An Hour for Ai Weiwei

After meeting with Marty, J’Ann, and Suzanne, I offered to propose something for a gathering of old and new friends Thursday 1 October at Hartford Coffee on Hartford from 4:30-5:30. I want us to discuss…

An Option for “Unworthy Victims”

On Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Year First published in the National Catholic Reporter, fall 1997 Some years back, the political critics Noam Chomsky and…

Theme of Class #2: From Up in the Air

In our Thursday evening class, Walking Together without Fear: Reading and Writing with Alice Walker, we pondered the following reflections from Alice Walker, Denise Levertov, and Fred Branfman. 1. Alice Walker, Thousands of Feet Below…

Living in Truth

“… every attempt to live within the truth, must necessarily  appear as a threat to the system and, thus, as something which is political par excellence. Any eventual political articulation of the movements that grow…

Journalist/2

1. That is precisely what I have been trying to elicit all these years: Outrage, outrage, and offense at what Israel is making a million and a half immiserated people Living in the Strip endure….

Dissidents

Glucksman says the role of the intellectual is to warn, to predict horrors, to be a Cassandra who tell us what is going on outside the walls of the city. I share this notion….I too…

Compromismo, 1983

I came across this excerpt  from a 1983 statement  from Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga in response to a request from the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission on behalf of Salvadoran refugee children. This statement reminds me of the commitment of…

Facing the Facts

My life is mapped out: it is my destiny to take a bullet by the Mafia some day. The only thing I don’t know is when. —Giovanni Falcone   See how the accusations against the…