WHERE BAD COPS COME FROM

Sam Smith Whenever anything like the Gates incident arises, we spend an inordinate amount of time assessing blame and hardly any discussing remedies. Calling someone a racist doesn't cure anything. In fact, racism is normal. That isn't to say that it's nice, pretty, or desirable. Only that suspicion, distrust, and distaste for outsiders is a …

When test tyrants enter the firehouse

San Smith 2009 - The real problem in the Ricci v. DeStefano case* is neither the white nor the black firefighters but the law and its technocratic application. For the past six years - as the lawyers have had their fun - no one of either ethnicity has been promoted in the New Haven fire …

SWAMPOODLE REPORT: THE SUPREME COURT DOES SOMETHING RIGHT

Sam Smith I don't own a gun. I was never any good at shooting a gun. I was educated by Quakers and avoid violence every chance I get. Still, I was delighted by the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling. Not simply because it upheld the Constitution, but because, in a land whose leaders are increasingly …

Letter to a spook: But you don’t know me

Sam Smith 2005 I don't know for sure that you're out there at all, but from what I read and hear there's a pretty good chance, so I thought I would pass this along. You may be tapping my phone, scanning my e-mails and collating my other electronic ephemera, but you don't know me. Any …

THE TWO BEST KEPT SECRETS ABOUT SCHOOL INTEGRATION

Sam Smith 1. It would have been much easier if, at the time the country was fighting over school integration, it hadn't segregated its cities with hardly any debate. 2. It would have been much easier if zip code had been included as well as ethnicity. Even today, the issues of segregation by neighborhood and …

Clues your country may be turning into a fascist state

Sam Smith, 2006 NOTE: Some of these symptoms are found in non-fascist countries where they should be treated as serious warning signs. On the other hand, fascist states - unlike democratic nations - have many, if not all, of these symptoms. Your president asserts the right to ignore part or all of laws passed by …

Martin Luther King Day, Bull Connor years

Sam Smith, 2006 I would like to celebrate Martin Luther King Day but I can't get Bull Connor out of my mind. I look for reminders of Martin Luther King but they are either old and weary or in lonely, small places. Reminders of Bull Connor are all around us. The spirit of Bull Connor …

Who cares who was a Communist?

Sam Smith, 2006 - Reading about Arthur Miller's alleged Communist connections brings to mind some unfinished business for American historians: a fair account of American Communists. Even today, the image projected by the media is heavily tilted towards the FBI version of the tale, an absurd melding of fact, rumor, fiction, and extreme rightwing bias. …

Backing off of hate

Sam Smith 2006 When a situation such as the one created by the anti-Muslims cartoons and their reaction, the tendency for all parties is to seek ever higher ground of self-righteousness - all the time exacerbating the situation. The fact is that the biggest danger to the world at the moment comes from the conflicting …

Of pink suits, golf balls and civil liberties

SAM SMITH From a talk given at an upper school assembly at Maret School, Washington, DC, September 2006 In my son Ben's senior year at Maret, he and a couple of friends visited a used clothing shop where one of them - Chris Friendly - found a pink suit and a pink fedora that he …

Questions for a senatorial inquiry on gay marriage

Sam Smith, 2006 1. The Ten Commandments outlaw killing and adultery but that doesn't seem to bother your colleagues as much as gay marriage. Why do you think the Ten Commandments are less important to them than gay marriage? 2. Would you accept a compromise in which we outlawed not only gay marriages but support …

Integration of Glen Echo Amusement Park

A HOWARD STUDENT CONFRONTS GUARD AT GLEN ECHO Sam Smith, 2006 - In the summer of 1960, a local movement formed to end the policy of segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park. Howard University students, members of the Bannockburn community, the local NAACP, Cedar Lane Unitarian Church and the Wheaton-Kensington Democratic Club, all picketed the …

Zero tolerance

Sam Smith, 2004 - During the Cold War someone defined the difference between the major parties this way: In America everything is permitted that is not prohibited. In Germany everything is prohibited that is not permitted. In France everything is permitted even though it is prohibited. In Russia everything is prohibited even though it is …

The Post Office pays a visit

Sam Smith - Government censorship was never much of a problem for us. Other publications, however, did not fare as well. In B.W. (Before Web) the Post Office was the most powerful prude around. As a young radio reporter in 1959, I interviewed the Assistant Postmaster General in his office on the subject of obscenity, …

An early terrorist suspect

EDITOR DETAINED AT AIRPORT 1998 - The Progressive Review''s editor, Sam Smith, was detained at Washington National Airport for a half hour on Wednesday Nov. 4 as five US Airways security officials, 3 police officers, and one bomb-sniffing dog attempted to determine if he was, as they suspected, a terrorist. Total evidence for the suspicion …