Democracy

Lesson Plan

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:45 -0400

The Right and I agree on the potential of universities as a space in which students develop ideas that can transform the world. The difference is, they want to stamp it out, and I want to encourage it.

Sunbeams

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.

Frederick Douglass

Los Vecinos

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

And we’re included in the golden circle / of familia, through no virtue / of our own, yet here she is again at our door / with a plate of something delicious, or a big plastic bag / filled with nopales from the edible pads / of the giant cactus in their yard

The Fourth Estate

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:45 -0500

I don’t believe we’re confined to the media business models that we know. As the information landscape evolves, there will still be journalism about what is happening now, and that will help people in the future who are trying to make sense of it. This work has value.

Sleeping Children

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

What was happening in and to Gaza was not really about democracy at all—or any kind of universal, God-given values. It was simply about power.

Sunbeams

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

The press must be free. It has always been so, and much evil has been corrected by it. If government finds itself annoyed by it, let it examine its own conduct, and it will find the cause.

Thomas Erskine

Stirring the Pot

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Leading a strike, starting trouble between sisters, feeding strangers

Sunbeams

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.

Newt Gingrich

Opportunity Knocked

dgmlewis@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A lot of the Biden administration’s pitch was “In ten years, we promise you you’re going to have a job.” Most people can’t afford to have that long-term view.

Crossroads

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:14 -0500

The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

Enemies of Freedom

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Like the breeze that blew through the campus that day, whipping up the leaves and our hair, the student strike had stirred me, as if from sleep. Certainly, in deciding to march despite my fears, I woke up a little: I saw more clearly than I had before that my teachers weren’t my parents and my parents weren’t God and that I could risk a little disapproval without my world falling apart.

Mind the Gap

mcdermon@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

The lion’s share of Gen Z organizing on the Left is being done by young women, because they care passionately about the issues. I think there’s less of that drive among young men. Instead there’s a sense of rootlessness. We’ll have to see whether that actually translates into conservative voting behavior or support for certain policies.

A Thousand Words

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 -0400

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Poetry By Sparrow And Alison Luterman

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400

When I worked as a manuscript reader for The Sun, I didn’t always agree with founder and editor Sy Safransky about poetry. . . . But there were two poets whose work always appealed to both of us: the Bay Area poet and essayist Alison Luterman and New York City’s kindest oddball, Sparrow. . . . It’s my honor to introduce both poets, whose rewarding, divergent work has been crucial in shaping the voice and image of The Sun for decades.

— Ann Humphreys

Sunbeams

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 04:00:00 -0400

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Made To Be Broken

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 04:00:00 -0400

The way Americans interact with each other now has made it clear that the Constitution was perhaps never deserving of all the praise it’s gotten.

Of History And Hope

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 04:00:00 -0400

We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

Sunbeams

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

They argued about the weather, sports, sex, war, race, politics, and religion; neither of them knew much about the subjects they debated, but it seemed that the less they knew the better they could argue.

Richard Wright, “The Man Who Went to Chicago”

Market Street

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

The sea of people looked like a great heartbroken circus, wild living art, motley and stylish, old and young, lots of Buddhists, people from unions and churches and temples, punks and rabbis and aging hippies and nuns and veterans — God, I love the Democratic Party — strewn together on the asphalt lawn of Market Street.

I Pledge Allegiance To The Republic

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

Every morning the public school chooses a student to lead us in patriotic worship over the intercom. I stand before my classroom flag and count my heartbeats. At recess I draw stars and stars.

Sticks And Stones

mcdermon@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

It’s hard to be optimistic about this country overcoming its current political challenges without some disaster happening.

Sunbeams

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 05:00:00 -0500

Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed.

Mahatma Gandhi

America America

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 05:00:00 -0500

My granddaughter barely speaks. Her name is Effie, which in Greek means “well-spoken.” Maybe in Greece she would be. Names aren’t expected to match the person. If they were, we’d be named upon our death, when someone would have a stab in the dark at getting it right.

The Elephant In The Room

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 05:00:00 -0500

In a lot of ways the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in 1861 found its modern parallel on January 6, 2021.

Prayer For A Divided Nation

Thu, 27 May 2021 04:00:00 -0400

Prayers for the listeners of NPR and the listeners of Fox News, / For the followers of Rachel Maddow and the followers of Rush Limbaugh. / May they open their hearts, may they open their minds, / May they find ways to be in community and to repair the nation.

Defending The Roof Of The World

Thu, 27 May 2021 04:00:00 -0400

The Chinese empire is fragile, because it is built upon oppression. . . . If the oppression is too great, it may all come apart. If the empire were to break up, I think democracy might be possible in the smaller entities that would remain. . . . This is where Tibetans must keep up the fight and prepare for the long haul. We can prevail if we are able to keep our culture intact.

For Readers Who Didn’t Notice Last Month’s Announcement . . .

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 05:00:00 -0500

One Nation, Indivisible

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500

Sunbeams

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:00:00 -0400

There’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.

Molly Ivins

Many Voices

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:00:00 -0400

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.