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OPINION: Huddled Masses Yearning to Break Free
The world's largest gulag today is in the United States, where a quarter of the world's prison population is behind bars, and Mississippi is at the heart of that gulag …
OPINION: Immigration and the First Amendment
My late friend Marty Fishgold, a longtime labor writer in New York City, liked to say that "good journalism is a subversive activity" because it tells truth to power.
OPINION: Reform for a Broken System
The Salas family is one of many in Mississippi and the U.S. caught in the madness of the immigration debate and politicians' failure to pass real and meaningful reform to …
OPINION: The Business of Us All
I settled comfortably into my favorite chair one recent night and began watching the best Christmas movie ever: the 1951 version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
Character Acting With Harry Dean Stanton
Harry Dean Stanton, who died this month at the age of 91, was a "character actor," a term he didn't particularly like, one of those working stiffs of the Big …
Fighting an Old War
While Russia and Confederate statues deserve media coverage, they are also easy targets that don't challenge the corporate state.
Nissan: At the Union Crossroads
Poor ol' Mississippi, so poor it can't even keep its roads paved and bridges repaired, has thus far spent $1.3 billion on taxpayer subsidies to keep Nissan in Canton. Nissan …
The Democratic Old Guard
In March, when Bernie Sanders stood on the podium at the "March on Mississippi" in Canton and told the crowd that "the eyes of the country and the eyes of …
A Cold War Mentality
Back in the summer of 1992, just months after the failed coup that led to the fall of communism and Boris Yeltsin's rise to leadership in a new post-Soviet Russia, …
Political War Stories
Many American voters are profoundly unhappy with the candidates from both major parties this election. Fifteen years of war are enough, you two! Americans are sick of war.
A Topsy-Turvy World
I didn't make it to the recent Donald Trump rally in Jackson, but I'm sure my ears would have perked up as soon as the Republican presidential candidate began attacking …
Rebelling Against the Rebellion
Newt Knight is described as a "deserter, renegade and assassin" on the website of the local Sons of the Confederate Veterans chapter in Jones County, but Lew Smith in nearby …
Told You So About #MSLeg
In the poorest, most woe-begotten state in the United States, the Mississippi Troika and their loyal minions have managed to cut even deeper into woefully underfunded state education, health care, …
A French Government Official Weighs in on Nissan
A top deputy in the French National Assembly is calling on the French government to weigh in on behalf of workers at the giant Nissan plant in Canton who want …
Tav Falco’s Evanescent South
Tav Falco, enfant terrible of the 1980s, walked onto the stage at Lafayette's Music Room here, dressed in black, his hair a Nuevo-'50s coif, picked up his guitar and let …
Answering a Need Not Being Met
Dorothy Day House is the only refuge for homeless families in Memphis, Tenn., the nation's poorest large metropolitan area.
Roll the Farmers Union On
A closing sentence in a 1937 Southern Tenant declaration of rights speaks to the hope that union still inspires: "To the disinherited belongs the future."
Backward Toward Selma
Macye Chatman was a wide-eyed, Tennessee-bred, 19-year-old Tuskegee student in 1965 who turned civil-rights activist after seeing the level of racism and segregation practiced in the Deep South.
A Union Presence
Even the unofficial presence of a union and its supporters help workers long before an election is held and can force a company to act right.
‘This Is All A Big Game’
What a gathering it was two years ago when Terry McAuliffe got together with his buddies Bill Clinton and Haley Barbour in Horn Lake to celebrate the plant opening of …
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