Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Senator Elissa Slotkin share the stage at a town hall campaign event in Warren,                                                           Michigan. © Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

Many of us have been watching twin phenomena in Democratic Party politics with great fascination in this electoral season: the rise of democratic socialist and Muslim candidates. This is a part of a shift to the left in Democratic Party politics in response to Trumpism and the move rightward in the Republican Party.

I have written in recent posts parsing the similarities and differences between (establishment) social liberalism and (populists) democratic socialism.[1] I have pointed out that all democratic socialists are populists, but not all populist on the left are democratic socialists.

The Michigan Senate race in which a Muslim populist Abdul El-Sayed won a hotly contested primary has become a major flashpoint in the Democrat’s quest to gain control of the Senate. It has also become Ground Zero over whether identity politics or economic issues matter more in the party’s future.

El-Sayed is an Egyptian American born and raised in metropolitan Detroit. A Columbia-trained medical doctor, he served most recently as director of the Wayne County Detroit) Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services from 2023 to 2025. He supports Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE and ending US military support for Israel. He is a populist Democrat who identifies as a progressive, not a democratic socialist.

But it is El-Sayed’s position on Israel that has gotten him into the most trouble in party politics. A group of several hundred prominent rabbis and Jewish lay people and politicians have published a list of non-negotiable Jewish positions they want El-Sayd to commit to. They include:

-          Jewish safety, including for Zionist Jews who support Israel as a Jewish state

-          the right of Jews to define their own identity

-          Jewish sovereignty in Israel

-          full Jewish participation in civic life

-          an affirmative vision for a better future in the Middle East[2]

As an African American who knows feelings of insecurity stemming from indifference from the larger society, I can empathize with our fellow Jewish citizens watching the El-Sayeds and Zoran Mamdanis of the world ascend. But of the five non-negotiable positions, I think El-Sayed would only quibble with the third one. And that is because he, like many Muslims, might argue that non-Jews are second-class citizens in Israel.[3] I think he probably supports the other four principles, though his vision of what “a better future in the Middle East” looks like probably differs from that of Zionist Jews.

 Jewish Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, herself a former CIA analyst, plopped right in the middle the fray by coming out in support of El-Sayed. She said ...

“People want to see a Jewish woman and a Muslim man being able to get along, debate, push and

pull on each other, and move the state forward. Frankly, I think it’s good for Michigan, I think it’s

good for the country to see that.” [4]

 

Slotkin, with her national security credentials, is certainly viewed as part of the  Democratic establishment. Yet in the hothouse environment of the Michigan campaign, she has thrown her support to the populist (not socialist) El-Sayed.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has announced that he’ll be appearing with El-Sayed on the campaign trail on October 24^th. An elder statesman of the Democratic Party, he is certainly an establishment liberal. But rather like Franklin Roosevelt in his day, Obama sees that the moment is ripe to push public policies to the left with the issues of affordability and opposition to the ICE crackdowns as the centerpiece. Obama casts a broad net and has a strategic vision his fellow party insiders lack.

To any Jewish folks who are reading this post I’ll say do not let differences over Israel-Palestine prevent you from supporting a clearly anti-fascist candidate. If you are liberal or populist, you probably hold onto the hope for a two-state solution over there.

I used to hope for that too. But the US and the West failed to impose conditions for such a settlement on the two traumatized parties decades ago. It might have been immediately following the Camp David Accords (1978). Or it could have been after the Oslo Accords (1993). There is copious blame to go toward all sides following the failure of those efforts. But for the US to sit idly by as Jewish settlers encroached into the West Bank in ways that make a Palestinian state seem unattainable is unforgiveable. The Arab and Muslim world feels this. Others of us (progressives, left populists, democratic socialists, etc.) feel it too.

It has always been true that without a US-led demilitarized zone on the Israel-West Bank border and the military enforcement of East Jerusalem as the capitol of Palestine, there can be no two-state solution.[5]

We know that socially liberal Jews in the US deplore the Netanyahu government in Israel, but Israeli public opinion today is against Palestinian statehood. Those Jews who oppose the trajectory of Israeli politics today aren’t able to influence it. You and the rest of us can only watch as genocide takes place.

Social liberal establishment Jews can call what’s happening in Gaza whatever you want! Left populists Jews and non-Jews can call it genocide. None of it matters until a US administration takes office that is willing to play a forceful humanitarian hand there. Does anyone see such an administration on the horizon???

Until then let’s get busy on the host of issues around affordability (and I would include racial justice) that we can agree upon to move this country back toward a semblance of human decency. I salute Elissa Slotkin and Barack Obama for embracing that strategic vision!

