Category: Uncategorized

My biggest fear about the 2022 election is not that conditions will be that political and economic conditions will be difficult for Democrats–for reasons I have explained a few times I don’t think that will be the case–but that good candidates are not getting ready to run in state legislative races and political contributors are not getting ready to fund them beause that wrongly fear that it will be a bad year, (And it doesn’t help that we don’t know what the district lines will be now and won’t for about another two weeks.) Political scientists have shown that this dynamic explains part of the problem with mid-term elections for the party that holds the presidency. In other words, the failure of parties in those elections is a self-fulflilling prophecy. Don’t let that happen. If you are thinking of running for the General Assembly in 2022, do it. If you… Continue reading

By Diane Gottlieb and Katja Gottlieb-Stier Betty Allanoff Gottlieb, who was thought to be intellectually disabled in kindergarten because she spoke only Yiddish, graduated high school at fifteen, and attained a PhD in Biochemistry at 61, died on the thirtieth of March 2021, twenty-four years and three weeks after the death of her beloved husband Harry Gottlieb MD.  Betty had unparalleled joie de vivre. A passionate learner, her interests were perpetually expanding. A first generation American born to Jewish immigrants from what was then the Russian/Polish border, Betty lived with her parents and extended family on South 4th Street in Philadelphia in the building that became Southwark and, most recently, Ambra restaurant. She studied Biochemistry at Temple University and continued this focus pursuing a PhD at Indiana University. As the only woman in the department she was often discouraged by her male supervisors.  Following a chance reacquaintance with Harry Gottlieb… Continue reading

This is an update of the remarks I gave at a press conference led by Senator Vince Hughes and the Urban League and attended by Liz Randol of the ACLU, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, District Attorney Larry Krasner and many others last week. A proposed constitutional amendment stating that equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged because of an individual’s race or ethnicity is on the Pennsylvania ballot next week. The amendment would bring rights protected under the U.S. Constitution into the PA Constitution. Racial and ethnic prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination are totally antithetical to the basic rights of human beings. The protection of these rights is so central to a decent and just political community that at the federal level we have embedded it in our Constitution, thereby creating a way to appeal to the Courts if and when Congress, the presidency, and state and local… Continue reading

IN BRIEF White supremacy and slavery were created by political and economic elites to divide working people and limit their power; White supremacy has continued to do that throughout American history. Slavery and racial discrimination against people of color is so contrary to America’s unrealized ideals that it has to be justified by racist depictions of Black people that have then been used to describe all people with low incomes. Structural racism has created enormous barriers to Black economic progress and largely accounts for the substantial differences in income and wealth between Black and white people. White supremacy also harms white people with low and moderate incomes by undermining efforts to raise wages and create an inclusive and well-funded safety net for all. INTRODUCTION This policy brief, unlike the others in the We The People series, is not focused on a particular public policy but on the critical background issue… Continue reading

The election of Trump was in large part a rear guard action of old white men (and the wives who think their fate is wrapped up in white supremacy and patriarchy) against an American that has been changing far too slowly for many of us, but far too fast for them–that is changing at all.  Trump’s explicit racism and sexism appeared because the we were slowly undermining racist and sexist practices and the usual mechanisms by which they were reproduced from generation to generation. Those practices were reproduced even as explicit racist and sexist speech was becoming less common in polite company. The power of structural racism and patriarchy makes it possible for them to continue even when people don’t explicitly embrace them. But it becomes necessary to advance to advance racism and sexism explicitly when you are afraid that they are being threatened. Trump’s explicit embrace of racism and… Continue reading