As long as we continue to allow the United States to function as an empire it will.  And as long as it treats many of its own “citizens” as “subjects” it is likely to impose that same status on those abroad.  And to the extent that domestic struggles and the punished survivors of those struggles are ignored efforts to change the country’s impact in the world will suffer. Until there is massive unrest and protest aimed at the treatment of the Indigenous, Black, Brown and poor, until there are flotillas headed to Pelican Bay and “flytillas” to Pine Ridge claims of solidarity with the rest of the world will remain as hollow as claims of progress here.  It is unfortunate the extent to which this political disconnect exists.  And one need only look at the example of Bradley Manning, the accused and imprisoned deliverer of government secrets to Wikileaks, and the ways in which his case is so rarely connected to pre-existing cases of political imprisonment and torture to see how far that gap really is.  So much could be learned were his treatment put in the context of for instance, the Scott sisters or the even longer-standing cases of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli or the Move 9.  Failure to do so hampers a deeper understanding of this country, its impact in the world and what it will take to change it.

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