The US Doesn’t Need a Party, It Needs a Revolution

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/30/the-us-doesnt-need-a-party-it-needs-a-revolution/

 

Music of the World for the Caverns of Your Mind

 Rahsaan Roland Kirk.....

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/25/music-of-the-world-for-the-caverns-of-your-mind/ 

Money for War, Wars for Money

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/18/money-for-war-wars-for-money/

The Angle of Falling Light: A Review

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/12/the-angle-of-falling-light-a-review/

Community Space in a Privatized Land

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/04/community-space-in-a-privatized-land/

The Devil's Chickens Back in the Barnyard

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/01/the-devils-chickens-back-in-the-barnyard/

 

Palestinian Liberation, Not Imperialist “Stabilization”

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/25/palestinian-liberation-not-imperialist-stabilization/

The Audacity of Hope, Denied

 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-audacity-of-hope-denied/

Stepping Up the Propaganda for War

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/19/stepping-up-the-propaganda-for-war/

Supporting Genocide with a Non-Profit Status

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/11/supporting-genocide-with-a-non-profit-status/

Fungi, from Jamaica to Cop City and Beyond

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/07/fungi-from-jamaica-to-cop-city-and-beyond/

Poetry is Not an Expression of the Party Line

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/31/poetry-is-not-an-expression-of-the-party-line/

Food, Not War

           Bob Marley’s song “Them Belly Full (But They Hungry) has a lyric that goes “A hungry mob is a angry mob…”  I quote the song because tens of millions of people in the United States will lose their access to SNAP/EBT on November 1, 2025.  For those who don’t know, SNAP/EBT is how those people can afford enough food to feed themselves and their families.  Not only do these folks depend on this program to supplement their income so they can buy food, so do the grocery stores—big and small—depend on the income generated by those purchases.  Those purchases came to almost 94 billion dollars in 2024.  SNAP/EBT is not a handout, it is an essential part of a US economy that is out of whack; an economy that continues to give more money to the wealthiest among us while impoverishing more and more hardworking people.  Yes, most people who receive EBT subsidies work, just like most of the people who receive Medicaid and even more of the people who receive subsidies to help pay their health insurance.  Let me repeat, these subsidies are not handouts, even though it would be irrelevant if they were.

             According to an October 26, 2025 article on the The Hill website, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a five billion dollar reserve in its contingency fund. This funding is there to be used when regular funding is not available.  The USDA administers the SNAP/EBT program.  It could use these funds to stave off what will certainly be a drastic increase in hunger, but it refuses to do so.  There’s one main reason it is refusing.  The GOP and Donald Trump won’t let them.  It seems reasonable to say that the GOP and Donald Trump want people to go hungry, even while they continue to collect their paychecks and eat good meals most likely prepared by someone else.  Yes, letting people go hungry is a choice, just like deciding to send thousands of troops and sailors to the Caribbean to kill people accused without proof of being involved in drug trafficking while threatening sovereign nations with war is a choice.  Letting people go hungry is a choice, just like spending billions of dollars to build a gestapo-like police force with orders to kidnap people because of their skin tone and accent is a choice.  I could go on, but I think I made my point. 

            The current government shutdown is an act of vengeance by Donald Trump and his minions.  This becomes clear when one reads the text on the websites of numerous government agencies blaming the “far-left” Democrats for the shutdown.  It becomes even clearer when one goes beyond the alleged reasons given by the White House, reasons that include the lies that undocumented immigrants receive SNAP/EBT, Medicaid and ACA healthcare supplements.  They don’t.  Do I think they should be able to?  Yes.  But they can’t under current law.

            I live in Vermont.  A few days ago (10/23/2025), the newspaper Vermont Digger reported that some Vermont legislators are looking for a way to provide emergency funding so tens of thousands of Vermonters will not go without food sometime in November, the month we celebrate Thanksgiving.  That same article also reported that Vermont’s Governor Scott can order funds to be released that would cover those payments.  I hope and expect Vermont will figure something out.  However, that will do nothing for the tens of millions of other people in the US whose cupboards will be bare without the funds they receive because of the SNAP/EBT program.

