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Politics
Sunbeams
October 2022Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. . . . Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
Invasion Of Privacy
Khiara M. Bridges On Poverty And Reproductive Justice
Three of the nine justices have publicly articulated their position that the Constitution does not contain a right to privacy — at least, when it comes to matters involving contraception. . . . And that’s just the three we know about.
October 2022
Somebody’s Baby
We can see, if we care to look, that the way we treat children — all of them, not just our own, and especially those in great need — defines the shape of the world we’ll wake up in tomorrow.
September 2022Made To Be Broken
Richard Albert On The Difficulty Of Amending The U.S. Constitution
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.
July 2022
Sunbeams
July 2022Very 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.
Of History And Hope
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.
July 2022
Falling Behind
Ruth Milkman On The Growing Job Insecurity In America
In terms of security and a sense that you can count on a certain career path in life if you do your part — that’s over for most people. You’re on your own.
May 2022
The Smell Of Fatigue
Life has always been as hard as the soles of my father’s feet. Like the callused hand my face melts into. He holds it like the cantaloupe before a fruit salad. Like life before America. Before it’s sliced, devoured, consumed.
May 2022I Pledge Allegiance To The Republic
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.
March 2022Market Street
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.
March 2022
