When Trump Met Putin

An Eyewitness Report of the Helsinki Summit

The evening before the Trump-Putin “summit” in Helsinki, I got on my white Finnish Jopo bike and went to see what was happening at the Hilton Kalastajatorppa in the seaside suburb of Munkkiniemi. It was extremely weird that Trump & Co. would be at my favorite hotel, just up the ...
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When Trump Met Putin

Agency, Order and Sport in the Age of Trump

Jim Thorpe, Jack Johnson, and the Sporting Middle Ground

It is all connected. Trump’s racist law-and-order politics, his criticism of black athletes, his newfound pleasure in the pardon, and his desire to be loved. His recent pardon of early 20th-century boxer Jack Johnson, who had been convicted of violating the Mann Act, reveals a fraught and complicated history of race ...
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Agency, Order and Sport in the Age of Trump

The American Experiment

A Poem

If you work for the Department of Justice, quit. If you work for the Department of Homeland Security, quit. If you are a border patrol agent, quit. If you are a contractor who builds detention centers, quit. If you sell vehicles to ICE, quit. If you are ICE, quit. If you sell tranquilizers to the Department of Justice, quit. If you write speeches for the Homeland Security Secretary, quit. If ...
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The American Experiment

Militancy and its Discontents

What the civility conversation gets wrong about activism

In early July, historian David Greenberg issued a kind of warning about the current state of American politics, the latest entry on the hand-wringing over civility on the anti-Trump left. He’s not alone: recently a CNN anchor chided a commentator for calling Stephen Miller, the ostensible architect of Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, a ...
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Militancy and its Discontents

Women March in DC to Protest Family Separation

A photo essay documenting the activism on June 28th

"We Care" "We Care" shouted a thousand women as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capital. Organized on very short notice by WomensMarch, which brought millions of women to Washington on January 21, 2017, the march started at Freedom Plaza and stopped for a rally at the Justice Department ...
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Women March in DC to Protest Family Separation

Was it all futile?

Review: John Kelly’s ‘Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain’

Among the many moral panics aroused by Jeremy Corbyn's accession to the Labour leadership has been the return of the spectre of Trotskyism. Lord Hattersley has warned that ‘the old gang is back’, referring explicitly to the Militant grouping of the 1980s; Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has produced ‘evidence’ ...
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Was it all futile?

Psychogeographies of the Financial Imaginary

Uncovering the tax havens hidden in plain sight through counter-financial dérive

An interview with RYBN.ORG Max Haiven: During our the recent Navigating the City walking tour of the City of London in April you were using the Offshore Tour Operator, an open-source device you developed as part of your The Great Offshore project which seeks to make sense of the complex web of physical and virtual offshore ...
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Psychogeographies of the Financial Imaginary

Moral Blindness and Immigration in America

The Trump administration’s inhumane approach to immigration

Reactions to Donald Trump’s immigration policies -- whether in the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Muslim ban, rejection of domestic and gang violence as valid reasons for asylum or, more pointedly, the separation of families seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border, have primarily focused on the architects of such policies ...
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Moral Blindness and Immigration in America

A New Committee with Lech Walesa, 2018

Reflections on the limitations of the continuing struggle for democracy in Poland

In opposition to the threat to democracy in Poland today, Lech Walesa is calling for a united front against the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), reviving a citizens committee he led thirty years ago in the democratic struggle against Communist dictatorship. Here the first of two pieces responding to ...
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A New Committee with Lech Walesa, 2018

Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber

The importance of engaging with differing perspectives in the Age of Trump

Like so many others, I have been frustrated by my inability to find the language and style of discourse for engaging Trump supporters in reasoned discussion about their choice and their reactions to his pronouncements, executive orders and consequential tweets. Attempting to engage in such conversations invariably led to confrontation ...
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Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber

Ask Brett Kavanaugh About Facebook

Digital media shapes democratic citizenship and we have a right to know whether SCOTUS candidates understand why

What is Facebook? I ask this question as I am well embarked on a two-week intensive seminar, “Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media,” part of the 27th annual Democracy and Diversity Institute sponsored by The New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies in Wrocław, Poland. Facebook and Twitter, and the ...
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Ask Brett Kavanaugh About Facebook