Debate on the global economy is intense, provoked especially by the protests in Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and Prague. But the arguments often come without real proposals. With this in mind, Dissent posed the following question to several commentators: In recent years, the left in the United States and abroad has raised tough questions about “globalization.” What institutions—or reforms of existing institutions—would you advocate as the centerpiece of a program of alternatives proposed by the left? Please present at least two or three practical ideas and the means by which to carry them out.—Eds.
Four years ago, when I began interviewing people who work in New York’s Internet industry, I was struck by an irony: even though their employers and clients were some of the largest media and technology conglomerates in the world, workers …
Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans by Daniel Cavicchi Oxford University Press, 1998, 256 pp., $19.95 It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen by Eric Alterman Little, Brown, 1999, 282 …
The neighbors of Our Lady of Mercy church were aghast. The archdiocese wanted to build an assisted-living home for thirty senior citizens on the church’s eleven-acre property in an expensive Washington, D.C., suburb. The aggrieved residents quickly collected money to …
In this space last year (“Carte Blanche, Bête Noire,” Winter 2000), I described some aspects of the emerging European and worldwide movement against corporate-driven globalization, ending on an optimistic note (“it’s . . . a great time to be politically …
Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene by Adolph Reed, Jr. The New Press, 2000, 211 pp., $25 Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era by Adolph Reed, Jr. Minnesota, 1999, 303 …
It is often said that force is no argument. That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove. . . . It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving stone. …
In 1998, Diane Mancus was principal of Houston’s Ser Niños Elementary School, located in a poor neighborhood a few miles from Rice School, a K-8 institution smack in the center of one of the city’s wealthiest enclaves. Mancus remembers the …
The people have spoken,” said James A. Baker the Third, after George Bush’s dubious Florida victory (of .009 percent) was certified (by his campaign co-chair there). Not mentioned: Al Gore’s 325,000 national plurality. Can one express more contempt of democratic …
What are the prospects for a multiracial coalition emerging on the right? George W. Bush’s campaign efforts to court voters of color, as well as the spectacle of inclusion and diversity at last summer’s Republican National Convention, have made this …
Is there such a thing as a universally shared human nature? And if there is, is it essentially benevolent, malevolent, or some mixture of the two? Moral and political philosophers have debated these questions for centuries. In recent years, with …
In early 1945, with the war not yet over, Jean-Paul Sartre visited the United States for the first time. He traveled with a group of correspondents who were invited for the sake of influencing French public opinion favorably toward the …
I am only one of the just war theorists whose work Laurie Calhoun criticizes, but because I am the local one, it seems right that I respond in Dissent. She and I have an old disagreement, and I am not …
Imagine: You awaken in the middle of the night to the sound of piercing sirens. Suddenly the ceiling comes crashing down. You are trapped under rubble, bones broken, joints popped from sockets. Blood pours down your face from the gash …
From Seattle to Washington and Prague, it has been a noisy year for those trying to democratize international financial institutions (IFIs). Critics of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have made their …
