Rights and Democracy
This Week in OtherWords: An Early Thanksgiving
While I’m concerned about the damage this latest bout of extreme weather wrought, I’m also thankful that my loved ones are safe and sound. I hope that the same holds true for you, your friends, and relatives.
Isolation on Both Ends of the Line
When Martha Wright’s grandson went to prison more than 20 years ago, she learned a stark lesson about the cost of maintaining ties with a family member who is incarcerated.
Politics Creep to a New Low
America has always had political campaigns that dig into the muck of their opponents’ personal lives, then fling any nasty nuggets of negativity they find right into the face of voters. But this year is different. Not, of course, because there’s any less singling of slime, but because the campaigns are also digging into the private affairs of another political target: you.
George McGovern’s Shining Moment
It is eerily fitting that George McGovern‘s passing occurred in the final heat of a furious election campaign, precariously balanced between Republocrats and Democlicans, two corporately owned political parties.
Remembering George McGovern and Old-School Campaign Tools
George McGovern changed my life. I was a campus antiwar radical in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I wore blue jeans, a headband, and a thread belt. I had hair halfway down my back. And I’m sure the State Director wished that he had another option.
Supremely High Stakes in This Election
The rights of working families across America hang in the balance this Election Day. The future of laws protecting working people — our right to safe working conditions, to organize, to sue employers who have discriminated against us — will depend on who we elect.
GOP Looks in Mirror, Spots Voter Fraud
But now comes a Houston-based, tea-party outfit calling itself True the Vote. It claims to be dedicated to sniffing out ineligible voters — in particular, your darker-skinned types who favor the Democratic Party. True the Vote claims that hordes of these undesirables are swarming America’s polling places to vote illegally. Sadly, though, these self-appointed guardians of ballot integrity have not had much luck in sniffing out, you know, actual documented cases of such fraud.
Can Obama Get His Groove Back?
One January night before his re-election campaign heated up, President Obama took the podium at the Apollo theatre in Harlem. He scanned the room and flashed his megawatt smile, prompting the crowd of 1,400 young professionals to cheer “Four More Years! Four More Years!” The president gave a shout out to the singers India.Arie and the Rev. Al Green. Then, channeling Green, Obama sang: “I’m so in love with you.” The crowd, predictably, went nuts.
Pulling the Plug on Ex-Gay Quackery
Jerry, a 23-year-old gay Texan, endured seven years of so-called “conversion therapy” starting at the age of 13. One of the most humiliating “treatments” entailed being taken to Nevada, where prostitution is legal, and forced to perform sex acts — which he found revolting — with female “sexual healers” who were twice his age.
A Plan for the Democratic Party
Until the votes are cast and counted, no one, no matter how smart or well-connected, can predict with certainty the outcome of the 2012 elections. And yet, Democrats and some Republicans are already forecasting that President Barack Obama will win re-election, and Democrats will maintain control of the Senate and pick up new House seats.
