Month: March 2006

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MIKE DAVIS asks, “Who is Killing New Orleans?”: “A few blocks from the badly flooded and still-closed campus of Dillard University, a wind-bent street sign announces the intersection of Humanity and New Orleans. In the nighttime distance, the downtown skyscrapers on Poydras and Canal Streets are already ablaze with light, but a vast northern and eastern swath of the city, including the Gentilly neighborhood around Dillard, remains shrouded in darkness. The lights have been out for six months now, and no one seems to know when, if ever, they will be turned back on.”
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PLUS: historian MICHAEL KAZIN talks about a hero and leader of the Christian left – William Jennings Bryan, who fought the banks and corporations and ran for president as a Democrat in 1896, 1900 and 1908 – and ended up as the voice of fundamentalism in the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial. Mike teaches at Georgetown; his new book is A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.

Also: AMY WILENTZ has just returned from Dubai, the Gulf state whose economy is based not on oil but rather on its free port (with the largest man-made harbor in the world) and, increasingly, tourism. We’ll have Amy’s eye-witness report on the emirate after the collapse of the American ports deal. Amy was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, and is a contributing editor of The Nation.

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1965-1968 saw the climax of the civil rights movement and the massive escalation of the war in Vietnam as well as the tremendous growth of the anti-war movement. The intense, dizzying and heartbreaking story of those tumultuous years has now been told with unprecedented power and insight by TAYLOR BRANCH. His new book is At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.
READ Gary Wills in the New York Review on Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge

Also: It’s the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq: JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent of The Nation, says “Nothing, not even the Bush administration’s deception and intransigence, has done so much to continue the quagmire as the failure of Congress to check and balance the madness of President George.”

Plus: Chicago’s Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among Americans about immigrant radicals. At the Haymarket demonstration, somebody threw a bomb that killed seven policemen. Eight labor activists were convicted of murder, and four hanged, although they were later proven innocent. Historian JAMES GREEN tells the story — his new book is Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America.

More Stuff to Read: Jon Wiener’s “White Collar Blues: Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch”

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Terror: The Bush Deception. According to the Bush administration website lifeandliberty.gov, we are winning the war on terrorism. DAVID COLE disagrees; he says Bush’s disregard of fundamental principles of human rights is the most likely source of the next attack. David teaches law at Georgetown; his article “Are We Safer?” appears in the March 9 issue of New York Review. his most recent book is Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism.
David Cole will be speaking on “Domestic Spying, Torture, and the War on Terror” in LA Wed, Mar. 22 at 700pm at 10000 W. Pico Blvd in West LA: email MSmall@akingump.com.

A Hard Bill To Swallow. Last Wednesday the House passed the National Uniformity for Food Act. HAROLD MEYERSON Says it “might better be named the Swallow at Your Own Risk Act.” In one swoop, the bill preempts roughly 200 state laws governing food safety. Harold writes for the Washington Post, The American Prospect, and the LA Weekly.

An Abortion Story. In 1998 in Buffalo, abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper. Days later, another local doctor, Shalom Press, was told he was “next on the list.” Now his son EYAL PRESS tells the story of a fight on the front lines of the war over abortion — in his home town. Eyal writes for The Nation; his new book is Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America.

ALSO: Your Minnesota Moment, news from my home town of St. Paul: Garrison Keillor says “Impeach Bush.”