As of this coming year, high school students in Philadelphia, PA will be required to take a course in African American history in order to graduate. In a recent column, I lent my support to the new prerequisite, and responded to those who have attacked the plan, most of whom have criticized such a course […]
Published as a ZNet Commentary, 9/9/05 When I was a kid, I remember my maternal grandmother defending Richard Nixon for the crimes of Watergate, because, as she put it: “He didn’t do anything any worse than what every other President did.” Knowing, even at six, that this was hardly a morally compelling justification for one’s […]
Published on Counterpunch.org, 9/2/05, and widely syndicated, nationally This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt: You don’t know me. But I know you. I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we […]
The city I called home for ten years is dying: a slow, agonizing, all-too-terribly public death, before the eyes of the nation and the world. It is dying, as are far too many of its people, because our national leaders only have the stomach, or the talent (or both) for killing, as in Iraq or […]
