Civil Rights

  • David Kupfer

"I have never met a single person behind bars who said, 'Well, I want to get out of here, but I sure hope the Republicans don’t help.'”

Remember King's Commitment to Doing What's Right

  • Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Early in his life, before becoming committed to nonviolence, King himself owned a weapon.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ammon_Bundy_(14536029270).jpg

Contrary to media coverage, the Oregon Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation is not led by ranchers who are tired of being pushed around by the federal government.

Teaching Rebellion: Schools Must Cultivate A Struggle for Justice

  • Xian Barrett

They ask me each morning, “When’s the next protest? “Has Rahm Emanuel resigned yet?”

From the Magazine: From Plantation to Planet

  • Scott Russell Sanders
art credit: heath hinegardner

A few years ago I visited two plantations just upstream from Charleston Harbor, the entry point for about 40 percent of the enslaved Africans brought to North America.

Why Every Student Will NOT Succeed With the New Education Law

  • Kevin Kumashiro

The new law disproportionately impacts the students and communities with highest needs, while continuing to profit a multi-billion-dollar testing industry.

Earl Holloway

"It was important to her that people understood the government, understood their rights, and understood the Constitution that we are still trying to perfect today."

Registry for Muslims Has Already Created A Decade of Profiling and Fear

Did Special Registration for Muslims make us safer? Hardly. And the negative impacts linger.

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Missouri Athletes Bust Through Intolerance

  • Fred McKissack
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Sam_final_Mizzou_home_game.jpg

University of Missouri’s black football players showed their power to organize against racism.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBkWShXFcZ4

It was fascinating to watch Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders duke it out in the New...

Donald Trump, even before the early caucuses, had profoundly disrupted the Republicans. But how, exactly?

https://pixabay.com/en/guns-revolver-two-weapon-pistols-307948/
Obama’s Executive Action on Guns Targets the Disabled

Research shows that people with psychiatric disabilities are no more likely than anyone else to commit acts of...

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By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something 
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. 
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord. 
Love the world. Work for nothing. 
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it. 
Denounce the government and embrace 
the flag. Hope to live in that free 
republic for which it stands. 
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man 
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth? 
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn’t go. Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).


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