 

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[1] https://drvernondamanijohnson.substack.com/p/progressivism-left-populism-democratic

 [2] “Non-negotiables” unveiled by progressive Jewish leaders as they push El-Sayed to stop throwing flames - Israel & Jewish News - JNS

[3] For two slightly different views on this issue see What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel | Council on Foreign Relations; versus a view that sees more extralegal challenges facing Israeli Arabs in https://schwartzcohenlaw.com/rights-and-protections-of-israeli-arabs/

 [4] The Jewish case for electing Abdul El-Sayed

[5] I propose something like the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea where something like 20,000 US troops remain to this day.

 

As many voices are calling for our country to find common ground in this era of political polarization, I too wish for that commonality. But I lament especially with the way Donald Trump has sought to trash established institutions and practices, that common ground may have been eviscerated to the point of no return.

I have shared on these pages before my view that the 30% or so of Americans who continue to support Trump no matter what he does are people who wish to live in a very different country than the one we had before 2017. They are the MAGA or Red Nation. My project since Trump was returned to office has been to challenge people who work and reside in Blue places, multiracial democratic spaces, to hold their ground against the Trumpian onslaught.

This is because I believe we have come to the place where we live culturally in two distinct nations: one Red and the other Blue. I believe that those of us of a Blue persuasion must weather this Red Nation storm in the belief that if we stick our guns, “this too shall pass.” Central to the problem that Trumpist face is that Red and Blue nation people and those who don’t neatly fit into either pole all live amongst each other. That is why I believe that if Blue nationalists hunker down, continuing to do what they do, take hits from Trumpian Red nationalism and wait out the storm, they’ll still be around when Trump leaves office, though undoubtedly in a battered and weaker state than before.

Two voices over the last year have mapped a hopeful way forward in these perilous times. Joyce Vance, who you might know from the podcast Sisters in Law and as an MSNOW legal commentator, published a wonderful little book entitled Giving Up Is Unforgivable at around the time Trump got re-elected. In it she surveys the depth and breadth of our political institutions and the checks and balances built into them. She cites the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, Watergate and the period after 9-11 as moments that placed great stress on national institutions and argues they were able to respond to and endure.[1]

Vance focuses primarily on our political institutions. The federal courts have done their job ordering many of Trump’s executive orders and other acts be halted on statutory or constitutional grounds. Sadly, with the big exceptions of tariffs and birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court has appeased Trump by employing the fast track “shadow docket” to permit him to do his thing illegally.[2] 

The shadow docket has been used to allow mid-decade redistricting favorable to Republicans since late last year.[3] Its use is intended to further dilute the Democratic vote and lock in a Republican majority for the foreseeable future. Still, Vance exhorts us to use First Amendment rights to pressure Trump from all angles, especially she implores us to vote.

We shall see if the massive Republican effort to distort mid-term election outcomes in their favor works. People may be so unhappy with Trump’s policies that they vote his Republican minions out of power.

Meanwhile, at the level of the big private institutions of civil society we have also seen  capitulation of some major universities, law firms and media companies under pressures from the Trump administration.  Last December David Callahan of The Nation raised the issue of the role major private foundations can play in deploying their resources to counter Trumpism.[4] This was after the Department of Justice had announced that it was considering investigating George Soros’ Open Society Foundation for supporting domestic terrorism and illegal immigration. They also singled out the Freedom Together Foundation and the Ford Foundation for scrutiny. Callahan questioned whether the foundations, which are “creatures of the capitalism,” were up to “challenging the system which had spawned them.”[5] 

I’m happy to report that nearly two years into Trump 2.0 a number of big foundations are  holding up quite well. In May the Open Society Foundation announced a “$300 million initiative to improve the daily lives of Americans and stand up for the rule of law while strengthening rights and freedoms under attack across the United States.” This “represents a meaningful expansion of the Foundations’ work on democracy reform and economic justice.”[6]

Freedom Together Foundation CEO Deepak Bhargava swiftly threw support for Open Society when it was first targeted saying it was a “blatant efforts to weaken civil society’s ability to hold the government accountable.”[7] In the summer of 2025 Freedom Together announced it was seeking to raise $250 million to help grassroots groups “push back against President Trump and what they see as his steady drift toward authoritarianism.”[8] Having announced its intentions the foundation seems to be stealthily going about its business. So I have no idea of how their efforts have progressed.

