Progressive Media Advocates
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, History News Service: At a gala celebration Monday in Charleston to mark the sesquicentennial of South Carolina’s secession from the Union in 1860, the chief cause of secession—slavery—will be ignored. Historians Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts see this as yet another episode in a 150-year struggle over public memory in South Carolina and America.
Tina Dupuy: Pastor Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church congregation – also known as the “God Hates Fags” picketers – have no place in a polite society. But we don’t live in a polite society. We live in this one. And in this one we are guaranteed the freedom of speech.
Tom Hall: While Faux News and right-wing blowhards fabricate against wikileaks for publishing the truth, the Republican Party voted to reaffirm its opposition to ending discrimination in the military, even if such discrimination hurts the nation’s security.
Charles Hayes: As those who participate already know, the greatest lesson of all of self-education is that things are seldom as they seem. Examining the food industry is a good way to prove this to yourself. Then apply what you’ve learned to politics.
Wendy McElroy: Why is it difficult to prosecute police officers for criminal misconduct even when the abuse is severe and unequivocal?
Jessie Daniels: While it’s true that it’s no longer ok to say the n-word in some mixed groups, there’s plenty of evidence that racism – even the crudest forms, and alongside some new forms – still abounds in the contemporary U.S. in plenty of above ground.
Jessie Daniels: My father identified as Native American. In his view, Native Americans had it “much worse” than black Americans and still do. I argue that rather than trying to rank order oppression and which group “had it worse,” it’s important that we see these as connected.
Jessie Daniels: This bold move against racism and the death penalty by a retired Supreme Court Justice is good news for those concerned with the injustice of capital punishment.
Steve Hochstadt: No historian would transform the evidence into the nasty claims about Soros, and the Baumbach family who saved him, that Beck broadcast to his 2.6 million FOX News viewers.
Steve Hochstadt: Our nation also has far to go. Claiming that we are color blind, that whites no longer have privileges in America, that we need no longer worry about preventing discrimination is nonsense. One need only have observed the reception of our first black President to know how important skin color still is in America.
Andrea Nill: Ultimately, the only thing more messed up than changing the Constitution to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship is deporting their parents, snagging the U.S. citizen kids, and giving them to an American couple.
Ron Wolff: Voters demonstrated sophistication and thoughtfulness, first, because they failed to allow the onslaught of money to purchase their brains.
Diane Lefer: The restorative justice model is able to keep the compassionate focus on those who have suffered most from violent crime–the victims, while still addressing the factors that drive crime and recidivism and without denying the humanity of the imprisoned.
Randy Shaw: America is not threatened by isolated “selfish jerks,” but by an organized cadre of wealthy individuals and powerful corporations whose agendas are far more destructive to other people and the planet than a selfish driver.
Andrea Nill: Described as a lawmaker who is “less interested in getting in the spotlight and more interested in driving immigrants out of the country,” Smith will undoubtedly use his leadership position to push through his anti-immigrant agenda.
Paul Hogarth: California voters are already filling out their absentee ballots. While they vote to pass Prop 19 and “no” on Prop 23, it’s important for them to also vote “yes” on Prop 24 and 25 – but most importantly, “no” on Prop 26. If we don’t get the word out, it could pass.
Mark V. Sykes: Robert M. Nelson and 27 fellow Caltech scientists, engineers and administrators working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are risking their jobs and their personal financial well-being to fight for their right of privacy against unwarranted government intrusion. They are fighting for all of us, and they deserve our respect and support.
Rev. Irene Monroe: Anti-gay bullying is not to be endured or tolerated. And it must be stopped by us all — and at all levels, from our legislators to our educators.
Thomas A. Foster: The conversations about homophobia in the black church or about Bishop Long’s hypocrisy confuse the issue at hand. This is not the story of a closeted gay man who simply needed sexual release. Sexual abuse – in all its forms – is about power, not sex.
Sikivu Hutchinson: Bullying is vicious, unconscionable and life-threatening. Yet reactive public condemnations of bullying often foreclose real analysis of the systemic mechanisms that institutionalize violence and terror against gay, lesbian and gender non-conforming children.
Lydia Howell: The US government — bought and paid for by weapons-makers and mercenaries (‘contractors’) —does not think that We The People have the right to even question, much less challenge and resist permanent war, which is bankrupting our country and civilian deaths ignites violent reaction.
Andrea Nill: no one ever mentioned having kids in the U.S…what our work shows is that migrants come in response to labor demand in the U.S. and are motivated by economic problems at home.
Steve Hochstadt: I will keep talking about race because my students cannot understand American history without knowing the role played by racism.
Robert Fuller: The ill-effects of rigid work schedules, inequitable pay, and other demeaning practices are now the subject of a growing body of research documenting the damage done not only to individual employees but to the companies for which they work.
Andrea Nill: The FBI crime statistics show that as undocumented immigration has increased, crime in Arizona and other border states has gone down. Data from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) additionally shows that the violent crime rate in Arizona has been declining since 2006 and in 2008 and is at the lowest level since 1973.
Sikivu Hutchinson: Black Skeptics Los Angeles spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on providing resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless and LGBTQ youth who will be the first in their families to go to college.
Carl Matthes: Despite the much-heralded 2008 success of Prop 8 in California to stop same-sex marriage, that vote, and it’s subsequent ramifications, provided not only 18,000 lesbian and gay couples with legal marriages, but the accelerant for the Prop 8 case currently being decided by SCOTUS.
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
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More Torture, Please
Steve Hendricks: I derive immense comfort, for example, from the similarity between the pro-torture 70 percent and the 68 percent of Americans who believe “angels and demons are active in the world.” Surely many of my pro-torture countrymen just need a little more education about torture. Well, a lot more.