I was deeply sad when I heard of the passing of Dolly Parton. She was one of the most likeable stars. And she was such a great songwriter, I was open to listening to her songs growing up even though I wasn’t particularly a fan of the country music genre. I especially like Dolly Parton’s collaboration with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.

My Facebook page is connected to a lot of leftist activists and artists. I was surprised to see the heartbreak and deep affection that these leftists have for Dolly. Then I read tributes of Dolly from leftist magazines like The Nation and Jacobin Magazine for her strong support of unions, the LBGTQIA+ community, Black Lives Matter, children’s literacy and for those who are poor and struggling (especially those in the Appalachian community where she came from).

Dolly herself wasn’t a leftist. But she shared with leftists a deep empathy for the poor and the marginalized due of her strong Christian faith. Dolly believed that her Christian faith taught her to love everyone, especially those who are marginalized in society. Dolly Parton grew up in a poor Appalachian community that was often look down on, which gave her a lot of empathy for others who are marginalized. This led her to accept LGBTQIA+ individuals and others whom many other Christians would harshly judge and condemn.

Until 2 days ago, I didn’t know any of this. This made me want to get a Dolly Parton biography from the library and learn more about her philanthropy.

Several articles stated that Dolly Parton is one of the few individuals who are loved from across the political spectrum, among both progressives and conservatives.

Here are some tributes of Dolly that I found online.

Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote for The New York Times:

“Writing her own story was the most radical, precise way to define herself in a world that kept trying to fit her into a box. She was not simply Southern, not simply country. She was from Appalachia — a place that is just as mythologized, mocked and misunderstood as Dolly was. It’s a place where people are rarely allowed to speak for themselves. Instead, they are interpolated through coastal biases about white trash and red states...

...Her indefatigable sense of herself as a creative person, with the right to make her art as she saw fit, came from her sense of place. She crafted stories in the rhyme, meter, poetry and politics of Appalachia. Her interpretations of bluegrass may be among my favorites, especially when she met her creative match in Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris...

...For all her sparkle, Dolly was a simple girl. She wrote simple lyrics, simple melodies, told simple stories about simple human experiences. Her lyrics were simple because the living in Appalachia can be so hard. They were often radical for the same reason. Lines like ‘They just use your mind, and they never give you credit. / It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it,’ from her smash hit ‘9 to 5’ are true to the working-class politics of folk music but tell a story through women instead of men...

...Appalachia’s food, its literature and its music are universal. That’s why anywhere in the world where people have been pushed from their homeland or trapped in its cycle of exploitation, you will find a Dolly Parton fan.”

Jarek Paul Ervin for Jacobin Magazine

“...Parton was one of the most consistent voices for working-class people. She used her songs to tell stories of hard work, poverty, and defiance, transforming the lives of ordinary people into subject matter for heroic ballads.

Zohran Mamdani put it best when he characterized Parton as an ‘irreplaceable champion of the working class’...

...This sensibility permeated Parton’s music, which cast tramps, widows, hungry children, divorcees, and other working-class women as narrators. Her songs told tales of poor families who nevertheless held their heads high and carried on even when the deck was stacked against them. She also wasn’t afraid to tackle difficult themes like women’s sexuality and marital infidelity...

...Parton addressed what people were waiting to hear about: poverty, injustice, labor exploitation, and working-class pride. She did so in a way that was as funny as it was heart-wrenching, producing music that endures long after its moment...

...Parton gave a voice to those who are all too often forgotten, both in culture and politics. It wouldn’t hurt the Left to steal a page from her songbook.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation:

“Organized labor is celebrating the life and legacy of an artist who championed working women and carried a union card for almost 60 years...

...Workers everywhere knew what Parton meant when she sang about ‘barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’,’ and complained, ‘They just use your mind and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.’ That song appeared on a remarkable solo album by Parton, 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs, which also included songs such as ‘Working Girl’ and ‘Poor Folks Town’ by Parton, along with a poignant cover of ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,’ Woody Guthrie’s reflection on the racist treatment of migrant farm workers...

...Dave Pomeroy, the bass player who serves as president of the AFM’s powerful Local 257 in Nashville, noted, ‘Throughout her 58 years as a proud member in good standing of Local 257, she set the gold standard for supporting her band and fellow musicians,’ he recalled. ‘Dolly and her team consistently filed AFM union contracts for gigs, sessions, and tours, ensuring that the bands, singers, and studio musicians working alongside her received the benefits of union membership’...

...SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, a longtime social, economic justice, and LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, hailed Parton as ‘a once-in-a-generation artist and, just as importantly, someone of true generosity and decency.’

‘As a fellow native Tennessean,’ he recalled. ‘I’m humbled by what she did with her platform: putting books in the hands of millions of children through the Imagination Library, standing up for people being treated unfairly, and modeling real inclusion, including as a steady friend to the LGBTQ+ community well before that was easy to do. SAG-AFTRA and the entire creative community mourn her loss.’”

Chris Azzopardi wrote for Pride Source:

“Everybody wants to call Dolly ‘the great unifier’ now, ever since the 2019 podcast ‘Dolly Parton’s America,’ from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad, made the case for her as maybe the last person left in America who both sides claim as their own. It’s not wrong. It’s also a little bit of a cop-out to call her that, because it makes her sound like she got there by staying quiet, by being agreeable enough that nobody could pin anything on her. She didn’t. She got there by answering hard questions in a way that made it very hard to be mad at her for the answer because it was honest, and honesty was Dolly’s default.

I asked her once, point blank, on a Zoom call the morning after a bruising presidential election, what it meant to reach people across ‘the spectrum of religion, race, politics, gay, straight.’ She didn’t dodge into a talking point. ‘I just love people,’ she said. ‘I love that God light and that God core that is in every single one of us. I do not judge or criticize or condemn.’ Fine, sweet, very Dolly. Then I pushed a little further — does it hurt you, knowing not everyone can love like that? And she didn’t do the thing famous people do, where they pivot to gratitude and grace. She just said yes. ‘Well, yeah, it does hurt me that anybody cannot open their heart to love people in the way they should’...

...I once asked Dolly why she’d taken that step, becoming one of the first major country artists to stand up for LGBTQ+ equality. She didn’t treat it like a stance at all. Just unconditional love. ‘Why wouldn’t I stand up for everybody, for all people?’ she said. ‘In the country field, we’re brought up in spiritual homes, we’re taught to ‘judge not lest you be judged,’ and it’s always been a mystery to me how people jump all over things just to criticize, condemn and judge other people when that is so un-Christian — and they claim to be good Christians! We’re supposed to love one another. We’re supposed to accept and love one another. Whether we do or not, that’s a different story. But that’s what we’re supposed to do.’”

Christopher Wiggins and Neal Broverman wrote for The Advocate:

“For generations of LGBTQ+ fans, however, Parton was more than an entertainer. She returned their devotion. She championed marriage equality, rejected religious judgment of queer people, defended transgender Americans and embraced drag culture...

...Parton’s Christian faith was central to her life, but she refused to use it as a weapon against LGBTQ+ people...

...When North Carolina’s anti-transgender ‘bathroom bill’ became a national controversy in 2016, Parton responded with compassion — and characteristic humor.

‘I think everybody should be treated with respect,’ she said on CNN. ‘I hope that everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are’...

...Parton publicly supported marriage equality years before the U.S. Supreme Court made it the law of the land...

...She said she had witnessed the pain LGBTQ+ people experienced when they were targeted and rejected. Parton’s conclusion drew upon the Christian faith she repeatedly invoked in defense of queer people: Judgment belonged to God, she said, and everyone was one of God’s children.”

Krysta Fauria wrote for AP News:

“...for many Christian members of the LGBTQ+ community who struggled to reconcile their sexuality and gender identity with the intolerant beliefs they were taught, Parton’s public support helped them keep their faith in some cases, and transformed their understanding of how God sees them in others.

‘Her approach to solidarity was inspiring for me as a young, queer Christian girl realizing I was gay,’ said Ciarra Jones, a 32-year-old workplace consultant from Oakland, California. ‘For queer Christians, experiencing another queer Christian — or another queer-affirming person that is Christian — is important to your journey. Dolly, for me, was one of those lights.’

Long before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide, Parton made acceptance a recurring theme of both her music and public persona, which has contributed to long-running support from the LGBTQ+ community...

...Parton, whose grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, said her support for LGBTQ+ people was rooted in her Christian faith.”

In an interview of Nehemiah Frank by Adrian Florido, Jordan-Marie Smith and Justine Kenin for NPR:

“ADRIAN FLORIDO: Many Black Americans feel a special kinship with Dolly Parton, who, though a white country singer from Appalachia, seemed to transcend racial and political divides and often supported Black civil rights struggles. To talk about this, we are joined by Nehemiah Frank. He publishes an online newspaper, The Black Wall Street Times, and he wrote about this...

...NEHEMIAH FRANK: There’s this phrase in the Black community that we often use about people coming to the cookout. And Dolly Parton was always welcome to the cookout. And the reason why was because she was just so authentic and unapologetically herself. She was such a genuine person, and vulnerable, you know, at times when she didn’t have to be because of her privilege...

...Dolly had spent decades carefully avoiding, you know, partisan politics, for one. But when she finally spoke, she didn’t hedge on whether Black lives matter. She made the moral question sound as obvious as it should have been. And I thought it hit. You know, it sounds a little funny when she says it, but to Black America, when we see that is, you know, she’s not centering herself or just white people. She’s saying, hey, Black people are human. And I think that vulnerability, with her stature in American pop culture - like, she really put herself on the line there, and she didn’t care. So, you know, Black Americans saw her as an ally the moment she got real...

...The thing that we could learn from her is that, you know, it’s not a hard thing to be able to reach across the aisle or to reach into people’s lives. It doesn’t take a lot, and, you know, she made it look easy. Of course, she does have a lot of resources but, you know, small acts of kindness can go a long way.”

Jason G. Edwards wrote for The Christian Century:

“What was it about Dolly that made it possible for people who usually aren’t capable of sharing politics, theology, or even a common vocabulary to share her?

Ten years ago, Jad Abumrad, the creator of Radiolab, became fascinated by the breadth of that affection. He’d never given Dolly much attention until he saw her perform in Queens in 2016. The presidential campaign had American public life feeling especially raw, and he noticed the crowd: drag queens, evangelical Christians, hipsters, and people whose lives otherwise seemed unlikely to overlap, all waiting to see the same woman…

…Dolly’s faith never fit neatly into any standard denominational framework, but she talked often about God, Jesus, scripture, and prayer. Some of what she said would’ve been difficult to reconcile with the theology of churches she knew, but that didn’t seem to trouble her too much. When once asked how she practiced her faith, she resisted the verb: ‘I don’t practice it. I live it’…

…There was a generosity about Dolly, and a kind of extravagant welcome. She had convictions, but she didn’t seem to need an enemy to prove them. She had the ability to laugh at herself without making someone else the punchline. Some element of her faith seems to have opened her toward all kinds of people—and them toward her.”

#dollyparton #lgbtqcommunity #transcommunity #blacklivesmatter #unions #workingclass #appalachians #america #democrats #republicans #leftists

Leave a comment

Here is the book “The Duterte Years: Angelo Lopez Cartoons 2016-2022” that showcases my editorial cartoons in the Philippine News Today that tried to highlight the authoritarian direction that former President Rodrigo Duterte was taking the Philippines during the years 2016 to 2022.

During that time, Rodrigo Duterte became President of the Philippines and he began to systematically attack the democratic institutions of the country. He gave the police impunity to kill people who are only suspected of drug crimes without giving these suspects a chance to defend themselves in a court of law. The result is around 30,000 Filipinos killed by the police or vigilantes. As well as crime suspects, anyone who dares criticize Duterte or the use of extrajudicial killings is targeted to be harassed, jailed or killed. So journalists, lawyers, activists, priests, mayors, and ordinary people are being threatened for daring to be critical.

In the pages of the Philippine News Today, a Filipino American newspaper based in San Francisco Bay Area, I tried to use my cartoons shine a light on economic exploitation, vigilante killings, and the steady walk to authoritarianism.

Through my cartoons, I was trying to cry out to Filipinos and Filipino Americans to take notice before it is too late.

If you are interested in purchasing my book, you can go to

https://www.amazon.com/Duterte-Years-Angelo-Cartoons-2016-2022/dp/B0BZ2Y7G95/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2QOD5JJOT9ZWD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.TQSvGKHCOrExalZY6ZuXag.xOXxhjZJvqFB9G-2DMnEQUiwzDf2lv2QJJS5urvHhVE&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+duterte+years+angelo+lopez&qid=1787511844&s=books&sprefix=the+duterte+years+angelo+lopez%2Cstripbooks%2C136&sr=1-1

#philippines #democracy #authoritarianism #fascism #rodrigoduterte #extrajudicialkillings #drugwar #democraticbacksliding #redtagging #freeexpression #activists #journalists #clergy #Catholicchurch #lawyers #judges

Leave a comment

When I attended an Episcopal Church in the late 2000s, I produced a weekly cartoon for the church bulletin to go with the the weekly readings. "Bible Cartoons" is a collection of these cartoons, which are collected from the years 2009 to 2012.

I am a very flawed human being who often fails to live up to Christian values. Like all human beings, I’m a complex mix of good and bad.

A few years ago, Pope Francis said that the Church should be a hospital for sinners and not just a sanctuary for saints.

I like that description of a Christian community.

In an article by Carol Glatz for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Glatz wrote about Pope Leo XIV welcoming both believers and nonbelievers to Church:

“An authentic Christian community knows how to sincerely and joyfully welcome everyone: Catholics, non-Catholics and people of no faith at all, Pope Leo XIV said.

‘A true parish’ is where ‘we all learn to say ‘Welcome,’ not only with words, but with a spirit of hospitality, opening the door and welcoming everyone,’ he said, speaking to members of the community during his first visit to a parish in his Diocese of Rome.”

I think a church community is just a group of flawed people who together learn how to love and serve each other and be the best versions of ourselves and our community that God wants us to be.

We’ll never reach perfection. But I don’t think God expects us to be perfect. God expects us to constantly screw up. I think we can be flawed people and still do good.

So I approached these cartoons not as a Bible expert, but as someone who thinks the Bible is important and has given me much wisdom on how to better understand God.

If any of this tempts you to want to buy my book, you can go to Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Cartoons-Mr-Angelo-Lopez/dp/0997326328/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25Y5N0ALQHZJQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.woVPwR8NscRInqbVVW08E4v168aM1Y98XM_1DUa_KZA.PGjCwwN6ntPRGNLcY0FDZrvXt4-KbR5Bq2n7LoLSPHU&dib_tag=se&keywords=angelo+lopez+bible+cartoons&qid=1787373227&s=books&sprefix=angelo+lopez+bible+cartoons%2Cstripbooks%2C160&sr=1-1

#christianity #bible #jesus #good #christiancommunity #god #christian #oldtestament #newtestament #gospels

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Over the past few decades, the middle class has shrunk as the economy has geared more towards benefitting the upper middle class and the elites. The middle class has been struggling for several decades, so the plight of the middle class didn’t start with the Trump administration. But his tariffs and his invasion of Iran have raised grocery and gasoline prices that has eaten away at the average middle class American income.

