A few weeks ago, after writing about Ethan Saylor for The Nation, I received a number of questions about why President Obama didn’t speak out about Saylor’s death the way he did for Trayvon Martin. I argued that these questions were misguided. People get murdered every day, the president weighed in because it became a…
Today began much the same as yesterday, except we walked out to the bus. Nico has always had a special needs bus, a “short bus,” pick him up, and for the last year it was right in front of our house. We’d watch the neighbor kids gather at the bus stop from our porch, but…
Today my son started first grade. There was no busing today, just hundreds of parents and kids in their various spots along the school. Nico was happy to walk from the car to school (it was a longish walk due to parking hundreds of parents) and was willing to leave the playground alone, but got…
There’s a long piece in the Washington Post (Wonkblog) today about claims that stop-and-risk reduce crime. I’m now becoming obsessed not with police brutality, per se, but with the discourse of police explanations. “No question about it, violent crime will go up,” New York police commissioner Ray Kelly declared on Meet the Press on Sunday, when…
An online conservative on Twitter called Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator, “retard Barbie.” The leading Republican candidate for governor thanked him. Thirty hours later, that candidate noted that he thanks his supporter, but to “stay positive.” This language stops ONLY when people inside a movement stops. I know some of you are Republicans. I…
Today, word has come that Hosni Mubarak will be released, cleared of his corruption charge, and surely this government will not hold him accountable for the killing of protesters, given the blood that flows in Egypt’s streets. The turmoil in Egypt is matched by this story, in which the CIA admitted what we all knew…
A friend and historian asked me, in the wake of yesterday’s post, to think about the ways that compliance might track against overall reduction in crime in the last few decades. This is important. Ray Kelly defended stop and frisk by saying it’s lowered crime rates. TASER notes the 110,000+ lives saved thanks to their…
I’ve been trying to write about non-compliance and police violence to no avail, so far. I’m not sure what’s not catching editors’ eyes about my various essays (and soon I’ll just start posting them here), as I think there’s a very big story happening before us, but we get distracted by tasers, by drones, by…
The Atlantic Cities had a great piece on Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. It explores the re-writing of Macedonian history and the ways in which public sculpture plays a role. Skopje 2014 wants to settle Macedonian history once and for all: to root an ethnically-diverse, 21-year-old modern state in a unifying and uncomplicated vision of…
Every story needs a villain or two. One reason the Trayvon Martin story caught on so powerfully is that the dramatic cast was set from the start, with the rogue vigilante versus the innocent teenager on a snack run. One reason that Zimmerman was set free is that his lawyers successfully convinced the jury of…