The Nation
Remembering Bob Edgar [VIDEO]
Bob Edgar died suddenly from a heart attack last week at age 69. In Congress from 1975–87, as general secretary of the National Council of Churches and as the CEO of Common Cause, Edgar worked to hold those in power accountable to the public.
Whether it’.s for requesting that the Justice Department investigate Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas for a conflict of interest in the Citizens United ruling, or for bringing aid to the Palestinian town of Jenin after the 2002 Israeli bombardment, Edgar is remembered for his lifelong commitment to social justice and his opposition to the insidious influence of money in politics. As New Yorkers, among others, push forward on bills to change campaign financing across the country, it’s worth remembering his words: “We the people have to stand up, take ownership of our government, reduce the impact of money, reduce the impact of corporate interests. People have to recognize that they are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.”
I had the luck to talk with Edgar for the Free Speech for People project in the spring of 2011. What follows is a part of that conversation. Watch a longer interview with Edgar about democracy, myths and realities, here.
That Robert Redford Film on Radical Fugitives Deserves Your Attention
For the past month, in a change of direction, I’ve written mainly weekly, media-related “columns” here, as opposed to the daily, shorter, “blog” posts that I produced for the three years previous. Going forward, starting this week, I’ll be mixing it up, with both full-length pieces and shorter takes. The following falls in the latter category.
It’s a flawed film, but I’m surprised that not a single writer here has explored The Company You Keep, directed by (and starring) Robert Redford. It portrays several Weather Underground members who became fugitives after a bank guard was killed in one of their robbery attempts. I saw it a couple of days ago and was glad I did.
Of course, I am a veteran of political activism in the late-’60s and early-’70s, but beyond that, the story has a local angle for me. I happen to presently live about a mile from where the incident that inspired the movie (via a novel) took place: the infamous “Brinks Holdup” near Nyack, New York. that resulted in the death of a Brinks guard and two local police officers. I drive by the memorial to them almost every day. The local post office is named after the two slain cops.
RISD Students Stage First Fossil Fuel Divestment Sit-In
Eleven students from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) are holding a sit-in today in college President John Maeda’s office. The activists are demanding that President Maeda and Board of Trustees Chair Michael Spalter endorse divestment from the coal, gas, and oil industries and commit to presenting the case for divestment to the Board of Trustees at the board’s May 17 meeting.
This sit-in is the first of its kind in the nationwide divestment movement, through which students at more than 300 colleges and universities are demanding that their schools stand against climate change and divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies.
“I want to have kids. I want to show them this planet,” said Phoebe Wahl, a RISD senior. “As artists and designers, we are innovators with the ability to shape our own future. The way that our generation deals with this issue will define the future of civilization.”
Immigrant Rights Groups, Labor, Occupy Plan May Day Protests
Protest groups across the country are gearing up for May Day protests on Wednesday. In New York, Occupy Wall Street has posted a schedule for the day, kicking off with young workers marching from Bryant Park in solidarity with the Transport Workers Union. Occupy says it plans to visit the offices of union busters and companies with whom the TWU members have contract disputes.
At around noon, protesters will then go on an “immigrant worker justice tour,” in order to highlight the daily struggles facing immigrants and workers in New York City. Activists will visit several workplaces in midtown to “demand an end to exploitation of immigrant workers” with the march ending at Senator Schumer’s office for a speak-out on what real immigration reform looks like.
Occupy has also scheduled an event to “Save The People’s Post Office” where protesters will meet at the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office at 14th Street and First Avenue. I previously have written about the fake USPS budget crisis and how our pro-privatization Congress refuses to allow the Post Office to save itself.
Stay Out of Syria! Part II
Senator Lindsey Graham is one of several Republican lawmakers calling for US intervention. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon.)
Part I of “Stay Out of Syria” can be found here.
A Fighter by His Trade: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Sports and the American Dream
The Boston Marathon bombers.
“The most difficult part of getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom.”
Chilean Students Run For Congress
Giorgio Jackson. Photo by Brittany Peterson.
Giorgio Jackson, 26, was vice president of a chapter of the Chile Student Federation in 2011 when the movement saw regular marches of over 100,000 people take over the streets. Universities and high schools were occupied for months. The demands were clear: students wanted free, quality, public education and an end to profiteering. Jackson participated in regular dialogues with government ministers and congresspeople, and was disappointed with the indifference he found despite his movement’s massive 80 percent public support. “I felt frustrated that no one understood our proposal, or would defend it, or that there wasn’t a single voice to remain firm in defending our alternative,” said Jackson. “We deserve to have a space there.”
Interns' Favorite Articles of the Week (4/28/13)
This week: Gender segmentation still prevails in the workplace, the greenery of West Virginia hides the scars of strip mining and Canada's border service holds off on capturing terror suspects until new terrorism legislation is up for debate. Speaking of terrorists, Americans are as likely to be killed by them as by their own furniture.
— Alleen Brown focuses on education.
Sequestration 101: If a Budget Cut Doesn't Impact the Wealthy, Congress Won't Fix It
Courtesy: The Progressive Caucus
As thousands of air travelers suffered through flight delays last week, the average American got a lesson in civics: when you cut government spending, it has real life consequences. Americans are fond of saying that they want to slash government spending in the abstract, but loath to point to specific programs that they actually want to cut. With sequestration, this ambivalence has come home to roost. Because the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration affect all programs evenly, the ones that touch middle-class Americans, not just the poor, have suffered equally.
This Week in 'Nation' History: George W. Bush Opens His Presidential Library & Collective Amnesia Reigns
The opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, last week has led to a re-examination of the forty-third president’s legacy. An article in The Washington Post noted Bush’s approval rating has enjoyed a steady increase in the four years since he left office, attributing that spike to “the passage of time and Bush’s relative invisibility.” While that public invisibility has indeed been enjoyable, the library dedication should be an occasion to remember what it actually felt like in America during the Bush years. To take a tour through The Nation’s early judgments of Bush—before the wars, the cronyism, and the rejection of the rule of law brought such criticisms mainstream—is to be truly spoiled because there is so much to choose from, and there are many articles that deserve a second reading.
An early article on Bush’s first presidential campaign, “Running on Empty: The Truth About George W. Bush’s ‘Compassionate Conservatism,’ ” from April 1999, tried and failed to find a single way Bush had been compassionate to any constituency in Texas apart from his oil and gas industry cronies, arms manufacturers, polluters and other corporate malefactors. It also previewed Bush’s penchant for “speaking in tongues intended to be understood by the Christian right” and the regular-guy routine that became an important and effective component of his electoral strategy. “You think that if you could only forget the policies, the appointment and the vetoes, you could really love this guy,” Texas Observer editor Louis Dubose wrote. “He’s that good.”
An article published just before the 2000 election by David Corn, recent Polk Award winner and former Washington bureau chief for The Nation, considered the governor’s performance during the campaign—in which “Bush’s intelligence became a campaign issue”—and weighed the candidates’ respective closing arguments. “The dominant theme is, trust people, not the government,” Karl Rove told Corn. His boss’s own argument was more, well, succinct. “The greatness of America exists because our country is great,” Bush declared. At a certain point, one does feel a little nostalgic.
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