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Impossible Dreams by Stephen Duncombe
Consensus makes my skin crawl. This feeling likely results from my having attended too many direct action spokes-council meetings where consensus means lowest common denominator agreement, an agreement later ignored in the name of “diversity of tactics.” So it was a great pleasure to see Reverend Billy and Liza Featherstone/Doug Henwood squaring off on Buy Nothing Day in the Rail.
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Putting NYC Writers into Stone by Williams Cole
Unlike Dublin, St. Petersburg, or many other places, New York City pays little attention to its rich literary heritage. There are precious few plaques on historic buildings where writers worked or slept. And in terms of statues, “There's only one I can think of now,” says Harvey Shapiro, poet and former Editor of the Times Book Review : “William Cullen Bryant in Bryant Park, placed there by his cohorts of The Century Association, of which he was once the president.”
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Bonfire of the French Vanities by Francois Cusset
The worst news about the ten-day long November riots in the many French suburban housing projects (rightly called cités, a mix of Plato and Platoon) may very well be the amount of nonsense we heard about it. Let's not even mention Fox News' on-site discovery that Islam would not be compatible with Western principles, since Muslims this time were mostly bystanders barely taking notes; nor the State Department or the Japanese Embassy memos advising tourists and sales reps to avoid enflamed Paris, even though the city of light had actually never been more quiet than that week, safely cut off from its enraged Northern and Eastern suburbs by the most visible boundary an Imperial capital ever invented : the four-lane, partly covered, all-year long gridlocked boulevard périphérique.
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Xmas at the Q by JT Gottlieb
Having spent 10 holiday seasons inside the 25-foot walls of San Quentin State Prison, I can assure you that one of the many things that makes life inside a maximum-security penitentiary different and difficult is that the holidays creep up on you so very quickly. For most of the men incarcerated behind the walls—whether they are regular prisoners doing various stretches, lifers, or on death row—the holiday season is emotionally very rough. In December, more than other times of the year, it's not uncommon for people to rub each other's nerves the wrong way. But good things can happen, too.
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Reading Osama by Mridu Chandra
I remember once reading a very short excerpt in the newspaper of one of Osama bin Laden's publicly released statements and being surprised by how clear he sounded. It was about a year after the 9/11 attack and bin Laden said that he was fighting America (and the American-dominated UN power structure) because we support Israel at the cost of Palestine, and because of our constant intrusion into the political life of countries throughout the Muslim world. He said he would fight us until we were out of Arabia and his Muslim brothers could have their dignity back.
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In Conversation: Eugene Jarecki with with Williams Cole
Eugene Jarecki's new film Why We Fight won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It premieres on January 20 in New York and LA and rolls out nationally soon after. It's a well-honed argument that traces the origins and development of what President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech warned about as the “military industrial complex.
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In Conversation: Katrina Vanden Heuvel with Theodore Hamm
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is now both editor and publisher of The Nation. At the end of November, Rail editor Theodore Hamm sat down with her to discuss the state of the world, and the future of The Nation.
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A Riposte to Retort by Paul Mattick
Among the millions who marched in the world's streets before the American assault on Iraq and the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated against the war while the Republicans met in New York to reannoint G.W. Bush, I was not, I am sure, the only one to have felt a curious sensation of political energy coexisting with the assumption of failure. I never believed the demonstrations against the Viet Nam adventure would bring that war to an end, either, but at that time many did (while others imagined themselves part of an international force that would actually bring down the United States). Today's demonstrators operate on a vastly different historical terrain.
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In Texas a Model of Criminal Justice (Honest) by Gabriel Thompson
I discovered John Hubner's new book, Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth, during the same period that I was spending the bulk of my days on the eighteenth floor of Brooklyn's Supreme Court. A cousin of my close friend had been murdered the previous December—shot twice from behind at close range—and we were watching the case against his alleged assailant proceed.
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Country and the City by Steve Strunsky
It was getting close to curtain time on “Country's Biggest Night,” as the Country Music Association Awards bills itself. But music writer-cum-political reporter Chris Willman still hadn't taken his place among the 150 other journalists covering the event in the media center backstage at Madison Square Garden, where the CMA's were being presented outside of Nashville for the first time in their 39-year history.
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The Rail congratulates the following winners of 2005 Ippie Awards from the Independent Press Association-N.Y.:
1st Place, Best Story About Immigrant Issues Gabriel Thompson, "When Even the Minimum Wage is a Distant Dream" (December 2004/January 2005)
2nd Place, Best Editorial/Commentary Theodore Hamm, "Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn Legacy" (March 2005)
3rd Place, Best Investigative/In-Depth News Story Brian J. Carreira, "No Room at the Inn: Ratner Continues to ’Game’ Officials and the Public" (June 2005)
3rd Place, Best Overall Design: Amelia Hennighausen
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