The peaceful protests continue amidst emerging proposals for policy change, but will they amount to anything? Longtime Boston leader and community activist Hubie Jones, in his unpublished book Black in Boston: A Lover's Quarrel, came to understand the dynamics of race demonstrations in the confrontations and riots of 1967 and 1978. Usually, he says, they …
Continue reading “Defunding” versus “reprioritizing” the police: language matters
The lump in my throat won't go away. It's not the onset of the coronavirus. It is the result of another terrible disease afflicting this nation, the lethal virus of racism and racial injustice. I close my eyes and see the video that grips the country, African-American George Floyd pinned on the street, the knee …
Continue reading Nation at a crossroads, not a replay of ’68
Has Donald Trump finally reached his Joe McCarthy tipping point moment? Trump’s malevolently vicious attack on the memory of Lori Klausitis, which he wielded as a weapon to sully persistent critic Joe Scarborough, took me back to 1954. It was in that year’s Army-McCarthy hearings that attorney Joseph N. Welch’s famously retorted to bullying behavior …
Continue reading Could this be Donald Trump’s “no sense of decency” moment?
Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016. But Donald Trump was able to convince enough battleground state voters who disliked both nominees that she was worse. In 2020, he knows he can’t win re-election running a positive campaign about himself; his only chance is to turn off enough battleground-state Republican and …
An April 29th letter from American Airlines to its Advantage Gold Card members announced, "Caring for Your is Our Priority." I'm so touched. The Airline wrote that it would "begin to distribute sanitizing wipes or gel and face masks to passengers, as supplies allow. Our flight attendants will be required to wear face masks on …
Today is One Boston day, the seventh anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, when the Tsarnaev brothers set off two crude pressure cooker bombs that resulted in three deaths, wounded hundreds of others and sheared off limbs brutally and indiscriminately. The terrorist attack bloodied one of Boston's most iconic events and shattered our sense of …
Continue reading Grasping bits of optimism and glimmers of hope
There are so many good things that are happening as we adjust to the scary new normal of hunkering down, staying at home. But every time I listen to the President at a White House COVID-19 task force press conference I am simultaneously repelled and outraged, and the good things happening on the ground slip …
Continue reading COVID-19 crisis: silver linings and rot at the top
Everyone has an opinion on how serious is the WHO-identified pandemic coronavirus. Many share guidance on how to deal with it. Far fewer share evidence-based science. Disturbing though it may be, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at how much our assessments divide on partisan lines. According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll: unease is strongly …
Continue reading Beware coronavirus misinformation, well-intentioned or not
It's time to play my role in Super Tuesday. I've joked that in November I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Donald Trump. Any of the remaining candidates could do a better job than the incumbent. Nevertheless, I have twisted and turned. I used to scoff at voters who were still undecided days before an …
Continue reading Super Tuesday: resolving the struggle between head and heart
Last week's WGBH debate between Senator Ed Markey and challenger Congressman Joe Kennedy took me back to August, 1979. Joe Kennedy's uncle Ted was about to challenge fellow Democrat and incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Presidency. Seasoned CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd went to Hyannisport to interview Kennedy. The network set aside a full hour …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 