            By the way, Happy Thanksgiving.

True Crime: Murder on the High Seas

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/27/true-crime-murder-on-the-high-seas/

A Jazz Double Bill

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/23/a-jazz-double-bill/

Antifa: A Graphic History of its Origins

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/16/antifa-a-graphic-history-of-its-origins/

The World is Insane and Thomas Pynchon Knows It

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/13/the-world-is-insane-and-thomas-pynchon-knows-it/

Self Determination is Black Liberation

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/09/self-determination-is-black-liberation/

Colonialism and Tony Blair (Again?)

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/29/colonialism-and-tony-blair-again/

A Disturbing Journal of an Imperial Hell

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/26/a-disturbing-journal-of-an-imperial-hell/

A Tale of Two Charlies

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/18/a-tale-of-two-charlies/

The Communists Defended Free Speech, Not the Feds

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/09/the-communists-defended-free-speech-not-the-feds/

Throw Up Both My Hands (Make Me Want to Holler)

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/02/throw-up-both-my-hands-make-me-want-to-holler/

The War on Drugs as Imperial War

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/25/the-war-on-drugs-as-imperial-war/

Surviving the Selva: The Darien Gap and Migration

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/20/surviving-the-selva-the-darien-gap-and-migration/

If I Can’t Laugh, I Don’t Want to Be in Your Revolution

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/15/if-i-cant-laugh-i-dont-want-to-be-in-your-revolution/

Marc Estrin's Fictions of Alienation

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/13/marc-estrins-fictions-of-alienation/

Trumpism ≠ Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/08/trumpism-%e2%89%a0-nicaragua-cuba-and-venezuela/

Anti Capitalist Road Trip

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/05/anti-capitalist-road-trip/

The Mind of the State

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/28/the-mind-of-the-state/

What Will It Take to End Western Complicity in Israel’s Gaza Genocide?

 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/end-complicity-in-gaza-genocide

Vietnam and Palestine

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/17/vietnam-and-palestine/

Twentieth Century Rebel Woman

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/10/twentieth-century-rebel-woman/

Reporting Live from the Twilight's Last Gleaming

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/04/reporting-live-from-the-twilights-last-gleaming/

Ghassan Kanafani: Words of Liberation

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/27/ghassan-kanafani-words-of-liberation/

Talking Vietnam on Out of the Blank

 https://youtu.be/yvlB6pAUrDQ?si=SdqlBM6b8LEFUlDz

Punks Against Reagan, Racism, War and the Religious Right

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/23/punks-against-reagan-racism-war-and-the-religious-right/ 

Once Again, the Stupidity of War

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/17/once-again-the-stupidity-of-war/

 

FOXNews, the US Gestapo, and the Lies They Tell and Enforce

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/13/foxnews-the-us-gestapo-and-the-lies-they-tell-and-enforce/

Fascists, Migrants and Greece: An On-site Report

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/11/fascists-migrants-and-greece-an-on-site-report/

Putting the Avant in Avant-Garde, New York in the Long Sixties

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/03/putting-the-avant-in-avant-garde-new-york-in-the-long-sixties/

Two Murderous Regimes, Three Murdered Embassy Employees

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/26/two-murderous-regimes-three-murdered-embassy-employees/

World War Two: The Genesis of Modern Imperialism

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/23/world-war-two-the-genesis-of-modern-imperialism/

Setting the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/14/setting-the-controls-for-the-heart-of-the-sun/

Vanity on Parade

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/12/vanity-on-parade/

Killed by the Counterrevolutionary Coup: Chile 1973

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/07/killed-by-the-counterrevolutionary-coup-chile-1973/

The Brutality of Fascism: A Personal and Political Witness

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/01/the-brutality-of-fascism-a-personal-and-political-witness/

Nuclear Power Reactors in Vermont? Not Again

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/25/nuclear-power-reactors-in-vermont-not-again/

 

Nationalism: The Measles of Mankind

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/18/nationalism-the-measles-of-mankind/

