters by coming out, strongly, against the war in Vietnam.  And Black Power activists saw their own efforts as overtaking King’s politics and rhetoric.  By the time he was killed, Martin Luther King’s popular support had been waning for some time.

Posterity has rescued an image of Martin Luther King, at the expense of the man’s own broader political vision.

Ironically, in elevating an insurgent to a position in America’s pantheon of historic heroes, we risk editing out the insurgency.

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New nuclear tests are a political test

Posted on November 2, 2025 by David S. Meyer

Donald Trump announced that the United States would start testing its nuclear arsenal again–after foregoing nuclear weapons testing since 1992, when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union fell apart. In doing so, he effectively announced a political challenge to peace activists around the world.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the increased costs and dangers of a new era in nuclear weapons politics, but it’s always hard to get people to pay attention. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, activists have campaigned on the existential horrors nuclear weapons represent, demanding restraint–or even disarmament. But most of us are very distant from the development and deployment of nuclear weaponry. We’ve seen nuclear weapons and war in books, but not in real life. Think of the contrast with all the other things that animate social protest movements. And antinuclear campaigners have a hard time convincing audiences of less scary alternatives in a scary world.

There is a pattern of protest and policy that’s played out since 1945: someone notices an identifiable threat from the arms race and points to it to lodge larger criticisms. Over the years, these visible threats have included: the dangers of nuclear testing, including radioactive fallout; development of a new and expensive weapons system (the B-1 Bomber or the MX missile); cavalier rhetoric about nuclear war suggesting incompetence in the White House; or conspicuously ineffective civil defense drills to protect populations.

Sometimes these campaigns are boosted by books, movies, or tv shows illustrating the danger. Think of Dr. Strangelove, Failsafe, or The Day After. Some of the movies don’t stand up so well as movies, but recent films have been much better: Oppenheimer and A House of Dynamite are suitably horrifying and worth seeing as movies.

Activists campaign for a simple demand that seems to offer a solution to the near threat and the larger problem (e.g., “Ban the bomb”; “Stop nuclear testing,” “nuclear freeze”). Politicians and experts use public concern to institute some dimension of restraint, often negotiated arms control agreements, which manage public concerns. Testing of nuclear weapons has been a recurrent target for antinuclear campaigners, who have staged demonstrations in the streets of big cities and trespass at testing sites.

[Two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling picketed the White House in 1963, the night before attending a dinner inside for Nobel prize winners (above).]

In this way, movements against nuclear weapons work, exercising influence even though activists don’t get anywhere near what they demand.

When the Cold War ended, the nuclear danger receded somewhat, and the number of nuclear weapons deployed by the big powers declined substantially. But restraint has been eroding and new nuclear threats have emerged. Arms control agreements have disappeared in a whole variety of ways:

We all know that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s conduct of the Gaza War, both awful enough, could be much worse. Russia and Israel have their own nuclear weapons. America’s stalwart support of Israel and erratic alliance with Ukraine have encouraged other nations to try to develop their own nuclear weapons. Ulp.

Long before Trump first took the oath of office, the United States began developing ambitious and expensive plans to modernize its nuclear arsenal. And activists have been trying–with very little success–to reinvigorate public concern. It’s quite likely that a President Bush or Obama or Biden would have ordered some new nuclear testing. It’s extremely unlikely that any of them would have announced it in a fit of pique about China’s expansion of its nuclear forces.

So, Trump has done peace campaigners the favor of drawing public attention to nuclear weapons and signaling that he is not the president most of us would trust to make good decisions about the fate of the earth. The question now is whether people will pay attention and try to do something about it.

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