Jon Jeter

Jon Jeter is a published book author and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist with more than 20 years of journalistic experience. He is a former Washington Post bureau chief and award-winning foreign correspondent on two continents, as well as a former radio and television producer for Chicago Public Media’s “This American Life.”

An Open Letter to New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger

The Times has always been a newspaper by, and for, the elite, but by squeezing out the few alternative voices that you once employed, it no longer publishes those articles that illuminate and connect us to a world outside the Beltway, or beyond Harvard Square.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
A.G. Sulzberger poses for a photo on the 16th floor of the New York Times building in New York. Dec. 13, 2017. Damon Winter | The New York Times via AP

Dear Mr. Sulzberger,  I read with great interest news accounts of your conversation with President Trump, in which you admonished him for his inflammatory characterization of the media as “fake news” and asserted that such polarizing language poses a threat not only to journalists but to American democracy itself. You needn’t be a partisan --

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Stand Your Ground: As Florida Case Illustrates, A 33-State License to Kill

For all practical purposes, the consequence for killing an unarmed African-American in Florida is often less than that for killing a beaver in Maine.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
Tempe Louis, of Clearwater, pauses to observe a memorial on the side of the Circle A Food Mart, in Clearwater, Fla on July 24, 2018. Douglas R. Clifford | Tampa Bay Times via AP

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA -- To better understand the depraved heart of America’s racist justice system, take a moment to unbundle the “Stand Your Ground” statute that is the legal basis for a Florida sheriff’s announcement last week that he would not file criminal charges against a white vigilante who fatally shot an unarmed black man during a scuffle

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The Helsinki Furor and America’s Eternal Search for External Enemies

For the vast majority of Americans, the real menace is not Putin. It’s much closer to home: the gendarmerie who brutalize people of color, banks that swindle borrowers out of their life-savings, schools attempting to lobotomize our children, and a health-insurance cartel that makes more money the sicker we are.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
Actress Alyssa Milano speaks at a protest outside the White House, July 17, 2018, in Washington following President Donald Trump's meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Andrew Harnik | AP

CHICAGO -- Hoisting placards that read “Stop Killing Black and Brown People” and chanting “Who Do You Protect? Who Do You Serve?” hundreds of demonstrators poured into the streets of this city’s South Shore neighborhood Monday for a third consecutive day to protest the latest fatal police shooting of a black man. Known as “Snoop,” 37-year-old

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How Democrats Could Turn Kennedy Replacement into Revival

Democrats could use a hot-button, and unpopular issue like the repeal of Roe v. Wade to restart a conversation with ordinary, working-class Americans who feel abandoned by the neoliberal, pro-investor policies of first the Clinton Administration and then the Obama administration.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy presides over arguments at "The Trial of Hamlet," a Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles representation of Hamlet's trial, with a jury of 12 community members, including actors, high school students, philanthropists and Los Angeles dignitaries at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on Monday, Jan. 31, 2011. Damian Dovarganes | AP

WASHINGTON (Analysis) -- At a conference with Wall Street chief executives in late November of 2008, President-elect Barack Obama’s newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said this of the economic slowdown that had cast a pall over the country: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that

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The Upside of Janus: Court’s Ruling on Dues Check-Offs Could Help Democratize Unions

The Supreme Court’s much-pilloried Janus decision could actually prove to be a good thing in the long-run by democratizing labor unions and revitalizing a moribund movement that was the engine of America’s postwar prosperity.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
Henry Nicholas, president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, attends a protest by Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, in Philadelphia. The protesters denounced Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that government workers can't be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining, dealing a serious financial blow to organized labor. Jacqueline Larma | AP

CHICAGO -- “Shorty!” Ricky Maclin bellowed at the secretary in a stairwell at Republic Windows and Doors, trying to get her attention. She was one of the few black temps in the secretarial pool; he was vice-president of the union local, the lone black on its executive board. The two of them got along like the proverbial house afire, and on more

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Hepatitis Spikes as Poverty and Isolation Take Hold Among America’s Forgotten

What’s happening in Michigan is the largest outbreak of hepatitis A in the state’s history. But Michigan is hardly unique: In nearby Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky — and as far away as San Diego, Salt Lake City, and New York City — the number of hepatitis A cases is spiking sharply.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
Christine Wade sits among her children in front of their donated tent in the city-sanctioned encampment on a parking lot in San Diego. They are, from left, Shawnni, 12, Roland, 4, Rayahna, 3, Jaymason, 2, Brooklyn, 8, and Shaccoya, 14. The Wade family is among several hundred people living in the city's first campground open for the homeless, set up to curb the worst Hepatitis A outbreak in the United States in decades. Gregory Bull | AP

DETROIT -- The first signs that something was amiss surfaced in the weeks before the 2016 election, when public-health officials began to notice one patient after another walking into a clinic, or hospital emergency room in the Detroit metropolitan area complaining of the same symptoms: nausea and vomiting, pains in their stomach and joints,

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The US Ruined Their Countries, Now Trump Calls Them “Animals” and Sends Them Back

Unmentioned in America’s immigration debate is the role that both Democratic and Republican administrations have played in creating the volatile situations that force Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and other Latino refugees to flee in the first place.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS -- Late on the evening of June 28, 2009, two days before voters were scheduled to go to the polls to vote on a referendum amending the Honduran Constitution, army officers forced President Manuel Zelaya -- wearing only his pajamas and slippers -- to board a military airplane for Costa Rica. Three months later, after the

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