Free Rümeysa Öztürk Protest in Vermont

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/16/free-rumeysa-ozturk-protest-in-vermont/

 

An Angry Cry from the Place We Call the Periphery

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/11/an-angry-not-anguished-cry-from-the-place-they-call-the-periphery/ 

A Beginning, Not an End: Hands Off What?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/08/a-beginning-not-an-end-hands-off-what/ 

The Rebellion of the Hippie Lumpen in Capitalist Berlin

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/04/the-rebellion-of-the-hippie-lumpen-in-capitalist-berlin/

 

Resisting Trumpism 2.0, an excerpt

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/28/resisting-trumpism-2-0/

Resistance is Not Futile

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/21/resistance-is-not-futile/

Challenging the Dominant Paradigm

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/14/challenging-the-dominant-paradigm/

Behind the Numbers Lies Austerity and Authoritarianism

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/20/behind-the-numbers-lies-austerity-and-authoritarianism/

Trump and Vance Bully, Zelenskyy Leaves the Room, the War Drags On

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/03/trump-and-vance-bully-zelenskyy-leaves-the-room-the-war-drags-on/

Washita Love Child

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/28/washita-love-child/

With Aid Agencies Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/26/with-aid-agencies-like-this-who-needs-enemies/

You Can't Murder Liberation

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/21/you-cant-murder-liberation/

Funding the Revolution, Beating the Banks

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/14/funding-the-revolution-beating-the-banks/ 

Culture, Christianity and the Afrikaner Blues

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/13/culture-christianity-and-the-afrikaner-blues/

Violence in its Natural State: Palestine’s Moment

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/07/violence-in-its-natural-state-palestines-moment/

47 With a Vengeance

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/04/47-with-a-vengeance/

A Tale of Revolution and Friendship

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/31/a-tale-of-revolution-and-friendship/

Graphic Antifascism and a B. Traven Comic

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/24/graphic-antifascism-and-a-b-traven-comic/

Trump Carries the Big Stick?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/23/trump-carries-the-big-stick/ 

Tuneful Trifecta Train Ride

Bill Evans is on Elemental Records, not Resonance.

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/17/tuneful-trifecta-train-ride/

 

Patriarchy, COVID-19 and a Novel About a Dickhead

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/10/patriarchy-covid-19-and-a-novel-about-a-dickhead/

New Year’s Resolution Number One: Join the Movement Against World War

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/31/new-years-resolution-number-one-join-the-movement-against-world-war/

Syria After Assad

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/27/syria-after-assad/

Poetry and Revolution: Audre Lorde’s Prayers to the World

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/20/poetry-and-revolution-audre-lordes-prayers-to-the-world/

 

Washington's Third World War Scores Another Victory

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/14/washingtons-third-world-war-scores-another-victory/

Just Let Me Flip This Chromium Switch Here...The Comedy of the Firesign Theater

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/09/just-let-me-flip-this-chromium-switch-here-the-comedy-of-firesign-theater/

The Trumpist Bureau of Investigation?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/04/the-trumpist-bureau-of-investigation/

Where the Wind Don’t Blow So Strange: The Journey Begun

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/29/where-the-wind-dont-blow-so-strange-the-journey-begun/

The Impact of Images

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/25/the-impact-of-images/

Lula's Toughest Battle?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/20/lulas-toughest-battle/

The Power and Glory of a Pinochet Priest

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/08/the-power-and-glory-of-a-pinochet-priest/

Don't Mourn, Fight!

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/07/dont-mourn-fight/

Resisting Slavery, Resisting Incarceration

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/01/resisting-slavery-resisting-incarceration/

Will the Phoenix Rise Again in Palestine?

 Please donate to Counterpunch!!

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/25/will-the-phoenix-rise-again-in-palestine/

San Francisco Bay Blues

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/18/san-francisco-bay-blues/

 

So What Happens After November 5th?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/11/so-what-happens-after-november-5th/

Believe Me, It’s Been Going Downhill for Awhile

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/01/believe-me-its-been-going-downhill-for-awhile/

Correction:  Saigon was liberated on April 30, 1975 not May 11th of that year. Below is the corrected version of the piece.

