Originally published in the Tompkins Weekly, August 21, 2025
In July, when Congresswoman Greene introduced an amendment to strip $500 million of US military funding for the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel, only 6 members of the 435 members of Congress voted for the amendment. Our representative, Josh Riley, was among the 422 members of Congress who voted against. Thus has Josh Riley affirmatively and explicitly rendered support to a genocidal entity, along with 421 other members of the Democratic and Republican parties. He is placing a shield over the perpetrators of murder, who through bombing, shooting, and besiegement have caused, and continue to cause,the loss of enormous numbers of lives in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Our two senators, Schumer and Gillibrand also voted in July to continue shipping weapons to Israel.
In 1852 Frederick Douglass gave an address in our very own Ithaca, in which he bemoaned the two-party politics of his day (NORTHERN BALLOTS AND THE ELECTION OF 1852: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN ITHACA, NEW YORK,ON 14 OCTOBER 1852). Douglass, who emancipated himself from slavery, was a leader in the abolition and the African-American civil rights movements. Centered on the great moral issue of the time, slavery, his critique of the Whig and the Democratic parties speaks to us today when we consider the attitude of the Democratic and Republican parties towards the great moral issue of our time, genocide.
Douglass expressed: “…never has there been a time when the great principles of justice, liberty and humanity were put in more imminent peril than at the present moment. Never was there a time when the friends of these great principles were more loudly and imperatively called upon to stand by these principles than now.
“The ruling parties of the country have now flung off all disguises, and have openly and shamelessly declared war upon the only saving principles known to nations.”
He added: “The question is, Can we innocently and wisely give them our votes, and secure to them the reins of government which they crave? Ought we to vote for them, or ought we to vote against them, is the question? Let us see. There is, in this country, a system of injustice and cruelty, shocking to every sentiment of humanity—a crime and scandal, making this country a hissing and a by-word to the world, and liable to the judgments of a righteous God.”
“…our model Republic, under the corrupt and debasing policy of our two parties, has not even a refuge for innocent men. The murderer is better protected than the man without crime. The robber is better protected than the robbed.”– a remarkable foreshadowing of the protection that the two parties comprising our current Congress afford for murderous, land-robbing Israel!
For far too long the two large parties of today, puppets of the greediest and most depraved elements of our society, have been given a monopoly on political power in our country. Democracy is dead. People are outraged by our wasteful and destructive spending on foreign wars when our own needs are so pressing. People want a fair taxation system: we pay a bigger percentage of our earnings than do the rich (Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress maintained the “Trump” tax cuts for the rich). People want affordable, universal healthcare. None of these demands make inroads because the oligarchic forces controlling the two parties will not allow them to.
Just a few years after Frederick Douglass gave his address in Ithaca, the Whig party faded sharply. A new “third” party gained ascendancy, a party rooted in moral values, a party opposed to slavery. Abraham Lincoln brought the Republican party (a very different Republican party than today’s) to the White House, and slavery was abolished. The Green Party is the moral, people-centered party of our time. If we have any hope for a decent future, we must abandon the duopoly that oppresses the People of this country, and indeed the People worldwide.