Politics & Society

The Prerequisite for Real Change: Amending the Constitution and Getting Money Out of Politics

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Prelude 

It has been clear for decades that there is an ongoing erosion of the ability and power of our citizenry to govern itself.  I am an old and proud sixties warrior and have a vista that begins with McCarthyism in the 1950s and remember well its grey and oppressive political and cultural oppression. For a time there was relief and new life and an increase in the quality of the welfare state. However, since the 70s, a reactionary and selfish oligarchy composed of corporate and individual wealth and their paid bureaucratic servants has tightened its grip on our country’s governance. The means to this has been increasingly vast sums of money funneled into the electoral process and their accelerating and pervasive lobbyists’ influence on elected officials. The Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court opened the floodgates wide, but the truth is that the electoral and governance processes long have been reducing themselves to the rule of money, influence, and privilege by the few over the many.

Art

Correcting the Canon: The African American Feminist Art of Meta Fuller

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In 2012, the gap between the rhetoric of inclusion and the reality of exclusion remains huge. Renée Ater’s new book, Remaking Race and History: The Sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller, goes a long way in correcting the glaring omission of one of the key African-American woman artists of the twentieth century. Learn how Meta Fuller went from making her art in the evenings after finishing her domestic chores to creating one of the most remarkable Pan-African artworks of that era.

Editorials & Actions

Obama: a Civil Libertarian’s Nightmare

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Editor’s Note: Criticism of Obama does not imply support for his political opponents. However one decides to vote in November, one must do so with as full a picture as possible of what policies one is endorsing. How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian’s Nightmare
By Steven Rosenfeld

Obama has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration’s worst policies. April 18, 2012  |

When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communities’ great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government.

Activism

Rose Pastor: A Progressive-Era Hero of the 99 Percent

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The time is ripe to inform our current struggles with a look back at the labor unionists and relatively wealthy social reformers of the Progressive Era who helped save America from those who sought to corrupt the democratic system to their own ends. I’d like to share the story of an especially inspirational figure—Rose Pastor.

Activism

The Makings of a Center-Left Alliance For Israeli Settlement Boycotts?

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During a plenary session at last week’s third annual J Street conference, Raleb Majadele, a Palestinian Israeli member of the Knesset from the Labor party, may have broken an Israeli law. Responding to a question about whether he supports boycotts against Israeli settlements, Majadele said first that he was “against all boycotts in principle.” This prompted a round of applause from a minority of the more than 2,000 people in the audience. But a few sentences later, Majadele switched course and described settlement-only boycott in a positive light, describing it as “a pin-pointed boycott against the obstacle for peace.” A much larger portion of the audience then erupted in applause. (It remains to be seen whether Majadele will be prosecuted for this statement, as a new Israeli law makes it illegal for Israeli citizens to promote boycott against Israel or Israeli settlements.)

The notion of boycotting Israeli settlements was raised frequently throughout the plenary sessions and workshops of the three-day conference—and often to hearty applause. Peter Beinart, author of a recent New York Times op-ed that coined the phrase “Zionist boycott” (i.e., a pro-Israel boycott aimed at saving “democratic Israel” from its “undemocratic,” peace-destroying settlements) was a featured speaker and launched his book, The Crisis of Zionism, at the conference.

27.2 Spring

A Conversation with Jeremy Rifkin on His New Book The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

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The sun shines everywhere on the world, every day. The wind blows around the planet every day. Everywhere we check there is a geothermal core of energy, heat energy underneath the ground. And in the rural areas, we have agricultural foraging waste that can be converted to energy. On the coastal areas, the ocean tides and waves come in every day for energy. Wherever we have garbage, it can be bioconverted back to energy. So these are energies that are found literally in every square inch of the world in some frequency or proportion, enough to provide us till kingdom come.