Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...
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Documenting the City of Refugees

Radical Republicans Are Birthing the Nation They Want—and Most Americans Don’t

Never forget that banning abortion has always been a minority position in this country, one that does not represent the will of the voters.

Outlawing abortion is the outcome of a radical conservative minority. The success of this minority has been entirely driven by megadonors and organizations that create voter turnout through disinformation and motivating extremists. The notion that a cluster of cells that cannot survive outside a human host, one that has no ...
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Radical Republicans Are Birthing the Nation They Want—and Most Americans Don’t

The Future of the GOP

Has the Republic National Committee firmly dragged the Republican Party into Trump’s war on our democracy?

Coming as the statement did, just after former President Trump said that Pence had the power to “overturn the election” and, that if reelected, Trump would pardon those who attacked the Capitol, it has put the Republican Party openly on the side of overturning our democracy....

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The Future of the GOP

Texas Women Just Lost Their Right to Their Own Bodies

It’s time to fight back, and time to understand the anti-feminist backlash that allowed this to happen.

_____ I am frothing and devastated watching the Supreme Court allow Texas to functionally overturn Roe v. Wade. I’m angry in a million different directions: At the woman-hating “pro-life” movement that has spent decades working up to this moment; at Democrats who have never done enough to preserve abortion rights; at ...
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Texas Women Just Lost Their Right to Their Own Bodies

Vesna Kesic

In memoriam

Photo: taken by Stephanie Damoff (provided by Elzbieta Matynia). Elzbieta Matynia is a Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research and Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.
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Vesna Kesic

Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?

“That’s not who we are” — or is it?

As Plato suggested in The Republic, politics is driven more by stories than facts. As different as they are in all other regards, America’s last two presidents both won wildly improbable electoral victories while telling completely contradictory stories about their country. Barack Obama made his own hopeful story a symbol of ...
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Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?