Shannon Pettypiece wrote in the article “America’s wealth gap is growing, and Trump’s policies are making it bigger” for NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-economy-wealth-gap-americans-affordability-inflation-prices-rcna264112):

“The typical American can’t afford the median-priced home. A new car is out of reach for many, with the average monthly payment exceeding $700. Food banks are seeing a growing number of people skipping meals because they can’t afford groceries, and more middle-class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet…

…President Donald Trump’s policies are amplifying these trends. One year into his second term, his administration has cut programs helping lower-income households while advancing policies benefiting the wealthy and corporations. He’s signed legislation to cut food stamps and Medicaid benefits and put new restrictions on low-income housing assistance and student loans. To cope with higher costs from tariffs, he has suggested Americans buy fewer dolls for their children...

…’Donald Trump talks a lot about the working class, his MAGA base is primarily working class, but if you look at the data, the working class is doing very badly in the second Trump administration,’ said Robert Reich, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the Labor Department during the Clinton administration. ‘The real growth in the second Trump administration has been in corporate profits and in the wealth of the people at the top.’”

REFERENCES

“What is a K-shaped economy” by Stephan Bisaha and Scott Detrow for NPR

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/nx-s1-5660842/what-is-a-k-shaped-economy

“Bessent said the K-shaped economy ‘is over.’ Here’s what financial experts say” by Maria Ramirez Uribe for PBS NewsHour

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/bessent-said-the-k-shaped-economy-is-over-heres-what-financial-experts-say

“How the affordability crisis has evolved since Trump’s return” by Karina Cueva and Bridget Craig for PBS NewsHour

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-affordability-crisis-has-evolved-since-trumps-return

“The State of the American Middle Class” by Rakesh Kochhar for Pew Research Center

https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/the-state-of-the-american-middle-class/

“Running on Empty: America’s Fragile Middle Class” by Robert Cropf for Fulcrum

https://thefulcrum.us/business-democracy/cost-of-living-crisis-us

“K-shaped economy in 2026: Deciphering the divide” by Travis Dugan and Jason Graveley for Silicon Valley Bank

https://www.svb.com/market-insights/economic-market-outlook/deciphering-the-k-shaped-economy/

“How the middle class was hollowed out from 1979 to 2022, according to new federal data” by Nick Lichtenberg for Fortune

https://fortune.com/2026/01/22/middle-class-hollowed-out-1979-2022-congressional-budget-office-federal-data/

#middleclass #workingclass #economicinequality #kshapedeconomy #donaldtrump #gasprices #groceries

Leave a comment

Here is a cartoon that I did in 2013 for The Philippine News Today

Over the past decade and a half, I’ve been thrilled to see Popes Francis and Leo XIV open up spaces within the Catholic Church for progressive Catholic voices again. My own left wing political views were deeply influenced by the Catholic Left of the 1970s and 1980s.

At that time, Pope John Paul II was clashing with those liberal Catholics who wanted to further the Vatican II reforms.

Pope John Paul II was a conservative pope, but he was not part of the Traditionalist Catholic movement that wanted to get rid of the Vatican II reforms and turn away from ecumenical outreach to different religions and Christian denominations. John Paul II dutifully implemented the Vatican II reforms, but he didn’t want to initiate new reforms. He was part of a generation of conservative Catholics who felt that the Vatican II reforms were moving faster than the ability of Catholics to adjust. I didn’t like Pope John Paul II’s conservative stances on gender roles, reproductive rights and LGBTQIA+ rights. But I respected John Paul II’s strong opposition to both totalitarian communism and Reagan/Thatcher free market capitalism, his strong defense of indigenous rights and environmental causes, and his efforts for peace in the various conflicts around the world. Because he lost several close Jewish friends during the Holocaust, John Paul II was a strong supporter of ecumenical outreach to differing religions and Christian denominations. He made a special effort to reach out to Jews and Muslims and to make amends for the Catholic Church’s centuries of Antisemitism and Islamophobia.

During the 1970s and 1980s, there was still a vibrant Catholic Left. Famed Catholic leftists like Dorothy Day, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan were still alive. Catholic activists led protests against nuclear weapons and the School of the Americas program that trained autocratic right wing paramilitary forces in Latin America. There were still labor priests that marched for farmworkers and striking factory workers in the picket lines. Catholic parishes were important in the sanctuary movement that sheltered refugees escaping right wing dictatorships in Latin America.

My biggest Catholic heroes were the priests, nuns and lay people in the Philippines and Latin America who risked their lives to defend the poor against right wing autocratic governments and death squads. These Catholics were influenced by liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor.

Francis and Leo XIV are both Latin American popes who center most of their speeches on the preferential option of the poor.

I began to realize that I was deeply influenced by liberation theology and the preferential option of the poor without ever reading the defining text of liberation theology: Gustavo Gutierrez’s “A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation.”

The book was unavailable in the library. But I was able to check out 3 books from the library: “On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation” by Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller; “Gustavo Gutierrez: An Introduction to Liberation Theology” by Robert McAfee Brown; and “Expanding the View: Gustavo Gutierrez and the Future of Liberation Theology” edited by Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro.

What is the “preferential option for the poor”?

The way that I define the preferential option for the poor is to consider political policies by how they affect the poor and those in the margins of society. Catholic Social Thinking teaches that policies should prioritize helping the poor and marginalized.

Here is a 2013 cartoon that I created in 2013 for The Philippine News Today

The seeds of the concept of the “preferential option for the poor” and liberation theology are found in the 1965 Vatican II document Gaudium et spes (https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html_).

Gaudium et spes states:

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ…

…Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources and economic power, and yet a huge proportion of the worlds citizens are still tormented by hunger and poverty, while countless numbers suffer from total illiteracy. Never before has man had so keen an understanding of freedom, yet at the same time new forms of social and psychological slavery make their appearance…

…At the very time when the development of economic life could mitigate social inequalities (provided that it be guided and coordinated in a reasonable and human way), it is often made to embitter them; or, in some places, it even results in a decline of the social status of the underprivileged and in contempt for the poor. While an immense number of people still lack the absolute necessities of life, some, even in less advanced areas, live in luxury or squander wealth. Extravagance and wretchedness exist side by side. While a few enjoy very great power of choice, the majority are deprived of almost all possibility of acting on their own initiative and responsibility, and often subsist in living and working conditions unworthy of the human person…

…To satisfy the demands of justice and equity, strenuous efforts must be made, without disregarding the rights of persons or the natural qualities of each country, to remove as quickly as possible the immense economic inequalities, which now exist and in many cases are growing and which are connected with individual and social discrimination…

…However, those political systems, prevailing in some parts of the world are to be reproved which hamper civic or religious freedom, victimize large numbers through avarice and political crimes, and divert the exercise of authority from the service of the common good to the interests of one or another faction or of the rulers themselves.”

Inspired by the spirit of Gaudium et spes, Latin American bishops convened the Council of Medellin in 1968 to formulate how the Latin American Catholic Church would address the widespread poverty afflicting Latin America. At that time, the Catholic Church was often seen as siding with the wealthy elite and the bishops wanted the Church to side with the poor.

Robert McAfee Brown wrote in his book “Gustavo Gutierrez: An Introduction to Liberation Theology”:

“The church (the bishops acknowledge) can no longer remain indifferent to the social injustices that condemn most Latin Americans to abysmal poverty. The church is frequently charged with being allied with the rich, and even though many bishops, priests and religious are actually poor, the prevailing image is of an affluent church in lockstep with the affluent portion of society.

To remedy this situation, the church must distinguish between (a) poverty as a lack of material goods, which is always evil, (b) spiritual poverty as an attitude of openness to the Lord, and ( c) poverty as an identification with the poor in order to bear the evils under which the poor are ground down and destroyed…

…All this means that ‘a poor church must denounce the injustice manifest in the inequities between rich and poor, and bind itself to a life of poverty among the poor, following the example of Christ who, though rich, ‘became poor for our sakes’. The church must also employ its resources and personnel to ‘give preference to the poorest and most needy sectors. This new solidarity ‘has to be concretized in criticism of injustice and oppression.”

Behind the scenes, Gustavo Gutierrez was shaping the theological for “the preferential option for the poor.” Gutierrez was a Peruvian Dominican priest who studies in Europe and was influenced by Catholic and Protestant intellectuals like Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Marie Dominique Chenu, Christian Ducoq, Hans Kung, Francois Perroux and Karl Barth.

Gutierrez saw that Latin American poverty was a result of an exploitative economic system rather than just individual sin. In 1971, Gustavo Gutierrez wrote “A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation” that encapsulated his ideas.

I don’t have Gutierrez’s “A Theology of Liberation” to quote from for the article.

But I can quote from Gutierrez’s book “On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation”. He wrote:

“…we are in a position to be able to point out with all the clarity one could wish that the poverty, injustice, and marginalization of persons and of groups are not irrevocable facts, but they have human and social causes. Furthermore, we are shocked by the immensity of this reality and by the growing distance, from this point of view, between the nations of the world and between persons within each country. This changes our approach to poverty and forces us to examine personal and social responsibilities in a new light. In this way, it gives us new perspectives for knowing how to discover- continuously- the face of the Lord in those of other persons, in particular those of the poor and the mistreated…

…The vision evident in the formula ‘preferential option for the poor’ is the most substantial part of the contribution to the universal church made by the life of the Latin American church and by liberation theology… This perspective is obviously not something that belongs to liberation theology alone; the Christian message itself requires, and reveals the meaning of, a response to the poor in which God’s gift of the reign is accepted.”

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html#The_foundations) shows the influence of “the preferential option of the poor” on Leo’s thinking.

Magnifica Humanitas states:

“For the Christian community, social justice is a concrete way of following Jesus and remaining faithful to the Gospel. In the New Testament, Jesus proclaims the ‘good news to the poor’ ( Lk 4:18) and identifies himself with the lowly, the sick, the imprisoned and strangers (cf. Mt 25:31-46). He thus teaches us that justice is born from, and fulfilled in, fraternity, because the way we approach and relate to the least among us becomes, in concrete terms, the measure of our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters. Justice, however, concerns not only the behavior of individuals, but also the way in which the structures of society are conceived and organized…

The recent Magisterium has insisted that social justice begins with the least among us. Saint John Paul II spoke of a preferential option for the poor that must guide both personal and societal choices, while Pope Francis denounced a “throw away’ culture’ that generates ever new forms of exclusion. From this perspective, social justice requires us to look at individuals and communities, starting with the most vulnerable: the poor, migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, victims of violence and people living in urban or existential peripheries.

The idea of ‘social justice’ helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically… In this perspective, justice is not merely about the fairer distribution of resources or the correction of current injustices, but also assumes a restorative dimension. It aims to mend broken bonds and reintegrate those who have been excluded, taking into account the wounds caused by injustices, such as wars, colonialism, racial or gender discrimination, violence against entire peoples and exploitation. This may include restoring dignity and a voice to those who have been ignored, fostering processes of healing for collective memory, opposing discriminatory laws and practices, and providing concrete support to those who still bear the consequences of wrongs suffered in the past.”

Over the course of my life, I’ve tried my best to live up to the progressive Christian values that I learned from these Catholic heroes of mine. Because of my own human weaknesses, I’ve often failed to live up to those values. When I’ve failed, though, I stand up and try harder to be the best person that I can be.

If you want to know what left wing values are behind my political cartoons, the values I’ve written about in this article are what guide my sense of social justice and my criticism of capitalism.

Here is a cartoon I created in 2015 for The Philippine News Today

Here is a cartoon I created in January 2022 for The Philippine News Today

Here is a cartoon I created on April 2022 for The Philippine News Today

Here is a cartoon that I created on May 15, 2025 that I posted in The Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon that I created on October 30, 2025 that I posted in The Cartoon Movement

Here is a short 2015 video by The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) on the life of Bishop Oscar Romero, who spoke out against the oppression of the poor by the right wing autocratic government of El Salvador

Here is a 2015 New York Times video about Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and Lay Missioner Jean Donovan, 4 nuns who were killed by right wing death squads in El Salvador in 1980.

This Rappler video shows the February 22, 1986 radio broadcast where Filipino Cardinal Jaime Sin urged Filipinos to go to Camp Aguinaldo to protect defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and vice military chief Fidel V Ramos, who had defected from dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This was one of the major factors in the overthrow of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that nonviolently overthrew the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.

In this video, the Sisters of the Religious of the Assumption share their experiences during the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution.

In this 2014 Rappler video, Sister Cho Borromeo of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary recounts her experience facing imminent death during the EDSA People Power Revolution of 1986

This October 2016 Voices of Faith video shows the conversation with Sister Simone Campbell and the Filipina activist nun, feminist and heroine of the EDSA People Power Revolution, Mary John Mananzan. Sister Mary John Mananzan stood workers facing police violence during the 1975 La Tondeña strike, the first major protest against martial law imposed by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1972. This led to a lifetime of activism, advocating for women’s equality within the Catholic Church, and speaking out against patriarchy, clericalism and sexual abuse. Sister Mary John Mananzan co-founded Gabriela Women's Party, a major women’s activist group.

#Philippines #latinamerica #romancatholicchurch #catholicchurch #romancatholicchurch #preferentialoptionforthepoor #liberationtheology, #activism #poor #poverty #humanrights

Leave a comment

But 1980s music has a special place in my heart. It’s the music of my high school and college years, and it evokes happy memories of school friends and growing up.

When I entered high school, I was this shy nerdy kid who loved the Beatles and the Monkees. I learned about New Wave music from my friends. Several of my friends would write their favorite bands in the cover of their notebooks. A few would lend me their cassette tapes of their favorite groups. Sometimes, some friends would give me a ride to school and put a cassette on. I would go to the library and check out cassettes or CDs that my friends recommended. So I basically learned by osmosis from my friends.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, my wife and I would take our nieces to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk concert series during the summer to see some of these 1980s bands play their biggest hits in the beach. It was a lot of fun, even if a bit humbling to see the crowd full of middle aged people dancing and reminiscing.

A few years ago, I got in my Kindle the Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein book “Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s”. It’s a wonderful book that interviews some of the great New Wave musician where they talked about their experiences of fame and the inspirations behind their songs.

One of the things that each of these bands and musicians had in common is that they all were influenced by David Bowie and the Sex Pistols. It made me realize just how seminal they were. I remember reading a long time ago an article where one of the members of Duran Duran said that they wanted their music to combine the energy of punk and the danceability of disco.

Several of the musicians commented how unprepared they were for fame as young people who were still finding themselves in their 20s. Several developed terrible drug problems that either derailed their music careers or led to personal problems. The studios often pressured the musicians to constantly tour to sell records and then go to the studios to create more hit records without any breaks, which had the effect of drying up their creativity and willingness to experiment and try new musical ideas.

John Taylor of Duran Duran said in the book:

After "Girls on Film” and the Rio album, the success was so huge in the early eighties that when we lost that in the second helf, we thought, Oh my God, is that it? After Andy and Roger left in 1986, we lost a huge part of our firepower, and we had to try to find ways to get the chemistry back. It wasn’t easy. We took such a bashing in our late 20s from the culture. There wa this period where everybody said, “Okay, you’re out. Get out!” That’s when you need Nick Rhodes. He was like “I’m not moving!” If it were up to me, I’d be in a hole in the ground somewhere.

I also occasionally watched Bands Reunited on youtube. It was a show that tried to reunite 1980s New Wave bands for one performance together. I found out things that I didn’t know before about the struggles that some of these musicians went through.

Nick Heyward of the group Haircut 100, for instance, had a nervous breakdown due to the pressures of fame and that eventually led to the dissolution of the band. Debora Iyall of the group Romeo Void was constantly criticized by her studio for her weight because they wanted a better image for their MTV videos. Martin Frye of ABC struggled with Hodgkin lymphoma after ABC’s hit album How to Be a ... Zillionaire! which led to a prolonged absence from the musical scene.

