After El Paso and Dayton
I wonder if we might contribute something to the discussion by focusing on what I’d describe as the “script” of the post-shooting responses. That script includes the following: 1. praise for the first responders; 2. exhortations from local political leaders that “this will not affect who we are” and “we
The Ordinary/Extraordinary May Stevens
May Stevens was born in 1924 and, at the age of 94, lives in New Mexico. She has been, for most of her life, an artist. For the last seven decades, she’s been a political artist. I don’t know if she still creates art for public viewing. I hope so
The Peril of Voting and the Promise of Action
It may well be that no outrage yet carried out under the Trump regime has so galvanized popular disgust and opposition than the decision to implement a policy of separating children from parents when they arrive at the Mexican-US border. Although the news reports from the detention centers are not
Something Lost? Something Gained?
The New York Times recently published a profile of Saul Chandler, a seventy-year old man who now spends most of his time on a boat docked at City Island, a small sliver of land off the east coast of the Bronx. Apparently, he’s a bit of a local legend on
Why He Did It
The authorities and the media sometimes seem more annoyed and frustrated at Stephen Paddock because they can’t figure out why he did it than they are about him killing 58 people and wounding hundreds. More precisely, they are annoyed and frustrated because they can’t come up with a story about
Abolitionism: a Study Guide
By John Garvey and Noel Ignatiev (This was first posted at hardcrackers.com). We think it would be useful to study American abolitionism as a home-grown radical movement launched in inauspicious times. To further that end, we have prepared a reading list and a set of questions.[1] For hard-to-find works, we can