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Former Kentucky Rep. Charles Booker overwhelmingly won the states U.S. Senate Democratic primary on Tuesday, taking the progressive candidate one step closer to his goal of unseating far right Republican Sen. Rand Paul in November.

With about 97 percent of votes counted as of Wednesday morning, Booker has won over 73 percent of the votes in the state, beating out the next most popular candidate, Joshua Blanton, by over 60 points. Booker, a Black racial justice activist, ran on a platform of connecting the hood to the holler in other words, connecting the states urban and rural residents in unity.

The commonwealth of Kentucky has never had a Black person to be the top of the ticket, to be a major party nominee for U.S. Senate, Booker said in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night. If anybody tells you change is not possible, if anybody tells you that ceilings cant break, tell them, look at Kentucky.

Paul won the Republican nomination by a landslide, with over 86 percent of votes on Wednesday morning.

Polling has found that Paul has a strong chance of winning over Booker in the red state this fall; a Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy poll from earlier this year found that 55 percent of those polled said theyd vote for the incumbent, while 39 percent said theyd vote for Booker. A far right politician, COVID denier and supporter of Donald Trumps attempted coup, Paul has been a U.S. senator since 2011, largely representing a capitalist libertarian viewpoint.

Booker ran on a progressive platform, supporting proposals like Medicare for All and calling for a Green New Deal. He has said that Kentucky voters have been inspired by racial justice movements in recent years and that there are opportunities to unite Kentuckians, regardless of race or residence, behind common goals.

Major unions and progressive organizations have endorsed Booker; when Booker ran to oust Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2020, he gathered endorsements from popular progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

Democrats have historically had a hard time winning against Republicans in Kentucky. The last time the state had a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was in 1999, over 20 years ago.

In 2020, Amy McGrath an establishment-backed Democrat who spent millions to defeat Booker in the primary roundly lost to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been in office since 1985. McConnell won by nearly 20 points, despite the nearly $91 million spent on the race by McGraths campaign.

At the time, political reporters and progressives said that Booker could have won against McConnell, had the Democratic party establishment not lined up behind McGrath, who the Louisville Courier-Journal editorial board called unimaginative and uninspiring in their endorsement of Booker. Considering that Booker lost by only about 3 points to McGrath in that election despite having been outraised 50-to-1 in campaign funds was a show of the progressive appetite among Kentucky voters, analysts said.

This time around, as of the end of April, Paul has over $8 million on hand going into the general election campaign, while Booker has only around $470,000, according to OpenSecrets. The race will be closely watched. While Booker faces long odds, a triumph over Paul would be a huge win for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

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Progressive Charles Booker Wins Primary to Challenge Rand Paul in November - Truthout

By David M. GreenwaldExecutive Editor

Pushing back against the notion that Progressive Reform is in retreat, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner during a forum said, We are winning. How much are we winning? Two years ago, 10 percent of the US population had a progressive prosecutor. It is now 20.1% of the US population.

He added, There is no political party in the United States that is as successful as the one youre looking at, which is the progressive prosecutor partyif you want to call us thatnobody can match that.

While San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin faces a recall vote next month and LA DA George Gascn is facing a recall drive, it is important to remember that these are only the latest attempts to thwart progressive prosecution and criminal justice reform.

Before them, both Kim Foxx of Cook County (Chicago), Illinois, and Larry Krasner of Philadelphia were elected and faced various efforts to push back. The four of them were part of a discussion on Tuesday about efforts to reform the criminal legal system.

The discussion was co-hosted by the LA Progressive and ACLU and moderated by LA Black Lives Matter Founder Melina Abdullah.

Krasner was one of the first of the wave of progressive prosecutors and the state has done everything to turn back the tide of reform. But even with a well-financed opponent backed by the police union, Krasner still prevailed with nearly two-thirds of the vote.

So what do they do when they cannot beat us in elections? Krasner asked. Number one, they try to end democracy because elections are not working for them. And number two, they recall, they recall George. They recall Chesa. They recall in Virginia, theyre doing it right now. Any state where they can do it, theyll do it.

What are they doing in Pennsylvania? he asked. Well, they tried to pass a bill to term limit me, which has already passed the Pennsylvania house. They tried to pass a bill to take away my cases, which has already passed in the Pennsylvania housewhat we are going to do in the future, because it doesnt seem to be working out any other way, is we are going to save democracy.

As he was speaking, his office was preparing to secure the election for one of the most watched primaries in the country on Tuesday.

