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16 posts from April 2016

By David Stovall

The 2016 report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (The Trump Effect) reveals a disturbing, but commonly known fact in US public schools: the United States has NEVER intended to educate the majority of its populace. Because it hasn’t, we find ourselves in a constant struggle to make sense of a world that masks the realities of economic decline, imperialism, and white supremacy. The inability to provide an education that provides the masses with the capacity to ask critical questions of themselves and government feeds into a sordid process that engages a mythical relationship. With a problematic account of history that is imbued in the larger racist colonial project of stereotype, violence, and innuendo, our society rewards diversions from historical accuracy through the glorification of the contributions of rich white males. Read more →


According to the Center for Disease Control and RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network), one in five women have experienced completed or attempted rape, and about three percent of American men—or one in thirty-three—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Most victims first experienced sexual violence before age twenty-five. Statistics, however, only paint part of the picture, as most victims do not share or report these crimes to their family, friends, or the police. Read more →


By Jay Parini

My old mentor Alastair Reid died only two years ago at eighty-eight. He was a Scottish poet and translator, and we met in 1970 in Scotland, where I lived for seven years. He was an astonishing fellow: wry, witty, learned, and lavishly gifted as a poet and critic. My sense of what a poem should “sound like” came from reading him carefully. There was a deep musicality in his work, an accessibility as well, that struck me then and has remained with me throughout my life. Read more →


A Q&A with Erika Janik

Happy publication day to Erika Janik and her new book Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives in Fact and Fiction! Pistols and Petticoats is a lively exploration of the struggles women have faced in law enforcement and in mystery fiction since the late nineteenth century. Working in a profession considered to be strictly a man’s domain, investigating women were nearly always at odds with society. These sleuths and detectives refused to let that stop them, and paved the way to a modern professional life for women on the force and in popular culture. We caught up with Janik to ask her about the social implications of women joining the police force, “murder as entertainment,” and how the reality of policewomen compares with the stories told in the crime genre. Read more →


By Alondra Nelson | Genetic genealogy testing aligns with an enduring human desire: the search for roots and identity. The appeal of genetic ancestry testing cannot be understood without also understanding the backdrop of the specific example author Alex Haley provided about how this should be accomplished and what effects it might produce. Roots, for which Haley received a Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of Haley’s colorful family genealogy, which he traces back to The Gambia. The story is framed as the author’s “epic quest”: his prodigious efforts across years and continents to uncover his family’s past. In 1977, when Haley’s work was transformed into a television miniseries, the story of his ancestors’ trials, tribulations, and resilience held the country in rapt attention for eight days. Read more →


By Stephen Kendrick: Founded in 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery is one of the Boston area’s most famous attractions. This urban wildlife habitat and nationally recognized hotspot for migratory birds continues to connect visitors with nature and serves as a model for sustainable landscape practices and conservation. Author and Unitarian minister Stephen Kendrick takes us on a tour of the cemetery in his latest book The Lively Place: Mount Auburn, America’s First Garden Cemetery, and Its Revolutionary and Literary Residents, which was released earlier this month. In honor of Earth Day and its theme this year of Trees for the Earth, we’re sharing this excerpt in which Kendrick writes about how he learned to appreciate the cemetery’s trees as social creatures putting together a complex environment. Read more →


By Carole Joffe

In a story that has remarkable relevance for today’s reproductive wars, on March 22, 1929, the New York City Police Department sent an undercover female detective to a birth control clinic run by Margaret Sanger. Detective Anna McNamara received an examination and and was told by the examining physician of several pelvic disorders. Strikingly, even though she had obtained the necessary evidence that the clinic was providing then-illegal birth control services, McNamara returned to the clinic several times for follow-up visits. Read more →


By Marilyn Sewell

My husband and I went on a long-planned trip to lovely Charleston, South Carolina, last October—as it turned out, just as the city’s most recent flood was subsiding. The local paper (The Post and Courier) reported one of highest tides on record, swamping cars, creeping into homes, and tangling traffic. Hundreds of people who live near the edge of the water in this tourist area couldn’t get to work. I chatted with the wait staff in restaurants as I sought out the shrimp po-boys, the collard greens, the fried chicken I love: Are you concerned about global warming? Typically, the answer was “No, flooding is a regular occurrence, we are used to it.” Read more →


By Molly Altizer

Presidential candidate Donald Trump demonstrated his brand of blatant racism when he accepted an invitation by local Republicans to speak in the town of Patchogue, NY, last week at a Republican fundraiser just blocks from where Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero was murdered in 2008. Read more →


By Gail Forsyth-Vail

When one of my children was five years old, they entered kindergarten. The child we entrusted to the school was a high energy, affectionate, interesting kid. A kid who “bounced,” just like A. A. Milne’s Tigger in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. A kid not always aware of their hyperactivity, nor of others’ reactions to it. Read more →


By Jonathan Rosenblum

Millions of workers across the country have won wage hikes under the banner of $15, and this week many more in California stand poised to join the parade. But three and a half years after the first picket sign was hoisted demanding $15/hour and union recognition, very few minimum wage workers are actually getting paid that much. That’s because among those crafting wage legislation, it’s become an axiom that increases must be phased in over time for the sake of business and economic stability. California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez reflects a prevailing establishment view that what’s needed is “a reasonable, measured approach that would prevent sticker shock for businesses.” Read more →


By Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Indigenous peoples have long fought for meaningful inclusion in international political fora, beginning at least as far back as 1923 with the League of Nations, the United Nations’ precursor. Despite the fact that Indigenous peoples (IPs) have always practiced the art of international diplomacy with each other and outsiders who invaded their territories—and the fact that their existences as nations typically far predate today’s modern states—they have been largely shut out from the contemporary world’s political processes. Read more →


A Q&A with José Orduña

Happy Publication day to José Orduña and his memoir, The Weight of Shadows: A Memoir of Immigration and Displacement! The Weight of Shadows chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. It is a searing meditation on the nature of political, linguistic, and cultural borders, and the meaning of “America.” Our executive editor Gayatri Patnaik spoke with Orduña to discuss James Baldwin’s influence, Orduña’s hopes for the book, and how he crafted the narrative. Read more →


A Q&A with Andrea Ritchie | Public awareness of police brutality is growing, spurred by stories about individual Black men who have been murdered by police across the country. But Black women and women of color have been rendered largely invisible in discussions about state-sanctioned violence, even though they too are targeted and killed by police officers. What can we learn from their experiences of injustice, and from their resistance and activism? Black lesbian police misconduct attorney and organizer Andrea Ritchie, co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Violence Against Black Women and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, takes on these issues in her forthcoming book, Invisible No More, due out next spring. With Women’s History Month still fresh in our mind, we caught up with Ritchie to ask what to expect in her eye-opening account. Read more →


By Kay Whitlock

Matheson’s Shrinking Man is an apt metaphor for the current moment in American politics and economic life. The lives and well-being of countless individuals, families, households, and communities are shrinking; the situation is particularly dire for those who already bear the brunt of structural racism, gender violence, and economic violence. The very concept of the Public Good is shrinking, and without intervention, it will vanish into oblivion. Read more →


By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

I was driving to a meeting listening to the news this morning and a special segment was announced. It was described as a discussion on the Supreme Court’s decision on “union dues.” The second time that I heard this promo I stopped my car and called the station. Though I did not reach a human being, I left a pointed message to the effect that this case—Friedrichs v California Teachers Association—was NOT about union dues. So, if it was not about union dues, what was it about and why would the news station make such a basic error? Read more →