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This week on Uprising:

* GOP Targets Citizenship Birthright of Immigrants’ Children
* Understanding the Crisis in Ivory Coast
* Black Agenda Report on Somalia’s Mercenaries
* War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914

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GOP Targets Citizenship Birthright of Immigrants’ Children

A conservative affront to the 14th Amendment gathered steam this week as Republicans assumed office in record numbers throughout the country in statehouses, governorships, and the U.S. House of Representatives. Designating citizenship as a unique responsibility of the federal government, the Citizenship Clause of the14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” With their new majorities, elected Republicans are seeking to revoke the birthright citizenship of immigrants’ children on two fronts. The first is on the federal level with the appointment of Texas Republican Lamar Smith as chair of the influential House Judiciary Committee. However, the Democrat controlled Senate is expected to reject any anti-14th Amendment legislation that makes it through the House. The second effort is on the state-level, with a 14-state conservative coalition—including South Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania—introducing legislation modeled on Arizona’s SB 1070, which will instigate costly litigation. Additionally, this week Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia restated his opinion on the 14th Amendment, declaring that its equal protection did not extend to women or gays. The crux of Scalia’s argument rested on the Constitution not explicitly stating that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. He said “Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.” Regardless of whether Scalia’s comments were coincidental or calculated, Republicans will undoubtedly take the justice’s comments into careful consideration in their efforts to reinterpret the 143-year-old Constitutional amendment.

GUEST: Ali Noorani, President of the National Immigration Forum

Find out more at www.immigrationforum.org.

Understanding the Crisis in Ivory Coast

The violence that erupted after the Ivory Coast’s November 28th election has reached a fever pitch. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo who had ruled the West African nation for over a decade, lost the election to Alassane Ouattara, but refused to give up power. The United Nations, the African Union, and the Economic Community Of West African States all recognize Ouattara as the President-elect. The US has frozen assets owned by Gbagbo and his family and barred American citizens from financial dealings with the rogue president. But the Ivory Coast army and factions of the media openly support Gbagbo. More than 200 people have died in post-election violence and more than 20,000 have fled the fighting over the border into Liberia. Ouattara, who is holed up in a hotel in Abidjan has called for a West African special forces operation through the UN to forcibly remove Gbagbo from power. The hotel remains under siege by Gbagbo’s forces.

GUEST: Emira Woods, Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies

Find out more at www.fpif.org.

Black Agenda Report on Somalia’s Mercenaries

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Somalia’s Mercenaries.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914

While the American tradition of antiwar writing is often traced back to the post-World War I era, little is known about the antiwar impulse before the war. In fact, in the era between the Civil War and WWI, American writers like Herman Melville, John William De Forest, and Walt Whitman wrote literature that went against the popular convictions of the time by morally critiquing war. For example, Herman Melville’s 1866 collection of war poems entitled Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War received little praise or attention. Cynthia Wachtell, a Professor of Literature at Yeshiva University chronicles the little-known antiwar work of American writers during this era in her new book “War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914.” In it, Wachtell also analyzes the role played by writers like Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and William James, in popularizing distaste for war, even as they met resistance from the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and others. Harvard Professor John Stauffer calls War No More “the most important work on war writing to have emerged in many years.”

GUEST: Cynthia Wachtell, Assistant Professor of American Literature at Yeshiva University in New York and author of War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914

Find out more at www.warnomorethebook.com.

Watch Sonali’s interview with Cynthia Wachtell here.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Were men but strong and wise,
Honest as Grant, and calm,
War would be left to the red and black ants,
And the happy world disarm.”

– Herman Melville