He then said provocatively, The way that we are going to do it is somehow slowly were going to convince our colleagues in the Democratic Party that instead of running away from criminal justice reform, they better run at it and hug it as hard as they possibly can, because the reality is, Donald Trump knows how to turn out Duck Dynasty and a bunch of guys with long beards who want to kidnap people. And if Democrats dont stop acting like its the Clinton era and rejecting progressives and rejecting criminal justice reform, then they will not turn out the sensible and progressive and young and broke and Black and brown votes that they need to beat this bunch of fascists.

He said this starts with Chesa Boudin and George Gascn and our colleagues in Virginia who are being recalled as well.

He noted the nonsense Im facing and the nonsense Kim Foxx has faced from the very beginning.

He said, She (Kim Foxx) was outspent five to one, and she beat that bum by 20 percent. He said, The people want what we have and thats why other people are trying to steal away what the people want.

Krasner argued, The people are 100 percent with us. It is the institutions that are not ready to embrace, Its getting better, but its media. It is the mainstream political parties that should be supporting us. It is judges. Although that changes, you know, this is a great social justice movement. Like any other, it takes a few decades. Lets just say maybe 30 years. Were in a crucial part of that success, which is weve gotten to the point where they vigorously fight us.

He argued that they figured out that they cant beat us in the ballot box.

So what are they going to do now? he asked. Lets find a way for 15 people to cause a new election for Chesa. Thats what theyre trying to do.

He continued, saying it is absolutely essential that we not be back on our heels. The democratic party in the United States has been playing Republican light ever since at least bill Clinton, if not before that. People do not want Republican.

He predicted that John Fetterman would win the Democratic nomination for a key Senate seat.

This is a guy who is a political outsider in many ways, an anti-politician. He flew a flag with a marijuana leaf on it from the State Capitol as Lt. Governor, when everybody thought that was nuts, five, six years ago, he said. He is about to win by 30 points over the Clinton era candidate.

He said, And the reality is we have had to do this on our own. We have not always been kissed and embraced by the mainstream democratic party. Its one of the institutions that we have to modify. We have to change. Its just not immediate.

He predicted that both George (Gascn) and Chesa (Boudin) are going to get through it.

I believe in my heart that what is going to happen, is when the people get to say what they want to say, at the end of the day, theyre going to say, we wanted it, he said. This is part of the normal process of a social justice movement.

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Commentary: Krasner Offers a Fiery Defense of Reform and Progressive Prosecution, Pushing Back against the Recall - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

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It's time that progressive politicians condemn left-wing extremist violence with the same lack of equivocation as most conservatives denounce right-wing extremism

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Former Conservative minister and senior RBC executive Michael Fortier and his family were asleep in their Montreal home at 1:30 a.m. on May 4, when he was woken by a neighbour banging on his drain pipe to warn him that the Jaguar and Land Rover parked in the driveway were on fire.

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The neighbours daughter had been studying for her final exams and saw the flames, alerting her parents. The warning allowed Fortier, his wife and three kids to get out of the house unscathed. One witness said someone could have died if the flames had engulfed the house.

The next day, surveillance footage showed two men pulling up on bikes, taking out a package and tossing it towards one car. They left as casually as if leaving an ice cream shop, said someone who saw the footage.

Responsibility for the attack was later claimed by anonymous extremists on the anarchist website MTL Counter-info, acting in the spirit of vengeance. They claimed to be supporting Wetsuweten land defenders trying to block the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline in B.C. As glaciers melt and drought, fire and famine spread, Mr. Fortier thinks that his money and connections will protect him, his children and grandchildren. But the ecologically-dispossessed will know the names of those responsible. He must understand that no one is safe amid the storm, it concluded.

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RBC has become the focus for a number of acts of vandalism smashed windows and spray paint on bank branches and the home of RBC Quebecs president even though it is only one of 20 or so lenders to Coastal GasLink.

But the attack on Fortiers home was a noticeable escalation. It invites the question: what will these furtive eco-warriors do for an encore? How far will they go to prove the point that no one is safe?

This is not the first time that left-wing extremists have targeted the Coastal GasLink pipeline. On Feb. 17, around 20 hooded figures cut the locks on a construction site near Houston, B.C., before threatening workers and causing millions of dollars of damage to heavy equipment. Video footage showed attackers wielding axes, hitting a truck with an employee inside and firing off flares. The RCMP said last week that it has made no arrests and has no updates on the incident.

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While horrific hate crimes such as the mass shooting in Buffalo have, rightly, focused attention on the scourge of right-wing extremism, ideologically motivated violence on the far-left is often characterized as legitimate protest, perhaps because there are lingering sympathies with its goals among progressives. But it is not acceptable or justifiable.

