Derrick Bell: Fighting Losing Battles
| by Stephen Steinberg | Winter 2012 |
When Derrick Bell published Gospel Choirs in 1996, he sent me a copy with this inscription: "Our job is to turn out the truth. God’s help is needed to get the truth accepted." This epigrammatic note — principled resolve, on the one hand, and pessimism born of despair, on the other — encapsulated the two sides of Bell’s world view.
From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the World: The Emergence of a Mass Movement
| by Dan La Botz | Winter 2012 |
The Occupy movement has changed the American political landscape. We are at the opening of a new mass movement and a radicalization that presage an era of coming social upheaval and class conflict that require the left to both analyze these developments and to develop a strategy to intervene. The left today, small, divided, and weak, must develop an approach that will make it possible for it to grow and unite so that it can influence events.
Obama, Austerity, and Change We Really Can Believe In
| by Jack Gerson | Winter 2012 |
Barack Obama took office three years ago on a euphoric wave of aspirations.
Music of Change: Politics and Meaning in the Age of Obama
| by John Halle | Winter 2012 |
In a classic essay George Orwell describes himself as "amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations." Rather it leads to "orgies of hatred" as "young men . . . kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators."
Wrestling on Shaky Ground: Israel, Palestine, and the Decline of a Superpower
| by Adam Keller | Winter 2012 |
Since the beginning of 2011, Israeli politicians, generals, and diplomats displayed a growing nervousness in anticipation of "September," i.e., the proclaimed Palestinian intention to seek a full United Nations Membership for the State of Palestine.
The Greek and the European Crisis in Context
| by C.J. Polychroniou | Winter 2012 |
At the beginning of the new millennium, Greece, a weak, peripheral nation in the European economy, was still licking its wounds from the greatest politico-financial scandal in its post-war history — the collapse of the Athens stock exchange. The wild stock market speculation had been fuelled by often-repeated statements from various government officials (with Finance Minister Yiannos Papantoniou leading the chorus) that the upward trend was an accurate reflection of the robust state of the real economy.
In Sweden, When the Voters Turn Right, the Right Turns Left
| by Steven Saxonberg | Winter 2012 |
With the electoral losses of left-leaning parties in the past year in Germany, the UK and even in the model social democratic country, Sweden, recent events do not seem encouraging for those engaged in progressive politics. Given the meltdown of the financial markets and the rising consensus against free-market policies, even within the business community and business magazines, such as the Economist, one might have expected the Left to do much better and even see some kind of renaissance.
Teacher Unionism Reborn
| by Lois Weiner | Winter 2012 |
In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher unionism’s continued existence is imperiled — if what we define as "existence" is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers’ rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it.
The Rise and Fall of ACORN
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2012 |
Most people never heard of ACORN (Association of Community Organization for Reform Now) until the conservatives attacked it. The media does not follow long and complicated organizing campaigns. It prefers more time limited dramatic news such as lawsuits or demonstrations. But even when ACORN organized large demonstrations, the media was not likely to credit ACORN.
The Dialectical Biologist
| by Phil Gaspar | Winter 2012 |
It has been almost 10 years since the death of the Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould at the relatively early age of 60. Gould was not only a major figure in the life sciences, he was also one of the great popularizers of science. He wrote a monthly column for Natural History magazine from 1974 to 2001, generating exactly 300 essays that explained complex scientific ideas without oversimplifying them.
