Journalism

Q. You grew up in the fifties in Chicago in a world you call “Negroland.” What was “Negroland”?
Margo Jefferson: Negroland is my name for a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty. Children in Negroland were warned that few Negroes enjoyed privilege or plenty and that most whites would be glad to see them returned to indigence, deference, and subservience.
–“10 Questions for Margo Jefferson,” continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

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BILL McKIBBEN says the progress on solar power has given him what he calls “a fairly rare emotion: hope.” Bill is one of our heroes –a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement. He also spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone pipeline, going to jail in the process, and launched the fossil fuel divestment movement. He wrote about solar power for the New Yorker, HERE.

Once again, we’re not done with the sixties: TODD GITLIN says Bernie Sanders’s start in the sixties explains how he got where he is today. Todd teaches journalism and sociology at Columbia; he wrote the classic history The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. He wrote about Bernie’s roots in the sixties for The New York Times, HERE.

Also: Gay marriage won by arguing for equality. Should abortion rights be making an equality argument? KATHA POLLITT, columnist for The Nation, talks about opposition to women’s equality as a key issue of our time. She wrote about the equality argument for abortion HERE.

Instead of prosecuting Edward Snowden under the Espionage Act, Congress and the president should be saying Thank you.  Without him, Congress would never have ended the NSA’s bulk phone data collection.  I
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

My wife gave me Time Warner Cable as a retirement present so I could spend my golden years watching the Boys in Blue on TV. This makes me a lucky guy because 70% of Southern California doesn’t get to watch the Dodgers on TV, at least until Charter Communications fulfills its promises. But nothing about it has been easy.
. . . continued at the L A Times op-ed page HERE

Do the police have a privacy right to withhold video shot by in-car cameras or body cams? Do public officials, acting in their public capacity, have a right to prevent the public from reviewing video evidence of their conduct? You’d think the answer was obviously “no.” When the police kill somebody, it’s not “private.”  . . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Los Angeles artist Chris Burden, who died on April 10 at age 69, is best known here for his 202 antique street lamps in front of LACMA—they’ve become an icon of the city—but one of his most fascinating and misunderstood works is The Other Vietnam Memorial– 3 million Vietnamese names etched into a dozen gigantic copper plates that stand 13 feet high.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

It’s a simple distinction, but somehow it’s been overlooked by a lot of those who support the decision by PEN to give its “Freedom of Expression” award to Charlie Hebdo. Those who signed the protest against the award (I was one of them) agree that Charlie Hebdo had a right to publish cartoons about Islam, no matter how disgusting, and not be killed for doing it. The question is whether Charlie Hebdo should be given an award for publishing them.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

The ACLU in California today released a free smart-phone app that allows people to send cellphone videos of police encounters to the ACLU, automatically—and the ACLU will preserve the video footage, even if the cops seize the phone and delete the video or destroy the phone. The app, “Mobile Justice CA,” works for both iPhones and Android users. It’s available at Apple’s App Store and at Google Play.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Today, April 17, is the 50th anniversary of the first march on Washington to end the Vietnam War, organized by SDS.  Now, there’s a new battle underway, as  peace activists challenge the Pentagon’s whitewashed history.
New at The Nation: “Vietnam in the Battlefield of Memory,” http://www.thenation.com/article/204465/vietnam-battlefield-memory

The mother of all problems in higher education today is high tuition at public colleges and universities, which forces students into decades of debt and makes for-profit schools seem like a plausible alternative.  Making four years of college free is not only fair; it’s also politically possible.
. . . continued at The Nation, HERE