To be clear, research across Western countries indicates that the number of victims claimed by right-wing extremists and jihadists is far, far higher than those killed by the left. But as Teun van Dongen, a senior research fellow at the International Centre of Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), wrote recently: Fairness means we hold all forms of extremism to the same standards, not that we consider all forms of terrorism to be equally dangerous and harmful.

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While left-wing extremism may kill fewer people, assessments by law enforcement in Western countries consider the threat to be increasing and evolving. Germany, for example, recorded a record number of crimes committed by left-wing extremists in 2020. Notably, violence is increasingly directed toward people, rather than symbolic targets like buildings and vehicles.

A survey by the ICCT suggested left-wing terror attacks far outnumber attacks by jihadists and right-wing extremists, particularly in Germany and Greece, even while the number of victims is a fraction.

The concern is that left-wing websites are incubators for hate that in time might spawn similar levels of violence as the white supremacy online breeding grounds.

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The U.S.-based Network Contagion Research Institute noted that some anarcho-socialist websites use the kind of violent rhetoric and dehumanizing insults usually associated with jihadists and right-wing extremists.

In Canada, ideologically motivated violent extremism has been dominated by extreme anti-authority rhetoric that in the words of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is often rooted in the weaponization of conspiracy theories. CSIS said it has observed a marked increase in violent threats to elected officials since the onset of the pandemic.

Statistics Canada said hate crimes in Canada rose by more than a third to 2,669 in the first year of COVID the largest number since comparable data became available in 2009.

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All reasonable people condemn the crimes committed against Black, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian populations by white supremacists.

But the same opprobrium should be awarded to anarcho-socialist violence, on the basis that all extremism should be held to the same standard.

As for the people the Montreal anarchists claim to be championing, many members of the five Wetsuweten bands, including elected chiefs and some hereditary chiefs, support the $6.2-billion pipeline and strongly resent the interference of outsiders who oppose it.

Im sick and tired of our people living off welfare were still living in poverty and people are just trying to work and make some money, said Theresa Tait Day, a hereditary sub chief. I ran into a few claiming to be land defenders coming to Smithers. I said go home, we dont need you here. But they did come and one even had a warrant out for their arrest.

Its time that progressive politicians condemn left-wing extremist violence with the same lack of equivocation as most conservatives denounce right-wing extremism.

Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

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John Ivison: A banker's cars firebombed in the night and progressive politicians stay silent - National Post

International refugee protections were established in the aftermath of World War II when, for the second time in a generation, Europe was reeling from a large-scale conflict that displaced millions of people across the continent. Since this system was formalized, countries have colloquially been grouped into three classifications: origin, transit, and receiving countries. While evolving crises have forced some governments to transition between categories, we are now seeing a new trend in how countries treat receiving obligations in particular. Over the past 10 years, countries that have traditionally been viewed as receiving countries have implemented various policies that aim to discharge responsibility for and dismantle refugee protections. This would create a new standard whereby receiving countries no longer participate in the care of persecuted people.

A countrys role in a migrant crisis can always change. Whether a country becomes a point of transit depends on the location of the crisis. To play the receiving role, a country must be able to resettle large numbers of people efficiently. Countries can act in multiple capacities for example, Turkey has served as both a transit and a receiving country during the Syrian crisis. Countries can also take on different roles in different crises. For example, Poland primarily acts as a transit country for Ukrainian refugees but is a receiving country for Syrians. Some countries, like Canada and Iceland, are more insulated, which allows them to act almost exclusively as receiving countries.

What scholars have referred to as The Long Peace has changed our view of these roles. The era since WWII has been defined by unprecedented peace among the great powers. When refugee protections were established in the initial aftermath of WWII, that peace was fragile. Refugee protections were seen both as a way to establish dominance in the new world order by demonstrating an economy that is strong enough to provide for a growing population and as a show of goodwill in the international community. They were also viewed as mutually beneficial should that fragile peace collapse.

As peace continued among the great powers, the international community began to view the absence of conflict among European countries as an eternal truce. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated how precarious that peace could be. The immediate and strong condemnation of Russias actions reflected the fear from the international community that this invasion had broken the prolonged sense of peace.

The Long Peace also had detrimental effects on how the international community views refugee protections. Many established receiving countries now view refugee protections as a relic of times of conflict and a burden in times of peace. This viewpoint allows the international community to make exceptions for Ukrainians, as their crisis is seen as a rare exception to the Long Peace.

