A Website of the Radical Imagination
Brandeis accepted me on a Thursday, May, 1960. Friday, it dropped football. I had two varsity letters. I should have read the sign. I was leaving a land that valued touchdowns and jump shots for a preserve where the only score that brought respect was your G.P.A. “A place,” said Don Nussbaum, a disgruntled power … Read more
Mark Dudzic is the Labor Party’s National Organizer. This summer he summed up progress made by the Party during the past decade. It’s a perfect time now to take stock as the Party has just concluded its successful effort to establish the first state Labor Party in South Carolina. (See Dudzic’s account of the campaign … Read more
‘I am me.’ Pessoa. Once upon a time–How now can I begin like that? It’s June 30, 2000, it’s morning still cool although the murderous heat is waiting impatiently in the high branches of the eucalyptus. You shake your head no. Heat is an abstraction. Those are four black crows, you insist, the same ones … Read more
Marian Swerdlow worked as a New York City Subway Conductor for four years. The following is excerpted from her book on her experience, Underground Woman (Temple University Press). One of the most traumatic things that can possibly happen to a subway worker is a ‘twelve-nine,’ the code for a person under the train, and hence … Read more
[Michael Robbins emailed us an argument against Charles O’Brien’s pro-war position in late February. He then made some slight additions to his note the next week. Mr. O’Brien had already responded to the first version of Mr. Robbins’ argument, but he’s added an addendum to that response that treats Mr. Robbins’ emendations. Mr. Robbins’ (3) … Read more
Your editor struck up a correspondence with the author of this article after we both responded to a group email from William Greider linking us to one of Greider’s recent pieces. It led to an exchange about the Affordable Care Act and to this piece of “samizdat” detailing one desperate senior’s angle on ACA (and … Read more
What follows is an exchange between George Scialabba, essayist and editor of The Baffler, and longtime First of the Month contributor, Fredric Smoler. The subject of their debate (which was sparked by Smoler’s article “Democracy Now.”) is the controversy surrounding Michael Kinsley’s Times review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, … Read more