At Jacobin, Alex N. Press writes about the police shooting of Jacob Blake and wonders if the response from the Democrats will be merely rhetorical: “Kind words from Democrats may be more palatable than the Republican Party’s racist fearmongering, but they are nowhere near enough.” Press argues that the party should support the movement to defund the police, pointing out that Republicans will accuse them of doing so regardless of what their actual policies may be.
At The Nation, John Nichols compares the Republican National Convention to a ponzi scheme.
Eve L. Ewing reports on police unions, which, she writes, are closer to fraternities than labor organizations. Writing about this close-knit clan, Ewing observes: “It scorns the personhood of all but its own brethren. It derides all creatures outside its own clan. And for that reason, the brotherhood is not only a hurdle impeding reform. It is the architecture of an alternate reality.”
“Novelists, like the rest of us, can’t look away from the Trump administration. Unfortunately, they haven’t found much interesting to say about it.” The New Republic’s Alex Shephard takes Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me as a rare example of the well-written Trump novel: funny, but “grounded in genuine outrage.”
The New York Times Magazine’s Jenna Wortham profiles Black Visions, the Minneapolis-based queer-led acitivist collective.
Following a special vote requested by over seventy National Book Critics Circle members, the NBCC has announced that Carlin Romano will remain on the board of directors until his term ends in 2022.
Tonight via Zoom, Jill Filipovic and Anand Giridharadas will discuss Filipovic’s new book, OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind. The event will be hosted by the Strand Book Store in New York.