-ron j

On September 8, 1974, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while president of the United States.  I remember when I first heard the news.  A friend and I had just taken our seats in a lecture hall at the University of Maryland’s main campus in College Park, MD.  The class usually began with a series of announcements from the professor—guest speakers, upcoming tests, book purchases and so on.  That day, the only announcement was that Ford had just pardoned Nixon.  A murmur went through the overflowing lecture hall.  Two hundred students expressed their anger and cynical acceptance.  Those who supported Nixon were either non-existent or very quiet.  As the class continued, whispers about a protest on the green began to circulate.  Maybe they reached the podium, because the professor let class out half an hour early.  A couple dozen of us headed to the mall. There was little going on.  Some people sneaking hits of weed in the bushes and raised voices disparaging the pardon.  People’s cynicism was magnified.  The overwhelming sentiment was confirmed—the powerful always get away with their crimes.  I had to work that evening, so I headed to the IHOP, where I cooked over a grill forty or more hours a week.  Lots of pork products, eggs and pancakes.  Short stacks, if you know what I mean.

That same month the University of Maryland student newspaper had a strange letter regarding a rumor that the university was going to pay the former Israeli military “hero” Moshe Dayan lots of money to speak at the college.  Yes, the eye patch-wearing member of the zionist terror group Haganah was invited to tell Israeli lies for a hefty sum.  I don’t recall whether or not he did come to the campus.  I do remember that a table I was sitting at dispensing left-wing newspapers and books was overturned by a couple of members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL)  because some of the books we had supported the Palestinian Liberation Organization.  Back then, the PLO was a predominantly socialist and communist organization opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.  Washington and Tel Aviv wanted it destroyed as much as they want today’s Palestinian resistance destroyed.  Indeed, it’s easily argued that the destruction of the mostly secular PLO informed the rise of the religiously inspired resistance of Hamas and other such groups.  The JDL was a group founded by the racist, supremacist New York rabbi Meir Kahane.  Its attacks on Soviet installations and cultural events, Black organizations and organizers, and US leftist groups, together with anti-socialist rhetoric, indicated its essential fascism.  The group was illegal in Israel.  Nowadays, individuals who consider Kahane a hero and inspiration are part of the Israeli government.  The JDL’s hate-filled politics are part of the mainstream in Israel. Similarly, although the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had the JDL on its watchlist for years, many of the ADL’s current positions are distressingly similar to some of Kahane’s numerous statements back in the day.  This is especially true in regard to the movement against Israel’s apartheid regime. Although many zionists in the United States probably never heard of Kahane, too many of their sentiments come straight out of his philosophy.

Meanwhile, Richard Nixon drowned his sorrows in San Clemente, just up the interstate from the neon glow of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.  His buddy Elvis performed at the university’s basketball arena.  A regular hunk of burning love. On April 30, 1975, the Vietnamese liberation forces took Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.  Lots of us celebrated. A few days later, Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford, ordered an attack on Kampuchea after a US Navy ship was temporarily captured by the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge, who were in control of Cambodia thanks in part to Washington’s relentless bombing of the country since 1969 and its replacement of the monarchy with a CIA fascist named Lon Nol, turned back to its killing fields. A few weeks earlier, Marine recruiters set up shop in front of the University of Maryland student union only to be met with a fairly large blockade of their table by students, staff and some faculty.  Right-wing students attacked those of us who encircled the table several rows deep, attempting to break through by pushing people to the ground and punching a few.  Mostly, these big men went after the smallest women.  Campus police eventually intervened and the Marines went inside the Union behind a closed door.  A couple of protesters were able to get into the room and disrupted the recruiting procedures there.  They got arrested.  We took over the office of a university administrator and they released the two arrestees.

