Barack Obama Archives - Page 2 of 5

Democracy

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Progressives mourn a SCOTUS legend, famous for potent dissents, who saw gender equity as a path to civil rights for all

September 19, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

----------- Today, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last night from cancer at age 87. Justice Ginsburg was born in ...

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Public Health

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Facing a disproportionate death rate among Black people from COVID-19, President Trump shrugs: “What, me, worry?”

July 23, 2020 • by R. Drew Smith

When faced with emerging epidemics related to HIV/AIDS in the 1970s, to crack cocaine in the 1980s, to Ebola in 2014 and 2018, the U.S. government was slow to intervene on behalf of homosexual populations, or urban poor populations, or African populations, who respectively were most-affected by those public health ...

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Activism

What Will It Take for Black Lives to Matter?

Nonviolent, cross-racial coalitions are the way back to a decent America

July 9, 2020 • by Todd Gitlin

I wrote the article that follows three years ago. Since it first appeared in the American Prospect, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has generated the largest protest movement in American history. What has changed? And what hasn’t? It remains true that the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is ill-defined. It has rough edges ...

What Will It Take for Black Lives to Matter?

Politics

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

What we can learn from Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

July 8, 2020 • by Richard Johnson and Desmond King

History suggests that the response to the current crisis of policing in the United States must be a stronger role for the federal government. Yet few activists within the Movement for Black Lives are demanding that the federal government flex its coercive muscle. Given the racism of the current occupant ...

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

Migration

The Supreme Court’s DACA Ruling & Me

On being superfluous

July 1, 2020 • by José Ángel Navejas

When I crossed the border from Mexico in 1993, there were no doubts about what I would do once I arrived in Chicago: find a job in a factory, or wash dishes, or get down on my knees to scrub dirty toilets, whichever came first. In Mexico, I had grown ...

Politics

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

The critical factor connecting protest and electoral politics today

June 25, 2020 • by Sanford Schram and Richard Fording

There has been extensive commentary about the protests over the recent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, with some suggesting parallels to the 1960s. But a number of observers have incisively pointed out differences as well, noting the racial diversity of today’s protesters compared to those who took to the streets ...

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

Politics

Why Don’t We Call It Treason?

John Bolton confirms what Senate Republicans already knew

June 24, 2020 • by John Stoehr

I don’t like John Bolton any more than you do. He’s a crank. He’s a snob. He’s a warmonger. One thing you can’t question, though, is his loyalty. No matter how wrongheaded, how dangerous, how much he prefers airstrikes to diplomacy, you can’t doubt his dedication to the United States. ...

Interviews

Bernie Sanders’s Socialism Is New York Born and Bred

June 24, 2020 • by Charlotte Slivka and Ted Hamm

Charlotte Slivka [CS]: Bernie’s Brooklyn is so much more than what the title would suggest. This book shows a deep love for the city and how politics and life are so tightly intertwined in our dense and crazy city. Are you from New York? Ted Hamm [TH]: No, I grew up ...

Bernie Sanders’s Socialism Is New York Born and Bred

Activism

Why “Abolition of the Police” Is a Bad Idea

We need the police to enforce equal justice and protect ordinary citizens, not to go away

June 18, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Note: The author would like to thank Jim Miller for his editing, and Adam Kent-Isaac, Lisi Kent-Isaac, Debra Kent, Bob Orsi, Mala Htun, and Jeffrey Tulis for their comments. A much longer version of this piece can be read at the author’s blog. On June 15, 2020, citizens demonstrating against racism ...

Why “Abolition of the Police” Is a Bad Idea

History

Taking Children

An excerpt from Taking Children: A History of American Terror by Laura Briggs

June 8, 2020 • by Laura Briggs

The past stalks the present, the ghost in the machine of memory. This is why history writing matters; it gives us ways to understand the specters already among us and to assemble tools to transform our situation. Things change; the epidemic of child taking in the context of mass incarceration ...

Activism

Wired Politics

Social media is crucial to organizing modern protests: It is also a vulnerability

June 4, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Nowadays, I try not to watch the cable news shows. There are other ways to get information about the demonstrations engulfing the United States, and my neighborhood in Manhattan, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. I text friends in the community for updates ...

Activism

What Is to Be Done?

Three scholars of democracy respond to the protests

June 4, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

I believe this extraordinary nationwide mobilization is the best answer possible to the Democrats who engineered the destruction of the Sanders primary campaign -- I mean Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, James Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, and the innumerable reporters and media “experts” who from the beginning insisted ...