One of the things that I enjoy is to look at Youtube videos of these music heroes from the 1980s and see recent interviews and performances of them as older people. I enjoy seeing them older and wiser. Most of them look happy and they talk about their experiences in the 1980s with humor and insight.

As a teen, I thought these musicians were the epitome of cool. But seeing them now as they’re older, they seem more open and relatable, willing to laugh at themselves and their experiences, and just seem more human. Those musicians that still perform do so for the love of music and not so much for the fame. Time has given many of them perspective on what’s important in life. And several of them seem like music nerds, which I find rather endearing.

Even with their grey hair and wrinkles, I still like them and their music. I’m just happy that they survived fame and seem happy with their lives.

In the book Mad World, for instance, Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet of the group Yaz talked about the friendship that they developed when they did a reunion tour that they didn’t have in the 1980s.

VINCE CLARKE: Alison and I weren’t a real band. We barely knew each other… We fell out pretty fast. We just didn’t know each other. We never went out for a drink- not one drink. We were quite different. We weren’t in the same school. We didn’t have anything in common…

ALISON MOYET: When we did the reunion, I was much calmer and more easy to get along with, and he was much more open and lighter. Consequently, we found that we had quite a lot in common in terms of our sense of humor, and had a lovely, lovely time.

VINCE CLARKE: It wasn’t until we did the reunion tour that we really got to know each other. We didn’t do so much reminiscing as we talked our kids. She has three, I have one, so we had a bit of advice for me.

Kim Wilde talked about taking a long absence from the music scene after suffering burnout, but returning to performing reinvigorated.

KIM WILDE: My career was tough to deal with at times. It became a roller-coaster ride, and I’d been on the ride for a long time… My whole life had been spent living out of a suitcase. Then I met my husband, Hal, and that was the final nail in the coffin of my career. I really thought I’d never sing “Kids in America” again.

I was 36 and had my spiritual needs. My poor spiritual needs had gone unattended for some time. Falling in love and having children awoke a lot of feelings inside of me, and one of the most powerful was the sense that I needed to get my hands in the earth… I spent most of the eighties and nineties plastered in makeup, and I had this real desire to go out and plant roses…

…when my career began again, it was focused on live music. I was utterly astonished when I discovered there was still a crowd out there who wanted to watch a middle-aged housewife singing “Kids in America.” The feeling was euphoric. I said yes to tours and more tours, and music came back in my life…

…I’m really proud to be associated with the song, and I’ve fallen back in love with it after turning my back on it for years. The love affair’s back on!

Robbie Grey from the group Modern English talked about the pleasure of seeing how his song “I Melt With You” has had a positive influence on people’s love lives.

ROBBIE GREY: I suppose “I Melt With You” can sometimes be a pain in the ass ‘cause you want people to listen to your other music, but we don’t complain about it. When you’re onstage and you see people and they’re full of ecstasy when you’re playing it, it’s fantastic. People say, “The first time I made love was to that song.” Or “Thanks very much. I managed to get a load of women thanks to you and that song.”

Jim Kerr of the group Simple Minds expressed similar sentiments about singing “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” to audiences.

JIM KERR: It will never be ours, but, in a good way, the song belongs to everyone now. it belongs to that generation and it’s a pleasure to play it, and every night we play it with full gusto. We never just go through the motions, because it’s a song from a movie that means a lot to a fair amount of people and you want to respect that.

Over the years, several 1980s New Wave groups have reunited to go on tour on release new albums. The Specials released the album “Protest Songs 1924–2012” in 2021 and went to #2 on the British album charts. Haircut 100 released the single “The Unloving Plum” in 2024 and are working on a new album. Duran Duran reunited in 2003 and have been making great music since that time.

#newwavemusic #1980s #ska #duranduran #psychedelicfurs #modernenglish #yaz #alisonmoyet #vinceclarke #kimwilde #thompsontwins #tearsforfears #simpleminds

Leave a comment

Here is a cartoon I created in 2022 for the Philippine political cartoonist group Pitik Bulag

For many years now, journalists, human rights, indigenous rights and environmental activists in the Philippines have faced red tagging, enforced disappearances, prolonged periods of detention without legal representation or trial, and have even been killed by the military.

I decided to occasionally use my cartoons to highlight some of the activists who have been detained.

I was inspired to do so after seeing Venezuelan political cartoonist Rayma Suprani and Nicaraguan cartoonist Pedro Molina use their cartoons to highlight prisoners and victims of extrajudicial killings in their countries.

In 2016, Rayma Suprani created cartoons to showcase the plight of political prisoners being held in Venezuelan prisons (https://cbldf.org/2016/11/in-exile-venezuelan-cartoonist-finds-space-to-criticize-government-oppression/).

Here are some of the cartoons that Suprani created

https://theworld.org/stories/2016/11/22/political-prisoners-venezuela

After the 2018 protests against the Danial Ortega government, over 300 people were killed by the Nicaraguan military and over 2,000 were detained. Pedro Molina began creating cartoon portraits of some of the victims who were killed by the Nicaraguan military (https://havanatimes.org/interviews/journalism-and-humor-cannot-be-silenced/).

A Human Rights Watch report (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/philippines) stated:

“Despite repeated assurances by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that his administration was prioritizing human rights, serious violations continued, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and harassment and threats against activists and journalists. Government security forces implicated in abuses were rarely held accountable…

…’Red-tagging,’ which involves state harassment, intimidation, and threats against individuals and organizations accused of being supporters or sympathizers of the communist insurgency, continues despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2024 that declared the practice a threat to ‘right to life, liberty, and security.’ Red-tagging targets leftist activists, land rights defenders, labor leaders, and youth activists and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression and association...

…The Philippine government has rejected calls from UN rights experts to disband the National Task Force on Ending the Local Armed Conflict, an agency under the president’s office and supervised by the National Security Council, that is often responsible for red-tagging. In September, the Department of Interior and Local Government proposed a 340 percent increase in the agency’s budget for 2026…

…Activists, including land rights and environmental defenders, have been at risk of enforced disappearance. On March 2, Indigenous leader Genasque Enriquez was reportedly arrested in Surigao del Sur, in the southern Philippines; his whereabouts remain unknown. On March 5, in the neighboring Agusan del Sur province, another Indigenous activist, Michelle Campos, went missing. She and three others then surfaced in a nearby hospital where they were being effectively detained while being treated under military guard for unspecified injuries…

…Across the Philippines, Indigenous communities—even those with ancestral domain titles—struggled to protect their land rights due to weak implementation of the principle of free, prior, and informed consent.”

Bishop Gerry Alminaza, the President of Caritas Philippines, wrote the article “Negros after the gunfire: what the blood on our soil is telling us” for Bulatlat (https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/04/22/negros-after-the-gunfire-what-the-blood-on-our-soil-is-telling-us/) where he writes:

“It began with landlessness in a land of vast haciendas, with entrenched poverty in communities surrounded by wealth, with cycles of exploitation in sugar, labor, and wages, and with a justice system many perceive as distant or inaccessible…

...a pattern emerges. Human rights organizations have pointed to persistent impunity, with accountability often elusive. Victims are often labeled as communist rebels, a practice widely referred to as red-tagging, which critics say places individuals at risk. Many of those killed are farmers, labor organizers, or advocates involved in longstanding agrarian disputes.”

Among the activists who are currently being detained or have been victims of enforced disappearances:

Frenchie Mae Cumpio, Mariel Domequil, Marissa Cabaljao, Mira Legion, Alexander Philip Abinguna, Dexter Capuyan, Bazoo De Jesus, Christina Pasion, Binay Serrano, Steve Abua, and more.

Here is the contact information to:

PHILIPPINE CONSULATE OF SAN FRANCISCO

447 Sutter St 6th Flr, San Francisco California 94108 USA

Email: political@pcgsanfrancisco.org

Phone: +1 (415) 433-6666 (8:30 AM - 5:30 PM)

https://pcgsanfrancisco.org/contact-us/

PHILIPPINE CONSULATE OF NEW YORK

556 5th Avenue, New York, New York 10036

Email: newyorkpcg.atn@dfa.gov.ph

Phone: (212) 764-1330

Here is a cartoon that I posted on February 15, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon that I posted on January 3, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon that I posted on January 29, 2026 in the Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon that I posted on August 5, 2026 in the Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon that I posted on August 6, 2026 in the Cartoon Movement

#cristinapasion #binayserrano #philippines #cabuyao #laguna #redtagging #enforceddisappearances #frenchiemaecumpio #marieldomequil #marissacabaljao

Leave a comment

A few years ago, I had a conversation with an anti-Trump Asian American Evangelical friend about her exasperation with the White Evangelical support of Donald Trump.

She wondered why Evangelicals support Trump when Trump is the very embodiment of the 7 deadly sins.

Since she said that, her remark has been something in the back of my head as a possible idea for a cartoon.

Recently I saw an online article on Burt Reynolds and it mentioned a famous centerfold that Reynolds posed for in the early 1970s.

That got me the idea for this cartoon.

In that same conversation, my anti-Trump Evangelical friend mentioned that if we want to defeat Trumpism, Christians will need to confront White Christian Nationalism since Trump gets so much of his support from White Evangelical Christians.

I agree with her.

But I think this is a fight that Evangelicals need to fight within their church. Non-evangelicals have no influence in this fight, even though White Christian Nationalism has an outsized influence in all our lives because of their support of Trump. We have to be outside observers as anti-Trump Evangelicals to try to change the direction of their denomination.

I have a theory that younger Evangelicals and Evangelicals of color will need to lead the way in steering their White Evangelical cohort away from the Trump cult.

Black Evangelicals, for instance, hold most the same conservative theological beliefs as their White counterparts. They tend to take a literal reading of the Bible. They focus on a personal relationship with Jesus.

Even with shared theological views, though, a majority of Black Evangelicals are Democrats and oppose Donald Trump while a majority of White Evangelicals are Republicans who support Trump. Most Black Evangelicals realize that they can’t ignore Trump’s racism.

I don’t know the exact percentage of Latino and Asian American Evangelicals who support Trump, but I’m guessing that both groups are much less supportive of Trump, especially with his anti-immigrant and racist policies.

I think Evangelicals need to learn the lessons that other Christian denominations had to learn about the corrupting influence of political power.

When any Christian denomination has a monopoly of political power over the state, they looked with disdain with those who do not conform to their religious beliefs and used the state to try to impose their beliefs on those who aren’t their definition of being a “Christian”. This way of thinking has led to pogroms, inquisitions, witch hunts and the oppression of minority groups. This deeply damaged Christianity.

There’s nothing wrong with Evangelicals taking part in social movements for change. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Evangelicals played an important role in the abolitionist and the women’s suffragist movements. But when they try to gain political control over the whole government and try to impose their beliefs regardless of the democratic rights of those who disagree with their religious beliefs, Evangelicals become corrupted by power.

Anti-Trump Evangelicals need to make the argument that there is something wrong with Christian Nationalist culture when non-Evangelicals can clearly see Donald Trump’s corruption while Evangelicals can’t.

Here is a cartoon I did in September 2017 for The Philippine News Today

I didn’t really do research that inspired my cartoon. But here are some references of Trump’s embodiment of the 7 deadly sins, as well as the importance of fighting White Christian Nationalism.

REFERENCES

“The Seven Deadly Sins of Donald Trump” by Michael Sean Winters for The National Catholic Reporter

https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/distinctly-catholic/seven-deadly-sins-donald-trump

“A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches” by Campbell Robertson for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks-evangelical-churches.html

“American Christians Face a Choice. The faithful can still repair the wreckage they have wrought.” by Peter Wehner for The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/christian-humanism-trump-choice/687475/

“Russell Moore speaks truth to his community. The Christianity Today editor and former Southern Baptist leader is gravely concerned about the soul of US evangelicalism” by Grant Wacker for Christianity Today

https://www.christiancentury.org/books/russell-moore-speaks-truth-his-community

“Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy” by David French for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/trump-usaid-evangelicals.html

“Donald Trump and the Seven Deadly Sins: A Christian Test of Power and Character” a blog by Gary Whittaker for his Jack Righteous blogsite

https://jackrighteous.com/en-us/blogs/righteous-roots-blog/trump-seven-deadly-sins-christian-analysis?srsltid=AfmBOoqjiZUxKAV8ofuIUCceDJrolIW32fLV7eKdFKx8H55P3MqcqLF3

“He was a top church official who criticized Trump. He says Christianity is in crisis” by Scott Detrow ,Gabriel J. Sánchez and Sarah Handel for NPR

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192663920/southern-baptist-convention-donald-trump-christianity

“Why Fundamentalists Love Trump” by David French for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/opinion/donald-trump-fundamentalists-evangelical.html

“When Explanation Becomes As Excuse: A Response to George Marsden” by Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell for Reformed Journal

https://reformedjournal.com/2026/08/11/when-explanation-becomes-excuse-a-response-to-george-marsden/

“Can Black Evangelicals Save the Whole Movement?” by Molly Whorthen for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/black-evangelicals-diversity.html

“The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness as a Virtue. At the National Prayer Breakfast, the president tested his audience’s commitment to Christian ethics.” by Peter Wehner for The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/evangelicals-trump-national-prayer-breakfast/685908/

“Teaching Black History in the Trump Age” by Rann Miller for Christianity Today

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/08/teaching-black-history-in-the-trump-age/

“Black Church Leaders to Christianity Today: ‘Thank You’ for Trump Editorial” by Relevant Magazine

https://relevantmagazine.com/current/black-church-leaders-to-christianity-today-thank-you-for-trump-editorial/

“Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being ‘Never Trump’” by David French for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/27/opinion/never-trump-maga-evangelicals.html

#donaldtrump #christiannationalism #whiteevangelicals #blackevangelicals #christianity #magamovement #republicanparty #unitedstates #america

Leave a comment

Here is a Jasper the Cat cartoon that I posted on March 27, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

Over the past few years, I’ve often heard criticisms from the MAGA Movement about the toxic Cancel Culture of the culture warrior Left. It’s a valid criticism. I’ve both experienced and witnessed instances of cancel culture myself.

But it’s a bit hypocritical of MAGA to condemn the Left of cancel culture when the Right, especially the Christian Right, is just as guilty of their own version of cancel culture. It’s especially pronounced now as MAGA adherents harass anti-Trump conservatives who break from Trump and threaten the anti-Trump conservative’s families and friends.

In my mind, cancel culture is just another form of ideological purity thinking where a group punishes an individual who does not agree 100% with the group. Cancel culture and ideological purity thinking are just 2 symptoms of groupthink, which is dangerous because it can lead a large group of people to commit terrible atrocities against vulnerable minority groups or individuals who do not conform.

We’re all imperfect. I’ve always been troubled when an online mob condemns a person for a bigoted comment that the person said 20 years ago, discounting that the person may have changed in the intervening decades and have outgrown that prejudice.

I know that in my own life, I’ve struggled to overcome certain prejudices that I had. And I’m still in that process of growth.

Some of my biggest heroes have been individuals who had that capacity to grow.

Abraham Lincoln, for instance, had very different views about race and Black equality before 1860 than he did in 1865. During his presidency, Lincoln met African American leaders like Frederick Douglass who impressed Lincoln with their intelligence and their love of American democracy. And Lincoln admired the courage and sacrifice of the Black soldiers who fought for the Union Army. By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln had adopted many of the Abolitionist positions for the rights of African Americans.

