Andrew Bard Schmookler's new book is called What We're Up Against: The Destructive Force at Work in Our World -- And How We Can Defeat It. I'll spare you some suspense; the evil force he has in mind is the Republican Party. Here's a video of a speech the author gave when he was running for Congress as a Democrat in a district gerrymandered Republican. As in the book, Schmookler calls out Republicans in the speech as promoting an unprecedented evil force in U.S. culture.

As Election Day draws near, a lot is at stake for working people in Seattle. But the outcome of Seattle’s City Council race will also reverberate in communities across the nation who want their city government to serve its constituents instead of corporate interests.

By making it the cornerstone of her platform in the 2013 City Council race, Kshama Sawant created the political will in a city controlled by the Democratic Party to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. The Democratic establishment wouldn’t have got there on its own.

Sawant won the election for District 3, unseating a 16-year incumbent Democrat and making her the first independent Socialist in decades to be elected in a major U.S. city.

After years of stagnant wages and an ever-increasing cost of living, Sawant's minimum wage initiative was tremendously popular with working class voters. To maintain their image as the “progressive” party, Democratic mayor Ed Murray and the rest of City Council had no choice but to get on board with a city charter amendment to raise the wage to $15.

My first stop, after living for 22 years in a refugee camp in Gaza, was the city of Seattle, a pleasant, green city, where people drink too much coffee to cope with the long, cold, grey winters. There, for the first time, I stood before an audience outside Palestine, to speak about Palestine.

Here, I learned, too, of the limits imposed on the Palestinian right to speak, of what I could or should not say. Platforms for an impartial Palestinian discourse were extremely narrow to begin with, and when any was available, Palestinians hardly took center stage.

It was touching, nonetheless. Ordinary Americans, mostly from leftist and socialist groups defended Palestinian rights, held vigils following every Israeli massacre and handed out pamphlets to interested or apathetic pedestrians.

However, after spending almost two decades living in the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and travelling across the globe to speak about human rights - starting with Palestinian rights, history and struggle - I began to grasp the seriousness of an unmistakable trend: where the Palestinian narrative is marginalized and fundamentally misunderstood.

   The Free Press celerated 45 years  with over 100 supporters on October 19 at the Florentine Restaurant. Six local activists were honored at the dinner in a lively ceremony emceed by Editor Bob Fitrakis filled with positive messages about effective organizing and activism in Ohio.
   The Free Press is now “Ohio’s oldest locally-owned news source,” since the Wolfe family recently sold the Columbus Dispatch. This October marks our 45th anniversary, and the paper has re-shaped political debate in Ohio’s capitol city since 1970.