October 2, 2013
Joe Atkins
Stories this photo appears in:
National
OPINION: Sycophantic Dem Establishment Aligning Against Bernie Sanders
University of Mississippi professor Joe Atkins, a Bernie Sanders supporter, argues that the Democratic "establishment" is working against the Vermont senator's chance at the presidency.
National
OPINION: Mississippi: A Microcosm of the U.S.
Way back in 1964, the year of "Freedom Summer" and the disappearance and death of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, the "singing journalist" Phil Ochs offered this elegy: …
Economy
OPINION: NAFTA to USMCA, An Even Trade?
"Demagogues have winning ways, especially with the man who has no one else to whom he can turn in his troubles," Mauldin wrote in his book, "Back Home," first published …
Immigration
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: New Orleans, A Good Idea
A different kind of musician, Bob Dylan, says New Orleans is a city where the ghosts of the dead and the laughter of the living are never far apart.
Civil Rights
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.
Education
OPINION: Tickled to See Teenagers Restarting the Revolution
Writer and champion of social justice Dorothy Day once said that "fighting for a cause is part of the zest of life. ... What we need is a revolution. Each …
Economy
OPINION: Art and Politics in Mississippi
This is a state justly proud of its contributions to the nation's musical, literary and artistic heritage.
Immigration
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 …
Economy
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."
Education
OPINION: The Trojan Horse of Education
My high school had one, and maybe yours did, too—the toughest teacher in the school.
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 …
Civil Rights
Fighting an Old War
While Russia and Confederate statues deserve media coverage, they are also easy targets that don't challenge the corporate state.
Business
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 …
National
Finding Great U.S. Journalism
Trump is waging a constant battle with what he considers the purveyors of "fake news," while those same news outlets struggle to keep up with the stream of misinformation and …
Development
A Pre-Huey Long Mississippi
When Huey Long first swept onto the political scene in Louisiana in the 1920s, the state was the quintessential southern backwater.
National
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 …
Bill Minor: Mississippi’s Eyes and Ears
Bill Minor wrote with authority. He had been a frontlines warrior ever since his first big story in Mississippi, the funeral of ranting, racist U.S. Sen. Theodore Bilbo.
Politics
Danny Glover and the Rights of Workers
I'll never forget Danny Glover as the drifter Moze in the 1984 film "Places in the Heart." It was a Depression-era story of a widowed mother in the South trying …
National
Political Homelessness
It's hard not to feel a little politically homeless these days. I'm thinking of that old folk song, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child."
National
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, …
National
Why Hillary Clinton Lost
Neal Gabler and many of the anti-Trump post-election protesters are wrong when they issue a blanket indictment of all Trump voters, millions of whom voted out of an economic desperation …
National
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.
National
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 …
Business
The Rights of Working People
A longstanding French tradition upholds the rights of working people—and it goes back as far as the 1789 revolution with the so-called "sans-culottes" who were too poor to afford the …
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 …
State
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, …
Business
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 …
Business
Mississippi: Amazing for Film
Mississippi and its local communities benefit when the cameras roll here, whether they're big studio Hollywood cameras or those of independent filmmakers.
Politics
Bernie Sanders: For the People
Southerners are friendly folk, so Bernie Sanders is going to hear a lot of "Y'all come!" as he takes his populist presidential campaign to Dixie. The question is: Will they …
Business
Seeing Hope in Hard Times
Seeing voters in Louisiana and workers in Mississippi and Tennessee finally stand up to the political and corporate fog machine and assert their rights gives me hope for 2016.
Immigration
The Music of Immigrants
We're in the century-old Confiteria Ideal listening to the mother of all tangos, "La Cumparsita," and I'm thinking about the somewhat different world into which the tango was born.
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 …
Civil Rights
Waving the Wrong Flag
Working-class southern whites have a right to feel rebellious. The problem is they're waving the wrong flag to show it.
Politics
Howard Industries’ Secret Life
Many of Howard Industries' predominantly black workers say they're underpaid for the hard, grueling work they do, but negotiations with management went nowhere after at least 16 meetings.
Business
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."
B.B. King’s Universal Language
Blues music may be singing the "No Future Tomorrow" blues once B.B. King hangs up his guitar for good, Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer warned back in 2004.
Politics
Trouble in Mississippi
Look at Mississippi under Republican grass-eater rule in both the governor's mansion and state Legislature. A lopsided tax system that favors corporations and the rich has contributed to one of …
Civil Rights
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 Long Apprenticeship
Some of my favorite fiction writers got their training banging out newspaper stories, like hardboiled master James Cain, but Hemingway had another point when he said getting "out of it …
Business
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.
Immigration
Jesus, the Migrant
In her new book "Jesus Was A Migrant," writer Deirdre Cornell says migration is central to "biblical spirituality" and the chosen people themselves were "displaced, uprooted, homeless" migrants.
Politics
‘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 …
Politics
Mississippi: The Next Stage for Progressivism?
A lot is changing in my home state, and the change here says much about the South today.
Song for Charlie
We went to see one of jazz's great bassists, Charlie Haden, and his Quartet West. Rachel and Michael had never heard of him and had no interest in jazz, but …
Politics
Cochran, McDaniel: Bourbon vs. Populist, Again
The parallels between the Populist movement of the 1890s and today's Tea Party are striking, even though crucial differences also exist.
Business
A Bust for Barbour’s Corporate Welfare
Chiquita, known as the United Fruit Company before that name became synonymous with political bullying and corruption in Latin America, announced recently that it was moving its operation at the …
When You’re Down and Out
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who rode into the Governor's Mansion decrying the evils of undocumented migrant workers, says he also doesn't want "unions involved in our businesses or our public …
Civil Rights
The Police State That Was Mississippi
One out of every four adult Americans now has a police record. Louisiana and Mississippi lead the nation in putting people behind bars.
Labor Rights, Civil Rights
A group of workers, preachers and activists traveled from Mississippi to Detroit recently to proclaim what should be a core issue of 2014. "Labor rights are civil rights," Open Door …
Mandela and the South
When Nelson Mandela spoke to the U.S. Congress on June 26, 1990, the godfather of modern-day Republican obstructionism, the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, wasn't in the …
The Immorality of Incarceration
Mariachi guitarist Johnny Mora's bout with drugs was years in his past, but the legacy of jail time it led to is as much a companion as his guitar when …
Southern Tradition and Hypocrisy
The ruling class in the South doesn’t tolerate challenges to its rule well.
Last of the Letter Writers
Sandy Margolis, the last of the letter writers, died at age 74 two years ago this September.
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