When we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Gideon ruling this year — recognizing the right to counsel conferred by Gideon’s persistence and Justice Hugo Black’s resolve — we are erasing a far longer and richer legacy: the history of the women who invented the idea of the public defender.
What is going to stop ex-President Trump from returning to the White House is voters refusing to vote for him. Indictments and prosecutions can play a role in that inasmuch as they are the society communicating to itself what is okay and what is not. They can play a role in shaping public opinion but they are no replacement for an election.
Working people never stopped fighting as neoliberalism was imposed. Bouts of resistance kept resurfacing, but remained localized and politically narrow. In the absence of structures that could give workers confidence in collective struggles, workers were left with survival tactics that came at great cost and unintentionally reproduced neoliberalism’s individualist ethos.
When the newly elected Governor of Oklahoma committed his state to Christian nationalism,
the poet and war veteran H.C. Palmer raises some objections to such gestures.
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