Book and Movie Reviews

An Expendable Man by Margaret Edds
Feb. 25, 2004

“An Expendable Man” by Margaret Edds does a superb job of telling the story of how an innocent man, Earl Washington, was put on Virginia’s death row and ended up spending 18 years in prison. I know she does a superb job because some years ago, when Washington had still not been pardoned but when things were looking hopeful, I researched this case and wrote a series of articles about it in the Culpeper News, the small-town paper read more

Efficiency of Factionalism, Fatality of Discipline
July 7, 2004

There’s a common tendency, even among organizers and activists, to assume that in some sense George W. Bush is right when he says “A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier.” We all support democracy in our unions and in labor media, but not of course in order to make our unions more efficient, rather to keep our members happy even at the understood risk of slowing down the important business of organizing and read more

Fear and Bowling
Also published in Democratic Underground at http://www.democraticunderground.org and in BuzzFlash at http://www.buzzflash.com

“Bowling for Columbine” has some comical moments here and there, but Michael Moore was engaging in false advertising the other day on NPR when he called it a comedy. It’s a depressing film about a horrible situation, and it makes a very serious and compelling argument.

The question Moore asks is why the United States has a rate of murders read more

“METROPOLITICS: A regional agenda for community and stability” by Myron Orfield
October 2000

“METROPOLITICS: A regional agenda for community and stability” (1997) by Myron Orfield presents a convincing solution to a surprising array of problems. Americans hate sprawl, but they hate even more anything that they can find a way to label socialism. Orfield describes a system of regional government — tried and tested by himself and others in Minnesota — that promoters read more

Nader and the Powers that Be

Also published in shortened version in print edition of The Progressive Populist.

Feb. 21, 2004

With Ralph Nader expected to announce tomorrow whether he will run for President this time around, I (an unrepentant Nader 2000 supporter) read a book today that constitutes the strongest argument I have seen for why he should not. The book is “Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win,” by G. William Domhoff.

Domhoff’s 108-page book read more

Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington

If you have some doubt as to whether and to what extent American corporate management has set new standards for heartless greed and destruction, or whether and to what extent Congress and the federal agencies meant to regulate these corporations are instead working on their behalf to transfer money, power, and protections from the people to the CEOs, this book may change your way of thinking.

If you already think the pigs are pigs and the feds are a trough, read more

This Divided State: A Brilliant Film
March 24, 2005

At a recent screening of “This Divided State,” a brilliant documentary by Steven Greenstreet, someone in the audience asked the 25-year-old director what he thought would change the minds of conservatives in the film who expressed fear that liberals would corrupt their children, and who on that basis fought to keep all liberal opinions out of their community.

Greenstreet’s answer was not what you’d expect to hear in a gathering read more

A Tour Guide Who Takes You Across Class Lines
April 10, 2005
Betsy Leondar-Wright has just published “Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists.” In this 160-page book from New Society Publishers, which contains brief interviews with numerous activists, Leondar-Wright takes us on a tour of many of the pitfalls and possibilities discovered by those who have worked to build organizations and coalitions across class lines.

She describes the book as intended read more

By Jacques Derrida, editor

This is a very saddening book in which these authors, who have helped to move our thinking away from some of the remnants of religion over which we continue to trip, express their (perhaps elderly, not to say senile) longing for old-time religion itself. Not only that, but they suggest, as opponents of postmodernism or pragmatism do, that outgrowing the tiresome remnants of religion found in the arrogant self-descriptions of scientists or ethicists actually allows (or read more

Daniel Quinn has an idea. He sees homo sapiens as on the verge of self-destruction and traces the major behavioral patterns bringing this about back to what is commonly referred to as the agricultural revolution. According to Quinn, we long supposed our species to have originated when writing originated some five thousand years ago, and continue to suppose “humanity” to have begun when what Quinn calls “totalitarian farming” began some ten thousand years ago, and this despite read more