What—apart from the fact that U.S. prisons are pandemic petri dishes and prisoners’ lives are officially regarded as dispensable—does the colossal, ongoing disaster of our criminal justice system have to do with the current disaster of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout? You might answer that having the world’s largest prison population (indeed, more than 20 percent …
What if—as I’ve recently written—the current pandemic is a “hinge moment” in history, offering the possibility of a break from the past? What if the actions taken in response to the pandemic, especially the things that we have repeatedly been told are impossible (such as radically cutting emissions) demonstrate that another world is indeed possible? …
The maxim “the map is not the territory” was coined by philosopher Alfred Korzybski, who also said, “the word is not the thing,” perhaps inspiring Zen teacher Alan Watts’ dictum, “the menu is not the meal.” Experience is deeply affected by (and often confused with) the way we label it. One of Korzybski’s proofs was …
I often ask myself how seriously we Americans take our freedoms. It’s a good question, because for each person who risks standing for the full freedoms promised in the Constitution, there are many who allow them to atrophy from disuse. If that tendency takes over, it would be quite easy for extreme-right Supreme Court judges …
On 3 April, the powers-that-be at Howard University laid off 84 staff members, including E. Ethelbert Miller, director of Howard University’s African American Resource Center, who attended Howard and went on to serve the university community for more than 40 years. Ethelbert is a literary activist of wide-ranging commitments and honors: he chairs the Board …
NOTE TO READERS: My essay “Living Into The Questions,” leads off the Americans for The Arts’ blog salon about “The Beauty in Change: Considering Aesthetics in Creative Social Change Work.” Please read it and let me know what you think! This is the talk I delivered last night at Bowery Poetry in New York City, …
The work of artists and creative activists can help to create a cultural democracy that prizes diversity, practices equity, and brings a deep respect for human rights to every aspect of civil society. Therefore, the people-powered U.S. Department of Arts and Culture calls on all artists and creative activists to join in the movement to …
You know the “Stockholm Syndrome,” right? It’s when hostages empathize with their captors, a form of what psychologists call “traumatic bonding.” Welcome to the Stockholm Syndrome State. The culture of politics is in a coma, the result of an overdose of deference to authority dissolved in a long drink of state-sponsored fear. Shall we wake …
Dear Readers: I’d love to see you at my upcoming book launches in New York at 6 pm on Thursday, 23 May and Berkeley at 2 pm on Sunday, 2 June. What comes to mind when I write that someone has used words as blunt instruments? Insults or arguments maybe, the kind of hate-speech that …
After dinner the other night, a friend who’d recounted the rather impressive incompetence of the powers-that-be at his workplace said that he tried not to think about how messed up things are in the larger world beyond his 9 to 5, because when he got in touch with all that could go wrong, it terrified …