Weaponization of Antisemitism vs. the Legacies of Black Scholarship
Universities in the US of America used to be institutions for not just free speech, but revolutionary political speech. From the student movement that ended Vietnam War to the radical uprising (“Intifada” to use the translated term that is frightening militarist warmongers who are “grilling” university presidents today while their funded military is grilling children in Gaza) of civil rights movement across the country, to Black Panthers and freeing political prisoners movements to anti-nuclear war peacenik movements - American students have always been at the front of the struggle calling for end to militarist occupation and interventions into any and every country that the US imperialism has tried to harm. And the situation with Palestine will be no different.
Rally for Abortion Justice Unites Activists against Texas Ban
Thousands of New Yorkers came together in solidarity this weekend to “Rally for Abortion Justice”, and to reiterate that they won’t tolerate any attacks on reproductive freedom. With a goal to fight until we have abortion access for all, marchers gathered at Foley Square…
80 Lines: Bob Dylan
I have (randomly) selected about 80 lines from among the various chats Bob Dylan has had with journalists over the decades. Here they are, in no particular order.
COVID-19 and Workplace Psychology
Never in recent history has there been such an acute need to understand collective grief. With easily a majority of people having suffered either direct losses of family members or of those that they have come to know, there is suddenly and predictably a shortage in knowing who to reach out to.
Florida Becomes the First State in the South to Adopt $15 Minimum Wage
The movement to enforce $15 hourly wage had started off with New York fast-food workers back in 2012, who put up a unified movement that attracted global headlines.
Remembering the Unforgettable: Professor Katherine McAdams
Katherine C. McAdams who was an associate professor Emerita in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, is no more. She was my professor, philosopher, and academic guide. She had worked in public relations and reporting, and had been teaching research methods, writing and editing since 1979.
Thank you, Bernie Sanders
Watching and covering Sanders rallies has been an incredible journey for me. His decency, ethics, admiration for the teeming millions of Americans across social locations — were all superlative.
New York - Bleeding, Dying, Living.
The city which used to make a year seem like a fleeting moment, that made one crave for time to halt because too many things were happening at the same time; now it makes an hour seem like years. The clock of pace has stopped for New York. Its only a tick-tock of death counts. There is no Manic Monday to complain about. There is nothing to thank God for any Friday.
Shirley Chisholm: The Original Boss Lady of American Politics
Even while positing herself as a candidate beyond gender and race identifications, the way Shirley Chisholm managed to constantly draw national attention to problems of sexism and racism perplexed many.
U.S. Women’s Soccer Players bring glory; receive less
Considering the fact that an unequal hike in prize money has already been declared for future World Cup appearances, it seems the end to this battle for equal pay is nowhere near.
When women journalists prevailed over New York Times
What is instructive in this context is that the Fashion/Style page was being subverted with women's rights issues by the women journalists of the day.
Sridevi - A fan's tribute
Sridevi is no more. This is my personal tribute to India’s only multilingual superstar.
A Closer Look At “The Enemy of the People”
"With so much recent mainstream press evocation of Joseph Stalin and claims of “enemy of the people” comparisons to Donald Trump we thought it timely to share some recent thoughts on the subject from journalist, professor and writer Saswat Pattanayak. As an additional side note, and given what Pattanayak exposes about the nature and history of the association of a phrase, rather than with Stalin some of us would be more familiar with the play by Henrik Ibsen and further note that this is also where the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke got the inspiration for the spelling of his own middle name." (Dr. Jared Ball, iMixWhatILike)
Brahminism, Patriarchy, Supreme Court And The Justice
It is the patriarchal fixation with fathers and husbands as feudal heads of indian households where sanctities are attached to family units, that leads to normalization of corruption in a judicial system that is unsurprisingly spearheaded by the brahminical chiefs.
Padmavati, Karni Sena and the crisis of Hinduism
The externalization of the bad guys from Hinduism by calling them fringe or corrupt or evil is a deliberate ploy to sanitize the religion of the possibility that it could be intrinsically capable of producing not just the good guys but also the bad ones.
No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist USA
Rise and Resist protest against Donald Trump’s rhetorics surrounding Charlottesville
Donald Trump and the ritual of shock and awe in American duopoly
Trump is the logical apotheosis of humanized capitalism, where the winners take all, where executive decisions are sacrosanct, where we feel it right to sponsor deaths and tortures and waterboarding and drones and assassinations and weaponization of regions that we consider inferior, says Saswat Pattanayak.
Matter & Consciousness: Revisiting Lokayata
Lokayata did not deny the consciousness so much as it complicated it. Instead of acceding to an assumption that consciousness could be a peculiarity of the spirit, it depicted consciousness as an attribute of the body. This occurred, according to them, because whereas the material elements comprise the living body, consciousness is produced in it.
Sahir Ludhianvi - Communist and a Poet
Sahir’s dream coincided with that of a revolutionary who is capable of imagining not just a world without borders, but also a world without prison cells – a song that is so relevant today in light of sedition charges routinely applied to silence independent thinkers of the society Sahir once had sought to liberate.