The Way It Looked in 1969
Now the age of 101, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has composed poetical works about most U.S. presidents since the administrations of Eisenhower in the 1950s. I recall with appreciation his poem “Tale Tale of the Tall Cowboy”…
Category: Dissidents
A Hierarchy of Human Life?
Nawal El Saadawi, The Essential Reader In his poem “Cosmopolitan Greetings,” Allen Ginsberg urged: Stand up against governments, against God. This expresses the life and work of Nawal El-Saadawi. I am African from Egypt, not…
After Sanders Makes His Endorsement, I Turn to Some Great Reminderers
Those who live by compassion are often canonized. Those who live by justice are often crucified. –John Dominic Crossan, Scripture Scholar, USA Don’t mourn. Organize. –Mother Jones, labor activist, USA The madness of violence must…
Hope’s Beautiful Daughters: A Spring & Summer Class
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. — Saint Augustine Why…
Beautiful Anarchists
Howard Zinn, Emma: A Play in Two Acts About Emma Goldman, American Anarchist Those photos of Dorothy Day— Like the one you saw in the office at the Catholic Woker Where you were first scouted…
Women in Black by Hedy Epstein
Every second Tuesday of the month, we hold a vigil of Women in Black in University City. Usually, these are uneventful. People may support us, some take our flyers and say thank you, others refuse…
There and Then, Here and Now
A lady: Yes, that’s just like what goes on nowadays, and it’s because anyone that is struggling for the liberation of the oppressed, he himself is a Christ, and then here’s a Herod, and what…
Cultivating Attention and Animating Conscience: Reading Thoreau in Desperate Times
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I…
Perennially Good Advice
“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above…
To Serve Suffering Humanity
Shekhar Ganguly, A Satyagrahi, a Revolutionary, a Communist People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1995 I recently read Arundhati Roy’s moving essay, “Walking with the Comrades,” detailing her solidarity with the indigenous Maoists of India back…