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Eight Days In Brooklyn

“ ‘Black rage’ — it’s a new defense for the Long Island Killer, sort of like an insanity plea,” my dad says as he drives us toward Brooklyn from La Guardia Airport. I have just arrived with my daughter, Rose, from northern Idaho for our annual week-long visit and I’m anxious for news.

On Racism And Nonviolence

An Interview With Arun Gandhi

Peace without nonviolence is impractical. Some people think, if there is no war, we have peace. But, in effect, no society is at peace at the moment. In the United States, there is street violence. This is not peace at all. No country has ever made an attempt to achieve a thoroughly peaceful society.

By Fire And Water

An Interview With Michael Meade

All this violence is a fire screaming for the water of human attention. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep going unless we deal with it. To me the two big events of the last two years are the fires in L.A. and the flooding of the Mississippi River. I think they are strangely related.

From Yale To Jail

For no reason I can explain, I began to discover how little it matters where you are or what anyone does to you. I was sure that what I had done to get put in the hole was right, and somehow the longer I was there the better I felt.

Storm

It was too hot to do anything except wait for the heat to end, wait for rain. Wait on the red brick porch, down at the end of our street where the road made a wide, looping turn, disappearing into a tangled mess of kudzu vines.

Uncle Ruff

I was not hallucinating. Here was time incarnate, bareheaded, wrapped in heavy bib overalls and flannel, and moving in a lithe, short-stepping dance about the concrete ramp.

Stepbrothers

Gays And The Men’s Movement

White male privilege isn’t confined to those who own banks, control empires, and manipulate governments. Even the freakiest-looking punk-rock anarchist is only a haircut and a costume change away from enjoying a white male privilege black men will never know.

Victory

In their letter to the weekly newspaper, the Klan hadn’t said what time they planned to arrive, just that on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination they would be in Churchill passing out literature and demonstrating. When I called around town to find out what people were planning to do about it, the consensus in the white community was that we should ignore them.

Race

The carpenters, The Supremes, the flowering vine planted at the base of a cross

Small Favors

I started using carry-out at the grocery store when I got pregnant. Even when I could still lift the bags, I decided not to. Having put off pregnancy until forty, I didn’t want to take any risks. After a month or two, Cao showed up. He looked Vietnamese, his black hair slicked back, new-employee shiny. At first I didn’t care who carried my groceries, but then I started lining up for the registers he worked. Cao made the extra effort.