Q&A

Q&A features interviews with writers, economists, social scientists, activists and other big thinkers with important perspectives on issues affecting our democracy.

EDITORS' PICKS

The Morality of Drone Strikes
Are U.S. drone strikes consistent with the idea of "just wars"? A military and political scholar breaks the question down.
Decoding the Political Buzzwords of 2012
From "Romnesia" to "Right to Work," linguist Geoffrey Nunberg decodes political buzzwords of 2012, including his pick for Word of the Year.
Climate Change's Catastrophic New Math
Bill McKibben answers questions about his terrifying new article in this week's Rolling Stone.

August 24, 2012

What is a Living Wage?

by Theresa Riley

Just last month, the federal minimum wage — currently at $7.25 an hour — celebrated its three-year anniversary. At that rate, a security guard, retail store clerk or nanny working full-time for minimum wage makes just $15,080 a year. That’s barely above the poverty line for a single person ($11,344) and far below it for a family of four ($22,314).

In this week’s episode, Sister Simone Campbell talks about our poverty crisis and her belief that we need to replace minimum wages with “living wages.” Sister Simone is not alone in advocating for the living wage concept. Economist Robert Pollin wrote his book, The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy, in 2000. It chronicled the living wage campaigns that swept the country in the 1990s. At the time journalist Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect , noted in a back-of-the-book blurb that “The living wage campaign is the most interesting (and under-reported) grassroots enterprise to emerge since the civil rights movement.”

We called Pollin to find out more about the concept and why it’s important not to sacrifice the welfare of workers in tough economic times.

About 100 immigrant janitors marched through downtown Houston to protest a local cleaning company accused of withholding paychecks from its employees and not paying them for all hours they worked. The march took place after a federal lawsuit was filed against Houston-based Professional Janitorial Service. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Theresa Riley: What is a living wage?

Professor Robert Pollin

Robert Pollin: Conceptually the idea of a living wage emerges out of social movements and thinking about what it takes for people to live a minimally decent life. There’s a great book by Lawrence Glickman – it’s called A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of a Consumer Society– and he defines it as “a wage level that offers workers the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect, and to have both the means and the leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.”

August 16, 2012

Juan Cole on America’s Terrorism Double Standard

by Lauren Feeney

On his oft-cited blog Informed Comment, author, scholar and historian Juan Cole writes about the Middle East and American politics. In the wake of the attack at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Cole compared our nation’s response to what he calls “white terrorism” with its response to “other” (read: Islamic) terrorism. We reached him by phone to learn more.

Lauren Feeney: The two recent mass shootings at a movie theater in Colorado and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin — were they terrorism?

Juan Cole: The federal code contains a definition of terrorism — it’s the deployment of coercion or violence against civilians for the accomplishment of a political purpose. The movie theater incident wasn’t terrorism, as far as anybody can tell. That was mental illness. As for the Sikh temple shootings, I think there’s ample evidence that this individual was motivated by a political program of hatred for what he considered to be non-whites. The likelihood is that he thought he was targeting a Muslim congregation, because Sikhs wear turbans and beards and a lot of uneducated Americans mistake Sikhs for Muslims.

Feeney: CNN’s CNN’s Peter Bergen recently reported that militants linked to al-Qaeda or inspired by the jihad-instilled ideology have carried out four terrorist attacks in the U.S. since September 11th, while “right-wing extremists” like Wade Michael Page have committed at least eight. Why then do you think Americans still equate terror with Islam?

Cole: There is a certain amount of, frankly, latent racism in this issue. Sociologists have long remarked that there’s a kind of mainstream, who are unmarked, and minorities, who are marked. In other words, if a bank robber is white, the reporting on the bank robbery won’t mention that in its news. It’ll just say, “The bank was robbed.” If the bank robber is a member of a minority, then the ethnicity of the bank robber will typically be mentioned. I think the same thing, marked and unmarked identities, operates with regard to terrorism. MORE

August 7, 2012

The Funny Side of Race and Politics

by Lauren Feeney

W. Kamau (rhymes with ka-pow!) Bell is a San Francisco-based comedian whose new show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, will provide a satirical take-down of the week’s political and cultural news. Executive produced by Chris Rock, the show — which might be described as a racially-charged version of The Daily Show — premieres Thursday night on FX. We reached Bell to talk about race, politics, and how to make both funny.

