Unpronounceable Words
George McGovern and William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now March 2007 Dear Andrew, I have finished McGovern and Polk’s primer on the catastrophe in Iraq and how to get…
Category: Activists
Doing the Opposite of What Dr. King Suggested
Reagan Patrick is taking her third course with me, Comparative Religion and Culture. She recently spent some time with Dr. Martin Luther King’s April 4, 1967 speech on Vietnam and wrote the following reflection. After…
Trying To Stop the War
Shawn Francis Peters, The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era Johanna Hamilton, 1971: On the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI Shawn Francis Peters’ 2012 book is an account…
As Broad and Powerful as Possible
Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2010) If a white person wants to help our cause, ask him what he thinks of John Brown. Do you know what Brown…
Share the Wealth with Lea Koesterer: 2017 Harvest in Occupied Palestine
My friend Mary Wuller told Lea to get in touch with me before she went on her trip to Palestine with Interfaith Peace Builders. We visited at Northwest Coffee in December, and I knew I…
The World according to Chomsky: Winter Reading Group 2018
In recent years, I’ve known many people who ask themselves, “What can I do, given the state of the world?” In the past year, this question has been especially urgent, given the toxicity of…
Finkelstein’s Gaza
I just received Norman Finkelstein’s latest book, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. I noticed this blurb by Alice Walker: “This is the voice I listen for, when I want to learn the deepest reality…
When Simone Met Simone
Most interesting among [Alain’s disciples] was Simone Weil, the future author of Gravity and Grace, who was taking the same classes as the future author of The Second Sex. Simone Weil dressed oddly and always…
Three Hours in the Morning
In Talking with Sartre, U.S. professor John Gerassi explores a fascinating range of subjects with the French intellectual, writer, and activist. At the book’s conclusion, Gerassi writes, “What we must do instead, he said, is…
December 10 Sunday Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer: Reckoning with Torture
In November 2005, Stop Torture Now, a project of the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, delivered a Peoples’ Indictment against Aero Contractors and the commissioners of the Johnston County airport in…