Innehållsförteckning för Sep-22-14 från The Nation

Richmond, a Work in Progress Charles T. Smith’s letter to the editor [Aug. 4/11] about my article on Richmond, California, in the June 9/16 issue, accuses the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) and one of its lead organizers, Mike Parker, of pursuing a “misguided, middle-class liberal agenda” that favors the city’s “gentrifying element” and furthers “class and ethnic divisions” at the expense of its “working class.” My report, “Will Big Oil Retake Richmond?” is one of many in recent years to note just the opposite. The municipal reform movement, led by Green Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and other RPA activists like Parker, has been very successful in uniting diverse elements of the community in struggles for a higher minimum wage, anti-foreclosure protection for working-class homeowners, increased taxation of Chevron and safer operation…

Gun violence in the United States cost taxpayers nearly $700 million in 2010, according to a study by the Urban Institute that looked at hospitalization costs across six states. Add in "societal costs" and the number jumps to an astronomical $174 billion. 
 The injuries associated with gun violence, including homicides, were concentrated among uninsured black boys and men in a relatively small number of communities. 
 Such concentrations of violence, particularly among young people of color, "should serve as a clear call to action to find new solutions to gun violence," the study's authors conclude
 —Carla Murphy
 Colorlines.com…

Let’s be honest: Why should any sane person care who hosts Meet the Press? I haven’t watched any of the Sunday news shows in a quarter-century and have no intention of ever doing so again. Should anything newsworthy occur on one of these shows, their transcripts become available within minutes of the broadcast, but this almost never happens. They remain influential with the rest of the mainstream media and therefore offer a clue as to how its denizens define their job, but they are not really “news” shows at all; instead, they are branding exercises for network news divisions. This is why, before NBC fired Meet the Press host David Gregory and replaced him with Chuck Todd, the network forced Gregory to meet with a “brand consultant,” hoping to develop…

Yestel Velazquez went to pick up his
truck from an auto shop on a Tuesday evening three months ago. He had left it in Kenner, Louisiana, with a mechanic named Wilmer Palma, a fellow Honduran immigrant he’d met doing construction work after Hurricane Katrina. Velazquez was inside his truck, ready to drive away, when several unmarked cars pulled up and blocked the exits. He recalls men in plainclothes and bulletproof vests that said Police, along with an officer in a Kenner Police Department uniform, getting out of the cars.
 Minutes later, Velazquez and Palma were lined up behind a Ford Expedition, along with more than a dozen other employees and customers of the auto shop and people from a neighboring business. They were all Latinos. One by one, the men were…

The Beast Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. By Óscar Martínez. Translated by Daniela Maria Ugaz and John Washington. Verso. 275 pp. Paper $16.95. La jaula de oro Directed by Diego Quemada-Díez. Animal de Luz Films. La fila india By Antonio Ortuño. Océano. 232 pp. Paper $16.95. 72 Migrantes www.72migrantes.com There were seventy-two people in all. They were migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil and possibly elsewhere, and their final destination turned out to be the same place: a patch of overgrown grass along the cinder-block walls of an abandoned building on a ranch in San Fernando, in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, ninety miles south of Brownsville, Texas.
 It was August 2010, and they had been traveling on three trucks headed to the…

I spent ten days this summer in Basque country in Spain. The people were great, the food marvelous, the landscape gorgeous, and the towns and cities I visited—Santander, San Sebastián and Santillana del Mar—paragons of urbanity. There was a little detour to see a remarkable early house by Antoni Gaudí, one of those geniuses whose example throws me into indecision about whether to get back to work or simply give up. These places were wonderful not simply for their architecture and urban ensemble but for their thick habits of civility, the promenading and snacking and the fabulous scene at the beach, chock-a-block with all generations and with a body culture seemingly so unfetishized that it made me feel svelte.
 It was my first visit to all of these towns. I’m…

Many political bookies have tipped the Republican Party to win the Senate in November. This scenario raises a vexing question: Just what will Mitch McConnell do if, instead of opposing and undermining, he must actually govern? In late August, The Nation and the YouTube channel The Undercurrent released an audiotape of McConnell addressing a private strategy session of millionaire and billionaire Republican donors convened in June by the notorious Koch brothers. His comments there, which some have compared to Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe, are revealing.
 McConnell begins by paying tribute to his patrons, thanking the Kochs “for the important work you’re doing” and for “rallying…to the cause.” What is this cause? Putting Americans to work? Rebuilding the middle class? Unleashing free-market answers to catastrophic climate change?
 No, even when…

Inverkeithing is one of those places that make Scotland seem like a country with more history than future. First the coal mines shut down, then the paper mill, and finally the shipbreakers—the HMS Dreadnought and the ocean liner Britannic were both taken apart at the yard here. Mike Ryan’s father died in a mine cave-in; he’s seen his own employers sold twice. But what brings Ryan and about forty other men and women to the whitewashed crypt of a former Franciscan friary on a warm summer evening isn’t the past. This is an “Imagine Scotland Cafe”—aimed at persuading undecided voters to vote Yes in the September 18 referendum. 
 The question on the ballot is simple—and binding: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” For most Scots, the answer is simple,…

