Tag: police officers
Once Again in Haiti, Something Must Change
Change can come to Haiti in a hurry, but only when the United States decides it will. Pope John Paul II famously said that “something must change” in Haiti in 1983, during the rule of Jean-Claude Duvalier. But not until 1986, when the State Department decided to abandon Duvalier, did he finally leave the country that he and his father had worked to impoverish.
Yesterday, the United States seemed to make a similar break with Ariel Henry, the de facto
Is Venezuela ‘Fixed’? – The Atlantic
“Venezuela is fixed.” Pundits began saying this on Venezuelan state media a couple of years ago, and it became a mantra for a numbed nation. But even Nicolás Maduro, the president, concedes that the phrase is not quite right. The country is not yet fixed, he said in a press conference in 2022, but it’s very much improving.
“Venezuela is fixed.” Perhaps to Maduro’s annoyance, the mantra has become a sarcastic quip, invoked when the Caracas airport goes dark during
Stopping a School Shooting – The Atlantic
Scot Peterson served for many years as a school resource officer in Broward County, Florida. His job was largely uneventful—he might catch a kid vaping or break up a fight—until just after Valentine’s Day 2018. That day, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 people. Shortly after, a video circulated showing Peterson taking cover beside a wall while the gunman was inside shooting. From then on, Peterson became known in his town, and in international
A Progressive City Debates Crime
Plus: One moment that could have weakened Donald Trump’s influence
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Donald Trump is guilty of deplorable actions, under indictment for multiple crimes, and yet remains the most popular
Why So Many Californians Are Living in Cars
The month I moved to Los Angeles felt apocalyptic, even by the standards of a city forever being destroyed in film. It was the end of the summer of 2020; stores were closed, streets empty, and wildfires had enveloped the region in smoke, turning the sky orange. Yet after I parked the U-Haul, things got even bleaker.
Walking to my new apartment, I passed a car where a 20-something had passed out with the engine running. Folks, I noticed,
Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic
The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the
When Science Outpaces Ethics – The Atlantic
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What do you watch or read or see portrayed in the media that is most at odds with your own observations and personal experiences, whether at home, at work, in your dating or family life, or in any other area where your reality
A Case for Redirecting DEI Funds
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
If there were a Hall of Fame for song lyrics and you got to make one nomination, what would it be and why? (The linguist John McWhorter might pick something from Steely Dan.)
Send your responses to [email protected].
Conversations of Note
Here
The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege
The diversity, equity, and inclusion industry exploded in 2020 and 2021, but it is undergoing a reckoning of late, and not just in states controlled by Republicans, where officials are dismantling DEI bureaucracies in public institutions. Corporations are cutting back on DEI spending and personnel. News outlets such as The New York Times and New York magazine are publishing more articles that cover the industry with skepticism. And DEI practitioners themselves are raising concerns about how their competitors operate.
The
America needs more lawyers. This isn’t a joke.
For decades, a myth about civil-rights lawyers has been spread by court decisions, legislative testimony, and popular culture. Courthouses, the story goes, are filled to the brim with plaintiffs’ attorneys desperate to make a dollar off someone else’s misery; ambulance chasers all too happy to file frivolous civil-rights cases and squeeze a few bucks out of a cash-strapped city that would otherwise spend the money on its community center or library.
In fact, the opposite is true. The