Belated July 4th Video: The Greatest Speech of the (19th) Century
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” illumines the hypocrisy of a nation unable to check and challenge itself concerning its own moral hubris.
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King as Inspiration, Not Guide
On the 40th anniversary of his assassination, we honor Martin Luther King by refusing to ask: “What would King think?”
Read MoreGood Friday vs. Easter in the Mayan Riviera
What (and where) holidays mean; when the bloody demise of Jesus resonates more than the triumph over death.
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Yes We Can/Si Se Puede: Remembering and Forgetting Cesar Chavez (March 31, 1927—April 23, 1993)
President Obama got his campaign slogan from Cesar Chavez, but on this 16th anniversary of the great labor leader’s death we still have no national holiday to commemorate his legacy.
Read MoreReflections on an Ineffective Negro Leader
Despite our annual effort to remember it differently, Dr. King was universally criticized for his refusal to be a good “Negro leader”.
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V-Day: An Arrow in the Heart
The original St. Valentinus (one of at least seven with the same name, so we can’t be too sure!) was arrested for marrying Roman Christian couples. His bloody martyrdom was particularly brutal. Love and loss, romance and violence. They’ve always gone together.
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Obama and the Unbelievers: The Future of Secularism
The presidential inauguration showed that an enforceable wall of separation between church and state simply does not exist in America, at least at the level of expression in the public square. What is the future of secularism in our religious democracy?
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Super Bowl Sunday, American Holy Day
Indignant responses to the Janet Jackson nipple slip and the somber post-9/11 halftime show reveal glimpses of the sanctity of this yearly ritual, but it’s also in the creation of icons, the reinforcement of rules, and Americans telling themselves stories about themselves.
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From Yes We Can to Yes, We Did!
If King could have conceived of this day, with the coincidence of a holiday in his honor and the swearing-in of the first president of African descent, he would surely have marveled. And then he would have set us all to work.
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The Cynical Use of “Freedom of Religion”
On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we pay attention to the ways that religious groups are trying to claim that their right to religious freedom entitles them to oppress others.
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