| Dec 16, 2015 | Peace / SecurityWhy should a “Muslim” shooting outrage us so much more than other mass shootings? “Our nation is under siege,” Chris Christie declared after the San Bernardino murders. “We’re facing the next world war.” Other candidates issued their own battle cries. Donald Trump...
| Oct 14, 2015 | Environment / HealthWriter Naomi Klein and her filmmaker husband Avi Lewis lucked out with the release of their new documentary, This Changes Everything. This film about why humanity must kick our fossil-fuel habit before it wrecks the planet arrived at an ideal time. For one thing,...
| Jul 1, 2015 | Rights / DemocracyI’ve spent my whole life in the Northeast, but I have Southern roots. My late grandfather came from a long line of sharecroppers who toiled in the fields of Decatur, Georgia for generations. Their history of hardship was common in the South. Where my grandfather grew...
| | Rights / DemocracyIf Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech is the 20th century equivalent of Abraham Lincoln’s magnificent Second Inaugural — and I think it is — then what President Barack Obama gave us in Charleston, South Carolina is our century’s Gettysburg Address. He gave a...
| Jun 24, 2015 | Rights / DemocracyWhen I say publicly that I’m descended from slave owners, I almost always hear a gasp. I let the tension hang a moment and then I break it: “Well, someone has to be, right?” This usually gets a laugh, or at least a humph of recognition. Because many...