Recently, many countries have been implementing policies to deter, deny, and deport refugees and asylum seekers. The U.S. has effectively barred asylum seekers through Migrant Protection Protocols and Title 42, which the Biden administration has only madehalf-hearted attemptsto repeal. In Europe,Belarus,Greece,Denmark, and theU.K. have enacted policies to shift asylum seekers away from their borders.Japan, which accepts less than 1 percent of refugee and asylum applications, has proposed legislation that would expand the use of detention and limit access to appeals for asylum seekers.Australiahas been forcing asylum seekers into informal refugee camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for almost a decade to deter future migrants.

Political instability, natural disasters, and violent conflict continue to force people from their homes. However, receiving countries have settled into the misconception that they are immune from their own humanitarian crisis. They can only see themselves as a receiving country, unable to succumb to a crisis that would designate them as an origin country. These countries think they have already done their part after resettling large percentages of the refugee population each year. They have placed a metaphorical timer on how long countries need to care for their neighbors in times of crisis.

This pattern of anti-refugee policies has closed off traditional migratory pathways but has also spurred other countries to build out their immigration infrastructure to fill the gap.For example, Colombiahas not only welcomed almost 2 million Venezuelan migrants but has given them Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to live and work for 10 years freely.Germanyhosts the largest population of refugees in Europe, andRwandaseeks to expand its immigration infrastructure to accommodate asylum seekers relocated by Europe. However, these countries could follow in the footsteps of others and dismantle their systems when they decide they have done enough.

There are currently more displaced people than ever before and fewer places for refugees to be efficiently resettled and we should be prepared for more movement in years to come. There is an urgent need to hold governments to the promises they made to ensure that we have the necessary infrastructure to provide for these people. If we allow governments to decide that they no longer have to uphold the commitment to care for refugees in times of duress, we undermine the premise of protecting those most in need.

Photo credit: iStock

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The international community is failing refugees - Niskanen Center

Seeing his son with the water below his waist, standing firm on the stones of the riverbed, Pablo Cuevas ruled out using the 60-meter rope he had bought to cross the Rio Grande with his family, because it would prove more of a hindrance than a useful tool in their desperate attempt to reach American soil.

Dad! The river is calm! shouted the 22-year-old from about 30 meters away from the bank. Faced with the imminent arrival of Mexican or American border agents, the man let go of the rope, hugged his five-year-old grandson very tightly and entered the waters. It was mid-morning on April 17, less than a month ago. The Rio Grande, a treacherous river according to the migrants who have lived to tell the tale, was calm that day. It was a lucky break for this family that fled Nicaragua because of their fathers job: Pablo Cuevas is a renowned human rights defender in his country.

Accustomed to tense situations back home due to his clashes with gangs and police officers under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, Cuevas concealed his fear of jumping into the river so that his wife, daughter-in-law and his other grandson would not lose the courage they had rehearsed during the 40-day journey to Ciudad Acua, in Mexicos Coahuila state. The trip had taken them across Central America and Mexico, along a road rife with robberies, kidnappings, extortion, fatigue, hunger and death that 49,738 Nicaraguans followed in the first quarter of 2022 alone, according to the United States Customs and Border Protection. That is the largest number of migrants from this country to try to cross the US border in recent history.

It was on the first week of March, as he sat inside his home in Managua, that Cuevas made the decision to join this unprecedented exodus to escape the political violence and precarious economic situation that Nicaragua has been experiencing since 2018, following social protests that were brutally repressed. by the police and paramilitary groups. The countrys sociopolitical crisis has deepened since June 2021, when the Ortega-Murillo presidential couple intensified the hunt for opponents that facilitated Ortegas re-election and perpetuation in power.

Before the government closed the CPDH (Permanent Human Rights Commission), says Cuevas, alluding to the last such organization left in Nicaragua, I received threats and intimidating messages. Someone from the government told me that I had better leave... I have never been a fan of desk jobs, I always liked to be out doing field work, but there came a point when I could no longer practice freely, and my wife was having nervous breakdowns thinking that they could arrest me at any moment. So we decided to leave, and the route through the Rio Grande seemed the best, after analyzing it with many users I had who had already crossed into the United States, he tells EL PAS.