I was not able to find information about the Ford Foundation’s response to the administration’s threats. But if you peruse its website today, you’re immediately confronted with the rubric “The Work of Our Moment” with subtitle “The Importance of Democracy and the Rule of Law.” Knowing that Ford operates globally one could think that heading applies to anywhere in the world. But the adjoining photo features a brown woman and child standing gleefully next to a sign reading “Vote Aqui” (Vote Here).[9]

Alas! I must once again point us to the wisdom of Antonio Gramsci which relates so well to what the Blue Nation faces today. Trump’s Red Nation ...

at the moment of (its) advance and attack ... would find themselves confronted by a

 line of defence which was still effective ... the defenders ae not demoralized, nor do they abandon

their positions, ... nor do they lose faith in their own strength or their own future.[10]

 Trump and company are throwing spaghetti at the wall, but in many important places it isn’t sticking! The Open Society, Ford and Freedom Together Foundations; the CNN, MSNOW and Politico media companies; Harvard and the other universities, and also the big law firms that haven’t caved to Trump. They are not “demoralized,” and have not lost faith in our future. They point the way for small, localized actors in civil society nationwide to oppose and outlast. Trump 2.0

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[1] Joyce Vance, Giving Up Is Unforgivable.

[2] The shadow docket rulings allow the Supreme Court to rule without the benefit of oral argument and without offering legal reasoning for decisions.

 [3] For “shadow docket” explanation see https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB11391/LSB11391.1.pdf. For criticism of its use see Ketanji Brown Jackson rips Supreme Court’s shadow docket over Trump policy wins.

[4] David Callahan, “Philanthropy in the Crosshairs,” The Nation, December 2025, pp. 32-37.

[5] Ibid, p. 36.

[6] https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/newsroom/open-society-foundations-launch-300-million-initiative-to-advance-economic-security-and-defend-civil-liberties-in-the-united-states

 [7] Callahan, p.34.

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/us/politics/freedom-together-deepak-bhargava.html

 [9] https://www.fordfoundation.org/

 [10] Hoare, Q.  & Smith, G.N  (Eds.). (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers. 1971, p. 235

Reflections on 9-11 a Quarter of a Century Later

                                          Reflections on 9-11 a Quarter of a Century Later

As we remember the awful events of September 11, 2001, we are called upon to recall the suffering of the innocent victims who died that day. This includes both those who were going about their daily business at the Twin Towers and the courageous first responders who rushed into the conflagration in the futile attempt to save them. 

Those of us who are old enough to remember 9-11 clearly remember where we were and what we were doing that morning. I was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee to start the day. As was my custom, I turned on NPR Morning Edition to catch the top stories of the day. The correspondent was reporting some kind of violent attack that had occurred somewhere. My first groggy thoughts were “Oh! Another moment of political upheaval, somewhere in the Global South; probably the Middle East.”

I stepped outside to fetch the morning paper and returned to the continuing coverage and now heard that an airliner had struck the World Trade Center in New York City. I turned on the television to view video footage of the first plane crashing into one of the towers. “Turn on the TV” I yelled upstairs to my wife. “An airplane has just crashed into the World Trade Center!”

The second plane hit the other tower minutes later as I was cleaning up in the kitchen after a light breakfast. By now they were reporting that the planes had been hijacked, possibly by Islamic terrorists.   I remember saying to myself, “If this is true, I wonder if the United States will be able to comprehend what has happened to it and respond in a way that makes sense.”

That sentiment came from my perspective as an activist who had been an advocate for Palestinian statehood since the 1970s. I had watched US politicians and media demonize the Palestinian movement.  I had followed the US-British aerial assault on Iraq after the first Persian Guld War that lasted for nearly a decade long outside of the jurisdiction of the UN and international law.

Yes! Those who executed the 9-11 attacks were Islamic extremists. For the average American who knew next to nothing about Middle Eastern history and those countries relationship with the West the attacks were senseless acts committed by evil lunatics.

But knowing something about history is important. People in Middle East see the history of their relationship with the West through the lens of Western imperialism. Especially since oil was discovered in great quantities there early in the 20^th century it has been the goal of Western security to control that resource in its interest and to find rulers compliant to those interests. Those great power’s interest would often conflict with the goals of anti-colonial movements across the region after World War II.

Anti-colonial/anti-imperialist nationalists who sought to control the oil under their ground for interest defined by locals rather than foreigners were looked upon with suspicion in Western capitals. The British, French and more recently Americans have been killing people in the Middle East since the 1920s as they connived to control the natural resources they resided over.

Winston Churchill was British Colonial Secretary in the 1920s. After British forces used poisoned gas to suppress an uprising in Somaliland there were concerns over the human consequences of using such weaponry. Churchill sought to use the gas again in its campaign to put down insurgents in Iraq. He opined “I don’t understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.”[1]

Indeed, the West has always seen the natives of what we now call the Global South as “uncivilized.” This attitude has allowed us to bomb and pillage as part of the “civilizing mission.” The natives had to be pacified before they could be civilized.