Early in Malcolm X’s life, he held very racist views against White people and was disdainful of the efforts of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. for racial integration. After Malcolm X had a falling out with the Black Muslims, he journeyed to Mecca and saw for the first time White people treating with respect those of other races and it led to a profound change in his views. After his trip to Mecca, Malcolm X was more open to collaborating with civil rights groups in a common effort for the fight for human rights of the Black community and all oppressed communities.

In the 1950s, Robert F. Kennedy was a cold war Democrat who worked with Joe McCarthy and didn’t give much thought to the civil rights movement. But during his time as Attorney General, Kennedy was exposed to the racism of segregationists that were exposed by the civil disobedience campaigns of the Freedom Rides. the Sit-ins and the 1963 Birmingham campaign. Kennedy changed from apathy to deep concern for the right of the African American community. After his brother was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy’s grief made him open to the poor and the marginalized who were inspired by his brother’s presidency. RFK visited inner city minority communities, poor White Appalachian communities, southern Black sharecropper communities, and Native American communities. By the time of Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, RFK had evolved into a champion of the poor and the marginalized.

Instead of cancel culture politics, I think the Left should focus instead of coalition building politics.

When one is focused on cancel culture and ideological purity, it tends to shrink the number of people who might otherwise support your political cause.

When one is focused on building a coalition, that assumes that differing groups will have differing beliefs and the goal is to bring these groups together by finding areas of common ground.

The aim of coalition-building is to persuade different groups to fight for a common cause.

The aim of cancel culture and ideological purity is to impose their beliefs and silence those who disagree.

My own left wing political beliefs are influenced by the 20th century goal of both the liberal Left and the socialist Left to create a multiracial coalition of working class Whites, minorities and the poor in a common fight for economic and racial equality.

When the Left was successful in creating this coalition, it was the basis for the political support of the New Deal and the Great Society programs of the 1930s and the 1960s.

Socialist leaders like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin also hoped that by creating this multiracial coalition, it would steer working class Whites away from the racist appeals of demagogues like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

Politics in a healthy American democracy is based on whether one can build a large enough coalition to pressure the political system to enact meaningful reforms that help all Americans.

Since Richard Nixon’s 1968 Southern Strategy, it has been the goal of Republicans to break up the New Deal multiracial coalition by diverting White working class voters away from economic issues and towards racist grievances against minorities and immigrants. This had a terrible effect on the Republican Party and has led to Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.

Here is a Jasper the Cat cartoon I post on March 5, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

My own left wing politics is based on finding a way to create that multiracial coalition of working class Whites, minorities and the poor that was the goal of leftists during the 20th century. But with so many working class White communities caught up in the Trump cult, I feel like I’m in a political world that I no longer understand.

Trump’s policies and Republican policies do not help the working class.

But I don’t know how Democrats and the Left can win them back.

During the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders won the support of many working class voters who would eventually vote for Donald Trump in the general elections. So perhaps we can win back working class voters on economic issues.

But we should not throw under the bus vulnerable minority groups who are threatened by Trump in an attempt to win back working class Trump supporters.

I sometimes wonder if my own left wing politics is outdated in a world that I do not fully comprehend.

As a leftist, I have been dismayed and a bit fearful of the recent attacks on the Left by Donald Trump, Fox News, the MAGA movement and even some moderate Democrats. These attacks have come in the wake of recent electoral victories by Democratic Socialists in various parts of the country.

I’m not a Democratic Socialist, but I deeply admire Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I believe all those in the Left of the political spectrum should look at the example of the Popular Front of the 1930s, when liberals, socialists and Marxists formed a loose alliance in a common fight against the fascism of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.

I learned about the Popular Front from reading about I.F. Stone, a radical leftist journalist who was a strong supporter of the Popular Front.

A divided Left is easy prey for Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.

I worry about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement conjuring up another Red Scare to divert attention away from Trump’s disastrous Iran war and his terrible economic policies. I also worry that moderate Democrats unintentionally feed into this narrative against the Left.

During the Red Scare of the 1950s, one didn’t have to be a communist to be harassed and blacklisted. Joe McCarthy and the Red Baiters targeted anyone on the Left of the political spectrum, from socialists to New Deal liberals to center Left individuals. They lost their livelihoods, their reputations, many friends and their patriotism was impugned.

My own leftist politics makes me very vulnerable if another Red Scare happens.

Perry Bacon wrote the article “Democratic Centrists Need to Stop Saying ‘Both Sides’ Have ‘Extremes’. Yes, democratic socialists are left of traditional Democrats. But they aren’t remotely as radical—or anywhere near as powerful—as the MAGA right” for the New Republic (https://newrepublic.com/article/212517/democratic-centrists-need-stop-saying-both-sides-extremes) that stated:

“Yes, democratic socialists are left of traditional Democrats. But they aren’t remotely as radical—or anywhere near as powerful—as the MAGA right...

...the idea that the U.S. now has a far left that is equally dangerous and radical as the far right is entirely wrong, no matter how many powerful people and institutions hint or claim otherwise. America’s extreme right wing is by far the country’s big problem, and it’s hard to address that problem when powerful elites insist that the trouble is with ‘both sides’...

...First of all and most importantly, the political left in America believes in and practices democracy. Until leftists collectively try to use judicial and then violent means to overturn an election that they clearly lost, as MAGA Republicans did in 2020, I don’t want to hear any bullshit false equivalences between leftists and MAGA conservatives. Conducting free and fair elections and respecting their results is fundamental to democracy. MAGA’s leader, Donald Trump, refused to accept the 2020 results, as did dozens of Republican members of Congress and state officials. To this day, Republicans tiptoe around the issue to the point where they can’t even give a straightforward answer to the question, ‘Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?’

In contrast, Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialists of America, Avila Chevalier, and other powerful people and groups on the left don’t deny Trump was elected in 2024. And it’s not just ignoring election results. The socialist left is trying to win power the democratic way—getting average Americans to vote for their candidates. The MAGA right is trying to gain and expand its power through gerrymandering, voting restrictions, and other undemocratic means. They’ve spent years making up claims of voter fraud...

...What the U.S. desperately needs is socialists, traditional liberals, independents, and pro-democracy conservatives to disagree with one another during Democratic primaries but then join together to defeat the MAGA right in general elections. That unity can’t happen if anytime centrist Democrats lose a primary they act as if a socialist candidate winning is as dangerous as a MAGA candidate winning. It’s not. I plead to those on the center left to stop calling people extreme unless they are trying to end democracy in America.”

Here is a Jasper the Cat cartoon that I posted on June 13, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

#workingclass #donaldtrump #unitedstates #democraticsocialists #liberaldemocrats #moderatedemocrats #MAGA #leftwing #minoritycommunities #democraticparty #democrats #moderates #centrists #blackcommunities #immigrants #progressives #liberals #socialists #abdulelsayed #berniesanders #elizabethwarren #aoc #democracy

Leave a comment

The July 30 detention of Filipino-American activist Christina Pasion and Mangyan-Buhid community organizer Binay Serrano by the Philippine military points to a long pattern of the military accusing human rights and indigenous rights activists of being communist insurgents and then detaining these activists.

Issues between activists and the Philippine military have existed for several years. Ever since former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte formed the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) under Executive Order No. 70, however, NTF-ELCAC has increased the harassment and detention of human rights and indigenous rights activists.

At least 16 activists and journalists have been victims of enforced disappearances during Marcos's presidency.

Among the activists who have been red tagged and detained: Christina Pasion, Binay Serrano, Frenchie Mae Cumpio, Marielle Domeguil, Marissa Cabaljao, Mira Legion Alexander Philip Abinguna, Dexter Capuyan, and Bazoo de Jesus.

Civicus Monitor Tracking Civic Space had a March 11, 2026 article titled “Philippines: Protesters increasingly criminalised while activists continue to face baseless charges, harassment and red-tagging” (https://monitor.civicus.org/explore/philippines-protesters-increasingly-criminalised-while-activists-continue-to-face-baseless-charges-harassment-and-red-tagging/) stated:

“The state of civic space in the Philippines was rated as ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor in its latest People Power Under Attack Report published in December 2025. Concerns documented in recent years include the arrest and detention of activists, often on fabricated charges. Human rights defenders have also been ‘red-tagged’, putting them at risk of arrest or even being killed. Civil society has also documented the harassment and attacks against journalists.

In February 2026, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its annual report. It stated that, despite repeated assurances by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that his administration was prioritising human rights, serious violations continued, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and harassment and threats against activists and journalists. Government security forces implicated in abuses were rarely held accountable…

…In recent months, there have been reports of torture and ill-treatment around the September 2025 anti-corruption protests and the ongoing baseless charges slapped against protesters. Fabricated charges were also filed against two activists after the EDSA protest anniversary. Anti-mining protesters in Nueva Vizcaya and a farmers’ protest camp in Cabuyao were also targeted. Attacks against land rights defenders, baseless terror financing charges and red-tagging have persisted.”

The Human Rights Watch report that Civicus referred to (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/philippines) stated:

“Despite repeated assurances by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that his administration was prioritizing human rights, serious violations continued, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and harassment and threats against activists and journalists. Government security forces implicated in abuses were rarely held accountable…

…’Red-tagging,’ which involves state harassment, intimidation, and threats against individuals and organizations accused of being supporters or sympathizers of the communist insurgency, continues despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2024 that declared the practice a threat to ‘right to life, liberty, and security.’ Red-tagging targets leftist activists, land rights defenders, labor leaders, and youth activists and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression and association...

…The Philippine government has rejected calls from UN rights experts to disband the National Task Force on Ending the Local Armed Conflict, an agency under the president’s office and supervised by the National Security Council, that is often responsible for red-tagging. In September, the Department of Interior and Local Government proposed a 340 percent increase in the agency’s budget for 2026…

…Activists, including land rights and environmental defenders, have been at risk of enforced disappearance. On March 2, Indigenous leader Genasque Enriquez was reportedly arrested in Surigao del Sur, in the southern Philippines; his whereabouts remain unknown. On March 5, in the neighboring Agusan del Sur province, another Indigenous activist, Michelle Campos, went missing. She and three others then surfaced in a nearby hospital where they were being effectively detained while being treated under military guard for unspecified injuries…

…Across the Philippines, Indigenous communities—even those with ancestral domain titles—struggled to protect their land rights due to weak implementation of the principle of free, prior, and informed consent.”

Anne Marxe Umil wrote the article “NTF-ELCAC spells widespread rights violations” (https://www.bulatlat.com/2025/03/29/ntf-elcac-spells-widespread-rights-violations/) describing the abuses of NTF-ELCAC:

“Karapatan said that the NTF-ELCAC actively surveils, red-tags, and harasses local activists, coercing them into denouncing their organizations. In its pursuit to quash the revolutionary movement, the group said that many individuals are tricked into attending aid events, only to end up in ‘surrender ceremonies’ where they are wrongly depicted as ‘armed rebels returning to the law.’

Karapatan has documented 560 victims of forced/fake surrender under the Marcos Jr administration.

For Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the NTF-ELCAC has long been used as a weapon to red-tag, harass, and intimidate farmers and peasant leaders who are fighting for genuine land reform and social justice. ‘Its existence perpetuates a climate of fear and impunity in the countryside,’ said KMP Secretary-General and Tanggol Magsasaka spokesperson Ronnie Manalo.”

REFERENCES

“Negros bishop calls for independent probe into deadly Toboso clash” by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippine (CBCP) News

https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/negros-bishop-calls-for-independent-probe-into-deadly-toboso-clash/

“Philippines: Authorities increasingly using Facebook to stifle young activists’ right to freedom of expression and protest” by Amnesty International

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/philippines-authorities-using-facebook-to-red-tag-young-activists/

“Philippines: Marcos Rights Gains Fall Short. Ex-President Duterte, Former Top Officials Unpunished for ‘Drug War’ Abuses” by Human Rights Watch

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/01/16/philippines-marcos-rights-gains-fall-short

“Activists sound alarm over rising forced disappearance cases in the Philippines. Families gather to remember disappeared activists and to call for justice” by Mong Palatino for Global Voices

https://globalvoices.org/2024/11/06/activists-sound-alarm-over-rising-cases-of-enforced-disappearances-in-the-philippines/

“Negros After the Gunfire: What the Blood on Our Soil Is Telling Us” by Bishop Gerardo A. Alminaza for Altermidya

https://www.altermidya.net/negros-after-the-gunfire-what-the-blood-on-our-soil-is-telling-us/

Here is the 2025 report by Human Rights Watch about the human rights situation in the Philippines

https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/south-east-asia-and-the-pacific/philippines/report-philippines/

“Activists Keep Disappearing in Marcos’s Philippines. Military kidnappings have produced a public outcry.” by Nick Aspinwall for Foreign Policy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/09/philippines-marcos-disappeared-activists-duterte-tamano-castro/

#philippines #tacloban5 #redtagging #enforceddisappearances #cristinapasion #frenchiemaecumpio #activism #indigenousrights #bonbbongmarcos #humanrights

Leave a comment

On July 30, Filipino-American organizer Christina Pasion and Mangyan-Buhid community organizer Binay Serrano. were arrested in Cabuyao, Laguna, by combined forces of the 68th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Philippine Army and the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Here is an August 2, 2026 statement by The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) (https://ichrp.net/release-christina-binay/):

“Pasion and Serrano’s arrest happened a day after an encounter between soldiers of the 76th IB and alleged members of the NPA in Brgy. Del Pilar, Naujan, Oriental Mindoro – an island south of Luzon, where Laguna is located. Three NPA fighters were killed and the fighting caused the forced evacuation of residents and intensified military presence in the area. A humanitarian team sent by local human rights organization Karapatan Southern Tagalog reports that four (4) military tanks were deployed in the area to intimidate residents, civilians are monitored and intimidated, and classes in schools are suspended.

The arrest of Pasion and Serrano, the forced displacement of residents, and the widespread military presence in civilian communities in Naujan constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law. These incidents follow the same IHL violations last January in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro, where bombings conducted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) caused the deaths of three (3) Mangyan children, the death of college student Jerlyn Doydora, and the illegal detention of Filipino-American Chantal Anicoche.”

Justin Umali wrote the article “Police arrest two community organizers in Laguna” for Bulatlat (https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/07/31/police-arrest-two-community-organizers-in-laguna/) where she wrote:

“Cristine Pasion and Binay Serrano were undergoing medical treatment when soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) 68th and 203rd Infantry Battalions (IB), aided by elements of the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) Regional Mobile Force Battalion Region 4A and PNP San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, reportedly broke open the door of their apartment and arrested them, approximately 6:00 a.m.

Human rights alliance Karapatan Laguna condemned the arrest, stressing that ‘there is nothing new about [the state’s] modus in branding activists and human rights defenders as members of the [New People’s Army or] NPA to arrest and deny them their rights.’

‘These arrests only serve to worsen the already worrisome state of human rights in Mindoro, while serving to the advantage of large mining, land-use conversion, and eco-tourism interests in the island.,’ the group said in its statement…

…Karapatan said that civilian rights must be respected during ‘times of armed conflict,’ particularly stressing that Serrano’s rights are being violated ‘the longer she stays unreachable to legal counsel.’ The group has called on the Commission on Human Rights to conduct an investigation while condemning the military and police for their ‘callous disrespect of human rights.’”

In 2023, Carlos Conde wrote the article “Enforced Disappearances Still a Scourge in Philippines” for Human Rights Watch (https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/11/enforced-disappearances-still-scourge-philippines) where he wrote:

“In 2012, Congress enacted a law against enforced disappearance – the first in Asia – but, by most accounts, this law has proven useless. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should press for the Senate’s ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the prompt and impartial investigation of disappearance cases, and the appropriate prosecution of those responsible, regardless of position or rank.”

