Michael Brown is dead. Darren Wilson's career as a police officer is over. What remains are doubts that, absent a trial, we'll ever know the truth about Ferguson, and the certainty that this nation's racial divide in this country is as unremitting as ever. So what to make of the disappointing grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren …
Month: November 2014
On immigration, who’s the turkey this Thanksgiving?
We don't need a Rockwell painting to remind us that Thanksgiving is all about those who came to this nation as immigrants. Everyone, of course, except the Native Americans. The Pilgrims came to escape religious persecution. My great grandparents did it in the 1800's. At some point, your forebears did it as well. Wave after …
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Cosby revelations disgusting
It's as if we learned that Mr. Rogers was a pedophile, or Marcus Welby had sexually assaulted patients in his exam room. This week we learned that Bill Cosby, the apogee of middle class respectability both in character (as Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show) and in person (universally honored, including locally a few years ago by …
Ideological purity no help to the body politic
Most of us probably find ourselves somewhere around the center of contemporary political thought, whether it's to the right of center or left of center. Our movement in elections often determine outcomes, and we're usually out of touch with outliers in both parties. We are unsettled by a Congress now with an increasingly hollowed out center, …
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Berkeley students make mockery of Free Speech Movement
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at U.C. Berkeley, a pivotal moment in the history of student activism and political organizing that laid the groundwork for the antiwar movement and other social causes. At that time, students and faculty across the entire spectrum of political views joined together to protest …
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Pray for Charlie Baker’s good health
Governor-elect Charlie Baker is off to a good start. He was gracious to losing candidate Martha Coakley on election night and the day after. He struck the right tone with Deval Patrick in discussing the transition. Pushed to announce his positions on everything, he has refused to get sucked into the illusions of hosting the …
Election 2014 – is consensus as remote as ever?
Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. Yesterday, Republicans won big by turning that adage on its head. They nationalized state races and turned President Obama's unpopularity and his administration's failures into anvils around the necks of Democratic candidates. Even states that Obama carried turned against him. A happy exception to that trend was …
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Marjorie Arons-Barron 