Browse Topics
Civil Liberties
Unstacking The Deck
Lara Bazelon On The Deep-Rooted Flaws Of Our Justice System
By conservative estimates, there are currently enough wrongfully convicted people in prison in the United States to fill a football stadium.
February 2021
The Practice Of Touch
I imagine my own daughter in Danny’s situation. She is a toddler, so I would be allowed to stay with her if she got COVID. But if she were older, what would I do? What rules would I break to sit beside her?
November 2020
Many Voices
Cristina Beltrán On What Unites And Divides Latinos
I wish the Democratic Party would put more resources into these communities instead of waiting until shortly before an election and parachuting in a few campaign workers to do some half-assed Latino-turnout work. Latinos are not automatically the firewall for the Democratic Party.
September 2020
Sunbeams
September 2020There’s not a thing wrong with the ideals and mechanisms outlined and the liberties set forth in the Constitution of the United States. The only problem was the founders left a lot of people out of the Constitution. They left out poor people and Black people and female people. It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. And it still goes on today.
Sunbeams
September 2020There had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One [cabinet] minister suggested a curfew: women should stay home after dark. I said, “But it’s the men who are attacking the women. If there’s to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.”
The Great Work
Ralph Nader On Taking Back Power From The Corporate State
Every major advance for justice in our country took no more than 1 percent of adults — around 2.5 million people — with public opinion behind them, mobilizing to change government policy. If you’ve got 2.5 million people, you can recover our country, recover our government, recover our hopes and dreams.
May 2019
Not So Black And White
Dorothy Roberts On The Myth Of Race
I’m not saying that race is a natural division of human beings that can lead to unjust hierarchies. I’m saying that the very concept of race was invented to create and enforce such hierarchies.
April 2019
The World’s Oldest Person
has died. She attributed her longevity / to divorce and raw eggs, / which she ate daily. / A previous record holder / had no idea why she’d lived so long.
August 2018Poetic Justice
Camille T. Dungy On Racism, Writing, And Radical Empathy
If you say to me, “I don’t see race when I see you,” that means you’ve just erased a large piece of my experience and identity. That’s a type of violence.
June 2018
From Slavery To Freedom
The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition.
June 2018