REFERENCES

A statement by the family of Christina Pasion for the ICHRP US International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines's Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1451685906991183&id=100064493630392&mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=HufGufV1xnbGWVpl#

“Rights group seeks release of detained Fil-Am activist. ICHRP also seeks whereabouts of missing indigenous activist” by Cristina Elois Baclig for The Philippines Daily Inquirer

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2276282/rights-group-seeks-release-of-detained-fil-am-activist

“Release Filipino-American activist Christina Pasion from Bureau of Immigration custody! Release indigenous organizer Binay Serrano!” a statement by The Malaya Movement

https://www.malayamovement.com/statements/releasechristina-binay

“Arrest of Fil-American citizen raises immigration, security concerns” by Priam Nepomuceno for The Philippines Daily Inquirer

https://globalnation.inquirer.net/333520/arrest-of-fil-american-citizen-raises-immigration-security-concerns

“Red-Tagging in the Philippines: The Modern McCarthyism Threatening Freedom of Expression” by Sarthak Gupta for Global Freedom of Expression Columbia University

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/publications/red-tagging-in-the-philippines-the-modern-mccarthyism-threatening-freedom-of-expression/

#cristinapasion #binayserrano #philippines #cabuyao #laguna #redtagging #enforceddisappearances

Leave a comment

There’s nothing wrong with being on the Left, the Center or the Right of the political spectrum.

But whether you are to the Left, the Center or the Right, you should not give up your independent thinking just because you’re left wing, centrist or right wing.

There’s nothing wrong with finding a community of politically like-minded people. But being part of a political side is not meant to be a cult.

American democracy is premised on the idea that no one person or group has a monopoly on truth. All of us are right some of the time. All of us are wrong some of the time.

It’s important for all of us to protect our independent thinking and to be willing to go against our political or religious group if we think they’re wrong.

I was inspired to write this article because of the fears of the Left that I see being conjured up by Donald Trump, Fox News and some moderate Democrats after the electoral success of Democratic Socialists in recent primaries in the past few months.

I’m not a Democratic Socialist, but my politics are solidly left wing. I deeply admire socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Over the past Spring, I read 2 books about the Red Scare of the 1950s: Glenn Frankel’s book “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic”; and Victor Navasky’s book “Naming Names”. During the McCarthy Red Scare era of the 1950s, a person did not have to be a communist to be harassed and blacklisted. Joe McCarthy and the redbaiters of that era went after anyone on the left of the political spectrum, from Democratic Socialists to New Deal liberal Democrats. Many of these people lost their reputations and their livelihoods, their political views were silenced, some were deported, and all had their patriotism impugned.

If Trump succeeds in drumming up another Red Scare, I’m sure my own left wing politics leaves me very vulnerable.

Even though I’m a traditional Elizabeth Warren/Ted Kennedy liberal Democrat, I’ve occasionally clashed with younger leftists who don’t think I’m left wing enough. There is legitimate criticism of the tendency of the extreme elements of the Left to try to impose ideological purity on the rest of the Left.

But the MAGA Right are also guilty of trying to impose ideological purity. I would argue that in today’s America, our country’s biggest problem is the MAGA movement and the extreme Right.

I make that argument because the extreme Right has control over all 3 branches of the federal government. Donald Trump has used his power to get rid of any anti-Trump Republicans and to bully all other Republicans in Congress into compliance. Trump’s supporters have harassed anti-Trump conservatives and given death threats to their families. Trump has used the federal government to try to silence critics and to vindictively go after his opponents.

These examples of both the extreme Left and the Right point to a weakness of human nature, our tendency to get caught up in groupthink and to allow our adherence to ideology to overwhelm our sense of empathy towards those we disagree with.

This is why it is important to have people who are willing to follow their conscience and to be willing to go against our political side if we think they’re wrong.

During this time of rising authoritarianism, I don’t think the problem of the world is a fight between the Left and the Right.

I think the great battle in the world is between those on the Left and the Right who adhere to democratic principles and those on the Left and the Right who support autocracy.

Here are some examples of individuals who were willing to go against their political side when they thought they were wrong.

GEORGE ORWELL

George Orwell was a Democratic Socialist like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Though Orwell was a Socialist, he became one of the biggest critics of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union’s totalitarian communist government.

Unlike many leftists in the 1930s, Orwell never fell for the cult of personality surrounding Joseph Stalin. Orwell was critical of the show trials and purges in the Soviet Union that resulted in the killings of millions of people. His encounters with factional fighting among communists, anarchists and socialists during the Spanish Civil War made Orwell wary of rigid ideologues. Orwell wanted a socialism with the checks and balances that would prevent the abuse of power that he observed with Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.

Orwell was not a blind partisan. Orwell realized that all political movements are vulnerable to the corrupting influences of power if they are not careful. Orwell’s books “Animal Farm” and “1984” were written to specifically critique Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Orwell’s critique can apply to any authoritarian government whether it be from the Left or the Right.

Here are 2 blogs that I wrote on Orwell:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/george-orwell-and-the-importance-in-not-being-a-blind-partisan/

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/george-orwell-independent-minded-leftist/

BARRY GOLDWATER

Barry Goldwater was an ardent conservative Republican. One of the telling examples how the Republican Party has moved to the extreme Right is to see how Barry Goldwater’s status within the Republican Party changed from the 1960s to the 1990s. During the 1960s, Barry Goldwater was viewed as the extreme Right of the Republican Party. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Christian Right began to assert its influence within both the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Goldwater found himself increasingly at odds with the Christian Right. Goldwater criticized Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority after they had campaigned against the Supreme Court nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor. Goldwater increasingly saw Falwell and the Moral Majority as a threat to the separation of Church and State. He criticized fellow Republican Senators Jesse Helms, John East, and Jeremiah Denton for kowtowing to the Religious Right.

In a Senate speech on September 16, 1981, Goldwater said:

“The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’”

In a November 1994 interview, Goldwater said:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

Though Goldwater was an ardent conservative, he developed a close friendship with liberal Democrat George McGovern. Though they have very different views on the Vietnam War and on the role of the federal government, Goldwater and McGovern found common ground in their share experiences as World War II veterans, both had lost Presidential campaigns in a landslide and both had fruitful careers in the Senate.

Here are 2 blogs that I wrote on Barry Goldwater:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/barry-goldwaters-fight-against-jerry-falwell-and-the-moral-majority/

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2020/05/02/george-mcgovern-barry-goldwater-and-civil-discourse/

FATHER ANDREW GREELEY

Father Andrew Greeley was a sociologist, author and Catholic priest. He spent a lifetime annoying and exasperating his more conservative superiors with his New Deal liberal politics, advocacy of immigrants and the poor, and his criticism of church teachings on sex.

He was an author of numerous romance fiction books that were filled with clerical intrigue and explicit sex, which garnered a lot of controversy (which always seemed odd to me). Father Greeley was deeply critical of “Humanae Vitae,” the 1968 papal encyclical reasserting the church’s condemnation of most forms of contraception.

Father Andrew Greeley was at his most heroic in the late 1980s and 1990s when Father Greeley wrote a series of articles for the Chicago Sun-Times demanding that the church take action against pedophile priests (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/opinion/father-andrew-greeley-defender-of-the-faithful.html?_r=0)

Father Greeley was criticizing the Catholic Church’s coverup of the sexual abuse by priests a decade before the Boston Globe Spotlight unit exposed the priest pedophilia scandal in 2002. He was deeply critical of Pope John Paul II for his inaction, assuming that the Pope must’ve known about the coverup.

After the Boston Globe Spotlight unit’s articles expose the scandal, Father Greeley defended gay priests from those in the conservative hierarchy who were trying to scapegoat gay priests for the scandal, saying that the facts do not justify the hysteria against gay priests and that there is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Here is a blog that I wrote on Father Andrew Greeley:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2023/07/27/father-andrew-greeley-hero-and-early-critic-of-the-catholic-churchs-sexual-abuse-coverup/

MARGARET CHASE SMITH

In the 1950s, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith denounced the red-baiting tactics of her fellow Republican Senator Joe McCarthy during the height of his political power. Senator McCarthy had been making unsubstantiated charges of communism towards any person with left-of-center views, destroying the reputations and livelihoods of many American citizens.

On June 1, 1950, Senator Smith delivered a speech denouncing McCarthyism with Senator Joe McCarthy sitting only a few feet away from her.

Senator Smith said:

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.
Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

The right to criticize;

The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

The right to protest;

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in…

…I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.

I doubt if the Republican Party could — simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory.

I don’t want to see the Republican Party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one party system.

Here are 2 blogs that I wrote about Margaret Chase Smith:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/protecting-democratic-traditions-and-returning-to-collaboration-and-compromise/

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-republican-party/

JACKIE ROBINSON

People often forget that baseball hero and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson was a Republican. But the Republican Party of Jackie Robinson’s time was very different than today’s Republican Party.

Before the 1960s, the Republican Party were often stronger on issues of civil rights and minority rights than a Democratic Party that was dominated by segregationist southern Democrats. The GOP were the party of Lincoln that fought for the emancipation of slaves and they worked to expand the rights of African Americans through such laws as the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. During this brief period during Reconstruction, the first African American Congressman and Senators were elected to Congress, including such distinguished men as Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Robert Smalls, Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Robert De Large, Robert Brown Elliott, and Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina, and Josiah Walls of Florida. Prominent Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and George Frisbie Hoar spoke out for the rights of African Americans, Native Americans and Chinese Americans during the nineteenth century.

Robinson became a Republican when there was still a large contingent of liberal Republicans who upheld the Republican Party’s historic support of civil rights from the 19th century.

During the 1960s, however, Robinson had constant fights within the Republican Party as segregationist Democrats began to switch party affiliations and negatively influence the Republican Party.

In 1968, Republican Jackie Robinson denounced Richard Nixon’s coded racists appeals to try to attract Southern white voters. Nixon’s tactics evolved into the Southern Strategy, where the Republican Party would use coded racism to appeal to Southern white voters.

Robinson left the Republican Party during the Nixon administration due to its abandonment of fighting for Black civil rights.

Here are 2 blogs where I drew this description of Jackie Robinson from:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-republican-party/

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-republican-move-to-the-right/

ANTI-TRUMP CONSERVATIVE & ANTI-TRUMP EVANGELICALS

In today’s political climate, I have deep respect for the courage of anti-Trump conservatives and anti-Trump Evangelicals.

Though I deeply disagree with their politics, I admire these anti-Trump conservatives and Evangelicals for their integrity and their willingness to go against the cult-like support of Trump of their fellow Republicans and Evangelicals. These anti-Trump conservatives and Evangelicals have faced ostracism from former friends, death threats against their families and the loss of a political community.

These anti-Trump conservatives don’t really fit within the Democratic Party. But they are also repelled from the racism, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiments of the MAGA movement. So they don’t fit within the Republican Party either.

I had a conversation recently with editorial cartoonists Phil Hand and Milt Priggee. Both talked about how sane conservatives need to retake the Republican Party from the MAGA Republicans to move our country away from the extremism of Trumpism. I agree with both of them.

Here are excerpts of our conversation.

To watch the full conversation, you can go to this link

Angelo Lopez Cartoons

A Talk With Editorial Cartoonists Milt Priggee, Phil Hands & Angelo Lopez - June 14, 2026

On June 14, 2026, editorial cartoonists Milt Priggee, Phil Hands & Angelo Lopez had a conversation on Milt and Phil’s editorial cartooning career, their thoughts on the political scene & their insights on the editorial cartooning profession…

Listen now

3 months ago · 1 like · Angelo Lopez Cartoons

I also deeply respect anti-Trump Evangelicals. I’m sure they feel intimidated from speaking out in their congregations where so many of their fellow churchgoers are caught up in the Trump cult.

A while back, an anti-Trump Evangelical friend told me that if we are to fight Trumpism, we have no choice but to tackle White Christian Nationalism, since Trump derives his political power from the overwhelming support of conservative White Evangelicals.

I theorize that these Evangelicals have to learn the same lessons that the Catholic Church had to learn when Catholics were caught up in inquisitions, or when Muslim or Jewish or Hindu nationalists have to learn when they get caught up in harassing and killing those who don’t hold their religious beliefs.

I think White Evangelical leaders are in the same position that Catholic and Protestant leaders were in after World War II who had to grapple with why so many Catholics and Protestants supported Hitler, Mussolini and Franco and fell for anti-Jewish hate.

The Catholic and Protestant churches began purging their anti-Jewish church teachings and began to emphasize the importance of individual conscience to try to counter the tendency of groupthink.

These reformers saw that the Catholic and Protestant churches are at their best when they are at the margins of society helping the poor and the marginalized. The Christian church tends to be at its worst when it has a lot of political power and it tries to impose its beliefs on non-Christians.

Power corrupts. Thoughtful Evangelicals are seeing this right now as White Evangelicals are complicit in Trump’s corruption and racism in their cult-like support of him.

Anti-Trump conservative Evangelical David French wrote the article “The Problem With Political Christianity” for the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/opinion/gen-z-religion-evangelicals-trump.html) that details the harm caused by the White Evangelical community’s cult-like support of Donald Trump.

French wrote in his article:

“In 2024, Trump received 82 percent of the white evangelical/born again vote. He lost the rest of the vote by a whopping 18-point margin, 58 percent to 40 percent...

...The Billy Graham Center Research Institute at Wheaton College in Illinois recently released polling data showing that almost half — 48 percent — of Gen Z adults surveyed said that Christians’ support for Trump made them less likely to want to attend church, at least to some degree.

Actions have consequences. And one of those consequences is that a church that wraps its arms around arguably the most vulgar, most corrupt president in American history will repel good people, especially those people who’ve encountered MAGA’s claws...

...When many young people look at the church’s embrace of Trump, they’re not rejecting the church because it’s too moral. They’re rejecting it because they see the church’s immorality. They see its fear and moral compromise...

…We’ve seen the conduct of so very many Christians in the MAGA movement — we’ve seen their cruelty, their dishonesty and their racism…

...As my friend Russell Moore, an editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today, wrote in Plough magazine in 2021, ‘The problem now is not that people think the church’s way of life is too demanding, too morally rigorous, but that they have come to think the church doesn’t believe its own moral teachings.’”

I don’t know how anti-Trump conservatives and anti-Trump Evangelicals can win their fight against the Trump.

But they need to persist in fighting. Today’s Republican Party has very little common ground for moderate and progressive Democrats to work with. It’s impossible for Democrats to constantly have to win supermajorities to overcome Republican obstructionist tactics. So this dooms the Congress to dysfunction where nothing gets done. This is bad for progressives, moderates, conservatives and all Americans.

Here are 2 blogs that I wrote about anti-Trump conservatives:

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-republican-party/

https://angelolopez.wordpress.com/2020/02/08/why-does-a-liberal-like-myself-admire-anti-trump-conservatives/

#donaldtrump #antitrumpconservatives #antitrumpevangelicals #antitrumprepublicans #georgeorwell #barrygoldwater #jackierobinson #dissent

Leave a comment

Elon Musk and DOGE’s cuts on USAID last year have resulted in the deaths of thousands of poor people in the past year. Health policy experts project that millions will die by 2030 due to those funding cuts.

I got the idea for this cartoon after reading an article by Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times titled “U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People. That’s the Truth” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/opinion/usaid-elon-musk-doge.html).

Kristof wrote:

“A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

These figures may not be accurate; we just don’t have solid mortality data, and the aid cuts have also reduced data collection. What I can say after visiting numerous impoverished villages is that aid cuts are unquestionably costing the lives of many children…

…Until Trump’s second term, American aid cost just 23 cents for every $100 of gross national income and saved a life approximately once every 10 seconds. Seems like a bargain to me. Certainly it appears wiser than spending billions of dollars on a war with Iran.