Lauren Feeney: You’ve said your goal for your new show is “to be a comedic thorn in the side of evil.” Tell us more.

W. Kamau Bell: It is going to be my weekly take on the events of the world through a social and political lens. I’m a race person, so the lens of race will never be that far from what I’m doing. We’re excited about coming out right before the election. The hope is that we will be able to enter the national discussion around the election the same way that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher have. I think they’re all doing great, but I think there’s room for more.

August 6, 2012

The Huge Downside to ‘Home Field Advantage’

by Theresa Riley

This week’s guest Moyers & Company guest — filmmaker Anthony Baxter — criticizes Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to build “the greatest golf course in the world” across ancient sand dunes in Scotland. Baxter says the local Scottish community pays a heavy price for such greedy expansion in terms of both their homes and the environment. Now imagine that “greatest golf course” on a much larger scale: The Olympics. A recent story in The Atlantic called the Olympics a “loser’s game” for the host country, so we asked Dave Zirin, who writes about the intersection of sports and politics for The Nation, to further explain the surprising downsides to “home field advantage.”

This aerial photo shows the Olympic Stadium and the Orbit during the 2012 Summer Olympics at Olympic Park on Friday, Aug. 3, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Jeff J Mitchell, Pool)

Theresa Riley: Historically, is it true that hosting the Olympic games is a risky bet? What are some of the downsides?

Dave Zirin: No matter what the democratic or autocratic traditions, no matter if it’s a Western democracy or a country like China, the results are very similar whenever the Olympics occupy a given city. You get a huge explosion of debt. You get the displacement of people from their homes, and you get the imposition of a police state.

July 27, 2012

The Military Suicide Epidemic

by Lauren Feeney

One a day — that’s the current rate of suicide for members of our military. It’s also the headline on the cover of last week’s Time magazine. In their article, reporters Mark Thompson and Nancy Gibbs tell the stories of two Army captains — one a helicopter pilot handsome enough to be nicknamed Captain Brad Pitt; the other an Army doctor and father of three — who both ended their own lives on the same day.

We caught up with Thompson to learn more about the alarming rise of suicide in the military.

Lauren Feeney: How pervasive is the problem of suicide in the U.S. military?

Mark Thompson: The problem has grown markedly worse in the last decade. For generations, the military was proud that its rate was lower than the civilian rate. But starting in about 2004-2005, especially in the Army, that began to change. Over the past decade now the suicide rate in the Army has doubled from where it was ten years ago. More U.S. military personnel have died by suicide since the war in Afghanistan began than have died fighting there. MORE

July 20, 2012

Do You Know Where Your Tomatoes Come From?

by Lauren Feeney

Farmworkers pick tomatoes at Taylor & Fulton Tomatoes in Immokalee, Fla. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

“Harvesting tomatoes and other produce from the nation’s agricultural fields is arguably the worst job in the country,” journalist Chris Hedges writes in his book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

For workers in Immokalee, Florida, where nearly all of America’s winter tomatoes are grown, backbreaking labor under the heat of the Florida sun is only part of the drudgery. There’s often also toxic pesticides, sexual harassment, verbal and physical abuse — all for an average income of less than $12,000 a year.

Nely Rodriguez is a 46-year-old mother of three who’s been working in the Immokalee fields since she came here from Mexico in 2000. But she’s not suffering silently under these unjust conditions. Nely is a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community organization that has taken on the corporate giants at the top of the food chain — with some remarkable victories. MORE

July 19, 2012

Climate Change’s Catastrophic New Math

by Lauren Feeney

In a not-to-miss article in this week’s Rolling Stone, environmental author and activist Bill McKibben explains some new math that adds up to a terrifying trajectory for the planet. Shaken by the piece, we called McKibben to learn more.

Lauren Feeney: It’s been a really hot summer. Just how hot, in relative terms?

