Given that our new Vice President is a member of the powerful, but shadowy, Washington, D.C. evangelical group “The Family” (officially, the Fellowship Foundation), Jeff Sharlet’s 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power would seem worth looking at again. And it is hardly a reassuring re-read for anybody already …
It all started innocently enough. I and some other members of the Tucson Chapter of the National Writers Union had been noticing that books which we’d been intending to or had already read — written by some very established international and “mid-list” literary authors — were disappearing from our public library’s shelves to, it seemed, …
Read moreAre Billionaire Foundations Dumbing Down Our Public Library?
The original Uncle Tom was the slave-as-Christ-like figure in abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-known book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Begun in 1851, her series of stories, intended to depict the evils of slavery, stretched into 40 magazine installments. Publication in novel form brought international acclaim and made Stowe a successful author. Unless he defines it differently, …
The sense that “the fix is in” on a particular issue, the assurances of our elected representatives notwithstanding, is sure to give community activists that “uh-oh” feeling. Some of us bus riders felt it when a member of the City Council told us that the “redevelopment” of the Ronstadt Transit Center would be a “win-win” …
Read moreThe Fix Is In at the AZ Statehouse: A Review of “The Cactus Caucus”
In a demographic survey of downtown Tucson’s future population — as it is presented in the winning proposal for the building complex to replace the Ronstadt Transit Center — the Occupied Tucson Citizen has ascertained that this population will be overwhelmingly white and middle- or upper-class. Of the 101 total of clip art people shown …
Read moreClass Cleansing? Downtown’s Future Demographic in Pictures