Did Working Women Kill the PTA?
M y mom was known in the family as “POC”–short for “Pillar of Community.” Her estimable talents were in constant demand for every community effort, from leading the townwide campaign to register every eligible voter to serving on the school board. Like Mom, I do my share; but unlike Mom, I do only my share,…
The Web of Celebrity
In August, Cindy Margolis kicked off The Cindy Margolis Show, a variety show taped in Miami’s South Beach for Eyemark Entertainment, CBS’s syndication wing. Margolis is a thirty-something former Cal State Northridge business student- turned-model who distinguished herself from other former business students-turned-models in the mid-1990s not so much through her appearances on greeting cards…
Escape from America’s Prison Policy
C rime is a corrosive force in American society, creating and exacerbating social mistrust, political division, and racial animus. Doing something serious about it ought to count as a major objective, especially for those concerned with the plight of the poor and socially marginalized. The recent drop in crime rates, as welcome as it is,…
Capitalism, Work, and Character
Does work under today’s capitalism corrode character? The very question seems odd because the character issue has largely been ceded to conservatives–and conservatives have studiously ignored the damaging effects of capitalism. But allowing them this monopoly diminishes the debate on character and misses an opportunity to deepen the critique of the transformation of work and…
Loving Lieberman
B y custom, vice presidential candidates get the nod because they appeal to some highly sought-after constituency. Perhaps it’s a state rich in electoral votes. A prized ethnic group. Or maybe just the right or left wing of the party. Look diligently enough, though, and you’ll almost certainly strike upon some group the nominee was…
Left In
A ll right, y’all,” yelled a voluble young coordinator from the podium, “we gonna be disciplined and organized, so we can send our message!” Alas, it would not be that easy for the hundred or so protestors gathered at L.A.’s Pershing Square that day. The free-Mumia crowd, along with the anti-prison-industrial-complex protestors, spent most of…
Democratic Voters and Democratic Investors
D espite the newly fashionable populist rhetoric of this campaign season–Al Gore hectoring oil companies, HMOs, clothing manufacturers that run sweatshops abroad, and cigarette and gun manufacturers; Joe Lieberman berating media corporations for their moral offensiveness; and yes, even George W. calling on corporations to be “responsible to leave the air and waters clean”–the Democrats’…
Comment: Labor Man
N ew Democrats would not be wrong to view this year’s Democratic national convention as their own victory rally. Though the party platform offered brave words to comfort liberals, the details were safely moderate. Running mate Joe Lieberman, president of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), is about as centrist a figure as the Democratic Party…
Union Cities
A little over a year ago, 100 workers tried to form a union at Transit Express, a low-wage Milwaukee company that the county government pays to transport disabled people. Their employer put up surveillance cameras, hired security guards, distributed anti-union literature, and gave workers a pay hike–which he warned they could lose if they voted…
Labor Organizing as a Civil Right
H ere is a Labor Day idea. Why not make the right to join a union a basic civil right? In theory the Wagner Act gives workers the right to freely vote in a union, but in practice the price to employers for violating the law is small. Employers who retaliate by firing workers are…
Globalizing Democracy
Can globalism be governed? Or, as a first step, can we start by building a global civil society? Until recently, one could look in vain for a global “we, the people” to be represented. That is now changing. There is another internationalism, a forming crystal around which a global polity can…
Judge-Made Rights
O n October 2, 2000, the European Convention on Human Rights will be incorporated into English law through the Human Rights Act. Britain ratified the international convention some 50 years ago, but did not codify it domestically and give English courts and English judges the power to enforce it. Litigants have had to travel to…
Pay-to-Play Conventions
The Republicans had their time. Then AT&T, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft packed up the trade show we still call a “political convention” and moved it over to Los Angeles. This year’s conventions will cost an estimated $85 million–$25 million more than they did in 1996–and the long list of corporate sponsors to the convention’s “host…
The Other NYPD Murder
Two months after the fact, New York City Mayor Giuliani, purportedly mellowed by prostate cancer, issued an apology of sorts to the family of Patrick Dorismond, the unarmed Haitian-American man killed by New York police in March. The mayor did not apologize for the killing itself or for having personally unsealed Dorismond’s juvenile police record…
The Price Isn’t Right
Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Drug expenditures in the United States have doubled since 1993 and are expected to double again by 2004, according to a study by the Health Insurance Association of America. Elderly people now spend more on medicine than on doctor bills. Many health plans have…
Bush is a Little Too RANDy
Although Laura Bush’s speech at the GOP convention dealt more with daughters and dolls than politics, Mrs. Bush did make a foray into policy to trumpet her husband’s record on education. “The highly respected nonpartisan RAND study released just last week found that education reforms in Texas have resulted in some of the highest achievement…
Don’t Look Back
A fter several millennia’s worth of Orpheus-and-Eurydice stories, it stands to reason that Brazilian director Carlos Diegues’s contemporary filmic retelling of the myth, called simply Orfeu, feels like a trip inside a formidable echo chamber. Most distantly, Diegues’s movie rejoins the Orpheus tales of Aeschylus, Virgil, and especially Ovid, whose love-struck, lyre-playing Thracian was a…
The Social Recession
The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty, by David G. Myers. Yale University Press, 414 pages, $29.95. The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, by Robert Edwards Lane. Yale University Press, 465 pages, $35.00. Over the portal of modernity is written Kant’s famous definition: “What is Enlightenment? It is humankind’s emergence from…
Solidarity Sometimes
Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements, by Fred Rose. Cornell University Press, 253 pages, $17.95. Taking History to Heart: The Power of the Past in Building Social Movements, by James Green. University of Massachusetts Press, 352 pages, $19.95. In May of 1970, hundreds of flag-waving New York City…
Solutions to “Friends of Bill” (August 28, 2000)
ACROSS: 1 SO-S + O; 3 TE(THERE)D; 8 RâS + V.P.; 9 ENTRAINS (anag.); 11 PERS(UAS + I)ON (USA anag.); 14 IN + SECT; 15 S(I)MILE; 17 BEL(L)YACHES (by Chelsea anag.); 20 FUR + LOUGH; 21 LIAR (rev.); 22 RIGHTING (writing hom.); 23 A(GE)D (e.g. rev.) DOWN: 1 SERAP + HIM (spare anag.); 2 S…
