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Roundup

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/25/2021

    What Hank Aaron Told Me

    The author received a touching reply to a fan letter he wrote Hank Aaron in 1972. Writing a book about Aaron years later, he realized he didn't know the half of the burdens Aaron carried in pursuit of baseball immortality. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/22/2021

    White Americans have Weaponized the Idea of Girlhood

    by Crystal Webster

    The concept of childhood has elastic boundaries; in a racist society, those boundaries stretch to portray whites as innocents deserving protection and Black youth as dangerous and susceptible to punishment. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    1/15/2021

    Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning

    by Daniel Bessner and Ben Burgis

    Overreaction to the horror of January 6 risks giving license to a host of new internal security measures that will likely threaten democracy more than the misguided and futile efforts of Donald Trump and his followers to overturn the election. 

  • SOURCE: LA Progressive
    1/17/2021

    Immigrants, Trump, Pope Francis, and Two Films

    by Walter G. Moss

    Two recent films evoke Pope Francis's message opposing insular nationalism, a stance which echoes the inclusionary nationalism of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Monthly
    1/15/2021

    Impeach Trump, But Not for What He Said on January 6th

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    There's ample justification for Trump's second impeachment in his pattern of disregard for democracy and efforts to subvert the vote count. But reviving the charge of incitment of insurrection opens the door to ideological prosecution and the suppression of free speech. 

  • SOURCE: Public Books
    1/18/2021

    When Black Humanity is Denied

    by Edna Bonhomme

    Enlightenment institutions – the prison, science, and asylums – are organized through binaries that draw boundaries between people who are and are not able to exercise freedom. Black artistic work supports Black freedom by challenging those boundaries. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    1/15/2021

    In a Civil War, Accountability Must Precede Healing

    by Melody Barnes and Caroline E. Janney

    "With no consequences for their acts of rebellion, the months after Appomattox saw former Confederates regain local and state control and bend it to their purposes."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/18/2021

    Warnock’s Election Reminds Us that Black Churches are Vital to Democratic Success

    by Robert Greene II

    Democratic politicians must recognize the historical role of Black churches not just as gathering places where visiting politicians may speak to voters, but as organizing spaces where political agendas are formed. Dems who wish to emulate Rev. Warnock's victory need to embrace Black churches in a deep way.

  • SOURCE: Washington Monthly
    1/18/2021

    What the Founders Would Have Done with Trump

    by Frank O. Bowman III

    "The impeachment mechanism written into the American Constitution owes its structure to a set of very specific lessons the Framers drew from British and classical history," writes a constitutional law scholar. Those lessons point to the validity of trying Trump in the Senate even after the end of his presidency.

  • SOURCE: New York Review of Books
    1/19/2021

    Why It’s Time to Take Secessionist Talk Seriously

    by Richard Kreitner

    "The Confederate flags the insurgents carried through the Capitol weren’t about the past, but the future." (note: Subscription required to read source article.)