Which way will Mississippi go?
As a young child growing up in Chicago I enjoyed the stories from my friends about their summer vacations in Mississippi. I wondered why my parents refused to let me visit there. Once I saw a story in the Chicago Defender with frightening photographs of a lynching in Mississippi. My desire to visit vanished. My first visit to Mississippi and the “New South” was in 1996.
Lies, obfuscation and plagiarism
Lies, obfuscation, denial, hyperbole and now outright plagiarism characterize the U.S. right-wing-led push to war against the people of Iraq.
We Charge Genocide: The cry rings true 52 years later
Just over half a century ago, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson, two giants of the struggle for African-American equality, delivered to the United Nations a petition titled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.”
The January unemployment numbers
It’s been said that two swallows don’t make a spring. But that didn’t stop The New York Times writer who hailed the 0.3 percent decline in the official unemployment rate last month as the “first signs” that the labor market is “healing.”
Feminist response to State of the Union address
George Bush’s State of the Union speech was the public kickoff of his taxpayer-funded public relations campaign to convince an increasingly skeptical public that all is well – or will be if we just put our faith in him and believe.
The same thing is happening
Ryo Kumasaka, one of the 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were rounded up and forced into U.S. concentration camps during World War II, worries that history may be repeating itself.
(Some) heroes recognized at last
Let’s hear it for heroes. Not the fantasy “super-heroes” depicted in action movies, but real-life workaday Americans who risk their careers and reputations to take a principled stand for what’s right.
Bush can be defeated
The alleged key elements of President Bush’s 2004 re-election strategy have been recently revealed. The president apparently intends to emphasize the war against terrorism and homeland security. For many, this was no surprise since it has been clear since Sept. 11, 2001, that the war against terrorism is as much about moving a domestic right-wing political agenda as it is about fighting terrorists.
Housing crisis intensifies in Windy City
CHICAGO – Mayor Richard M. Daley announced a new 10-year Plan to End Homelessness. The plan “focuses on moving the homeless into permanent housing as rapidly as possible, and providing additional social services to help resolve the problems that caused them to lose their homes” according to a Jan. 21 press release.
NOW blasts Bush on Title IX
Washington – “In the best Orwellian tradition, the Bush administration is trying to convince us that left is right, up is down, war is peace and that its so-called Commission on Opportunity in Athletics actually cares about women’s equal participation in sports,” said National Organization for Women (NOW) Membership Vice President Terry O’Neill.