Hundreds of students protested cuts to the university staff over the academic year. Faculty in the Women’s Studies and Black Studies departments were the first on the chopping block.  Unionized staff joined us students.  We rallied a few times, held pickets and interrupted classes to get people’s attention.  It didn’t matter.  The next fall we would disrupt a meeting of the Regents while they voted to go ahead with the cuts. Higher education was looking to the future they had decided on and those that ran it were already working on how to cash in.  Neoliberalism was just around the corner and the foundation was being built much quicker than we could tear it down.  Jimmy Carter was down home talking to the young people and hanging out with the Allman Brothers while their manager distributed cocaine.  Gerald Ford didn’t really have a chance in the upcoming election.  His boys talked about getting high in the White House. Something was happening, but it wasn’t what it seemed like, Mr. Jones.  At least nobody in power was making abortion illegal again.

After Carter got elected and began privatizing public services under the guise of reform and retreating somewhat on his amnesty for draft resisters proposal, some of us saw our fears confirmed; the assimilation of the counterculture into the mainstream meant the purging of the politics many of us considered to be part of that culture. There were lots of corpses littering the ground of SE Asia.  Israel was expanding its illegal occupation.  Anti-colonial wars in Africa raged.  Nixon and his fascists almost took down the US government and even though they failed, they made it even worse than it already was.  Marijuana was completely illegal and friends were getting put away for months and even years for possession.

The Democrats were retreating from their McGovern moment and the corporate party leadership was taking the party back while the neocons—who were led by Democrat Henry Scoop Jackson, the senator from Boeing—were working on making war reasonable again.  It would take them a while.  The GOP was watching the Birchers and other right-wing clowns start to groom Reagan for the White House. The lines were being redrawn and the right wing in both parties was doing the drawing.

I still wonder how many of the people I used to get high with in my youth later voted for Ronald Reagan, who once called for a bloodbath of young people on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and sent in lots of cops to facilitate it.  Likewise, I wonder how many, if any, regret those votes.  After all, the Reagan years are a big reason why the two current mainstream candidates include a raving fascist and a Ronald Reagan in Democrat drag.  Speaking of which, I wonder how many of those who I used to drink and get high with voted for Trump.  Or think Ralph Nader lost the 2000 election for Al Gore and Jill Stein could ruin it for Kamala Harris.

We’re told electoral politics matter in the United States, but the results of each election I live through make me wonder as to the veracity of that truism.  I guess they matter for certain classes and sectors of the US population.  For me, a worker now mostly retired, the only way they matter is how much and in what ways I will be getting shit upon after the polls are closed.  That and how they’ll affect women and children, especially those who don’t have white skin or money.  Some things never seem to change.

Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com

Empire is Without Virtue

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/20/empire-is-without-virtue/

F*ck the Army: Revisiting the Antiwar Troupe’s 1971 Tour

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/16/fck-the-army-revisiting-the-antiwar-troupes-1971-tour/

The Red Hour of Miracles: Aimé Césaire’s And the Dogs Were Silent

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/06/the-red-hour-of-miracles-aime-cesaires-and-the-dogs-were-silent/

Kamala Harris: A Hubert Humphrey for 2024

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/27/kamala-harris-a-hubert-humphrey-for-2024/

When Offense is Defined as Defense—Kursk Version

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/19/when-offense-is-defined-as-defense-kursk-version/

A Punk Rock Paean

 Here is my review of a new book about musician Mia Zapata and her band, the Gits.  It is behind a firewall.  A yearly subscription is a mere 25 bucks....and well worth it!.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/17/a-punk-rock-paean/

Fake Jesus and Free Buffalo

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/07/fake-jesus-and-free-buffalo/ 

Washington Lies, Palestinians Die, Tel Aviv Gives Everyone the Finger

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/05/washington-lies-palestinians-die-tel-aviv-gives-everyone-the-finger/

The Folly of Atomic Power

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/02/the-folly-of-atomic-power/

Down and Out in San Francisco

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/down-and-out-in-san-francisco/

Biden Out, Trump Raging: The Shitshow Continues

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/22/biden-out-trump-raging-the-shitshow-continues/

NATO Still Needs to Go

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/12/nato-still-needs-to-go/

Scab of a Nation-4th of July 2024 Edition

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/05/scab-of-a-nation-4th-of-july-2024-edition/

Capital's Big Bank

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/21/capitals-big-bank/