The 00’s: a bad American decade
A decade’s end lends itself to reflection. As a historian, I am thinking about how the 2000s compare to previous decades. While time and perspective may alter my thinking, I believe the 2000s is...
Category: Politics
Ukrainian feminism: from Yulia Tymoshenko to making babies in a crisis
As a holiday gift to myself and readers, I sat down recently to speak to my friend, translator, and Ukrainian feminist, Maria Dmytrieva, who's famous as Mary Xmas in LiveJournal circles. What follows...
Rethinking Work: how about we take activism seriously?
The Internet was aflutter this week with drama over Matt Taibbi's latest Rolling Stone story, wherein he blasts the Obama administration as being crammed full of multimillionaires from Wall Street...
Rethinking Work: the U.S. military as labor
A war president accepted the Nobel Peace Prize this week and with that acceptance laid out a defense of war as foreign policy. It is not my point in this piece to argue Barack Obama's position on...
Harry Reid knows all about slavery
Slavery is one of the worst crimes that we can commit against one another. No country is free of its stain. In the United States, its legacy still haunts African Americans and stands as a wedge...
Broken promises: Ireland’s 2010 Budget exploits the vulnerable
“The worst is over,” said Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan on 9 December on the presentation of the 2010 Budget. It is actually truly astounding that the Irish Government believes that the worst...
Reflecting on Sheema Kermani: nostalgia and struggle in Pakistani feminism
It's an amazing thing, watching a woman's rights activist from my parents' generation in action. The passion that those women had at the height of the women's movement in the 80s when they were...
Reconcile U.S. football culture with progressive politics? Yeah, right
I’m writing from Eugene, Oregon, where I have come for my yearly reunion with college friends. Each year we meet to watch a University of Oregon football game, reliving the many games we watched in...
Climate change: the road to hell is paved with… well, you know
The 350 protests of October 24 have passed, and in the weeks that follow, we must remember why they occurred in the first place. This action sought to bring attention to the fact that carbon dioxide...
The time to hesitate is through: female sexuality in the age of Stupak
“Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/In a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” -T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Lines from this poem, this...