Duty to Warn

So Many Books, So Little Time?

First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School by Alison Stewart During the 1880s through the 1950s–what the African American historian Rayford Logan called “the nadir of American race relations,” when the striving of blacks was met by the iron fist of white supremacy–America’s first black high school became the springboard to almost a century of black achievement. In 1870 with some public money, a small legacy from Myrtilla Miner, a white leader in educating poor black women, and the prodigious efforts of Washington’s black elite, the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth held its first classes. After bouncing around to various locations, Congress appropriated $112,000 for a permanent structure, and the M Street School was opened to black students in 1892. A number of its earliest teachers had been trained at Ivy League schools, studied abroad or held advanced degrees. Because of Jim Crow, they were often unable to find work in their chosen fields, and so migrated to Washington, D. C. and the M Street School, which was renamed Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School in 1916.

The real lesson of ‘Green Eggs and Ham’

America just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s great “I Have a Dream” speech. Everyone says that they “love” Dr. King (now), but the media did notice that no top Republican Party leaders attended any of the main anniversary events.

Maybe it was this line of Dr. King ’s that they don’t like: “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification…”

What is nullification? It’s one of the last-ditch philosophical stands of the slaveholders, the historically disreputable — and thoroughly discredited — concept that a state could “nullify” a federal law by declaring it null and void. The idea of the Slave Power was that the Southern states would “interpose” themselves between the national government and the slaveholders, and prevent our laws from being enforced.

This way

This article is the foreword to David Swanson's new book, War No More: The Case for Abolition.

I lived in Iraq during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. On April 1st, about two weeks into the aerial bombardment, a medical doctor who was one of my fellow peace team members urged me to go with her to the Al Kindi Hospital in Baghdad, where she knew she could be of some help. With no medical training, I tried to be unobtrusive, as families raced into the hospital carrying wounded loved ones. At one point, a woman sitting next to me began to weep uncontrollably. “How I tell him?” she asked, in broken English. “What I say?” She was Jamela Abbas, the aunt of a young man, named Ali. Early in the morning on March 31st, U.S. war planes had fired on her family home, while she alone of all her family was outside. Jamela wept as she searched for words to tell Ali that surgeons had amputated both of his badly damaged arms, close to his shoulders. What’s more, she would have to tell him that she was now his sole surviving relative.

Geek show Fall line up is mixed bag

The fall television season is upon us and there is a bevy of nerd-tastic shows to make your geek radar buzz with excitement. There are always a ton of choices when it comes to the list of shows the networks will roll out each year, and the key is figuring out which ones are worth your time and which should be shelved immediately. Of course, as word of mouth spreads, some will live while others will go the way of dozens of probably best forgotten shows of the past.
Let's look at a few of the top selections to hopefully narrow down the viewing experience and make sure your screen is filled with the best of the best while avoiding the worst attempts at a science fiction/fantasy show.
At the top of the list is the show that has the most promise, the most push and the best team behind it — ABC's new series “Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” There's so much to like about this show that if it doesn't end up being the new big hit of the year, more than a few network executive's heads will roll. None other than the godfather of nerds himself Mr. Joss Whedon, is behind the series.

Military Sexual Trauma: Is this how we treat women in the military?

If there is one thing Democrats and Republicans in Congress can agree upon, it’s ending the epidemic of rape against female soldiers now. Sadly and painfully, it took the rape and murder of female soldiers from Ohio to finally convince Congress to act. But whether the rapes – along with sexual harassment and mysterious deaths – of female soldiers actually end, is left to be seen.

Minimizing Mandatory Minimums

In my last column, I panned the U.S. Justice Department’s memos that attempted to clarify its clarifications concerning marijuana enforcement in the states where the plant enjoys a legal framework. It seemed like business as usual. Arrest. Prosecution. Jail.


This column is a different matter. I laud Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Administration for steering the country in the right direction when it comes to mandatory minimum sentencing and consequent drug policy in general.


On August 12, 2013, AG Holder delivered remarks at the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, sounding more like Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance than the top U.S. cop. The speech concerned mandatory minimum sentencing laws that require binding prison terms of defined lengths for individuals convicted of certain federal and state crimes.

Obama’s Justice Department: Trumpeting a New Victory in War on Freedom of the Press

There’s something profoundly despicable about a Justice Department that would brazenly violate the First and Fourth Amendments while spying on journalists, then claim to be reassessing such policies after an avalanche of criticism -- and then proceed, as it did this week, to gloat that those policies made possible a long prison sentence for a journalistic source.

Welcome to the Obama Justice Department.

While mouthing platitudes about respecting press freedom, the president has overseen methodical actions to undermine it. We should retire understated phrases like “chilling effect.” With the announcement from Obama’s Justice Department on Monday, the thermometer has dropped below freezing.

Keep hope alive with a new war on poverty

Only a couple of weeks ago, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, I was reminded of the Rev. King’s last birthday, in January 1968.

He combined it with work — a staff meeting, planning for the multiracial Poor People’s March, where we made plans to occupy the National Mall. He spoke to us of the need to march to demand an end to the War in Vietnam and to push for a full commitment to the War on Poverty.

This week — four-and-a-half decades later — the U.S. Census Bureau reported that “the nation’s official poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line.” That’s up from 46.2 million in 2011, and translates to a poverty rate of 15 percent — one out of every seven Americans. The Census Bureau says that number includes about 16 million children and almost 4 million seniors. Is anybody listening?
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