This work highlights the deleterious effects of sprawl on civic life in America in an evenhanded way, not dismissing the pastoral, homeowning ideal that is at the root of sprawl, and sympathetic to the vast numbers of Americans who very clearly prefer it.
In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here (1967), Martin Luther King, Jr., warned that the struggle for black equality had moved into a more difficult phase that would test the moral commitments of white America to democracy. King commented that, for most whites, the battles over school desegregation and the Civil Rights Act had merely "been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality." King's warning about the thinness of the country's commitment to democracy was combined with a profound optimism that ending poverty and creating a truly free society was within reach-that Americans might at last choose justice. His optimism was consonant with and informed by social and policy analysis of the time. Three years earlier, the Johnson administration had launched its War on Poverty, and in Where Do We Go From Here, King quoted the analysis of Hyman Bookbinder—from President Lyndon B. Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity—that "the poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate."
Bob Dylan has spent much of the past fifty years trying to escape the label of "protest singer." Over the past decade, there have been plenty of serious topics for the topically minded songwriter to address: the Iraq War, threats to civil liberties, rising economic inequality, the financial collapse of 2008 and "Great Recession" that followed. Unlike his musical peers Neil Young (Living with War [2006]) and Bruce Springsteen (Wrecking Ball [2012]), Dylan to date has not addressed those events in any direct way, through new topical songs, in the last stage of his career.
Bob Dylan has spent much of the past fifty years trying to escape the label of "protest singer." Over the past decade, there have been plenty of serious topics for the topically minded song writer to address: the Iraq War, threats to civil liberties, rising economic inequality, the financial collapse of 2008 and "Great Recession" that followed. Unlike his musical peers Neil Young (Living with War [2006]) and Bruce Springsteen (Wrecking Ball [2012]), Dylan to date has not addressed those events in any direct way, through new topical songs, in the last stage of his career.
Abstract This paper explores how a regime recognizable as a Rawlsian property-owning democracy might be enshrined constitutionally in the context of the U.S. Five specific constitutional amendments are proposed: establishing an equal right to education, establishing a guaranteed social minimum, clarifying the legitimacy of regulating corporate political speech for the sake of political equality: establishing an individual right to a share of society's productive wealth, and assuring communities of significant size the right to remain economically viable over time. The substance and reasoning behind each proposal is discussed in length, and the paper also briefly discusses why a focus on constitutional amendments may be helpful both in clarifying how a property-owning democracy might be realized in practice and in establishing clear goals for social movements motivated by the aim of establishing a more equitable distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity in the United States.
AbstractFocusing on the case of post‐Katrina New Orleans, this essay argues that the framework of social capital used by Daniel Aldrich in Building Resilience needs to be supplemented by an explicit account of social justice. Policymakers must recognize the ways in which social capital can exacerbate deep social inequalities that impact residents' vulnerability to disasters. Concern with strengthening social capital should be matched by concern with rectifying severe inequalities.
Hurricane Katrina was a "disaster" both "natural" and "social." The storm destroyed a major American city that, like most American cities, was already the site of great inequality and vulnerability. It also dramatically put to the test both the logistical capabilities and the political responsibilities of national, state, and local governmental institutions. The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans is an important collection of essays on the dynamics of "remaking New Orleans" and the limits of that effort. We have thus asked a diverse group of political scientists to review the book, and at the same time to treat it as an opportunity to reflect on two related questions: 1) What are the most important economic, cultural, and political dimensions of the crisis precipitated by Katrina, both for New Orleans and for US cities more generally? 2) What resources does political science as a discipline possess to help us understand these issues, and can political science as a discipline do a better job on this score?—Jeffrey C. Issac, Editor