(IndyWeek.com)

Every year since 1976, Project Censored has spotlighted the 25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is expanding its mission—to promote alternative news sources. But it continues to report the biggest national and international stories that the major media ignored. Continue Reading

Concerned residents rallied at Hartford City Hall in support of a no-freeze shelter downtown and for additional support to combat homelessness.

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Reverend Paul Goodman, of Center Church, discusses the controversy and compromise surrounding the relocation of Hartford’s emergency “no freeze” shelter.

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When I was a soldier in Viet Nam we, the grunts, use to play a game while passing a bowl and listening to Hendrix and the Doors.  We called the game, “Suppose”.  It involved our imaginations and was filled with a soulful longing for a just and better world.  It went like this, “Just imagine what would have happened if Hernan Cortez and his men had been blown off course and landed at Plymouth Rock instead of Vera Cruz.  On the other hand imagine that the pilgrims had been blown south by a terrific gale and the Mayflower had run aground in the Yucatan?“

This imagining led to a description of an alternate history that had the Iroquois nation defeating Cortez and the Aztecs confining the Puritans to an island isolating the dreary Protestant work ethic and a Mexican Border patrol would have kept those pasty faced people at bay.  Alexander Graham Bell and James Watt would have been born in Cuernavaca to a Mixtec woman and in 1739 30,000 Aztecs would have joined the Irish in invading England defeating Cromwell as an Aztec soldier tears his heart out.  All of this “supposing” would have meant no United States waging war in Viet Nam as we would have a racially diverse and culturally Amerind nation.

I want to “suppose” an alternate history for Obama and his wars.  Suppose Obama shuts down the Pentagon and withdraws all United States Armed forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Japan and Germany.  Suppose he orders all the military industrial complex to re-tool their  factories for economic conversion, to make cars, cargo ships, TV’s, refrigerators, etc.  Suppose he signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and has all National Guard and Reserve forces rebuilding Houston and New Orleans. Imagine what our country would look like.   Alfredo Vea, a Nam veteran , wrote of the “suppose” story in his novel “Gods Go Begging”.  His main character is a Nam veteran whose name is Jesse Pasadoble.  Only a Viet Nam veteran who knows Spanish would understand the significance of this name.  He is Jesse “two step”, which is what we called the very deadly and poisonous bamboo viper.  If bitten you took two steps and died.

The will to resist tyranny is born from thought and imagination.  Thought begets heresy, heresy begets retribution, those veterans who resist will suffer retribution.  They will be jailed, discharged under other than honorable, lose benefits they bled and killed for but they still resist.  After my tour in Nam I denied them my body, I denied them my faith and they denied me as a human being.  Suppose what a world we would have if our President listened to us and heard us.  Supangamos mi hijos.

Dave Ionno
Viet Nam Veteran Against the Wars

As we mobilize, here in Connecticut and throughout the US, in opposition to the Stupak Amendment it is vital to maintain an intersectional analysis and vision to our advocacy and activism. The following discourse hopefully outlines (employing the examples of reproductive rights and trans rights) how we as a society cannot and must not rely  on our votes, our so-called political pressures, or our politicians in securing full and equal access to health care, as well as self-determination over their bodies.

We must, as in the words of the inspiring anarchist Ammon Hennacy “see our bodies as our ballots and to vote every single day with our bodies;” and so to work outside the system Continue Reading

A week after an all white jury found former cop Robert Lawlor not guilty in the murder of Jashon Bryant, the family of the slain teenager and the CT chapter of the NAACP are asking the Department of Justice to investigate the trial for any violations of civil rights laws. Continue Reading