Beacon Broadside

recent posts

about

Category: American Society

  • #CripTheVote: Voters with Disabilities Could Tip This Election

    By Lennard Davis It is a very tight Republican primary and the front-runners are winning in some states and losing in others. In the general election, it will be even tighter with the fate of the nation hanging in the balance. The election might come down to a single demographic casting the deciding vote.

  • The True Heart of Public Evangelicalism

    By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove In a surprise turn of events, the exit polls at the Iowa caucuses showed a victory of 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz over Donald Trump. Pundits credit the turnout to Cruz’s advantages over Trump and the other Republican candidates—superior fund-raising and a strong campaign operation—as…

  • All the News That’s Fit to Print: How the Media Hide Undocumented Workers

    By Aviva Chomsky In our post-modern (or post-post-modern?) age, we are supposedly transcending the material certainties of the past. The virtual world of the Internet is replacing the “real,” material world, as theory asks us to question the very notion of reality. Yet that virtual world turns out to rely heavily on some distinctly old…

  • Rediscovering Our Black Forerunners: A Black History Month Reading List

    Black History Month is as much about rediscovery as it is about celebration and commemoration. At Beacon Press, the books we publish that cover black history reintroduce us to long-forgotten or hidden historical figures, unearth information previously unknown about prominent black leaders, bring us closer to the struggles and triumphs of African ancestors. In the…

  • Reverend William J. Barber Learns the Power of Standing Together

    By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove I learned a great deal in Martinsville about moral leadership—more than I realized at the time. But I did not know what was next for me when our family moved back to North Carolina in 1991. Preaching had helped me find a voice of moral dissent,…

  • Barbie for President!: How the New Barbie, Like Most Politicians, Morphs to Our Desires

    By Laurie Essig The problem with presidential elections is that they stop us from seeing what’s really going on in our culture. Obsessed with the latest wins and losses, the latest political punditry, we stop keeping our eye on the ball and get distracted by the spectacle of corporate-funded rituals of “democracy.” So while most…

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks on the Dangers They Faced in the Civil Rights Movement

    By Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jeanne Theoharis | This is the second entry of our Montgomery Bus Boycott Turns 60 Series. About two months into the Montgomery Bus Boycott, times start to become dangerous for Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family. Death threats over the phone are coming in daily to King’s home,…

  • History Repeats Itself in Flint

    By Lydia Denworth In the tragedy of Flint, Michigan’s lead poisoning crisis, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is one of the heroes. Last September, Hanna-Attisha, director of pediatric residency at Flint’s Hurley Children’s Hospital, stood up at a press conference and presented research suggesting that the city’s water supply was poisoning its children. The number of kids…

  • We’re Employees, Not Contractors: Workers Organize to Fight the Gig Economy of Uber

    By Jonathan Rosenblum | What are US workers to do about the problems presented by the gig economy? The past year saw a number of prominent liberals offer policy ideas to mitigate the worst elements of precarious employment. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposed that companies pay into a common benefit fund for the…

  • Coming of Age Gloriously Funky Through Vinyl and R&B

    A Q&A with Rashod Ollison | Happy Publication Day to pop music critic and culture journalist Rashod Ollison and his memoir Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl! In Soul Serenade, Ollison tells his story of growing up gay in central Arkansas, searching for himself and his distant father, and how the…