On August 5, 22-year-old John Crawford was shot and killed by two police officers inside a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio. He had been holding a toy rifle that was sold in the store. A coalition of young people across the state, led by the Ohio Student Association (OSA), took action to demand that Walmart’s security tapes be released to the Crawford family, its lawyers and the public. Within a day of the OSA’s third demonstration in Columbus, Attorney General Mike DeWine allowed the family to see six minutes of the footage—prompting Crawford’s father to say that the police had murdered his son. The AG has convened a grand jury to determine if the officers will be indicted. Meanwhile, the OSA is organizing a pilgrimage from the Beavercreek Walmart to the…

Ever since The Atlantic published an interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggesting that President Obama’s reluctance to employ strong measures in foreign affairs (say, by providing arms to moderate Syrian rebels) has placed the United States in greater danger than it might be otherwise (as shown by the rise of ISIS), pundits and politicos of all varieties have been debating the validity of her claims. That debate has gained further intensity with the recent atrocities perpetrated by ISIS. Supporters of the president say he has wisely avoided US entanglement in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire; critics say his restraint has emboldened America’s enemies. In most of these conversations, Obama’s guiding principle—“Don’t do stupid stuff”—has been ascribed to his personality rather than to a calculated assessment of…

The power of charismatic politics in the world today has lately taken two extreme forms in Asia. In India, Narendra Modi came into office in May with a mandate unprecedented in the country since Indira Gandhi; in Indonesia, the victory of Joko Widodo (universally known as “Jokowi”) in July has made him the most popular Indonesian leader in half a century. From a distance, the two politicians appear to have much in common. Neither sprang fully formed from a political establishment: Modi started his career running a tea stall; Jokowi, a furniture-export company. Both come from a heartland of their respective nations: Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, the home state of Gandhi; Jokowi was the governor of Jakarta and before that the mayor of Solo, an ancient center…

Every generation gets the “fuck tha Police” it deserves. The 1988 title by NWA is a brilliant stomp. The production shares some anxious Public Enemy–style siren bleat, adds a Twilight Zone guitar figure and rollicking rhythm. It is crassly homophobic. It is celebratory in equal parts to its rage, putting the police on trial in a dream reversal. The late Eazy-E gilds the closing statement with a veritably Socratic gesture: “Without a gun and badge, what do ya got? A sucker in a uniform waiting to get shot.”
 The moment of truth precedes this by seconds: “They put up my picture with silence cuz my identity by itself causes violence.” The cops don’t need just cause, much less anthems; they’re the militarized edge of white supremacy, after all. Against this,…

When Congress returns from recess the week of September 8, the US military will have been bombing Islamic State fighters in Iraq for a month. Officials say the bombing could continue for months more, and they’ve also threatened to bomb IS fighters in Syria. 
 The Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution require congressional authorization to use military force unless there is an attack or imminent threat of attack on the United States. Congress has not authorized force in Iraq or Syria, and whatever one thinks of President Obama’s initial justifications, there is no such thing as an “emergency” of infinite duration. 
 The constitutional and legal limits on the president’s warmaking powers crucially shape the ability of the public, acting through Congress, to determine when, how and for…

In early August, the website Inside Higher Ed reported that at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), an official offer of a tenured professorial appointment had been rescinded by a top administrative officer. That alone would have been unusual, but concerns grew after sources close to the decision-making process reported that Chancellor Phyllis Wise was responding to calls and e-mails about Professor Steven Salaita’s acerbic and emphatic anti-Israel tweets. 
 Once scholars heard of this, protests erupted: 17,000 signatures have been gathered criticizing the decision, and 3,000 professors are boycotting UIUC. The American Association of University Professors issued a statement declaring that social media expression is private and protected speech, and that the use of “civility” as a litmus test—which the university now admits in rescinding the hire of…

A 1918 article in The Nation began: “There are a few Americans who may not have thought”—as one journalist claimed he did—“that Ukraine was the name of a musical instrument. But in spite of the frequent use of the word during the past year, its connotation is still vague.”
 The author continued: “A tall, broad-shouldered, sturdy race, [Ukrainians] possess an independent language that is remarkably pure and a literature with a wealth of popular lyric and epic poetry hardly equalled in the world. In spite of illiteracy that has resulted partially from the compulsory use of the Russian language in their schools, the Ukrainians surpass their Polish and Russian neighbors in their houses, costumes, food, mode of life, and popular art…. For centuries these people were the barriers against which…

On the afternoon of May 22, 2011, a tornado with winds reaching 125 miles per hour touched down in North Minneapolis, long the African-American center of the city. The quick-moving storm uprooted trees, downed power lines and sheared the roofs from houses. One person was killed and hundreds left homeless in the biggest natural disaster to strike the city in decades. 
 The tornado missed the house of Anthony Newby, a real-estate entrepreneur, by four blocks. New to the neighborhood, Newby joined the volunteers seeking to help struggling residents, but grew frustrated by what he perceived as the local government’s slow response. It wasn’t that he was an activist. Though he had lived in Minneapolis for years, he hadn’t been particularly aware of the deep poverty that exists in swaths…

The French Revolution vanishes into rain. The cafe where Camille Desmoulins jumped atop the table and roared is closed. So too the one grocery store in the Adirondack town. Three years fade into centuries of raised voices. When I think “of my childhood” what am I thinking? Spiro Agnew’s widow died. Everything a function of stochastic patterns this rain also obeys. Can’t you hear it the unpitched wave soaking the spruce? Can’t you hear them screaming? Morton Feldman said pointing below the Berlin pavement stones. One deafens to live till you’re deafened to all. I’m canceling all the noise my earthened ears bring me.…