The Occupy movement vows to reemerge this spring with a focus on May Day, the traditional day of workers’ protests. But Occupy’s call for a general strike on May 1 may be undercut by the movement’s unwillingness to lay out…
Tag: Danny Schechter
Is Occupy’s ‘Purity’ Under Assault?
Hardliners in the Occupy movement have begun equating police infiltrators and other enemies with Occupy supporters who favor some practical electoral and legislative goals. There is alarmist talk about the need to protect Occupy’s revolutionary purity from these reformers, as Danny Schechter…
Mike Wallace: Death of an Icon
Famed TV news interviewer Mike Wallace died Saturday at the age of 93, the last giant of a pioneering era that revealed both the power of television to do good and its many failings. Danny Schechter recalls Wallace as a…
Time to ‘Occupy’ the IRS?
As Americans struggle with their tax returns, they are reminded how skewed the tax system has become, with multi-millionaires who live off investments paying a lower rate that middle-class people who go to work every day, a situation that Danny Schechter says…
Is ‘Going Left’ Right for OWS?
The Occupy Wall Street movement has resisted making specific proposals for reform, focusing instead on its trademark occupation of parks and its protests on behalf of the 99 percent. Some longtime activists now urge OWS to “go left,” but Danny Schechter…
Seeking Justice for Wall St.’s Victims
International agencies and global movements target human rights violators from small or isolated countries, but the idea of holding accountable the powerful and well-connected who cause much greater human suffering is considered unthinkable, a paradigm that Danny Schechter challenges.
The Chasm of Political Ugliness
The retirement of Sen. Olympia Snowe and the death of right-wing smear-master Andrew Breitbart are removing two figures who stood on opposite sides of the chasm dividing the old world of collegial collaboration between politicians and the new one of…
America’s Road to Nowhere
The fact that the American Left lacks the media outreach to the public that the Right has is proving decisive as conservatives consolidate their influence in blue-collar communities that, ironically, are suffering from right-wing excesses of the past three decades, as…
Grammys Trims ‘Ethnic’ Music Genres
Money has a way of not just talking but corrupting nearly everything it touches, including awards purportedly meant to honor artistic quality. At this year’s Grammys, some of the less “popular” genres of music have been slashed to streamline the…
America’s Risky Myopia on Iran
Failed businesses like failed foreign policies can’t or won’t see around the next corner where unexpected challenges lie. Often the myopia results from a focus on the next quarter or the next election, a shortsightedness that now risks sending the…