Politics Archives - Page 42 of 105

Politics

How Does the United States Make Religious Peace in Afghanistan?

Europeans learned to manage their religious differences, but it required political action

April 28, 2021 • by Wayne Te Brake

_____ Nearly twenty years ago, on October 7, 2001, the United States, supported by a broad international coalition, started what the Bush administration called a War on Terrorism. It began with an aerial attack on Afghanistan, whose radical Islamist Taliban government had harbored those responsible for the devastating 9/11 attacks. Two ...

How Does the United States Make Religious Peace in Afghanistan?

Activism

Teaching Through the Pandemic

In a course about memorializing HIV-AIDS, students learned about community by making one

April 21, 2021 • by Dan Royles

_____ Everyone involved in education has found the past year to be a special challenge for teaching, learning, and simply making it from one day to another. But how do you teach students about a pandemic during a pandemic? In December 2020, queer historian Dan Royles interviewed Theodore (Ted) Kerr and his ...

Democracy

Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

But gun ownership only became popular after World War II, when conservatives united to prevent desegregation

April 21, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ America today is caught in a plague of gun violence. It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed ...

Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

Politics

Congress’s Incentive Cease-Fire

How a COVID relief bill could temporarily slow the tax break race to the bottom

April 21, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ Though corporate tax giveaway problems often arise at the state and local level, federal lawmakers could technically implement a fix for the whole nation. For decades, in fact, a few policymakers have pushed for Congress to use its power to regulate interstate commerce to end the race to the bottom ...

Capitalism

Up To Heaven and Down to Hell

Fracking, freedom, and community in an American town

April 20, 2021 • by Colin Jerolmack

_____ The following excerpt is from Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town by Colin Jerolmack and was reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. From page 229, Fig. 10.3b. Fracking in the Tiadaghton State Forest. Photograph ...

Capitalism

Data Cooperatives for Pandemic Times

To avoid ‘co-op whitewashing,’ experiments with data co-ops should be co-developed with communities connected to the long history and analysis of the various forms of cooperatives.

April 19, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz and Igor Calzada

To avoid 'co-op whitewashing,' data cooperatives must be shaped by those who need them most, rooted in cooperative principles and localized data....

Activism

The True Story of Two Guatemalan Asylum Seekers at Our Border

A saga of dispossession, past and present

April 15, 2021 • by Mónica Salmón Gómez

_____I met Francisco Chávez and Gaspar Cobo through a colleague and advocate for migrants’ and refugees’ human rights who works in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The two of them had fled Guatemala in June 2019. Travelling with a larger group of Central Americans going north, it took them twenty days to ...

The True Story of Two Guatemalan Asylum Seekers at Our Border

Politics

Joe Biden Embraces Liberalism

But is he returning to a New Deal vision? Comparisons to Harry Truman may be more apt

April 15, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ Yesterday, the Biden administration issued a proclamation on Black Maternal Health Week. It noted that African American mothers die from pregnancy-related complications at two to three times the rates of white, Hispanic, Asian American, and Pacific Islander women, no matter what their income or education levels. President Joe Biden and ...

Activism

Reflections on Violence

In defense of rioting, looting, and vandalism

April 15, 2021 • by E. Colin Ruggero and AK Thompson

_____ What follows is an excerpt from a longer interview with AK Thompson, conducted by E. Colin Ruggero, and published as part of a special edition of Theory in Action titled “Revisiting the Riot: 10th Anniversary of A.K. Thompson’s Black Bloc, White Riot.” Thompson’s book was first published in 2010 by the ...

Politics

Dan Crenshaw’s Eye

As he recovers from sight-saving surgery, will the second-term Texas congressman reflect on the health insurance that other Americans don’t have?

April 12, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Last week, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R, TX-2) sent out a quietly heartbreaking press release. It notified constituents and colleagues that Crenshaw would be temporarily out of commission as doctors work to save his one partially-functioning eye. OK, you may not like Crenshaw very much: I don’t. He is a Trump baby, elected ...

Democracy

Brazil

Land of despair

April 8, 2021 • by Daniel Peres

Brazil faces two threats, both lethal. On top of COVID-19, the country faces another virus, lethal to democracy: the virus of autocracy. The pandemic is brutally sweeping Brazil. Almost 4000 deaths per day, according to official data. There is no reason to doubt that we will reach more than 500,000 ...

Politics

Biden Must Fire IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig

Trump cronies have no place in the new administration

April 8, 2021 • by Sion Bell

_____ Like many of former President Trump’s appointees, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig made a name for himself combatting the very agency he would later lead. Before getting appointed to the position in 2018, Rettig worked for over 30 years as a tax attorney in Beverly Hills representing some of ...