Wildfires destroying homes in Colorado Springs, Colo., on June 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Gaylon Wampler)

Bill McKibben: It’s been an almost unbelievably hot summer. We’re living through epic droughts. We’ve seen the biggest wildfires in New Mexico and Colorado in our history. We’ve seen temperature records fall one after another — more than 3,200 new high temperature records set in June alone. And that’s not just here — this past June was the warmest ever measured across the northern hemisphere. There are crop-withering droughts in much of eastern Europe right now, epic flooding in India. What we’re seeing is a perfect distillation of what climate change looks like in its early phases. MORE

July 12, 2012

Bryan Stevenson on the True Costs of Mass Incarceration

by Theresa Riley

One of the Supreme Court rulings you may have missed in the din of its Affordable Care Act decision considered the constitutionality of mandatory sentencing to life in prison without parole for minors. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, determined that “requiring that all children convicted of homicide receive lifetime incarceration without possibility of parole, regardless of their age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes” is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The lawyer who argued the winning side of that case was Alabama lawyer Bryan Stevenson. For over 25 years, Stevenson has been an advocate for death row inmates in the Deep South. As the director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Stevenson works with clients who have been wrongly accused or denied proper legal representation, as well as those whose prosecutions and trials have been influenced by racial bias. A memorable guest of Bill Moyers Journal, Stevenson talked with us about issues of age and race in our justice system.

Riley: When did the trend toward mandatory sentencing begin, and what has it meant for juveniles?

Bryan Stevenson: There has been a general overall trend toward harsher sentencing in the United States and it’s one of the reasons why prison population has grown from about 300,000 in 1972 to 2.3 million people in prison today. The US now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Sadly, the people most directly impacted by the developments have been the vulnerable: poor people, people of color, the mentally disabled and children. In the late 1980s, a small number of criminologists began talking about juvenile crime and characterizing many of the youngest offenders as not really children but as this new word, “super-predators.” MORE

July 6, 2012

Organizing Workers in the Freelance Economy

by Theresa Riley

Friday’s disappointing job numbers featured one glimmer of positivity: USA Today reports that the number of temporary employees rose by 25,000. This may indicate that employers are getting ready to bring on new permanent staff because the “ranks of such contingent workers” often grow before that happens. On the other hand, it could just be part of a continuing trend of relying on freelancers over permanent staff. The New York City-based Freelancers Union estimates that nearly a third of American workers are freelancers — about 42 million people. One of the common drawbacks of freelance work is the inability to organize for benefits like health insurance, retirement funds, overtime and sick days. In 2005, the Freelancers Union began offering health insurance to independent workers such as nannies, graphic designers, journalists and artists. They now have over 165,000 members across all 50 states. We asked Sara Horowitz, who founded the Freelancers Union in 1995, to talk about this new model for organizing workers and what it means for organized labor in general.

Theresa Riley: You’re the daughter of a labor lawyer and the granddaughter of the vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. What were you taught about unions growing up?

Sara Horowitz

Sara Horowitz: My parents taught by example. In just talking about the topics of the day, it became clear to me that unions are a bedrock to make sure people have economic security – for individuals and for the larger economy. Having these family members showed me the union movement was something that could be your life’s work.

June 22, 2012

Still Waging a War on Poverty

by Lauren Feeney

It’s been 50 years since Michael Harrington’s The Other America shook the public with its depiction of poverty in America, inspiring the 1960s “War on Poverty.” To mark this anniversary, Kit Rachlis, editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, devoted his July/August issue to investigating just how far we’ve come.

Lauren Feeney: For those of us perhaps too young to remember, can you tell us about Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America, and the impact that it had?

Kit Rachlis: The Other America came out in 1962, to almost deafening silence. It got a handful of modest and praising reviews, but sank without a trace, and Harrington himself went off to Paris to take a kind of leave. Before that, Harrington had been a socialist activist living a bohemian life in New York’s Greenwich Village, where he was a regular at the White Horse Tavern, and, I believe, was present the night Dylan Thomas drank himself to death there. He was asked to do one article, which morphed into two, for a magazine called Commentary (which at the time was a liberal left magazine; it would later become a symbol of neo-conservatism), on poverty. MORE

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