The Cuevas familys greatest fear was drowning in the river. Between March and April 2022, news of Nicaraguans killed in those waters shocked the country: 10 people registered by the Association of Nicaraguans in Mexico, although there are other agencies that put the number at 14, such as the non-profit Comunidad Nicaragense en Texas. There were cases like that of a four-year-old girl swept away by the current, or the most recent drowning, on May 1, of Calixto Nelson Rojas, a radio host for Radio Daro, a station that was burned and attacked by the Sandinista regime. The death of the radio journalist was recorded by a Fox News reporter: it happened before the eyes of US and Mexican border agents who did not help him because they were prohibited from doing so, even as Rojas cried out for help. The reason for not saving him was that a Border Patrol officer allegedly drowned weeks ago while trying to rescue two migrants.

Cuevas, a man who was well informed thanks to his work as a human rights defender, knew about the dangers of crossing the river. We began to do introspection exercises with the family, to remember one of our camping trips to the sea in Nicaragua, specifically once an undercurrent dragged us out to sea, but we were able to swim and save ourselves, says the lawyer, who is now living in Florida, where he has started an organization to help other Nicaraguan migrants. So I told my family to remember to bury their feet firmly in the bottom so we could cross the river.

The Cuevas were able to cross without a rope and without a life jacket. However, some 3,000 kilometers south of the Rio Grande, in Nicaragua, dozens who have decided to leave the country and do not know how to swim are taking precautions before heading north: they are signing up for Mario Orozcos swimming lessons.

With no major signs of a solution to the sociopolitical crisis, Nicaragua has become a country on the run. In 2021 alone, the United States Border Patrol tallied 87,530 Nicaraguans who tried to enter the southern border without documents. An exponential increase occurred in June, when the Ortega-Murillos imprisoned all their adversaries and ended the possibility of a resolution to the conflict through transparent elections. If one asks people in Nicaragua about the best decision in this scenario, the majority, especially young people, will answer the same thing: to leave. Migrant groups leave at dawn from some gas stations in Managua, while others who feel politically persecuted, such as Pablo Cuevas, do so clandestinely across the Honduran border.

Border Patrol figures from January to March of this year provide a measure of this booming exodus: 70,066 Nicaraguans have surrendered to patrol officers. But there is an underreporting, says the Association of Nicaraguans in Mexico. There has been a change in the migratory dynamics from this country, driven by political violence that has aggravated endemic ills (a precarious economy and lack of jobs). In 2018, at least 120,000 Nicaraguans applied for asylum in Costa Rica. But the pandemic plunged this latter country into an unemployment crisis and Nicaraguans reconfigured their flight path. First, because Costa Rica has collapsed and second, because Joe Bidens immigration promises were interpreted as greater flexibility by the US government.

Suddenly, the migrant caravans in which Hondurans and Salvadorans used to predominate began to be led by Nicaraguans, who are now also prey to the mafias along the route. Among those preparing to flee the country, crossing the Rio Grande became the best option despite the dangers of its waters. That is why the post on Facebook by professional swimmer Mario Orozco offering free lessons went viral in Nicaragua.

Orozco assures that some of his friends drowned in the Rio Grande and that moved him into action. I am a professional swimmer, I know the techniques to swim in open waters. So I took one of my days off to teach and avoid these tragedies, he says, emphasizing that his work is humanitarian and not political. The swimmer is concise and prefers not to delve into details. He does not say why but, for those who live in Nicaragua, it is understood: anything that the Sandinista government views as criticism can cost jail time.

The pool where Orozco teaches is usually packed, as a reflection of the urgency to leave Nicaragua. I know it is a dangerous river, says Roberto Garca, a Nicaraguan who left the country a few weeks ago and is now in Tapachula, Mexico, where he is preparing myself mentally to ford the Rio Grande. There are those who take swimming lessons; I, for example, am watching YouTube videos, asking other friends who have already crossed where it is less deep; the current less strong I am afraid, but the situation is more critical when I am going to cross with my son, confesses Garca, an auto refrigeration technician who used to provide services to the Supreme Court of Justice.

Garca was imprisoned for seven months for participating in the 2018 protests in Nicaragua. Upon release from prison, his workshop was never able to recover due to police harassment and lack of customers. Weary, he decided to migrate. I dont even want to think about the day Im going to cross the river with my wife and son. It unsettles me. My son is 10 years old and I only think of him, especially when I see so many brothers drowning in the news like that announcer from Len. It was a horrible video. One feels powerless. I dont want a similar video of us, he says. He also doesnt want to leave one last message like that of the radio host Calixto Rojas before jumping into the waters of the Rio Grande: Today Im leaving for Piedras Negras at one in the afternoon. Tomorrow at eight I will be trying to cross the river.

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The Nicaraguans who are learning to swim to avoid drowning in US river crossing - EL PAS in English