Joshua Hortwiz is one of two authors of this book Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea. He received a law degree from George Washington University and is currently a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
|Visit the authors' website at: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence|
|Also watch: "Guns and Liberty" on C-Span, Horwitz and Anderson at Hartford University|
by Clarence Lang, author of new release GRASSROOTS AT THE GATEWAY: CLASS POLITICS AND BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE IN ST. LOUIS, 1936-1975
"All scholarship is autobiographical. I often wonder, then, whether my scholarly interest in the dynamics of class among African Americans stems from a desire to grapple with my own contradictions as someone from a working-class background who grabbed certain opportunities, squandered others, and in the process became a black middle-class professional who lives and works very differently from most African Americans.
When I think of the experiences that may have contributed to my research, I can pull from the fragments of my memory moments from my childhood when I gazed at manifestations of race and class, long before I developed the language to interpret what I was seeing. It is significant that I grew up in an apartment building in a declining commercial district of Chicago’s South Loop, in a transition point between downtown and the South Side. I remember that many of the people who constituted the high rise’s community were, like my mother, strivers who worked downtown and considered the building a stepping-stone to greater respectability.
Continue reading "Getting to Grassroots: Author Clarence Lang" »
What a setting in which to discuss our state's literary history and our own contributions to it!
For a complete schedule of Mardi's upcoming events, visit the UMP Author Events page.
by Mardi Link, author of the forthcoming Isadore's Secret and bestseller When Evil Came to Good Hart
Thursday night the Murder Takes A Road Trip book tour rolled into Suttons Bay, pages a'blazin'.
If the photo above appears a little blurry, chalk it up to road dust. That's Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli on the left, Aaron Stander in the middle, and me on the right. No cookies at the library, but a great crowd and even a nod this morning on Facebook. Plus, a stroll afterwards over to Brilliant Books to sign and chat.
For a complete schedule of Mardi's upcoming events, click here.
Continue reading "Murder Takes A Road Trip to Sutton's Bay" »
by Mardi Link, author of the forthcoming Isadore's Secret and bestseller When Evil Came to Good Hart
Last night was the first stop on the "Murder Takes a Road Trip" book tour I'm currently on with two fellow writers, Elizabeth Buzzelli and Aaron Stander. The three of us -- and we're privately calling ourselves the co-conspirators -- chatted up a good-sized crowd at the Bellaire Public Library.
For a complete schedule of Mardi's upcoming events, click here.
John White, author of the forthcoming book: Barack Obama's America, provides a series of views on American society.
Sarah Palin's resignation is the biggest political story of the summer. But the speculation as to why the Alaska governor resigned her post, misses an important story. When Republicans have been successful, they have put forward leaders whose personal story is emblematic of the times. Richard Nixon and his throughly middle-class background is a case in point.
Continue reading "Sarah Palin's Resignation According to John White" »
by Tom Diaz, author of No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement
Los Angeles Police Department Detective Frank Flores is a nationally-recognized expert on the transnational Latino gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). The gang operates in much of the United States, Central America, Mexico, and lately in Canada.
When I first interviewed Flores in March 2007 I had no idea that just months before he had been the target of an assassination by MS-13. The plot became public last month when a 66-page federal racketeering indictment was unsealed. It charges that in December 2006 “shot-callers” (leaders) of the gang’s Hollywood “clique” set in motion a plan to whack Flores, designating a hit-man and providing a handgun to do the job.
John White, author of the forthcoming book: Barack Obama's America, provides a series of views on American society.
In 1991, Michael Jackson released the song "Black or White." In the music video accompanying the song, male and female faces morphed into all shades of different colors. The Reagan era had ended only a few years before, but the U.S. was still a mostly white country. Jackson had transcended a racial barrier by becoming the first black artist to penetrate MTV. Today, whites are fast becoming a minority and the morphing of the face of America is happening thanks to an increase interracial marriages (something that was still uncommon in 1991). The Jackson video prophesized the coming of a new era in U.S. politics, one in which the binary concept of race (black/white) no longer really holds. (Indeed, defining race constitutes something of a slippery slope.)
Watch the music video on YouTube.
Learn more about Barack Obama's America here.
Continue reading "Michael Jackson's Ability to Break Barriers" »
Mardi Link is author of the forthcoming true crime novel Isadore's Secret. Below is a posting that appeared on her blog Rusty Gun on July 2, 2009.
July 1st the New York Times featured a story on naughty nuns. Well, not naughty nuns per se, but rather Rome's decidedly dim view of the behavior of nuns in the U.S. According to the article, the Vatican has initiated two investigations into the workings of American convents. Specifically, those convents whose Sisters are out and about, working with the public. Cloistered nuns who shun our modern world are, apparently, still ok.
When I was a young girl, growing up in 1960s Detroit, someone told me, possibly a teacher, that Jews and blacks were minority groups. I remember walking home, turning this idea over in my mind, and thinking that the person who had concocted it must be terribly misinformed, because when I looked around my world, the only people I saw were blacks and Jews.
When I told this to a neighbor recently, she said, "You mean there weren't any . . . just plain white . . . ?"
"No," I said. "Oh, maybe a few."
Grand River and Joy comes in part from that world, where together we two minority groups lived, went to school, and worked in uneasy proximity, never fully understanding each other, never fully welcomed by the surrounding majority.
Continue reading ""When I was a young girl" by Susan Messer" »
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