Blog

 
Blog

Quote of note


“They are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive.”

— Suha Arafat, referring to the senior Palestinian officials who arrived today in Paris to visit her ailing husband, Yasser Arafat. Mr. Arafat, who has led the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and who has been both the figurehead and the political leader of the Palestinians for roughly four decades, has been sequestered in a military hospital in Paris amidst rumors that he has fallen into an irreversible coma. It is unclear who will succeed him as the next Palestinian leader.  

—Mimi Hanaoka

  

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Blog

Whose land is it anyway?


issue banner

Presidential elections always demand a degree of individual and collective introspection, ranging from questions of policymaking, patriotism, and citizenship to the utility (or futility) of indirect elections and grassroots political activism. For the candidates, the media, activists on the street, and even InTheFray readers, this election season has proven to be no exception to — and, at times, an exaggeration of — this political rule.

In this issue of InTheFray, we examine the many faces of democracy and the subject that has dominated the news, dinner conversations, and rallies of all varieties throughout the United States — and across much of the world — since at least last spring: the 2004 U.S. presidential election. While InTheFray Assistant Editor Michelle Chen discloses how her trip to China inspired unexpected patriotism in The other half, our literary channel, IMAGINE, borrows a chapter from Opio Sokoni’s Making struggle sexy to elucidate how the American criminal justice system thrives on institutional racism and classism to fill prisons.

Looking beyond the policymaking and cultural concerns of the election, InTheFray moves Inside the beltway, outside politics to explore the deliberations of a traditionally apathetic U.S. citizen, Marna Bunger over whether she and millions of other undecided — and often uninspired — voters can make their votes count in what many have termed “the most important election of our lives.” In Clout concerns, meanwhile, Christopher White takes a look at another angle of the democratic process: the struggle of College Republicans to help their party win the election one college student at a time — with GOP support that is far from five-star quality.

Of course, given that the 2000 election shook so many people’s faith in the electoral process, it’s worth asking whether politics as usual — with thousands of new voters thrown into the mix — can restore faith in the democratic process this year. To answer this question, InTheFray Editor Laura Nathan takes Salman Rushdie’s Step Across This Line Off the Shelf to make sense of this election — and the American democratic process — from a non-native’s perspective in Where the two elections shall meet. While the answers may not be written in stone, this month’s book club selection just may hold the keys to American democracy’s creative potential or prove that progress is off-limits.

There’s only one way to find out. So don’t just sit there. Get out and read — er, vote.

Laura Nathan
InTheFray Editor
Brooklyn, New York

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Blog

Quote of note


“If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal, and the ideal is that marriage ought to be, and should be, a union of a man and a woman.”

— Karl Rove, in a statement aired today on Fox News Sunday. Mr. Rove, as Senior Advisor to President Bush, is largely responsible for President Bush’s rise to the White House and for engineering many of the president’s policies.

As a testament to Karl Rove’s disconcerting grip on both President Bush’s ear and on American policy, John DiIulio, former director of the White House Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives, stated: “Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office.”

—Mimi Hanaoka

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Blog

And now … the liberal pacesetters of 2004


Like many of his liberal counterparts, Mr. Anthony Romero may have grudgingly conceded to President Bush’s victory last Wednesday — but not without a subversive plan. As executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Romero is heading a national campaign to mobilize Americans against government-sanctioned infringements on civil liberty.

Last week in The New York Times, the ACLU called on civil libertarians to intensify their efforts to oppose the Bush administration’s “unrelenting assault” on citizens’ rights. Among the claims listed were that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft have destabilized checks and balances by labeling American citizens and others as “enemy combatants,” and furthermore, have imposed government-funded religion by subsidizing faith-based programs with taxpayer money.

Mr. Romero issued a statement shortly afterward addressing the administration’s purported deception of American citizens.  “The Bush administration has cynically used the American people’s genuine concern for safety to limit and erode fundamental rights most Americans don’t know they’ve lost,” Mr. Romero said. “Even republicans like Bob Barr agree with the ACLU that this administration has gone too far, too fast, in eroding our freedoms in the name of national security.”

Within a single day, the advertisement yielded more than $65,000 from unsolicited donors — and perhaps, helped to establish groundwork for the next four years of liberal activism.      

—Toyin Adeyemi

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: