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From Stephen Elliott
The debate about political poetry in the United States sometimes has an arid feel to it. Essential, yes. But fatally so? Not very often.
But poets caught up in violent political events are brethren. I believe it is essential for fellow poets to honor their struggle.
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A champion for immigrant rights, Kitzia Esteva talks about the fear and empowerment she embraced while on the UndocuBus, her work as a community organizer, and what Obama’s immigration policies mean to her.
...moreThere’s more violence in Gaza today. Emily Hauser asks a tough question about Israeli claims that its strikes are surgical and aimed at terrorists.
The IDF used social media to announce and live-blog the attacks, and to celebrate the killing of Ahmed Al-Jabari.
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DC is traffic circles, non-working fountains in some circles’ centers, jammed downtown corridors and quiet Anacostia neighborhood streets no taxi driver wants to know after midnight. It’s Muslim taxi drivers unfurling prayer mats in alleyways near the homeless guy singing to himself
...moreIf you live in California, haven’t voted yet, and are still questioning those poorly-worded propositions, don’t fret: KQED has got your back.
Compiled by KQED News and The California Report, the NPR affiliate presents voters with an immensely easy-to-understand ballot measure guide.
...moreComedian Nato Green writes about Hurricane Sandy, the NYU hospital evacuation, and the contrast between the merit of big government and the villainization of all things public.
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Voting for a third party is the way I choose to voice my dissent. It’s a vote toward realignment, a recalibration, of our political system. The dominant parties are stricken with tunnel vision; their economic promises are distracting us from other critically important issues
...moreIn our earlier roundup about Hurricane Sandy, we linked to this piece from The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta which quotes Governor Mitt Romney in 2011 at a Republican debate. He was talking about government spending in the context of a concern that FEMA was running out of money for dealing with national emergencies.
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I felt it was important for Rumpus readers to hear what conservatives have to say for themselves. So I spent the past month interviewing a bunch.
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Voters at home, the ones still open to voting for him, need Obama to take the fight to Romney, to speak with urgency and moral force. He needs to have lines of attack prepared for particular topics, and those attacks need to tell a larger story.
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Certain constituencies are always shoved aside, always told their issues will be addressed at some nebulous point in the future. During a lengthy debate, to see these issues merit neither discussion nor debate speaks to how little dignity is valued on the political stage.
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David Abrams served for twenty years in the U.S. Army. He talks to us about his debut novel, Fobbit, a tragicomic rendering of things he observed in Baghdad.
...moreSteve Brodner is back! Lest you accuse us of being politically biased, here he is live-blogging the Democratic National Convention for The Nation. Get ready for more hand-drawn satire, after the jump:
...moreWell this is just excellent: over at The Nation, artist Steve Brodner live-blogged the Republican National Convention—through illustrations. A sneak preview of what you’ll find, after the jump:
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To appreciate soccer one has to understand that there’s beauty in failure.
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Iceland’s most famous comedian ran for mayor of Reykjavic, and won…
...moreBefore yesterday, I suspect most people outside Missouri had never heard of Representative Todd Akin. I barely recognized the name myself, even though I consider myself a bit of a political junkie and I currently live in the neighboring state. All I really knew is that he was beating Senator Claire McCaskill pretty handily in her re-election bid, and that the Democrats were likely to lose that seat come November.
...moreToday in a Russian court, three members (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30) of the all-female Russian punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism.”
(For those unfamiliar with the story, here is a round-up of links that we published last week.)
The trio had been facing up to seven years, but, after much deliberation, was sentenced to two years in prison for an anti-Putin song they performed in a church.
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Three women of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot are on trial in Russia for hooliganism, which carries a charge up to seven years in prison, following their arrest in March after a performance of what they’ve called a ‘punk prayer’ critical of Vladmir Putin in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, one of the most famous Orthodox cathedrals in Moscow.
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A formerly freckle-faced pothead with a penchant for getting arrested, Prior admits she doesn’t hide emotions well and so to some, she can be a handful.
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Tom Barbash talks with author and reporter Hart Seely about winning ballgames from your couch, Donald Rumsfeld, faking sanity, and the fate of quality journalism in the online era of click chasing.
...more“Why take to the streets when Stewart and Colbert are on the case? It’s a lot easier, and more fun, to experience the war as a passive form of entertainment than as a source of moral distress requiring citizen activism.”
At The Baffler, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond takes on comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, arguing that the comedians serve, largely, to mollify the public by staunching desire for active action against unjust power structures by engaging in acts of essentially harmless ridicule.
...moreAt The American Interest, David Green issues “A Call To Linguistic Disobedience.”
In his essay, Green argues that some of the most basic linguistic techniques used to describe the state of American politics (or, to “define the situation”) – such as the use of a binary of left versus right, liberal versus conservative – create a system in which any substantive explanation or exploration of events becomes impossible, as actual dialog becomes shrouded behind and ultimately replaced by competitions over the definitions of fundamentally subjective labels:
“With no mutually acceptable vocabulary, communication between contending parties has all but been replaced by efforts to bypass opponents and communicate directly with two key constituencies: independent or swing voters, and the respective bases each side wishes to mobilize.”
...moreEurozine’s Mihir Bose lays out the development of modern athletics in connection with human rights, citing the political and ethical pressures involved in not-so-nice countries hosting major sports events.
He writes that the International Olympic Committee, among other major governing bodies of sport, has paid little attention to its founding rhetoric in the last 100 years.
...moreAt The New York Times, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond argues that liberals are treating “for-profit propaganda as news” to the detriment of our political system.
Almond makes a strong case for ignoring the demagogues and instead seeking out those who want to find common ground.
...more“On Sept. 11, 1948, my father, Khalilullah Nuristani, was born under the same burden of greatness. In retrospect, he must have believed that he could fulfill what had been his father’s unfulfilled destiny. My father became a tireless fighter for a free Afghanistan.”
Afghan writer Kakail Nuristani compiled photos, letters and documents from his father’s life, working with Adam Klein to tell a fascinating story that spans three-generations.
...more“Québec has long been a holdout, but that era’s over. Which makes the students indisputedly right about one thing: the problem with ‘reforms’ like these is that they constitute an abandonment of that old saw, the projet de société.”
Over at The Awl, Rumpus Saturday editor Michelle Dean provides a lesson on the current protests in Québec.
...moreHarriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, reports that poet Joshua Clover and 11 students at UC Davis are potentially facing a $1 million fine and up to 11 years each in prison. Their crime? Peaceful protest.
A petition is circulating which demands that UC Davis drop all charges, and if I hear about any other plans to pressure the UC Davis administration, I’ll update this post to reflect them.
...more“Just as women don’t hate Samantha Brick for being beautiful, and feminism hasn’t ruined anyone’s chances to be married, and no one thinks mothers don’t work, and there is no argument between working and stay-at-home mothers, there is no contradiction between the sexual imagination of some and sexual politics for all.”
At The Guardian, Hadley Freeman skewers the strategy–at play in both politics and media–that seeks to inspire in-fighting amongst women thereby distracting from actual policies or content.
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In the fall of 2008 I was chatting with a woman I know about the upcoming presidential election. She was in her 60s, single, a funky dresser, world traveler, and amateur artist—what my mom would have called a “free-spirited Auntie Mame type”— so I was surprised by what she had to say: She was voting Republican.