March 2011 has been a cruel month for America’s progressives and liberals. Two of their best known voices, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, quit their columns on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times.
Readers will miss them. Right-wingers will praise them as worthy opponents and chuckle. Does their absence from our most prestigious newspaper mean anything more significant for the progressive agenda or for journalism?
Collective bargaining, FOIA’s and school paper censorship are among the news being covered throughout the Midwest this week.
Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer prize winning journalist was at Southern Illinois University Carbondale to talk with students about her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns”. After a short discussion about being a journalist and her book, Wilkerson opened the room up for questions. One student raised his hand and asked her how her experience as a woman, not just a woman but a black woman, affected her and her work. “I never really had the option to worry about that,” Wilkerson said. “I’m not saying there weren’t challenges, I just didn’t have time to think about it.”
Jim Crow had many faces. One face of Jim Crow was the simple act of many white southerners stepping on a bus. If they didn’t want to sit with people in the front of the bus, they grabbed the colored-only sign and moved it back a row. Blacks in the back would then be forced ever farther to the back, while just one white person sat in the seat for whites only.
Much of our expanded “Midwest” is dealing with questions surrounding unions, teachers and the political ramifications of new regimes trying to make sweeping, sometimes unpopular moves. The recent political upheaval in Wisconsin is creating tremors felt across the country, but especially in the Midwest. One key story is the latest news about Indiana prosecutor Carlos Lam resigning after suggesting to Walker that he fake an attack on himself.