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Santa Ana: Living Behind Cardboard Walls

Capital and Main Staff Capital and Main
Isabelle Lopez, her husband and their dog live in a tiny room, perhaps 130 square feet, in the impoverished Lacy neighborhood in the Orange County city of Santa Ana. The room has cardboard walls, which Lopez’s husband painted white to provide at least an illusion they were solid. On those walls, she has tacked family photos and a large reproduction of a painting titled Angel de la Guarda, surrounded by cutout paper butterflies.

The Die-Hard Republicans Who Say #NeverTrump

Megan McArdle Bloomberg
Thousands of people are tweeting with the hashtag #NeverTrump. I invited lifelong Republicans who had decided that they couldn’t vote for Trump in the general, even if he got the nomination, to tell me their stories. Hundreds of e-mails poured in. I was surprised by the number of people, their passion, and their breadth. Here's what these folks are thinking.

The Scholar Denied : W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology

Monica Bell Los Angeles Review of Books
This new book argues that W. E. B. Du Bois was the first of the USA's modern sociologists. Du Bois's empirically-based studies of African Americans at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries are models of sociological research. Aldon Morris details this legacy, which academic Sociology still does not universally acknowledge. In this review, Monica Bell considers the significance of Morris's argument.

His Paula Deen Takedown Went Viral. But This Food Scholar Isn’t Done Yet.

Michaele Weissman The Washington Post
In June 2013, shortly after disclosure of Deen’s past use of the n-word made her the culinary world’s reigning persona non grata, Twitty posted an open letter to her on Africulinaria.com Twitty told Deen that far more repugnant to him than the n-word was “the near universal erasure of the black presence from American culinary memory.” How did this self-trained historical cook and unaffiliated scholar come to be recognized a a figure in the world of culinary scholarship?

‘Spotlight’ Gets Investigative Journalism Right

Stephen Engelberg ProPublica
The movie, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture, (now we know it won Best Picture) vividly captures the mix of frustration, drudgery and excitement that goes into every great investigative story. Where liberties were taken, and there were a few, they are in line with the realities of the news business.

A New Wave of Climate Insurgents Defines Itself as Law-Enforcers

Jeremy Brecher Waging Nonviolence
From May 4-15, 350.org, Greenpeace and many other organizations — notably grassroots movement organizations from every continent — will hold a global week of action called Break Free From Fossil Fuels. Break Free From Fossil Fuels participants will define themselves to the movement, the public and the courts not as criminals but as law-enforcers trying to enforce legal rights and halt governments and corporations from committing the greatest crime in human history.