December 21-28, 2015 Issue

Cover art by: Carolyn Drake / Magnum Photos

Feature

2.7 Million Kids Have Parents in Prison. They’re Losing Their Right to Visit.

States have gutted family visitation programs in reaction to prison overcrowding, and racist ideas about black sexuality.
Sylvia A. Harvey
Ralph Nader on 2016, Wall Street, and Our Broken Political System

The consumer advocate, civil libertarian, and former presidential candidate talks to The Nation.
John Nichols
How Ralph Nader Changed America

On the 50th anniversary of Unsafe at Any Speed, a look at how his work launched the consumer-rights, corporate-accountability, and other citizen movements.
Mark Green

Editorial

Asking for a Friend: I’m in Love With a Republican—What Do I Do?

Liza answers a reader in love, and another who wants to blow up the system that screwed him over.
Liza Featherstone
Coalition or Cold War with Russia?

American policy-makers and presidential candidates must now make a fateful decision—join Moscow in an alliance against ISIS, or persist in treating the Kremlin as an enemy.
Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel
We’ve Used Racial and Ethnic Profiling for Centuries, and It Hasn’t Worked Yet

Too many politicians choose to play to the lowest common denominator, pushing measures that make them sound tough but respond to no identifiable problem.
David Cole
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Column

Happy Birthday, ‘National Review’! Too Bad You Haven’t Grown Any Wiser With Age.

The GOP’s reliable source of awful ideas celebrates 60 years of being wrong.
Eric Alterman
Bombing Hasn’t Worked. Bombing Won’t Work. And Yet, We Will Bomb

The UK is grasping again for an old, failed tactic, thanks to the nationalist impulse to act fast after Paris.
Gary Younge
Dropout Remorse

Calvin Trillin

Books & the Arts

What Happens to the Right of Public Assembly in the Absence of Public Space?

The mentality of traffic engineering cripples mass transit, and free speech, in New York City.
Michael Sorkin
An Opera of Permanent Catastrophe, and of Hope

A new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu reveals the explosive powers still manifest in modern art.
Peter E. Gordon
Voting Rights and the Second Redemption

Ari Berman’s Give Us the Ballot argues that democratic rights can never be taken for granted.
Eric Foner
To Tell of Bodies Changed

Jana Prikryl
Rocky Without Reaganism

Creed offers a surprisingly daring depiction of the Rocky universe as seen from the other side of the tracks.
Stuart Klawans
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