Rebecca Gordon
Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua and Cruel and Usual: How Welfare “Reform” Punishes Poor People .
Her latest book, American Nuremberg: The Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post 9/11 War Crimes, was published by Hot Books in April 2016. An audio version is also available.
Prior to her academic career, Gordon spent a few decades working in a variety of national and international movements for peace and justice. These include the movements for women’s liberation and LGBT rights; movements in solidarity with the struggles of poor people in Central America; the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and South Africa; and movements opposing U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 1984, Gordon spent six months living in the war zones of Nicaragua, and in 1990, three months teaching desktop publishing at an anti-apartheid newspaper in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a founder of Californians for Justice, a statewide organization dedicated to the political enfranchisement of marginalized people, especially young people, poor people, and people of color.
Other organizations she has worked with include the Applied Research Center, the Center for Third World Organizing, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, and the Asian-Pacific Environmental Network. She is an editor of WarTimes/Tiempo de guerras, which seeks to bring a race, class, and gender perspective to issues of war and peace.
Contact Rebecca Gordon:
Mainstreaming Torture 
Now would be a good time for Rebecca Gordon move to and spend some time in Venezuela then to write another book.
Ms. Gordon:
My name is Jasdeep Pannu, Esq. and I am a Candidate for the 2018 US Senate. I recently read your article America’s War on Drugs in Mexico Is Depressingly Similar to the Global War on Terror.
My campaign centers on legalizing all drugs and using the proceeds to support Free Education and Free Dental/Vision/Health Care for all residents. The collateral benefits from legalization would greatly reduce the amount of violent crimes not only in the United States but worldwide as I am confident that Central America, specifically Mexico, and South America would follow our lead and change their drug laws as well. All of which I am sure you are well aware of. Not to mention a host of other matters that would be greatly improved because the repealing of all drug laws, ie. racism.
I know my platform is moral and humanitarian but I will not be able to accomplish our mutual goal of ENDING the war on drugs without the support of people like yourself and asking that you please forward this platform to some of your influential constituents.
I do not know of any other political candidate in 2018, or ever for matter, that will be running on this kind of platform but if I can get some successful results, which I am already receiving, others will follow and we can realistically put an end to the pure evil that is the war on drugs.
I have attached my platform below. I hope to gain your support after you read it.
Thank you.
Jasdeep Pannu, Esq.
PEOPLE’S PARTY OF VERMONT ISSUES and GOALS
Based on the fact that America is already financially involved in and regulating drugs with their suboxone and methadone clinics its time to legalize all drugs TAX them and provide FREE EDUCATION, DENTAL, VISUAL and HEALTH CARE TO ALL U.S. CITIZENS and Legal Residents.
I. Reallocation of Resources currently used on the war on drugs
The current system allows pharmaceuticals to make the addicts and our government pays for the cleanup and the jails. Not Good Business!
The current legal and criminal system with respect to the war on drugs gives the taxpayers all the heaviest burdens associated with drugs: debts, violence and jails while pharmaceuticals make record profits as well as drug dealers! Leaving the average person paying for the jails and rehabs!
Drug dealers and pushers will be out of work under my plan! Because of legalization which makes safer streets. Just as we do with the tobacco industry, drug companies will not be allowed to advertise in anyway shape or form. So our children will never be enticed at a sensitive age by media or advertising. My platform will also require that we spendmoney on education and prevention not enforcement and rehabilitation.
Our current government allocated $500 million last year(2016) to battle the opiate crisis. $392 million was spend on crime enforcement and rehabilitation. Only about $20 million was spent on education and prevention. Science has clearly shown that it should have been $392 million spent on education and prevention. The focus needs to be on educating the next generation not law enforcement!
II. END MASS INCARCERATION and PRIVATE PRISONS
There are 1.1million non-violent drug offenders incarcerated between the federal and state levels that cost us roughly around 55 billion dollars to $65 billion dollars a year. The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population but we have 25% of the world’s prison population! This doesn’t include the approximate $30 Billion used on law enforcement and we have yet to consider the judicial costs?! We catch 1% of all traffickers with this $30 Billion! Not Good Business!
There are $10 trillion worth of drugs coming into the United States if we were to TAX these products at even a conservative rate of 20% that’s $2 trillion/year that could be used for FREE healthcare(my true TriCare) and FREE education and for rebuilding infrastructure (I would like to get Green speed trains to connect us as opposed to the blood draining airline industry. I would like to have Tefla makes these Green Speed Trains) as opposed to spending $95 billion investigating, incarcerating and prosecuting people. We can’t let a government that introduced crack cocaine to the inner cities to support the coup d’etats in Columbia and at the same time jail the same people they got addicted. This hypocrisy needs to be exposed!
