Irene Monroe: Joyner points to the ongoing struggle in the African American community with its unresolved homophobia and misogyny that falls on the backs of its women and LGBTQ population, pitting one disenfranchised group against another.
Rankism
Rankism, a term coined by physicist, educator, and citizen diplomat Robert W. Fuller, is used to describe "abusive, discriminatory, or exploitative behavior towards people because of their rank in a particular hierarchy". According to Fuller rank-based abuse underlies many other phenomena such as bullying, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
What Niall Ferguson’s Attack on John Maynard Keynes Has Wrought
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Irene Monroe: While Ferguson’s gay-bashing of Keynesian economics was to discredit Keynes and his entire body of work, it has rather done the reverse, bringing renewed international attention to a renown economist and to another one of our LGBTQ unsung forebearers.
Is a Hero Just a Sandwich to You?
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John MacMurray: And while very few communities will openly admit their disdain for these people who have no permanent place to live, many cities have no problem creatively enforcing ordinances that make being homeless far more difficult than it already is.
Local Fights Against Austerity Growing
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Mark Vorpahl: Between sequestration and the billions of cuts to social programs that Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people.
Why the President’s 2014 Budget Should Restore Funding for ESOPs
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Heather Gautney: With 1 percent of Americans owning almost 40 percent of our wealth (and steep declines in trade unionism), worker ownership in productive enterprises marks an important step in reversing the tide of social inequality in our nation.
America’s Killer Jobs
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Julie Gutman: While the surreal quality of the Texas disaster was somewhat unique, the deaths and injuries caused by it were not. Every year thousands of American workers die on the job, and hundreds of thousands are injured.
Jason Collins: The Great Black Hope
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Rev. Irene Monroe: In a sports world that has become overwhelming shaped by African American male players and masculinity, Collins coming out celebration has everything to do with timing, gender, race and many more straight brothers embracing their gay brethren.
May Day Rallies Reflect Urgency of Pending Immigration Reform
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Peter Dreier: This year’s May Day rallies will focus on issues like pushing Congress to adopt a fair budget and raise the federal minimum wage, but the central focus will be on pending legislation for immigration reform.
Closing the “Walmart Loophole”
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Steve Smith: Walmart and other large companies don’t think twice about cutting workers’ hours and wages to such a low level that workers have to get health care through taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal.
Oh, That’s What the Boy Scouts Mean by Being ‘Morally Straight’
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Walter Brasch: If there was a Pathfinder merit badge, the Scout leadership would be unable to earn it—they’ve been wandering the wrong trail for many years.
Will Boston Marathon Bombing Ignite Islamophobia?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: Immediately following the Boston bombing, several “Muslim-looking” suspects were apprehended to the chagrin of law enforcement that later released them and offered an apology. Not much has changed since September 11, 2001.
Looking for the Union Label in All the Right Places
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Steven Mikulan: Labor 411 has expanded into both printed guides and a Web site that caters to socially conscious consumers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Click on an item and information about both the manufacturer and the union that represents the company’s workers pops up.
50 Years After MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” What Can We Learn?
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Gary Corseri: King challenged; he alerted; he upheld conscience and truth; he urged reason and fairness. He actualized our highest principles. He pointed a way.
Something America and China Could Do Together
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Robert Fuller: At the moment, the greatest threats to China and America come not from each other, but from flaws in their own systems of governance. Chinese and Americans alike are burdened by political systems that are not keeping pace with the times.
Real Faces of the Minimum Wage
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Richard Eskow: Here’s the truth: Most minimum-wage workers are adults, the majority of them are women, and many are parents who are trying to raise their children on poverty wages.
Arizona Copycats: Mexicans in the Photo
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Rodolfo F. Acuña: Our communities are still under siege. A war is raging in Arizona. The prison industry is still agitating, and the Tea Partiers and the Minutemen types are still terrorizing Mexicans.
Why Jackie Robinson Still Matters
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Anthony Samad: Jackie Robinson showed us that blacks and whites could co-exist on the same intellectual, emotional and physical planes. America had to see it before they could “see it.”
Cowardice and Heroism
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Rev. Jim Nelson: What is it about us that lets such hatred or anger grow in us that we believe it is acceptable to sow such harm and terror, such evil?
The Source of Indignity
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Robert Fuller: The twentieth century witnessed the successful application of the strategies and tactics of identity politics. Those same organizational techniques, applied to overcoming rankism, can render it as insupportable as the isms that identity politics has now put on the defensive.
De-mythologizing History! Why We’ll Boycott Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’
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Gary Corseri and Janis Schmidt: The Indian is largely invisible to Americans because if they became something more than the Hollywood Indian, Americans would be forced to confront their abiding racism.
United Mine Workers Need Your John Hancock
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Berry Craig: Peabody, Arch and Patriot Coal appear willing to stand by and do nothing as these brave miners and their spouses suffer and die from their work-caused illnesses and injuries without the health care these companies promised them.
Culture Wars: The Young Grow Old
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Rudy Acuña: Pundit after pundit predicts that the entrance of large numbers gay and Latino voters will end the culture wars that divide the country. There is only one problem — progressives forget that the “Young Grow Old.”
Who Will Save Social Security and Medicare?
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Shamus Cooke: Obama and the Democrats are aligning with Republicans to strike the first major blows against Social Security and Medicare. The decades-long political agreement to save these programs is dead, and the foundation of American politics is shifting beneath everyone’s feet.
Eric Cantor Lectures on “Tolerance” and “Diversity”
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Julie Driscoll: Cantor can continue to talk out of both sides of his mouth in an effort to re-brand Republican “messaging,” but the proof is in the pudding: Anyone who votes consistently against rights for same sex couples is a bigot, small-minded, and destined to stay that way.
Is the Supreme Court Going to Settle for “States’ Rights” on Same-Sex Marriage?
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Peter Dreier: When children born this year reach voting age 18 years from now, they will take same-sex marriage for granted. And they will surely wonder how it was even possible that America once deprived gays and lesbians the right to marry.
Another Tackle in the World of Homophobic Sports
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Rev. Irene Monroe: With news of LGBT equality in the news daily, one may wonder why this is news at all. But it is. The world of sports is quickly becoming the last closet, where gays and lesbians hide their sexual orientation. In a homophobic testosterone-driven sport like American football, Harris concealment is understandable.
UGLA: 30 Years of Grassroot’s Activism
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Carl Matthes: UGLA members, in addition to being long-term members and officers of NEDC, have been part of the successful visibility and national coming-out campaign the LGBT community instituted since the early ‘80s.
No Merit Badge for Courage for Boy Scouts
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Walter Brasch: Gays are part of every business, trade, profession, and even the military. Only the most paranoid, homophobic, and ignorant see any problem.
DINOs
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Berry Craig: Some of the DINOs will lambast “liberal unelected judges” if the courts toss out the “religious freedom” law. Bless their hearts, these DINOs still won’t get to first base with the Lee-leaning “You can’t be a Christian and a Democrat” crowd.
Defense of Marriage: Racism, Family Values, and the 99%
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Living in a culture in which they are reminded daily of their non-existence by a white supremacist heterosexist nation that deifies straight white beauty ideals and views affordable housing as a privilege, some LGBT homeless youth of color resort to destructive behaviors like survival sex and drug abuse.
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