The other morning as I left my house, the temperature was zero degrees Fahrenheit. This was a relief. It meant it had warmed up 22 degrees since the previous day! The Polar Vortex, […]
Of Winds and Borders
Looking Down the Hall
Trigger warning (cops with triggers). When I was fifteen I was busted for possession. The cops’ reason for searching us was made up but the baggies of roadside pot in my back […]
On the Deregulation of Life
Behold court nominee – now Justice – Brett Kavanough. In one concentrated packet of self-pitying, entitled rage we can observe the embodiment of capitalist deregulation in its purest form. Let me […]
BEYOND REPAIR: While Republicans & Democrats Unite to Increase Police Power, Others Point to New Way Forward
Virtually unnoticed in the cacophony of the Trumpian news cycle, a bill to place more power in the hands of police slithered through the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support […]
Puerto Rico and the World
In late March I stood on a partially buried cement and tile slab shaded by forest cover, – a toppled yagrumo tree lying where the entrance to the kitchen had been. I […]
A Future to Fight For: A Conversation with Frederick Douglass in the Shadow of Trump
In Douglass’ view, the unending deference of northern liberals set the stage for southern ascendancy. Their insatiable eagerness to “reach across the isle” (as we say today) produced a vortex of appeasement, given that the North was always ready to make concessions and the South unwilling to make any. “Under this so called practical wisdom and statesmanship, we have had sixty years of compromising servility on the part of the North to the slave power of the South.”
The slave patrol in the classroom
The very idea that the rules of the system are rigged is so threatening to the white racial self-image of earned privilege that it cannot be seriously entertained.
That time we sank the Santa Maria
In the winter of 1987-88 I was back in Puerto Rico visiting and read that a flotilla of canoes was leaving South America, tracing the Taino migration up the Antilles to Puerto […]
Martin Luther King Goes to the Mall (or WWMD?)
“It’s important to make an example out of these organizers, so that this never happens again.” This message was sent to the managers of the Mall of America by Sandra Johnson, the […]
Black Lives at the Mall of America: the long shadow of history
In the dock are eleven Black Lives Matter activists fingered by police as the “ringleaders” of a peaceful rally at the Mall of America last December. An additional 25 have been charged […]
Ricardo Levins Morales
Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio 