October 03, 2021 Americans Who Tell the Truth AWTT has been so focused on the release of Truth Tellers — the new documentary film of artist Robert Shetterly’s story — and the publication of Shetterly’s new book, Portraits of Racial Justice, that we almost overlooked some other notable recent publications. Tarana Burke‘s eagerly-anticipated life story, Unbound, was released by Flatiron […]
September 27, 2021 The Writer’s Almanac Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book Silent Spring was published on this date in 1962. “If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and […]
September 08, 2021 New Village Press New Village Press releases artist Robert Shetterly’s book Portraits of Racial Justice on September 19, 2021. The first in a series, the book features 50 of Shetterly’s exquisite color portraits of inspirational social changemakers. Essays by Sherri Mitchell, Ai-Jen Poo, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and Dave Zirin open the book. “Blending history, social commentary, […]
August 27, 2021 Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Read about how Oklahoman Allyson Reneau, Katherine Spillar of the Feminist Majority Foundation, and other advocates are trying to rescue women from Afghanistan. “[A]ctivists, including Dolores Huerta, Gloria Steinem, Cecile Richards and Mavis Leno (who crusaded for the rights of Afghan women in the 1990s), signed an open letter to Biden and Vice […]
August 14, 2021 Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American “On this day in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. … “The … Act is known for its payments to older Americans, but it did far more than that. It established unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected […]
August 13, 2021 Maine Public Radio “There is a long history of fine artists using their work as a form of protest against injustice and war—think Picasso’s Guernica or Diego Rivera’s frescoes. Several contemporary Maine artists fit into this tradition. We discuss the role of art as activism, both historically and today. This program ties […]
August 10, 2021 The New York Times Magazine “Right now in northern Minnesota, the Canadian oil-and-gas-transport company Enbridge is building an expansion of a pipeline, Line 3, to carry oil through fragile parts of the state’s watersheds as well as treaty-protected tribal lands. Winona LaDuke, a member of the local Ojibwe tribe and a longtime […]
August 05, 2021 The Perquimans Weekly While celebrating the 87th birthday of Wendell Berry today, we ran across this earnest review of Berry’s book Jayber Crow – published recently in The Perquimans Weekly, out of Hertford, North Carolina. “It’s one of those rare books that when you read the last few words in the last sentence, you want to take a step […]
August 04, 2021 PBS It was on this day in 1964 that the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were found in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. The activists, all in their 20s, had disappeared June 21. It was “Freedom Summer,” an effort to raise the dismal voter registration […]
July 28, 2021 William Sturkey, The Atlantic William Sturkey’s tribute to Bob Moses, who died on July 25th, reveals the heart of an extraordinary activist: “Moses entered the darkest places in the country with the light of an idea. He believed that everyday people could change the world, and he carried an almost illogical vision of […]