I say ‘wiser’ because all this is not just about compassion but also about self-interest. Aid money serves national security and protects us from diseases. I’ve noted that the current Ebola outbreak in Africa may have gotten out of control precisely because we cut aid spending in the region…

…But compassion isn’t a liberal impulse — it’s a human one. It was evangelicals and Republicans who in 2003 started the single best aid program ever, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR; it has saved more than 26 million lives so far. Some of the most heroic aid workers I’ve met in dangerous locations have been Christian missionaries, from nuns to doctors; they would dispute the idea that empathy is woke.”

Impact Counter made estimates on the consequences of Musk’s cuts to USAID (https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=title&order=asc). They projected that 262,915 adults would die over one year due to funding cuts. They project that 518,428 children will die in a year’s span due to the funding cuts.

I looked at The Lancet study that Kristof referenced in his article. The Lancet Global Health focuses on the health policy of the disadvantaged populations in the world.

The article is “Impact of two decades of humanitarian and development assistance and the projected mortality consequences of current defunding to 2030: retrospective evaluation and forecasting analysis” by Andrea Ferreira de Silva, Rodrigo Volmir Rezende Anderle, Gonzalo Barreix Sibils, Lucas de Oliveira Ferreira de Sales, Daiana Pena, and Caterina Monti (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(26)00008-2/fulltext).

The article states:

“Official development assistance (ODA) accounts for the majority of humanitarian and development assistance in the world's most vulnerable countries and has played a pivotal role in advancing global health. We aimed to comprehensively evaluate the impact of ODA funding on mortality across the past two decades, and to project the potential consequences of current defunding trends…

…ODA funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across LMICs over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deaths, reversing decades of progress in global health…

…We searched PubMed for reports examining the effects of official development assistance (ODA) and related terms on mortality worldwide, from database inception to Nov 2, 2025... The search was updated on Dec 20, 2025, retrieving 12 additional results, but none was deemed relevant to the research question. Across the reviewed literature, the effectiveness and impact of international cooperation and ODA on mortality have been evaluated through various modelling studies, primarily programme-specific models of disruptions to the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding that show substantial excess deaths among children, mothers, and those with HIV when funding is halted or frozen. Country-level longitudinal research further links child health ODA to lower infant and under-5 mortality rates, whereas effects on maternal and neonatal outcomes are mixed and seem to depend on subsector composition, funding stability, and coordination. A few studies examining the effects of international aid on specific countries and programmes were also found. Overall, the evidence suggests that targeted, stable ODA contributes to reduced mortality, whereas sudden cuts or aid sanctions are associated with increased deaths and service coverage losses. Despite this evidence, most studies focused on US-funded programmes, a smaller number of recipient countries, or analysed a shorter timeframe, leaving the effects of overall ODA on global mortality and its projections less understood…

…This study combined retrospective data and projections for the near future, up to 2030, across a broader set of countries, especially those most vulnerable to ODA shocks, to fully understand the effects of international cooperation and its potential fluctuations on mortality amidst the ODA funding crisis. Our models forecast an additional 22·6 million deaths across all ages, including 5·4 million deaths in children younger than 5 years, by 2030, under a severe defunding scenario; even under a mild defunding scenario, the projected number of excess deaths by 2030 is 9·4 million across all ages and 2·5 million among children younger than 5 years.”

REFERENCES

“This Is Why You Don’t Slash Humanitarian Aid” by Nicholas Kristof for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/opinion/ebola-disease-trump-musk-usaid.html

“This Is What Happened When Trump Abandoned the World’s Poorest Children” by Nicholas Kristof for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/opinion/foreign-aid-cuts.html

“The Human Impact of Cutting USAID. Billionaire wealth and the decimation of lifesaving aid” by Oxfam

https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/making-foreign-aid-work/human-impact-of-usaid-cuts/

“Trump’s team says ‘no children’ died from USAID cuts. Consider these 3 cases” by Ari Daniel, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru and Lameck Nyagudi for NPR

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/17/g-s1-133651/usaid-elon-musk-rubio-deaths

“Elon Musk Has No Idea How USAID Works. This Former Staffer Knows” by Arnold Isaacs for The Nation

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/elon-musk-usaid-doge/

“How many people are dying as a result of USAID’s demise? Fewer than academics imagine, but more than Elon Musk will admit” by The Economist

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/07/30/how-many-people-are-dying-as-a-result-of-usaids-demise

“The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on USAID” by David Remnick for The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/the-human-cost-of-doges-war-on-usaid

#elonmusk #USAID #doge #children #deaths #poor #marginalized #humansuffering #poverty #aidsvictims #humanitarianaid

Leave a comment

Donald Trump has been making false claims about the 2026 midterm elections to try to get American voters to lose confidence in the election process.

Ariel Edwards-Levy of CNN reported that the latest CNN Poll (https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/29/politics/cnn-poll-donald-trump-midterms-polls-iran-war) that found that Trump’s latest approval ratings has dropped to 34%.

Around 65% of Americans believe that Trump’s policies have worsened the economic conditions in the U.S.

Around 67% of Americans believe that Trump’s decision to take military action against Iran has hurt the U.S.

Political analysists believe that Trump’s low approval ratings will become an anchor on many Republican Representatives and Senators running for elections on this year’s midterm elections. This threatens the Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Due to this, Trump has been making false claims of election fraud to try to cast doubt on the election process and increase outrage among his MAGA supporters. Trump is promoting the SAVE Act that would limit how many eligible Americans can vote in the midterm elections

Trump is willing to sacrifice our democracy to maintain power.

Robert Kuttner wrote the article “Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup” for The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/07/28/trump-attempt-coup-january-6-election-republican-congress/) where he stated:

“Free and fair elections this November should produce a Democratic wave, mass repudiation of Trump, and the possibility of a new impeachment. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that Trump has only one strategy for averting that fate: stealing the 2026 midterm election. He can’t seem to deliver a speech without returning to his obsession that he actually won the 2020 election, most recently in a prime-time address filled with false evidence of supposed foreign interference.

On January 6, 2021, Trump attempted to stage a coup and he will surely try again. Last time, only the integrity of a handful of Republican officials spared the Republic that fate. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebuffed Trump’s demand to find exactly 11,780 votes, and Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with Trump’s scheme, laid out in detail by John Eastman, to refuse to certify the results…

…If this Republic survives, it will take a combination of citizen mobilization and vigilant courts that have increasingly lost patience with Trump’s efforts to govern as a dictator.”

Here is a video of a talk that I had on March 15, 2026 with civic activist Alice Smith about the National Voter Corps and the importance of voting in our American representative democracy.

One of the things that I am most worried about is that Trump might incite his supporters to cause mayhem in the election process the way he incited a mob to attack Congress on January 6, 2021.

That points to one of this country’s biggest challenges: how do we pull these people away from the Donald Trump cult and the weird alternative universe of the MAGA movement?

We need a sane conservative party whom Democrats can have a sane debate on ideas and be willing to compromise and find areas of common ground.

I don’t know how we can do so. But I remember anti-Trump conservative Republican Mitt Romney’s speech just after the January 6 attack on Congress.

Here are excerpts of Romney’s speech:

“We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning.

What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.

The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen.

Please! No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen.

The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth.

That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership.

The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election. President Trump lost. Scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General, and state election officials both Republican and Democrat have reached this unequivocal decision…

…I ask my colleagues: Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our Republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What is the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience?”

REFERENCES

“Takeaways From Trump’s Address Claiming Election Vulnerabilities. Documents released by the Trump administration to support the president’s claims did not back up his most aggressive statements.” by Julian E. Barnes and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/us/trump-speech-elections-takeaways.html

“What’s the Worst Thing Trump Can Do in the Midterms?” by Jeffrey Toobin for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/opinion/trump-midterms-worst.html

“The SAVE Act and the Election Power Grab. The revived bill is a serious threat to voting rights” by Michael Waldman for the Brennan Center for Justice

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/save-act-and-election-power-grab

“In primetime speech, Trump doesn’t provide evidence for illegal voting” by Shannon Bond, Jenna McLaughlin and Audrey Nguyen for NPR

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/16/nx-s1-5896448/trump-election-address

“Hundreds of ex-CIA officials question memo behind Trump’s Chinese election interference claims. Former officials call for investigations into whether the White House helped the CIA draft a document to boost the President’s claims” by Alex Woodward for The Independent

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-china-election-cia-memo-investigation-b3023353.html

“How Trump and His Allies Are Working to Depress Turnout, Intimidate Voters, and Steal the 2026 Elections” by Katrina Vandel Heuvel for The Nation

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-midterm-elections-voting-rights/

“The Read Reason to Worry About the Midterm Elections. Some worry about a November Trump coup. That’s far-fetched, but but the ordinary forms of voter suppression are the greater concern.” by Robert Kuttner for The American Prospect

https://prospect.org/2026/04/30/real-reason-to-worry-about-midterm-elections/

“Trump promised evidence of election fraud. Experts say there was none” by Franco Ordonez and Ashley Lopez for NPR

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/17/nx-s1-5897446/trump-promised-evidence-of-election-fraud-experts-say-there-was-none

#donaldtrump #midtermelections #elections #electionrigging #saveact #bluewave #falseclaims #nomorekings #democracy #americandemocracy #voting #gerrymandering #redistricting

Leave a comment

BIOGRAPHY

GWEN MURANAKA was senior editor of The Rafu Shimpo, the oldest and largest bilingual Japanese newspaper in the United States. She developed the Nisei Diploma Project, that honored to Japanese American students forced to leave school due to the internment.

Throughout her journalism career, Muranaka has drawn cartoons, including NOODLES, published weekly in the Japan Times in Tokyo. Currently she illustrates DAD’S THREE CATS, which appears in the Hawaii Herald and The Rafu Shimpo.

Muranaka is active in Little Tokyo as a board member of the Little Tokyo Community Council and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

You can see Gwen’s comic Noodles here

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/tag/gwen-muranaka/

STEPH BRAVO-SEMILLA is a professional artist and cartoonist from the Philippines. She joined the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1998 as a press cartoonist and illustrator.

The Inquirer was born at the time of the EDSA revolution and aims to be a newspaper ‘fearless in the face of repression and unwavering in its commitment to truth’. Since the COVID crisis, she has worked exclusively from home.

The gradual disappearance of cartoons from Philippine newspapers gave rise to a Facebook group that she soon joined called Pitik Bulag, giving Filipino cartoonists a place to post their editorial cartoons, meet regularly and exchange ideas about creating cartoons and sharing opinions on political issues in their country.

Steph is an artist for PLCPD (Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development )’s Child Rights Network, and Cartoonists Against The Tobacco Industry campaigns.

Here is the website for Pitik Bulag, a group of Philippine political cartoonists

https://pitikbulag.rappler.com/

Here is Steph’s Cartooning for Peace page https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/en/dessinateurs/stephb/

Here is Steph’s Cartoon Movement page

https://www.cartoonmovement.com/cartoonist/21963

STELLINA CHEN started her cartooning life in 2017, tackling world news with humor bit by bit. You can find her works on Le Monde, France 24, Courrier International, Le Temps, the News Lens and some more. She also published a comic book ‘’Dans la cour des grands’‘ in France in 2023.

You can find Stellina’s cartoons in her website

https://cartoonsbystellina.com/

ANGELO LOPEZ is the former editorial cartoonist of the Tri-City Voice and The Philippine News Today, both community newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Angelo’s cartoons currently appear in the Cartoon Movement, Counterpoint and Pitik Bulag.

Angelo Lopez won the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Award for Editorial Cartoons. He has also won the 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2018 Sigma Delta Chi award for editorial cartooning for newspapers with a circulation under 100,000. Angelo won first prize for the Best of the West contest in 2016 and third prize in 2017.

Angelo’s Substack page is https://substack.com/@angelolopezcartoons

CHAPTERS

4:56 How does the U.S. look to the 3 cartoonists?
19:16 How has the Iran War and gas prices affecting The Philippines, Taiwan, France, and Los Angeles?
25:44 How has the Japanese American community’s experiences with the internments during World War II influenced how the community has reacted to Trump’s immigration policies?
33:04 What are the 3 cartoonists’ biggest worries right about your countries and the wider world?
40:42 Has Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran emboldened China in pursuing its territorial claims against Taiwan and The Philippines?
47:47 Does Gwen see any signs of hope right now for our country?
55:47 Have there been any challenges in being women cartoonists? Is there a community of women cartoonists in Taiwan, the Philippines and the Asian American community?
1:05:03 What is Taiwan, the Philippines and the Japanese American community like?

#cartoonists #editorialcartoonists #gwenmuranaka #stellinachen #stephbravo #japaneseamerican #philippines #taiwan #comicstrip #donaldtrump #china #westphilippinesea

Leave a comment

LYLE PRIJOLES was a human rights activist who often traveled to the Philippines to do advocacy work for fishing and underserved communities.

Lyle was among 19 people shot and killed by the Philippine military on April 19, 2026 during a mission on the island of Negros.

Brandon Lee and Melissa Reyes wrote in a tribute to Lyle:

“Lyle Prijoles contained multitudes: nerd and agitator, artist and organizer, journalist and witness, brother and comrade. To write about him is to write about a life lived in deep alignment, one shaped by humor, intellect, service, and an unwavering commitment to the people...

...Seeing poverty, land struggle, and state violence firsthand clarified what had previously just been theory. He understood why U.S. tax dollars should not fund bullets and bombs for a government that could not feed its own people...

...From then on, Lyle committed himself fully to

the movement for national democracy, serving as LFS chair from 2008-2010 and later becoming a crucial force in building the youth and student movement for National Democracy and international solidarity work for the Filipino People through International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, or simply ICHRP-US...

...Lyle was a community servant, cultural worker, journalist, artist, and revolutionary shaped by love for the people. He was someone who spent his life asking difficult questions, sharpening contradictions, and choosing solidarity over self-interest.”

BRANDON LEE who was born and raised in San Francisco, is a journalist, environmentalist, and indigenous rights activist. He was living in the Philippines supporting indigenous peoples right to self determination and documenting human rights violations as a volunteer for the Ifugao Peasant Movement when he was shot in the Philippines by the Armed Forces of the Philippines last August 2019.

In 2020 he was a recipient of the Center for Environmental Concerns’ Gawad Bayani ng Kalikasan (Environmental Hero Award). He is now back in San Francisco recovering from his injuries. Brandon continues to advocate for human rights and is chairperson of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines US (ICHRP US)

JESSICKA ANTONIO was a former officer of BAYAN USA- Jessica was first elected as the National Secretary General of BAYAN USA at the 4th National Congress held in Chicago, 2012 and was elected as the Propaganda Officer 6th National Congress in 2018. She was first introduced to the National Democratic movement in Seattle, 2004 and has been part of this movement since joining the League of Filipino Students at San Francisco State University in 2007.

Experiencing Philippine exposure programs in 2008, 2010 and 2017 solidified her commitment to human rights and activism on a local, national, and international level.

Jessica currently teaches Art and enjoys time with her little pamilya.

If you want to be involved in issues that Lyle cared about, you can:

join the Defend Negros Northern California Instagram page
https://www.instagram.com/defendnegros.norcal

or you can join the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines

https://ichrp.net/

or you can support the ILWU Local 6 strike against C&H Sugar in Crockett, California

https://local6ilwu.org/

CHAPTERS

5:43 How did Brandon and Jessicka get to know Lyle? What was Lyle like?

