Two marches, two borders, two walls, how much more killing?

Considering that Israeli gunfire killed 15 Palestinian protesters and injured hundreds at the Gaza border last Friday, there's been mighty little media coverage of the ongoing mass protest. I can only guess that's how both Israel and the US powers-that-be like it.

The independent journal +972 explains the impetus for the Great Return March:

This year Palestinians will mark 70 years since the Nakba (in Arabic, the catastrophe) in 1948. During the 1948 war and its aftermath, Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages and more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes. Some 70 percent of the Gazan population are refugees, meaning they or their grandparents fled or were expelled from towns, villages, and cities inside the territory that become Israel in 1948.

According to Hasan al-Kurd, a leftist organizer in Gaza, the plan is to set up camps between 700-1000 meters from Israel’s border fence, outside the Israeli army’s unilaterally imposed buffer zone, where anyone who enters is liable to be shot. In the weeks leading up to Nakba Day [on May 15], there will be marches and bicycle races and other events every week, aiming to draw more attendees along the way. ...

“We want families. We want to live in peace — with the Israelis,”  al-Kurd said. “We’re against stone throwing or even burning tires. We will make sure the protest doesn’t escalate to violence — at least from our end.”

... Friday’s march in Gaza also coincided with the anniversary of Land Day, which itself commemorates how in 1976 Israeli security forces responded to a general strike and mass protest of Palestinian citizens of Israel by killing six and wounding some 100 others. ...

Inevitably, among the 30,000 or so reported to have marched, there were young men who threw stones. That's what young males who want to demonstrate they are becoming grown men do. Israeli troops, overwhelmingly well armed with modern weaponry and subject to no apparent restraints when it comes to Palestinian lives, took the bait. It is very unlikely the killing is over.

Meanwhile Adolfo Flores at Buzz Feed is accompanying a column of some 1000 Central Americans who are making their way across Mexico toward the US border.

Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.

Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them.

“If we all protect each other we'll get through this together,” Abeja yelled through a loudspeaker on the morning they left Tapachula, on Mexico's border with Guatemala, for the nearly monthlong trek.

When they get to the US, they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally. More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration's immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds.

The Washington Post has published a good background piece about the refugee caravan.

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are among the most violent countries in the world. Drug traffickers and gangs, some like MS-13 in El Salvador which originated in the United States, extort, rape and murder vulnerable people. Honduras has been particularly murderous to its own citizens ever since a 2009 coup in which the army removed the elected president. The Obama administration, under the leadership of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, refused to join international condemnations of that coup and approved the successor government which has detained many opponents.

President Trump has seized on the approach of the refugee column to inflame fears of arriving migrants among his always anxious base in a series of his trademark incoherent tweets about "big flows". The head of the Border Patrol Union seems to be champing at the bit to repel what he sees as an invasion.

Trump's bluster about the approaching refugees is all the more ominous since last month a federal court essentially allowed US cops to shoot people on the Mexican side of the border without penalty.

And now for the campaign's grind phase: Why Kaine?

When Hillary Clinton named Tim Kaine to be her Veep, my friends mostly wondered "why"? Sure, he looks to us like a pretty garden variety centrist Democratic white guy. And he is. Perhaps he is a little unusual in having experience with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Honduras, speaking Spanish, and attending a majority African-American Catholic parish. Some worry that he might be squishy on reproductive freedom, but I'm willing to trust Clinton on this one. Women's autonomy is baseline stuff for her.

But a moment's reflection shows what he is good for, beyond not pissing off anyone not already pissed off. His inclusion is a plausible outreach strategy to the only sector of the white electorate in which Clinton might be able to make gains: white Catholics.

NCR graphic

Polls usually describe Clinton as having a lead among Catholics. But that's what the numbers look like when you lump Latino Catholics with white Catholics. It is not hard to understand why Latinos intend to vote against Trump. But disaggregate the vote by race and you can see Clinton lags among white Catholics -- except those white Catholics who are most engaged with their faith. John Gehring at Religious News Service took a shot at explaining the discrepancies:

Catholic voters, who have been key to picking the winning ticket in almost every modern election, reject Trump decisively. In 2012, President Obama won the overall Catholic vote 50 percent to 48 percent. Hillary Clinton now leads 56 percent to 39 percent, a sizable gap unlikely to close much by November.

... Consistently reliable Republicans who attend Mass weekly supported Mitt Romney four years ago by 15 percentage points. Clinton is winning this critical slice of the Catholic electorate by a whopping 19 points. The Republican ticket also usually performs well with white Catholic voters, who supported Romney by 9 points, 53 percent to 44 percent. Clinton has halved that gap, trailing Trump by only a few percentage points, 50 percent to 46 percent.

... When Trump calls for a religious test for Muslims entering the country; questions the faith of Hillary Clinton, President Obama and Mitt Romney; and demonizes undocumented immigrants as “rapists,” it’s a reminder of the ugly nativism that Catholics once faced.

... Most politicians are smart enough not to tussle with a pope. Trump is the exception to that rule. He clashed with Pope Francis during the pope’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in February, blasting the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics around the world as “disgraceful” and a “political pawn” of Mexico.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Pope Francis said in response to a reporter’s questions about Trump’s plan for a massive border wall.

Clinton has room to grow her support among the white Catholic population. Few of them really vote the culture war issues -- abortion, gay marriage, gay parent adoptions -- however much conservative bishops might wish they would. Human decency counts with this group and if Kaine can reach some of these people, she'll reap another small segment of the white vote.

She needs that, as much be able to govern, as to outpoll the Donald in November.
*** Kaine's connection to Honduras does highlight one of Clinton's worst actions as Secretary of State: putting the United States behind a coup in 2009 in that country which has, predictably, left workers and peasants at the mercy of oligarchic and corporate exploiters. Honduran indigenous activists hold their coup government responsible for 100s of killings, including the assassination of environmentalist Berta Cáceres last winter. Her daughter, Laura Zuñiga Cáceres, joined protesters outside both conventions.

Will Tim Kaine use whatever influence a Vice President has for justice in Honduras?