Dispatches From the Culture Wars – June 18, 2024

Life in Brooklyn

Portside
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Chispa NV joined community leaders from Iowa and Nebraska in calling on Berkshire Hathaway, the parent company of Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power (NV Energy), to stop polluting our air with methane gas. Credit , Chispa
  1. Rejecting Democracy
  2. Life in Brooklyn
  3. Gender, Sexuality and Southern Baptists
  4. Active Duty Service Staff Oppose Gaza Policy
  5. Fossil Fuels Fuel Civil Disobedience
  6. Texas Bishop Takes On MAGA Governor
  7. Restaurant Workers and the Big Heat
  8. Is Anti-Anti-Semitism Anti-Semitic?
  9. Gay Theorists in Retreat
  10. Rethinking Reconstruction

 

Rejecting Democracy

By Donie O’Sullivan
CNN

These Trump supporters say America isn’t a democracy. And they’re okay with it.

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Life in Brooklyn

Gender, Sexuality and Southern Baptists

By Sarah Stankorb
Slate

The Southern Baptist Conventions’s resolution to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization has been getting headlines, but a look at their entire annual meeting shows that gender and sexuality are at the heart of the denomination’s battles over its future.

Active Duty Service Staff Oppose Gaza Policy

By Marjorie Cohn
Truthout

A coalition of active-duty service members, veterans and G.I. rights groups have launched a campaign called Appeal for Redress V2 to encourage military personnel to tell Congress to stop funding genocide in Gaza. It is modeled after the 2006 Appeal for Redress issued during the occupation of Iraq. 

Fossil Fuels Fuel Civil Disobedience

By Amy Pritchard
The Guardian

I took action in the hope that people in those offices, and in the wider JPMorgan Chase corporation, and people in general, are moved to take the next bold step that they can, to make drastic change. When you see doctors and grandmothers breaking your windows in objection to your work, I believe this has great potential for change.

Texas Bishop Takes On MAGA Governor

By Nick Mordowanec
Newsweek

Bishop Mark Seitz has seen countless immigrants come and go during his years of service in the southern border city of El Paso, telling Newsweek that challenging the policies and narratives of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other officials is sometimes necessary to protect the most vulnerable.

Restaurant Workers and the Big Heat

By Frida Garza
Grist

The confluence of indoor and outdoor heat has inspired some workers to unionize and fight for stronger safeguards at work. Employees at a Seattle-based sandwich chain recently secured historic protections against extreme heat in their first union contract. 

Is Anti-Anti-Semitism Anti-Semitic?

By Roman Altshuler
Salon

Beyond taking on the perceived penchant for progressivism on college campuses, Republicans sense an even more powerful weapon: Now charges of antisemitism can be used to attack protesting students, while manipulating the narrative to make Democrats appear as the party of social disorder, while also undermining Democrats before the November election. 

Gay Theorists in Retreat

By Samuel Huneke
The Baffler

Gay men, once at the vanguard of progressive change, are now regularly denounced by queer theory’s practitioners as “agents and dupes” of the dreaded status quo. “The academic field dedicated to overcoming our vast inheritance of homophobia,”  Tae-ho Kim and Blake Smith continue, now “ironically perpetuates it.”

Rethinking Reconstruction

By Eric Herschthal
The New Republic

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.