14:21 Was Lyle an intellectual? How did that influence his activism?

19:14 How did Lyle’s activism influence Brandon and Jessicka?

22:00 What was the community work that Lyle was doing in the Negros region? What are issues that the community was facing?

28:14 Is Lyle’s passion for social justice just part of his overall empathy for people?

39:00 How can people get involved in the issues that Lyle cared about? How did Lyle’s life influence Brandon and Jessicka?

#SupportLocal6 #FairContractNow #DefendNegros #Philippines #crockett #california #Philippines #landlesspeasants #ILWU #sugarplantations $humanrights #landreform #exploitation #unions #labor #workingclass

Here is a video of a talk that I had with Brandon Lee and Jessicka Antonio on May 6, 2023

Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are exacerbating America’s caregiver shortage at a time when the number of senior citizens will grow exponentially in the next few years

Miriam Jordan wrote the article “How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Hurting Elder Care” for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/us/immigration-trump-senior-living-staffing.html?searchResultPosition=1). Jordan wrote in the article:

“The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is colliding with a demographic reality. Americans are aging rapidly and living longer, creating soaring demand for elder care when the industry is already buckling under the weight of chronic labor shortages...

...Millions of immigrants, eligible to work in the United States, fill positions across the elder care industry such as nurses, dietitians, fitness instructors and maintenance technicians. And countless undocumented immigrants care for seniors in their homes, part of a vast informal economy.

Immigration enforcement is choking both labor pools...

...Katie Smith Sloan, chief executive of LeadingAge, which represents more than 5,000 aging service providers, called the recent Supreme Court ruling and the Trump administration immigration policies ‘a government-mandated disservice to older adults and families in need of care and services’...

...The senior-care sector was already under strain. More than half of 400 nursing homes surveyed in 2023 said they had turned away prospective residents because they lacked enough staff, according to the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living. Nearly all reported asking employees to work overtime or extra shifts.”

Madeleine Ngo wrote the article “Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Hits Senior Care Work Force” for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/us/politics/immigration-senior-caregivers.html) where she wrote:

“Providers that operate nursing homes and home care agencies say they have lost staff members as the Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants with temporary legal status. Republican critics of those programs say that they have allowed migrants to stay longer than intended, and that ending them “restores integrity” in the country’s immigration system.

But the long-term care industry already faces persistent challenges in recruiting workers. Providers say the reduction in staff could threaten the quality of services they are able to offer to the nation’s senior population. Some said they would have to raise wages to attract more workers to fill positions, and they were set to pass on cost increases to people receiving care.

The issue underscores the critical role that foreign-born workers play in the long-term care industry. Immigrants make up about 28 percent of the work force directly providing that care, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data from KFF, a health policy research group. In comparison, foreign-born workers account for about 19 percent of the entire U.S. civilian labor force.”

A large percentage of the immigrants working as caregivers are Filipino immigrants. Lynda Lin Grigsby wrote the article “Many Filipino healthcare workers in the US live in fear of ICE: ‘This is my place of work. I should feel safe’”. Grigsby wrote:

“In the US healthcare system, Filipinos make up a large percentage of the workforce – 4% of registered nurses are of Filipino descent, which is more than double the Filipino American population, according to National Nurses United.

The large number of Filipinos in healthcare work includes undocumented people, who fill workforce gaps and care for ailing people. Approximately 2% of undocumented immigrants in the US are from the Philippines, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

Amid heightened levels of immigration arrests, many Filipino healthcare workers say they are providing essential care while in the grips of anxiety over their own safety…

…In the US, Filipino caregivers are part of the backbone of a healthcare system facing critical labor gaps, said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, founder and executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California.

‘[Caregivers] wouldn’t be coming here if there weren’t the need for the labor,’ said Versoza.”

REFERENCES

“The Crisis of Care Work. The end of Temporary Protected Status and Trump’s budget cuts make a bad situation worse.” by Robert Kuttner for The American Prospect

https://prospect.org/2026/07/21/crisis-of-care-work-trump-tps-haitians/

“‘Every day the policy changes’: chaos and confusion for Filipino workers over US immigration rules. The US relies on migrant workers in crucial sectors but shifting policies under Donald Trump create uncertainty and fear” by Natasha May for The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/08/filipino-workers-us-trump-immigration-rules

“Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Hits Senior Care Work Force” by Madeleine Ngo for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/us/politics/immigration-senior-caregivers.html

“Immigration crackdown cripples America’s caregiving industry. Leaked plans to declare migrants dead and a SCOTUS ruling are hollowing out elder care” by Julia S. Beck for Salon

https://www.salon.com/2026/07/16/immigration-crackdown-cripples-americas-caregiving-industry/

“Despairing diaspora: The life of a Filipino in Trump’s America” by Lui Mendiola and Francessca Abalos for The Guidon

https://theguidon.com/2025/04/despairing-diaspora-the-life-of-a-filipino-in-trumps-america/

Here is a cartoon I posted in December 4, 2024 for the Cartoon Movement

Here is a cartoon I posted on July 24, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

#immigrants #donaldtrump #caregivers #elderly #seniorcitizens #homecare #nursinghome #filipinoimmigrants #nursinghome

Leave a comment

I’ve been reading on Facebook tributes from several editorial cartoonists who were influenced by Oliphant’s cartoons. A generation of American editorial cartoonists were influenced by Oliphant’s graphic brush ink style and his example of keeping those from both political parties who are in power accountable.

Oliphant attacked LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the 2 Bushes, Clinton, Obama and Trump with equal vigor. Oliphant never wanted to personally know political figure because he realized if he began to like them, he would pull his punches when it came to criticizing them and their policies in his cartoons. After they left office, Oliphant met Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford and really liked their personalities even though Oliphant’s politics differed from theirs. His encounters with Goldwater and Ford cemented Oliphant’s views never to know his political targets personally.

Pat Oliphant was part of a generation of great editorial cartoonists from the 1950s to the 1980s who lived through the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements and created powerful political commentary. Cartoonists like Paul Conrad, Herbert Block, Tony Auth, Signe Wilkinson, Don Wright, Jeff McNelly and many others.

My one Pat Oliphant book is “Oliphant’s Anthem”, which has a 1998 interview of Oliphant by Harry Katz (https://www.amazon.com/Oliphants-Anthem-Pat-Oliphant/dp/0836258983/ref=sr_1_1?crid=323QCDFUU9QKW&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xoB0AMx9FeCWbMEgrbMhfrmUlTyXYLf2CIW_bzMCfHlXnWmYCFWYUCgZvNcOZjkjhvuI5VliwB3fNZtXWucuHUYheGcG3GDNBhZmTJfDNdsNXpV5VA9p_XZAMUG-BJ7qQbp9yrDd5ii85HvNY1dMZyIyQlXUZU7w8ZuLGQ83E7g.LQkcA_lg_tc3jG6BBMI58vgRPzNEqVuOCn8KyY4WFCg&dib_tag=se&keywords=oliphant%27s+anthem&qid=1784484275&sprefix=oliphant%27s+anthem%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-1).

Here were some excerpts of that interview:

“In Australia, we had inherited the more humorous British approach, which is born of the libel laws there. In this country, of course, and God bless it, you can say anything you like about a politician whereas, in Australia and Britain, it’s possible, believe it or not, to libel these people…

…Herblock really earned his stripes back in the ‘50’s in the McCarthy era. He stuck to what he believed, right through that thing. He was more than instrumental in bringing down McCarthy. I mean, he really had a big part in it…

…Well, I think the cartoon should start some sort of dialogue in the letters column. One should be provoking and provocative. I’ve never been able to determine whether a cartoon can ever persuade, that is, actually change somebody’s mind. I think that, if it happens at all, the work is probably done through presenting the prickly aspects of a controversy or promoting a dialogue. From that may come some good…

…Sometimes, when you go in, you don’t know what your viewpoint is. You work that out as you go along. And you sometimes will come up with a cartoon which is a great idea and would make a wonderful drawing, but unfortunately, it’s an idea totally contrary to the point of view you’ve come to believe should be expressed. So you scrap it and start over…

…I just play that issue by issue. I think that pretty much sums up what the charter of the cartoonist is, at least the liberal cartoonist. Or the skeptical liberal cartoonist. And I just like what this country stands for. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here, you know. It’s a good place to be. It’s the great experiment. It’s still the great experiment. May it always be…

…For any cartoon, you’ve got to care about the issue, or you don’t do it.”

Several editorial cartoonists recommended that I watch the documentary “A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant” on Amazon Prime. I didn’t know much about Oliphant’s life other than that he was a great cartoonist. I watched it and grew to admire his great courage in being willing to offend and take a controversial stand.

A scene in the documentary that impressed me was Oliphant’s courage in taking on the Catholic Church when the Boston Globe Spotlight team exposed the priest/pedophilia scandal. Oliphant received death threats and condemnations from people who were offended by his cartoons that dared criticize the Church.

This points to the importance of protecting the right of political cartoonists and satirists to offend people. When we take that right away, that takes away the checks to traditional institutions, religious institutions, and other organizations who might be covering up corruption or other crimes.

In 2014, Indian cartoonist Kanika Mishra received death threats after using her cartoons to criticize cult leader Asaram Bapu, who had been accused of raping the 16-year old daughter of two of his followers.

Indian cartoonist Rachita Taneja was harassed and was sued by the government when her cartoons criticized the extremist Hindu Nationalist movement in India.

Malaysian political cartoonist Zunar was arrested and faced a possible 43 years in jail after being charged with violating the country’s Sedition Laws. Zunar’s cartoons were accused of offending cultural sensibilities because they were critical of the Malaysian government.

In 2015, 12 cartoonists and journalists of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were killed by extremists after creating satirical cartoons that offended their religious sensibilities.

Today’s editorial cartoonists have to thank the 1960s underground cartoonists like Spain Rodriguez, Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and others for stretching the bounds of what is offensive and how it can be used for political satire. And we have to thank 1960s and 1970s comedians like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and others for fighting the legal battles that helped protect free expression and political satire.

They gave the space for political cartoonists to take on the religious Right, outdated social mores, and such.

A few years ago, the musician Sinead O’Connor passed away. I hadn’t followed her career since the early 1990s, when she was embroiled in a controversy with Pope John Paul II when she accused the Catholic Church of child abuse.

So I was surprised at the respect that was accorded to her in Ireland at her passing. The Irish revered her for her courage in speaking out against priest/pedophilia before the Boston Globe Spotlight team uncovered proof of the crimes and the coverup.

Ireland went from being a majority Catholic country to a place where many Irish left the Church.

Allyson McCabe wrote the 2023 article “Appreciation: Sinead O’Connor was right all along” (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-07-27/sinead-oconnor-dies-snl-catholic-church-protest) where she wrote”

“…O’Connor saw herself as a protest singer in the vein of Dylan — a point she made clear on her next album, 1990’s ‘I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.’ While it was the Prince-penned single ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ that made her a global superstar, she took on racism and police brutality in ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’ and the warped values of the music industry in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ And, more obliquely, she sang about being an abuse survivor, on the title track and elsewhere.

From that point on, whenever she sat with journalists, she talked about racism, sexism, child abuse and the music industry’s relentless focus on commercial success, though she rarely found a sympathetic ear. She also used awards shows to do the same, until she decided to forgo them altogether — another form of protest…

…By singing and talking about things people often didn’t want to hear, O’Connor made it possible for others to confront their own shame and silencing, and to step toward healing and something that feels like hope.”

Margaret Spillane wrote the article “Sinead O’Connor (1966-2023): Premature Anti-Fascist” (https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/sinead-oconnor-obituary-premature-antifascist/) that stated:

“In fact, the demons against which O’Connor most consistently rode into battle were outer ones: racism, gender bigotry, the sexual exploitation of children, the profit-addicted music industry…

…O’Connor felt an especial urgency to speak out on behalf of people trapped within systems that controlled them utterly—whether that policing was done by the state, the church, or the family. O’Connor was born in a genteel suburb of Dublin, but under the regime of a violently psychotic mother; following this terror, O’Connor endured a spell in a juvenile detention center that once had been a Magdalen laundry in which families incarcerated their pregnant unmarried daughters. She wrote ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’ out of alarm at the racist law enforcement she saw when she first moved to the UK; the song concerns Nicholas Bramble, a Black teenager chased to death on his motorbike by London cops who’d assumed he’d stolen it. She dedicated the album to the Caribbean-immigrant parents of Colin Roach, a young man shot to death in the doorway of her neighborhood police station: the official report exonerated law enforcement and claimed Roach had shot himself. The album’s inner sleeve was emblazoned with a photo of Colin’s parents, gravely standing in the rain in front of the police station, holding up a poster of their son…

…For years, O’Connor had been raising an alarm about pedophile priests exploiting children with impunity while an enabling Vatican hierarchy looked the other way. Then in 1992, O’Connor wrapped up her Saturday Night Live a cappella performance of Bob Marley’s ‘War’ by solemnly tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II and speaking plainly into the camera: ‘Fight the real enemy.’ The audience responded with dead silence…

…Throughout her too-short life, Citizen Sinéad risked the skin of her soul as well as her body in order to speak inconvenient truths.”

The Catholic Church faced the consequence of silencing critics like O’Connor. I think the Catholic Church owes O’Connor an apology.

When a political cartoonist criticizes a religious institution, a government, a country’s direction, it’s often because of our love of the institution and our need to warn it that it is going in a wrong direction that will cause harm to others and itself.

I know that is my motivation in my political cartoons. I love the United States. I love my Christian religion. I love my Filipino heritage.

But all of these institutions are made up of human beings. All human beings are flawed. Since all institutions are made up of human beings, all institutions are flawed.

I want my country, I want my Church, I want my community to live up to its highest values.

That’s the value of the best intentioned critics.

#patoliphant #editorialcartoonist #editorialcartoons #sineadoconnor #critic #protest

Leave a comment

Here is a cartoon I posted on February 5, 2025 in the Cartoon Movement

Yesterday, I avoided watching Donald Trump’s speech trying to undermine Americans’ confidence of the 2026 midterm elections. I didn’t want the aggravation and the anxiety.

But I decided to listen to parts of the speech this morning just because I’m a political cartoonist and this seems too important to ignore. Trump’s speech was as bad as I feared it would be.

Yesterday’s speech re-confirms everything that I’ve been worried about with Trump’s threats to our democracy.

It got me thinking about this past decade: How do we defeat Donald Trump and break his stranglehold on the Republican Party?

A related questions: How do we pull the MAGA adherents away from a fascist Christian nationalist movement and bring them towards a more sane conservative Christianity?

Our country needs a sane conservative party that can debate the Democrats and the Left in the marketplace of ideas and be willing to compromise and find areas of common ground when the debate reaches an impasse.

Early in Trump’s first term, I held the hope that anti-Trump conservatives like Jeff Flake, John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Kasich and others would be able to fight the Trumpists and regain control of the GOP. That hope was dashed, as a succession of anti-Trump conservatives were vilified by the GOP base for opposing Trump, their families were threatened, and they lost elections to MAGA candidates.

In order to fight Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, I think two things need to be done.

First, the Democrats need to win back the working class communities from Trump and the MAGA movement. The working class communities in the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt form the basis of Donald Trump’s political power. The Democrats will need the support of working class communities in those regions if they hope to win the presidency and to win large enough majorities to overcome Republican obstructionism.

Second, American Christians will need to fight the Christian Nationalist elements within their churches that fuel the extreme right wing populist movements that made Donald Trump’s presidency possible. Donald Trump has a stranglehold on the Republican Party because of the outsized influence that white Evangelical Christians have in the Republican Party. Trump won in 2016 and 2024 because of the overwhelming support of white Evangelical Christians.

