Feature Archives - Page 33 of 150

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Nazis in Squirrel Hill and Slonim

On how remembering the past has taken on renewed relevance

November 28, 2018 • by Ezra Mehlman

Consistent with the aftermath of most national tragedies, the reductive takes have come fast and furious. Political narratives have focused on the emboldening of the alt right’s violent fringe; religious arguments have pointed to the omnipresence of anti-Semitism, even in areas where Jews feel most comfortable; regulatory discourse has predictably ...

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European Union Strikes Back at Populism

By renouncing the Law and Justice party, Poland could return to the EU fold

November 28, 2018 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has finally taken steps to comply with a European Court of Justice (ECJ) decree ordering it to reverse some of the judicial “reforms” that took effect in July. Under the offending legislation, the PiS had tried to force out disfavored Supreme Court justices ...

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The Performance of Transgender Inclusion

The pronoun go-round and the new gender binary

November 27, 2018 • by Jen Manion

The first time someone asked me my pronoun was about a decade ago at a meeting of directors of LGBTQ centers from colleges and universities in the Northeast. Sitting around a table for our first session, we were invited to share our names, pronouns, and the school we represented. I ...

Blue Monday

Cindy Hyde-Smith, or Mississippi God Damn!

Why the history of white supremacy matters for the last Senate election of 2018

November 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On Tuesday November 27 -- tomorrow -- voters in Mississippi will go to the polls to choose their next U.S. Senator in a runoff election pitting incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, a far-right Republican and Trump supporter, against Mike Espy, a moderate Democrat who served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton ...

Cindy Hyde-Smith, or Mississippi God Damn!

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Celebrating Human Rights

The 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

November 26, 2018 • by Yvonne M. Vissing

Human rights are under attack – not just in the U.S. but worldwide. We see rights violations as white supremacists attack synagogues and send bombs to people whose political positions they wish to silence. We see them as the government continues to separate children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. We see them in racially-provoked police-public ...

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A Citizen’s First Vote

Surviving the Georgia voter purge, a first generation American casts her first vote — with a little help from her friends

November 25, 2018 • by Lee Trinh

Luckily for me, many of my peers agreed. With each passing tragedy and movement, from the #BlackLivesMatter movement to Never Again MSD, many young Americans have realized that our political system must change. If our generation did not care, we were not sure if any other would. With adversity came ...

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Fixing Something Starts With Seeing How It’s Broken

Mindy Fullilove Talks About 400 Years Of Inequality

November 24, 2018 • by Mindy Fullilove and Victoria Richards

Victoria Richards: Is there a specific event or defining moment that inspired ‘400 Years of Inequality?’ Mindy Fullilove: The New School has helped us launch this project, which you can find on our website. 2019 will mark the 400th anniversary since the first Africans arrived in Jamestown [as slaves]. The project is ...

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Chief Justice Roberts to the Rescue?

Or, how the relationships between conservative idealism and realism may serve the public good

November 23, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I wrote this last week, but almost as soon as I did, I had second thoughts. I read an early draft of Peter Dreier comprehensive, “What Should American Progressives Learn From the Mid-terms?” in which he thoroughly demonstrated the depth and breadth of the Democrats’ victory in the elections. Perhaps given the dimensions of ...

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Life and Debt under Capitalism

An excerpt from Elettra Stimilli’s The Debt of Living

November 23, 2018 • by Elettra Stimilli

From the beginning, capitalism has established an intimate connection with individual lives, formerly based on the exploitation of specific skills in the form of work. The real change is that today at stake are not only specific services, but the whole of life and the very capacity of human living ...

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Smart Media Is a Pain

As machine intelligence advances, we encounter the painful limits of our social intelligence

November 22, 2018 • by Benjamin Peters

Public media discourse has been fairly agonizing. All sides seem beset by mobs of malicious morons: waves of fake news pounding against their believers, crafty hackers seeding chains of disinformation, the trollish alt-right cooptation of identity politics, and even a populous turnout at the US midterm elections that, no matter your political leanings, likely ...

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Making America Good Again

A few notes of thanks as Purple Wednesday closes a two-year run

November 21, 2018 • by Claire Potter

As I wrote that day, The message of The Poseidon Adventure was that we must not give in to despair, even in our darkest hour. In order to save our own lives, we must come to terms with, and fight back against, the new reality. The challenges faced by those on The Poseidon are ...

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What Should American Progressives Learn from the Midterms?

Victories in Congress and at the state and local level could pave the way for a progressive groundswell in 2020

November 21, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

Politics is a struggle for power -- over ideas and interests -- and after this year’s midterm elections two things remain clear. First, voter suppression and intimidation, racism, and corporate money continue to infect American politics like a virus. Second, despite those obstacles, America is a much more progressive country ...