social justice

Fascism American Style: Il Duce, Il Donald

May 22, 2016 by Ed Mooney

As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: civil rights, politics, social justice

Power to Intrude, Illustration by Ben Jennings, Prospect Magazine, February 2016

Privacy and Power

March 28, 2016 by fritztucker

Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to call for surveillance of oppressors, or imagine ways that surveillance could be used to create a world devoid of oppression. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about our current obsession with privacy. In The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, criminals, ethics, literature, New York City, philosophy, politics, reading, social justice, technology, women, writing

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Technology in the Age of Inequality

March 13, 2016 by fritztucker

Last week, I attended the Technology, Privacy, and the Future of Education symposium at NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communication department. One panelist, NYU Sociology’s Richard Arum, addressed the impact of technology on education-as-vocation—a subject on which I recommend Sugata Mitra’s self-organized, child-driven pedagogy. The other panelists focused primarily on digital technology’s impact on educational administration. Debates arose around the development of online-only curricula, apps that send parents reports on how late their children arrive to class, and the ethical implications […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, education, ethics, History, New York City, politics, science, social justice, technology

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Narrative, Performance, Selves & Solitude

January 3, 2016 by Ed Mooney

Nothing is more fascinating — and frustrating to others — than our capacity to manipulate the image or story we present to others. In an acute way this capacity to pretend or impersonate raises the question of who we are beneath public appearances. The clash between public appearance and underlying reality plays into the hands of those who deceive, sometimes in criminal activities, sometimes just as part of a harmless game of charades or a sober theatrical performance. Some persons […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: ethics, philosophy, politics, social justice

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Halloween as Social Movement

November 2, 2015 by fritztucker

In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Holt Paperbacks, 2007), Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the evolution of carnivals; from tribal societies masking and dancing to manufacture group solidarity (Intro, Ch. 1); to feudal festivals that challenged oppressive gender and class relations (Ch. 4). Writes Ehrenreich: Whatever social category you had been boxed into–male or female, rich or poor–carnival was a chance to escape from it. No aspect of carnival has attracted more scholarly attention than the tradition of mocking the powerful, […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: art, books, capitalism, childhood, children, civil rights, gender, History, homosexuality, law, literature, love, politics, social justice, women

Eyes on the Street

October 5, 2015 by fritztucker

Perhaps Jane Jacobs’ most acclaimed contribution to urban studies in The Death and Life of Great American Cities is her “eyes on the street” theory. “[T]here must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street . . . to insure the safety of both residents and strangers” (1992, p. 35). According to Jacobs, this high-density street life not only provides safety, but a shared sense of civic duty. People must take a modicum of […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, History, law, literature, New York City, politics, race, reading, social justice

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The Black Panthers: Revolutions and Dinner Parties

September 20, 2015 by fritztucker

I recently watched Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution. While the documentary is clearly pro-Panther, I nevertheless found it to be a surprisingly critical examination of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The film focuses on many of the well-remembered legacies left by the Panthers–such as their Free Breakfast for Children Program, their armed-yet-non-violent storming of California’s capitol building in Sacramento, and the mass movements to free Huey Newton, the Chicago 7, and the New York 21–as well as a few of the negative […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: African-Americans, art, Black Panthers, capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, film, History, literature, movies, New York City, politics, race, social justice

Jane Jacobs: Intuition vs. Evidence

August 31, 2015 by fritztucker

After having read countless authors who cite Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and having intuitively come to many Jane Jacobs-esque conclusions on my own over the years, I finally decided it was time to read the original work. Many of the conclusions Jacobs comes to resonate with my personal experience. Critiquing the notion that parks are safer for children than streets, Jacobs writes: “what significant change does occur if children are transferred from a lively city street to […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: books, childhood, children, civil rights, History, literature, New York City, social justice, women, writing

Representative Democracy is a Waste of Time

July 19, 2015 by fritztucker

Greece is, in many ways, representative of the world right now. Its economy is floundering due to, among other things, bad loans taken out by self-interested ruling parties aided and abetted by Goldman Sachs. Greek unemployment has reached record highs despite employed Greeks working longer hours than any other members of the Eurozone. The German response to this is austerity: including having Greece cut pensions, and sell its utilities and airports. Even the IMF has determined these measures to be […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, History, politics, social justice, technology