I have no idea how the Democrats can win back the working class. Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” policies were one attempt to win back working class Trump voters. Biden assumed that infrastructure programs that people could see visibly improving their communities would work better than tax credits to win over skeptical working class Trump supporters. It didn’t seem to win over the working class Trump supporters.

Here is a cartoon I created in August 15. 2024 that I posted in the Cartoon Movement

As for the fight against Christian Nationalism, I think there are fights within 2 Christian denominations that are necessary to defeat Christian Nationalism.

Within the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV and mainstream Catholics (both liberal and conservative Catholics) need to deal with a Traditionalist Catholic segment that wants to eliminate the Vatican II reforms and end the Catholic Church’s ecumenical outreach with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and different religions and Christian denominations. This Traditionalist Catholic sect supports many of the extreme right wing ideas of the wider Christian Nationalist movement.

David Gibson wrote the article “Pope Leo Faces the First Crisis of His Pontificate” for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/opinion/pope-leo-latin-mass-catholic-church.html) that describes Pope Leo’s challenges in dealing with Traditionalist Catholics:

“The focus of the uproar is a breakaway faction based in Ecône, Switzerland, the Society of St. Pius X, which is devoted to the celebration of an outdated version of the Mass in Latin. Why is the group, named after Pope Pius X, a fiercely anti-liberal early-20th-century pontiff, causing such problems? Why should anyone care about such a recondite internal church dust-up?

…the society’s hyper-traditionalism represents a troublesome current in the church, one that is channeling the politics of fear and resentment that are hallmarks of many populist movements. Ecclesial nostalgists and national chauvinists are following the same path: a shared focus on maintaining cultural and religious purity and restoring past glories of church and state.

The crisis is threatening to drag Leo into the polarizing conflicts tormenting so many societies just as he is emerging as the world’s most prominent moral voice on human rights, war, A.I., migrants and the poor…

…That would be a powerful signal that Rome has finally lost patience with a group that was born out of a rejection of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Those reforms ended centuries of anti-Jewish teachings, sought reconciliation with Protestants and other churches and embraced religious liberty and engagement with the modern world. Vatican II also led to liturgical changes such as allowing Mass in the vernacular and having the priest face the congregation. The Society of St. Pius X says those changes undermine the faith.”

Here is a cartoon that I did on June 5, 2025 that I posted in the Cartoon Movement

I don’t know if the Evangelical Church is going through the same inner struggles between Trump-supporting Evangelicals and anti-Trump Evangelicals. I follow anti-Trump conservative Evangelicals like David French, Russell Moore, and Pat Kahnke, but I don’t know whether they have any influence with white Evangelicals.

One of the things that I’m keeping an eye on is whether black Evangelicals may have to confront their white Evangelical churchgoers on their support of Trump and his racist demagoguery. Though black and white Evangelicals share the same conservative Christian theology and belief in a literal reading of the Bible, the vast majority of black Evangelicals are Democrats while the overwhelming majority of white Evangelicals are Republicans. Most black Evangelicals can’t afford to ignore Trump’s racism.

A December 11, 2024 article by Bobby Ross Jr. for The Christian Chronicle (https://christianchronicle.org/in-presidential-election-many-christian-voters-split-along-racial-lines/) stated:

“The racial divide typically extends to the voting booth — and did so once again in the 2024 election, according to network exit polls.

White Christian voters helped propel Trump to victory, with 72 percent supporting him, polling found. Meanwhile, 85 percent of Black Christian voters backed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.”

Carolyn Im and Luis Noe-Bustamante did research for the Pew Research Center in November 2025 that found a majority of Latino Catholics and Protestants oppose Donald Trump due to his crackdown on both legal and illegal immigrants (https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/11/24/how-latinos-assess-trump-and-his-impact-on-u-s-hispanics/)

On page 2 of their research, Im and Noe-Bustamante found that 75% of Catholic Latinos disapprove of Trump, 58% of Protestant Latinos disapprove of Trump and 72% of unaffiliated Christian Latinos disapprove of Trump.

More than 1 in 5 Latino Christians said they personally know someone who has been deported or detained by the U.S. federal government in the last year (22% of Catholics and 23% of Protestants).

I couldn’t find any article or survey on the percentage of Asian American Evangelical support of Trump. But I have found that overall, most Asian Americans do not support Trump and, like the Latino community, deeply oppose Trump’s immigration policies.

Here is a March 23, 2026 article by Terry Tang and Linley Sanders for the Associated Press on the Asian American opposition to Trump (https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2026/aapi-adults-mostly-think-trump-has-done-more-harm-than-good-on-immigration-new-poll-finds/):

“About 6 in 10 AAPI adults say Trump has hurt immigration and border security “a lot” or “a little,” according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, compared with about 4 in 10 U.S. adults in a January AP-NORC survey. About two-thirds of AAPI adults — who are generally more likely to be Democrats than U.S. adults overall — also say Trump has ‘gone too far’ when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, compared with about half of Americans in general…

…AAPI adults, one of the fastest-growing demographics in the U.S., broadly don’t support Trump’s tough tactics on immigration, the poll found. A separate AAPI Data/AP-NORC survey last fall found that unhappiness about Trump’s immigration approach had risen from earlier in the year…

…Most AAPI adults, 73%, have a ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ unfavorable opinion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.

AAPI Republicans have a much less negative view of the agency than AAPI adults overall, with only about one-third saying they view ICE negatively. But only about one-quarter of Republicans overall had an unfavorable opinion of ICE in a February AP-NORC survey.

There’s also widespread opposition to several hardline immigration policies, with about 6 in 10 saying they oppose large-scale immigration enforcement operations in neighborhoods with high populations of immigrants, and about 7 in 10 against allowing immigration enforcement agents to cover their faces when arresting people.”

I don’t know enough about the Evangelical community to know if this opposition to Trump among black and Latino Evangelicals translates to confronting their white Evangelical counterparts or whether it means the voluntary racial segregation of Evangelical churches based on their support or opposition of Trump.

I think the American Christian dilemma with Christian Nationalism is similar to the problem that European Catholic and Protestant leaders had in the 1930s and 1940s, when so many Catholics and Protestants supported Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.

When World War II ended, Catholic and Protestant leaders had to contemplate why so many Catholics and Protestants enthusiastically supported fascism and anti-Jewish hate.

For the Catholic Church, this contemplation eventually led to the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, especially the document Nostra Aetate (https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html) which eliminated anti-Jewish church teachings and stated unequivocally that the Jewish people were not collectively responsible for the execution of Jesus. Nostra Aetate also advocated for the Catholic Church to ecumenical outreach to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other religions and Christian denominations.

After seeing how so many Catholics fell into groupthink during the fascist era in Germany and Italy, Vatican II also emphasized the primacy of the individual conscience in the Christian life to try to insulate Catholics against groupthink.

The Lutheran Church condemned the antisemitism found in Martin Luther’s writings and how that influenced antisemitism within the wider Lutheran Church.

Other Protestant churches also eliminated antisemitic church teachings and enacted other reforms.

A few months ago I visited my Dad’s Catholic Church and was pleasantly surprised to see that the church now has a bookstore. I perused through the bookstore and my eye caught the book “My Battle Against Hitler: Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich” (https://www.amazon.com/My-Battle-Against-Hitler-Defiance-ebook/dp/B00KEPJRYQ) by an author that I had never heard before, Dietrich Von Hildebrand. I decided to buy the book.

I found out that Von Hildebrand was the Catholic version of Dietrich Boenhoffer, an Austrian Catholic philosopher who publicly opposed the Nazis in the early 1920s when they were just a gang of right wing racist ruffians. Von Hildebrand saw early on that the Nazi ideology was incompatible with Christian values and he wrote several articles proclaiming the dangers of Naziism.

When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Von Hildebrand fled to Vienna, Austria, where he he founded and edited an anti-Nazi weekly paper, Der Christliche Ständestaat ("The Christian Corporative State").

In his writings, Von Hildebrand frequently expressed his horror that so many of his fellow Catholics supported Hitler and the Nazi ideology. It reminds me a lot of the writings and podcasts of anti-Trump Evangelicals David French and Pat Kahnke, who are often bewildered that their fellow Evangelicals showed such blind support for Donald Trump in spite of Trump’s racism, cruelty, and his disdain of democracy.

On November 10, 1935, Dietrich Von Hildebrand wrote the essay “The Danger of Becoming Morally Blunted” where he wrote:

“…if a state slowly descends- in its official statements, in its legislation, and in its day-to-day conduct of affairs- ever more deeply into immorality and barbarism, then there is a tremendous risk that the populace will gradually become accustomed to its ethical level, that their initial indignation will subside, and that they will imperceptibly lower their own ethical criteria when they see that all crimes committed by the state go unpunished as it continues to exist with the dignity of its own inherent authority and the formal recognition of other states.

At the time, the laws passed by the National Socialist regime in the year 1933 provoked great indignation everywhere in the world. Since then, however, so many even more terrible things have happened that the events of 1933 no longer make much of an impression on most people. They have gotten used to the Third Reich by means of an imperceptible process of acclimatization that has led to its increasing acceptance. Their own moral sensitivity has suffered harm…

…People generally remain indignant only for a short while. After a certain time, a person tends to become weary of disapprobation, even if the deed that occasioned his revulsion goes unpunished and the sin continues to cry to heaven. If he cannot find relief for his indignation by doing something himself, and he is powerless in the face of the continued existence of evil, he will soon revert to everyday living. On the other hand, his ability to make ethical distinctions would not be weakened in any way if he were to arrive at an inner peace by enduring, as something permitted by God, an evil that he cannot effectively combat- not in any way resigning himself to it, nor wavering in his inner rejection for it, but enduring it with the awareness that he does not have the power to remove every evil from the world…

…As Christians, of course, we must never succumb to any embittered attitude of hatred. We must always retain a profound compassion for those who have gone astray, and we cannot allow ourselves to be poisoned by our indignation. Yet we must remain alert... There are some monstrosities we must never forget, much less accept, such as racial materialism of the National Socialist ideology, the policy of sterilization, the legislation regulating marriage, the denial of an objective law, the murders of June 30, 1934, the unparalleled persecution of the Jews (which repudiates any and every human solidarity), the pharisaical trials on trumped up charges related to foreign currency (leading to draconian sentences that mock any notion of natural law), and the arbitrary defamation of countless individuals. Nothing should diminish our inner judgment, our unconditional rejection, our consciousness of the horrific immorality of it all, and our determination to fight it with every means available.”

#donaldtrump #resistance #nokings #authoriarianism #fascism #americandemocracy #freedom #equality #christiannationalism #popeleoxiv #vaticanii #tradcatholic #dietrichvonhildebrand #workingclassvote

Leave a comment

Filipino American activist groups like the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines and Bayan USA stand in solidarity with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union strike against C&H Sugar in Crockett, California, led by Warehouse Local 6. ILWU Local 6 is striking over healthcare, retiree benefits, sick leave, overtime rules, and union protections as part of a new three-year contract.

Filipino American activist groups are showing their solidarity because of the plight of landless peasants in the Negros region of the Philippines who work in the sugar fields where C&H Sugar get their sugar.

On April 19, 2026, the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army did aerial strafing of Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental during a clash with Northern Negros Front of the New People’s Army. This aerial strafing led to the death of 19 people, including 9 civilians.

These conflicts stem from the problem of severe poverty faced by landless peasants who are being exploited by wealthy plantations in the region. These peasants were then displaced from their land so the landlords allow corporations to exploit the natural resources in that land. Among the corporations that benefit from this exploitation of workers and land are C&H Sugar.

Lallan Schoenstein wrote the article “ILWU Local 6 holds the line against C&H Sugar’s union busting” for Struggle La Lucha (https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2026/07/16/ilwu-local-6-holds-the-line-against-ch-sugars-union-busting/) that describes the solidarity between the Filipino American community and the striking ILWU workers:

“Originally known as California and Hawaiian Sugar Refining Company, C&H is trying to throw out substantial agreements in its contract with ILWU and cut union benefits…

…The Filipino community is backing us up, and our local community in Crockett is giving their support.

The Filipino community is tied in because C&H gets sugar from the Philippine island of Negros. There is a labor struggle going on there. On April 19, the Philippine Army’s 79th Infantry Battalion killed 19 people in Toboso, on Negros Island. The killings came as Washington and Manila launched Balikatan 2026, their largest joint war games yet.

Lyle Prijoles, a leader of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) from Hayward, California, was one of those killed. He was documenting conditions of sugar workers and linking their struggles to international networks.”

Bishop Gerry Alminaza, the President of Caritas Philippines, wrote the article “Negros after the gunfire: what the blood on our soil is telling us” for Bulatlat (https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/04/22/negros-after-the-gunfire-what-the-blood-on-our-soil-is-telling-us/) where he writes:

"It began with landlessness in a land of vast haciendas, with entrenched poverty in communities surrounded by wealth, with cycles of exploitation in sugar, labor, and wages, and with a justice system many perceive as distant or inaccessible…

...a pattern emerges. Human rights organizations have pointed to persistent impunity, with accountability often elusive. Victims are often labeled as communist rebels, a practice widely referred to as red-tagging, which critics say places individuals at risk. Many of those killed are farmers, labor organizers, or advocates involved in longstanding agrarian disputes."

REFERENCES

“ILWU Local 6 strike and picket action in Crockett, CA” by Fight Back! News

https://fightbacknews.org/articles/ilwu-local-6-strike-and-picket-action-in-crockett-ca

“California: First ILWU strike against sugar giant in decades. Walkout by union workers’ local over pay, benefits” by Stuart Chirls for Freight Waves

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/california-first-ilwu-strike-against-sugar-giant-in-decades

“Negros after the gunfire: what the blood on our soil is telling us” by Bishop Gerry Alminaza for Bulatlat

https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/04/22/negros-after-the-gunfire-what-the-blood-on-our-soil-is-telling-us/

“What were civilians doing in Toboso, Negros Occidental” by Anne Marxze Umil for Bulatlat

https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/05/20/what-were-civilians-doing-in-toboso-negros-occidental/

“How do Filipino peasants fight for their rights when their own government doesn’t support them?” by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines

https://ichrp.net/how-do-filipino-peasants-fight-for-their-rights-when-their-own-government-doesnt-support-them/

"Humanizing the victims: Toboso massacre not a win for the Philippine military" by Anne Marxe Umil for Bulatlat
https://www.bulatlat.com/2026/05/04/humanizing-the-victims-toboso-massacre-not-a-win-for-the-philippine-military/

"In the Public Square: Understanding Toboso" by John Nery and Eddie Quitoriano for Rappler

https://www.rappler.com/philippines/in-the-public-square-understanding-toboso-killings/

Here is a statement in the Bayan USA Facebook page showing solidarity with the ILWU Local 6 warehouse workers at the C&H refinery in Crockett, California

https://www.facebook.com/bayanusapage/posts/defend-negros-calls-to-actionsince-june-15-ilwu-local-6-warehouse-workers-at-the/1488597036635189/

A statement on Instagram by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines for solidarity with the peasant community working in the sugar plantations in Negros, Philippines and the ILWU Local 6 strike against C&H Sugar in Crockett, California

#SupportLocal6 #FairContractNow #DefendNegros #Philippines #crockett #california #C&HSugar #Philippines #landlesspeasants #ILWU #sugarplantations #humanrights #landreform #exploitation #unions #labor #workingclass

Leave a comment