Media Tools

The Hope and Message of Occupy Wall Street

By |

It wasn’t until people saw a police officer macing a defenseless woman locked in a cage that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests began to garner attention from the establishment media. When widespread shock at such an egregious act made ignoring OWS impossible, the establishment media tried denigrating it; painting the participants with broad brushstrokes from the pallet of tired, “Woodstock”-era clichés. After union workers and airline pilots began showing up in front of the Cathedrals of Wall Street Criminality, it got harder to disparage OWS through lazy references to bongos and granola. The loose, leaderless organizational structure, as well as the lack of clearly-defined demands, earned OWS sneers from the establishment media. NPR summarized their early disinterest in OWS by stating “the recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective.”

Politics & Society

The Audacity of Hoping for Torture Prosecutions

By |

On February 14th, David Frum, the Bush speechwriter-turned-pundit, published an Op-Ed for CNN.com that was truly Orwellian in nature. For those who enjoy seeing politics and facts totally at odds in print, Frum’s column was cause for celebration. I’m calling it here — 2011 already has a strong contender for the top prize of most hilarious Doublespeak! Despite strong opposition, the winner for 2010 was Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s accusation that Europe’s general commitment to peace was a threat to its security. Gates’s “War is Peace” formulation was classic Age d’Or Bush administration rhetoric- a sentiment so at odds with reality that one has to laugh.

art

Connecting the Dots of History

By |

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” In this struggle for justice, Massachusetts-based artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy sees godliness made manifest. Godliness is reflected in the actions of individuals who protect the weak from the strong, who maintain innocence in an evil world, or who fight for the dignity of being a human being. The arc is bent through the struggle and sacrifice of innumerable individuals, only some of whom will be named in a place of honor in the pages of history. Chatterton-Purdy has devoted the last seven years to a project called “Icons of the Civil Rights Movement …