Category: Politics and Current Events
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by Victor Tan Chen If there’s a lesson from the recent debacle over an economic stimulus package, it’s this: Republicans need to stop engaging in class warfare. Class warfare, as the Republicans have pointed out time and time again, is when public policy is unduly influenced by the interests of one group at the expense…
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by Philip C. Winslow Open Letter to: President Mahmoud Abbas, RamallahPrime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza CityOccupied Palestinian Territories Dear President Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyeh: I write to you in frustration and some alarm as the latest violence unfolds in the Gaza Strip and in Israel. I write as a journalist and humanitarian aid worker…
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by Allison Trzop Several weeks ago, a couple of folks from Beacon — including Director Helene Atwan — had the pleasure and the privilege of attending several readings and tapings for a miniseries being shot over at Emerson College’s Cutler Majestic Theatre here in Boston. Hosted by Executive Producer Howard Zinn — not only a…
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by Christopher Alan Bracey During a recent promotional event for my book, Saviors or Sellouts: The Promise and Peril of Black Conservatism, From Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza Rice, a middle-aged African American woman asked me a question that I’ve been hearing a lot these days. Although she agreed with much of what conservatives past…
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by William Ayers In his State of the Union address on January 28, President Bush, our self-styled “education president,” urged Congress to re-authorize the No Child Left Behind Act, calling it a “good law” and claiming that because of this legislation student learning is improving and “minority students are closing the achievement gap.” In reality,…
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by Suzanne Strempek Shea The woman in the post office doesn’t like Hillary, but tells me she’s not about to vote for Barack. "He’s Muslim," she leans in to whisper. I lean in closer and reply "He’s not." Barack Obama is a Christian. But he’s also one from a varied cultural and religious family, the…
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by Kelly Bulkeley Last night the students in my "Psychology of Dreaming" course at John F. Kennedy University turned in their first assignment of the quarter: a personal sleep history from childhood to the present. I like to begin my dream classes with a focus on sleep because it’s a great way to jar people…
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by Patricia A. Gozemba Draft a constitutional amendment that is divisive and sweeping in its possibilities for endangering committed and established relationships of all Floridians, straight and gay, and call it the "Florida Marriage Protection Amendment." Make sure that it’s ambiguous enough to ultimately be able to do away with domestic partnerships that are recognized…
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by Peter Laarman There was never any question that religion would play a huge role in the electoral pageant now fully unfolding as those frozen Iowans at last begin to caucus. After everyone saw how the well-organized voting faithful on the Right gave Bush his margin of “victory” 2004, the Democrats vowed (and here I…
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by Rev. C. Welton Gaddy As a Baptist minister and as a patriotic American, I’m deeply disturbed—although no longer surprised—by the inappropriate use of religion as a political tactic in presidential campaigns. I’m particularly disheartened by former Gov. Mike Huckabee comparing his sudden rise in the polls and his new frontrunner status in Iowa to…
