Archive
A ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Isn’t Enough
After the massacre of kindergarteners at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the gun lobby offered its usual blame-the-victims, good-guy-with-a-gun excuse: If only the teachers had been armed! This time, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, someone did have a...
‘Chain Migration’ Is a Nasty Canard
Let's do a mental exercise. Imagine that Jose moves to the United States from El Salvador. He comes here legally — he applied for the diversity visa lottery and he won! Then he quickly gathered together the required papers to prove to the U.S. that he was who he said...
A Food Stamp Indignity Worthy of Dickens
Even Charles Dickens, England's masterful satirist of the Victorian upper class, couldn’t have imagined elite rulers using a box of food as a gratuitous way to slap poor people. But Donald Trump and two of his slap-happy cabinet officials did imagine it — and then did...
Arm the Teachers
Racism is Literally Killing African-American Mothers
At first glance, tennis star Serena Williams and the late activist Erica Garner don't have much in common. They lived different lives on different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. But as black women in America, they both shared horrifying stories due to...
I’m an Eagle Scout, and I Don’t Want Pipelines in My Wilderness
I’m an Eagle Scout from Virginia. Troop 149, an enthusiastic and lively troop from Arlington, made me the person I am today. Being a member of Troop 149 meant a lot of things, but most importantly it meant incredible outdoor expeditions on the Appalachian Trail. The...
Mass Shootings Shouldn’t Be the Only Time We Talk About Mental Illness
After every mass shooting, we repeat all of the same things. Some call for gun control. Those against gun control say this isn't the time to talk about it. The Onion reprints its story titled, "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,"...
Long Live the Jersey Tomato
Food corporations and their academic cohorts keep trying to "make" an industrial tomato to rival Mother Nature’s product. And they keep failing. They might consider this instead: the Rutgers 250. It’s a revived version of the classic hybrid tomato bred in 1934 by...
Caught Her Red-Handed
In OtherWords: February 21, 2018
Another week, another mass shooting, another gun control debate. With brave survivors from Florida pushing hard against politicians in thrall to the gun lobby, maybe this time will be different. But one familiar element is the inevitable discussion of mental illness....
