On the challenges of governing a bright-blue city in the middle of a hot-red state. Originally published in The Nation. LAST DECEMBER, AFTER HE WAS SWORN IN as mayor of Durham, North Carolina, Steve Schewel laid down his vision for a city where elected officials work alongside residents to resist regressive state and federal policy. […]
Law and Disorder in North Carolina
Since Republicans gained control of the North Carolina legislature in 2011, judges have emerged as some of their staunchest adversaries. Now lawmakers want to curb state court powers. Originally published in The American Prospect. THIS FALL, IN A DISPUTE OVER GERRYMANDERING, federal judges stripped North Carolina lawmakers of the power to draw their own state district lines. […]
The 30 Years That Brought Us HB2
North Carolina’s bathroom bill seemed like a bolt from nowhere. But it was three decades in the making. Originally published in Indy Week and Triad City Beat. Photos by Alex Boerner. I. Hell Breaks Loose Last year, when the Rev. Mykal Slack was preparing to move south to Durham, nearer to his and his wife’s families, […]
Rebel Towns
Call it municipal disobedience: communities facing environmental threats are defying laws they deem illegitimate. Originally published in The Nation. THE 600 RESIDENTS OF SUGAR HILL, New Hampshire, have done a laudable job of keeping the vulgarities of modern life at bay. There are no fast-food restaurants, no neon signs. Instead, the former iron-mining town has […]
Expletive Deleter
As head of the FCC, alumnus Kevin Martin has tackled issues as controversial as when to allow dirty words on television and how much to rein in cable companies. But even though he has embraced Republican orthodoxy when it comes to indecency and media consolidation, FCC watchers have been fascinated by the frequency with which […]
Putting Science in the Dock
In an effort to exclude dubious experts, judges have assumed unprecedented power—and tilted the system against injured consumers. Originally published in The Nation. ON A CHILLY MORNING IN NOVEMBER 2001, David Healy stood in a witness box in Kansas City, Kansas, and received a sobering lesson on the U.S. legal system. A professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University […]
When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?
In rural Pennsylvania, township supervisors battling sewage sludge and hog manure stumble up against one of the biggest mysteries in constitutional law. Originally published in Mother Jones. LICKING TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, IS A ROLLING SWATH of soybean fields and pastures in Clarion County, two hours northeast of Pittsburgh, with 500 residents and quite a few more cattle. Drive […]
Age in Place… But Not Here
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. BLANCHE BELL, TO HEAR HER FAMILY TELL IT, had the determination of a bulldog—from studying physics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s because it was the toughest major offered to presiding over a family of six. “She was only 4-foot-11, but she was larger than life,” says her son […]
Whose House Is It Anyway?
A city’s quest for renewal can mean the death of an old neighborhood. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. WILHELMINA DREY HAS LIVED HER ENTIRE 87 YEARS in a blue sea captain’s house near the banks of Connecticut’s Thames River. From the ground floor, her family ran a grocery where the neighborhood’s Italian women congregated Saturday mornings, […]
Stolen Lives
Thousands of older Americans are being robbed of their freedom, dignity, and life savings by a legal system created for their protection. How can this happen? Originally published in AARP The Magazine. THE CHRISTMAS DAY BEFORE THE COURTS STRIPPED Inez America Carr of her independence, she woke up earlier than usual to help prepare the traditional family […]
