Monday I read a report that demonstrators in Burlington, Vermont (a left-oriented city that has sometimes been dubbed the People’s Republic of Burlington), were attacked by police in full riot gear using pepper spray and rubber bullets.

Spending summers at progressive camps was the highlight of my childhood. I attended Camp Woodland and Lincoln Farm, and later was a counselor at Camp Thoreau. These were places where left-wing views were either the norm, or at least not unusual. I flourished in an atmosphere where I felt I could speak my mind and not feel alone. That’s why I felt so good about sending my kids to Camp Kinderland.

The RFC’s income is down this year. For instance, our June mailing is on track to raise $5,000 less than it did last year. Yes, the economy continues to be bad, and too many people are having a hard time making ends meet, let alone maintaining their donations to progressive causes. But we did much better last year, even though last year the economy was equally lousy. What’s the difference?

We, who have just endured four of the warmest weeks the eastern two-thirds of the United States has experienced since we started keeping records, have been told repeatedly by media pundits that “you can’t attribute this particular spell of weather to global warming.” This statement, while true in a narrow sense, is false in a broader contextual sense. Worse, such “truths” are confusing and immobilizing. They make it more difficult to gather the impetus for the essential, society-wide behavior shift we need to avoid impending ecological catastrophes.

I spent the 59th anniversary of my parents’ execution speaking at Midrash, a progressive Jewish cultural center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I arrived in Rio on Sunday morning after an overnight flight from New York. My first presentation was not until Monday evening, but after resting on Sunday afternoon, I spent most of the next day doing television and newspaper interviews. On Monday I spoke following a showing of Sidney Lumet’s film, Daniel.