At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Pat Buchanan delivered an inflammatory speech now known as “the culture war speech.” He said, “My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There…
Over the years of debate over Pro-choice or Pro-life positions on abortion rights, I have been struck by many issues that have ultimately taken me to positions I might not have gotten to without this very public struggle over women’s rights and women’s liberation. For example, I have learned through this struggle that some very…
In the mid-1980’s, I found myself on a journey that I had not anticipated. In one way I had started the journey in my late teens when I recall quite consciously deciding I was going to be a Renaissance Man, someone who could live by his wits and be good at many different things. I…
Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson have argued that “It would be nice if conservative White evangelicals called off the Culture Wars that they started and continue to aggressively pursue. It would be even nicer if liberal (and even some progressive) pundits stopped prematurely announcing the end of the Culture Wars and the demise of the…
Recently I approached a checkout lane in a local grocery store when I overheard the clerk and a sacker having this exchange: “You’re still making $9.25? You’re kidding! Why would I stay here as long as you have and hope for checker job, when that’s all you make?” These two guys, likely about 21 (clerk)…
When I was a boy learning about life and community in a poor area of Milwaukee, I saw and experienced eating dirt. Although I don’t recall if there were specific ages when we were inducted into the practice or were no longer eligible for it, I do remember what it looked like. The boy expected…
Fictions are remembered, too, and they are not stored any differently in the mind from other experiences. They are experience. Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays For many years I have wondered how poor and working class people in the U.S. can be so regularly persuaded to vote against their own self-interests. Election after election we…
Memory, like perception, is not passive retrieval but an active and creative process that involves the imagination. We are all always reinventing our pasts, but we are not doing it on purpose. Delusion, however great, is not the same as mendacity. We know when we are lying . Lying is a form of double consciousness.…
In 1969, (I know, readers thought I was going to write “Stonewall,” but I am not!) I started student teaching with Florence Atu-Yarney and Ann Jo Carter. The two semesters I spent with them at Lincoln Junior and Senior High School were transformative in ways that I am still trying to untangle in my mind.…
Thirty-one years, 11 months, and two weeks ago, Paul and I met for the first time. In the ensuing years I have said countless times, “I never had a chance.” Several weeks ago I downloaded a count-down app to my phone. Every few days I change the music it plays while a counter shows how…
Creating Community for Everyone 