The fact that Big Pharmaceuticals are allowed to profit from the epidemic they created including having their “Mylanta moment,” yet the working middle class pays for the useless resources and billions WASTED on prisons and the inhumane war on drugs instead of having FREE EDUCATION and HEALTH CARE is unAmerican!
Image credit: wikipedia.org
III. School Mandates:
No Ipads in school till 5th grade. Handwriting develops your brain
School:
1/2 day English
Second half other language of your choice from pre-k to 8th mandatory
IV. Maternity Leave:
2 year paid maternity leave for mom or dad, not both parents.
Handing kids to strangers sometimes as early a week old but even 6 weeks or 3 month olds causes infants a great deal of stress which can lead to other issues.
V. Welfare for one child only!
You can have as many kids as you want the government is only paying for one.
Obvious exceptions for twins or rape victims.
VI. .2% of your income tax break for every year you are employed! You can’t give people on welfare continuous benefits no matter their circumstance(s) while never giving diligent people any kind of reward.
VII. Immigration:
The right way to fight illegal dangerous immigrants is to stop slave smugglers. Those are the illegal immigrants we don’t want in America! We know slave smugglers are dangerous! Our focus should be on them not undocumented immigrants who have lived on the mainland for years. There have been over 2700 people murdered by slave smugglers just this year and this number grows everyday. These impecunious people used their life savings to escape places like Syria and traffickers literally toss them over the boat to “destroy the evidence.” If they are lucky enough to survive the traffickers threaten them with death and torture to blackmail their already impoverished families. The biggest commodity of the Philippines is not a product but people. We have to stop these pure evils before worrying about what consenting adults ingest in their body.
VIII. Child Trafficking Enforcement Agency will replace DEA
Focus more on ending the child sex trade as opposed to the war on drugs.
IX. Prohibition Round 2:
Ending the War on drugs will lower crime rates just as it did when prohibition ended. When prohibition was over there was not a big celebration of people drinking because everybody was already drinking.
The same thing will occur with drugs: there won’t be a big celebration as people who want drugs have already been doing them. When Prohibition ended violent crimes were almost non-existent. The war on drugs and prohibition have one thing in common both times the mob got a hold of society and caused a 75% increase in violent crime. From Al Capone to M13 gangs its all really the same. The US has had more African American men killed in Chicago because of drug violence since 2012 than soldiers killed in Afghanistan!!
Unfortunately, the war on drugs causes violence globally, for example in Mexico alone between 2007-2014 there were 140,000 people MURDERED by the cartels. Most of them innocent of any wrongdoing. America has given over $2 Billion in military and police assistance and over $4 Billion worth of weapons to Mexico since 2006 to help them battle the cartels. This does not include the hundreds of millions we have given to Columbia, Peru and Bolivia during the same time period. These countries are now rejecting the aid of the United States because they can no longer handle the carnage the war on drugs has brought to their respective countries.
BOTTOM LINE: THE WAR ON DRUGS IS AN EPIC FAILURE
SINCE THE WAR ON DRUGS BEGAN OVER 40 YEARS AGO AMERICA HAS SPEND OVER $1 TRILLION TO BATTLE IT but THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND HAS NEVER GONE DOWN NOR HAVE THE NUMBER OF USERS!
Mark Twain says history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.
X. Congressman/Senators Term Limits:
Limit Congressman/Congresswomen and Senators terms to three terms. We always need fresh blood coming in. Stagnation causes corruption!
XI. RAISE MINIMUM WAGE:
If companies and corporations don’t have to pay for health, dental or visual insurance for employees they can increase the minimum wage to $20/hr
XII. Have braille on $
Thank you.
Jasdeep Pannu, Esq.
US Senate Candidate
Make charitable donations under:
“Pannu for the People”
Citizens Bank
Thank you for your books and the courage to write and publish them. The pursuit of justice is difficult, especially in the face of huge official resistance. Your works are essential reading.
Dear Lorin,
Thank you for these kind words. They mean a lot coming from you.
All the best, Rebecca(g)
On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 6:43 AM Mainstreaming Torture wrote:
>
Rebecca,
Your life has soared.
And so did your poetry.
I still have a poem written to me, from you, that I treasure.
You were a friend without judgement.
A friend who was funny.
All who love you are lucky .
Faith
Dear Faith,
Somehow I missed this message when you left it in February. Today it made me smile. Where are you? How are you?
Rebecca
And I missed your message as well. I am in Portland, Oregon. A city so hip that it hurts to walk down the street at times.
I got sober in1985. I work as an addiction counselor. How fabulous to actually make a living from such personal chaos.
I love it.
Come visit. Why not? Are you well? Are you happy more the not?
Geeez you were fun when I think about you.
Do I owe you money? Did I insult your family or any pets you had.
Did I return all CD/s?
Did I crash anything? Like a car? Or bike?
If so—-I make amends now. Fucking Irish whiskey?