The closing remarks of Bennie Thompson were so pure in their simplicity and directness, I had to hold my breath.
Imagine a common reality of collectively prioritizing our most universal gift…
Does flinching at new information that veers from our sense of truth bring too much discomfort?
Southern disdain for centralized authority is an extension of the post-Civil War rebellion against federal efforts to impart a level of equality upon the scarred backs of freed slaves.
Forgiveness was not a substitute for justice; it had energized us in the
fight for justice.
What happens when a large segment of a population finds itself displaced, bullied off the bench?
Looking Back on My Years in — And out of — Publishing
I used to wander around on lower Broadway in Manhattan when I was still a teenager. I had a dead-end job at a valve company taking orders from plumbers wanting a gate valve or oversized coupling for an apartment building going up.
It’s obvious to all (or damn well should be) that the background checks designed to prevent criminals and/or deeply disturbed individuals from purchasing weapons are pathetically deficient.
I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable.
Honestly, if you had described this America to me more than half a century ago, I would have laughed in your face.
We had been waiting for two long, agonizing months for rain to come, for anything to cast a veil over a furious sun that dried out fields, withered up grape vines, even discouraged the cicadas from droning in the pines. Now the rain started falling, thick, icy gobbets of it, drenching us the moment it struck.
Thus spoke the high-modernist architect Mies van der Rohe in the middle of the twentieth century. Nothing since then has refuted his remark. If anything, a good deal more fuel … Continue reading →
Racialized capitalism trains us to expect that some people fall through the cracks into unjust suffering; our cultural individualism tells us this is acceptable, as long as we aren’t the ones at the bottom.