Dispatches From the Culture Wars – January 28, 2025
- Will Government Workers Stand Up?
- Fighting Back for Immigrant Rights
- Mutual Aid Amid LA Fires
- Revanchist Racism
- The Deal With Elon
- How Amarillo Stopped Abortion Travel Ban
- Religious Schools Grab For Tax Dollars
- Climate Challenges
- Naming Babies After Weapons
- Criticism and “Talking Shit”
Will Government Workers Stand Up?
By Judith Levine
The Guardian
How can the civil service fight back? By serving. A union’s most potent weapon is the strike. Paradoxically, these workers’ most radical act today would be to refuse to stop working. Americans must recognize and support the myriad, often invisible, services that these public servants provide us and demand that they be protected and paid to keep providing them.
Fighting Back for Immigrant Rights
• ICE Unchained By Eleanor Bader, Truthout
• Labor Can Fight Back By Natascha Elena Uhlmann and Sarah Lazare, Labor Notes
• Starting an ICE Watch By Nikki Marín Baena, Teen Vogue
Revanchist Racism
• DOJ Cuts By Antonio Pequeño IV, Forbes
• Disabling the Civil Rights Act By Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information
• Teaching Lies By Jesse Hagopian, The Nation
By Schuyler Mitchell
Truthout
Since the Palisades and Eaton fires roared to life, Los Angeles residents have rapidly mobilized to help each other. Dozens of mutual aid networks, already in place before the wildfires, sprung into action; organizations were flooded with supplies, money and volunteers. Mutual aid organizing of this depth isn’t new in Los Angeles.
• You Gotta Believe By Zachary Shahan, Clean Technica
• Paging Walter Benjamin By Robert Zaretsky, Forward
How Amarillo Stopped Abortion Travel Ban
By Shoshanna Ehrlich
Ms.
On Nov. 5, 2024, voters in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo resoundingly defeated (59 to 41 percent) a proposition that would have declared their town a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Amarillo now enjoys the distinction of being the first city in the U.S. where voters rejected a post-Roe abortion travel ban.
Religious Schools Grab For Tax Dollars
One of the most dramatic expansions of private school vouchers in the country is making it possible for all Ohio families — even the richest among them — to receive public money to pay for their children’s tuition.
• The Big Fix By David G. Victor and Charles Sabel, Boston Review
• The Class Aspect By Keerti Gopal, Inside Climate News
By Caroline Bologna
HuffPost
Weapon-inspired monikers that parents have chosen in recent years include Caliber, Shooter, Trigger, Blade and Cannon, as well as brand-related names like Wesson, Remington, Colt, Ruger and Winchester. Arson, Cutter and Dagger are among the other names with a violent edge in recent data from the Social Security Administration.
By Seph Rodney
Hyperallergic
The general understanding of public critique is that it’s reductive, but it can also look to create an imagined future. More than being punitive or dismissive, public criticism can provide an opportunity to collectively look at a thing differently, and writing such a piece can be a collaborative venture. It can also be interrogative.