We do not have statistics for how many Muslims in the Middle East have died at the hands of Western imperialism since the 1920s. The Muslims haven’t kept reliable statistics either, but over the eight decades from the 1920s to 9-11, 2001 it is surely more than the 2,977 people who died on 9-11. Those who died in the Muslims lands, like those who perished, were frequently innocent victims.

The Muslims do know of the extent of the atrocities visited upon them, the collusion of puppet leaders with the West, and the quashing of leaders fighting for national self-determination. But because we in the West know nothing of that history, we cannot come to grips with what happened on 9-11.

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The three wars in the Persian Gulf are among the six colonial-imperial wars the US has fought in the Global South since the end of World War II. The first in Korea ended in a stalemate, The second in Vietnam saw the US defeated. The third over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was waged over the limited goals of liberating Kuwait. Many in the military brass wished to invade Iraq at that time, because it was believed to be developing nuclear weapons, and because its leader Saddam Hussein was the latest Arab to push for Arab unity against Western imperialism. That war ended in US victory.

But then came 9-11 and the “war on terror.” After appropriately invading Afghanistan to track down the Al Qaeda terrorists who were domiciled there, the US couldn’t help itself and invaded Iraq now, in search “weapons of mass destruction” which the Iraqi regime was developing, and some thought already possessed. 

There had been a UN based regime to inspect Iraqi weapons development since the end of the first Gulf war in 1991.[2] It had been on again, of again throughout the decade, but was in operation in 2003 when the US invaded. Inspections were continuing at the time of the US invasion. No evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been found; any none ever has been since.[3]

The Iraq campaign needlessly diverted resources away from what might have been an earnest effort at regime change and nation-building in Afghanistan. But in both countries US inability to understand the cultures aspiring to national self-determination and to anticipate where resistance might come from doomed the projects from the start.

These intellectual blind spots mirrored events in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. There the US failed to comprehend the dogged determination of Vietnamese revolutionaries and the substantial nation-building they had already undertaken. In the war on terror the fact that Russian and British imperialists had failed to colonize Afghanistan in the 19^th century and the lessons that might be learned from those debacles were overlooked.

In Iraq the possibility that Sunni Muslim nationalists would mount a guerrilla resistance in a dessert country where there were few forests to hide was not entertained. The US also did not consider the possibility that a majority Shia Muslim population might be influenced by neighboring Shia Iran in ways that would thwart US designs at nation-building there.

But here we go again in Iran! Whether it was emboldened by the ease with which it took down Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela or encouraged to attack by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US started its war against Iran in February. It began with the killing of most of the leadership of the country who had convened for a meeting. The hope seems to have been that if the head was cut off the government would be in disarray and a popular uprising might occur that would topple the regime.

But things didn’t work out that way and the more radical Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRG) took over the government. The IRG and its allies in Oman have engineered the closure of the Strat of Hormuz through which 25% of the world’s oil supply must pass to reach intended destinations.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth either did not listen to the top military brass to game out what the consequences of an attack Iran could have been; or did not seek their counsel at all. So, we got this idiotic war in the Persian Gulf.

The answer to the question asked myself a quarter of a century ago as I stood in my kitchen is a resounding NO! The Aghan war made some sense though I was among many who doubted that a White supremacist imperialist foreign policy establishment could orchestrate an Afghan nation-building project.

Iraq Saddam Hussein, warts and all, was a secular Iraqi nationalist, who, by the way, was a buttress against Islamic fundamentalist in his country and a potential ally in the war on terror. Today Iraq is governed by Shiites, the coreligionists of the Iranian regime and deeply influenced by it. And in Iran, having withdrawn from the internationally crafted nuclear deal, Trump has started a war that the US cannot win.

All the nations of the Middle East and across the Global South have ever  wanted was the breathing room to determine their own destinies in was affirmed in the UN Charter, the International Declaration of Human Rights and several other treaties and conventions trotted out since 1945. The United States was ambivalent about those pillars of international law then and its behavior since then 2001 has blatantly ignored them.

The US national security apparatus (not the US people) has learned nothing, since 9-11. And the people of the Middle East and the former colonial regions have had hell to pay because of it!

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[1] From Robert C Young, Postcolonialism: A Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 37. He offers a summary of violent British response to Iraqi nationalist aspirations on pp. 33-44.

[2] The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was created for this purpose.

[3] Hans Blix: I knew the truth on WMDs in Iraq – now I fear a repeat in Iran