Latest Release: Monday, November 29, 2004

What PSA's Can Teach Us About American Democracy

Chad Faldt

How many of you saw the televised exhortations to vote? I'm not talking about the 'rock the vote' events, or other such crap, but a couple of particularly and unintentionally enlightening commercials. Every presidential election is accompanied by a fusillade of rhetoric expounding on the civic virtues and duties of voting. The newest commercials display a brilliant sense of irony. The message is, perhaps, only a cynical and candid acknowledgement of the substance, or lack thereof, of the electoral process.

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Post-Election Views: Friday November 5, 2004

Crashing the Boston "D" Parties: A Look Inside the "Liberal" Void

Matt Pascarella

This piece was originally written during the Democratic Convention (July 2004).

(Boston) The revolutionary fervor and spirit of dissent, the crux of perhaps America's greatest historical event, the Boston Tea Party, seems an elusive memory in this city. As I drive into the city from the airport, my cab driver, from Haiti, tells me of the current presidential campaign, "Kerry is going to have to work hard - real hard."

Instead of rolling up my sleeves and heading down to the Fleet Center I decided check out some parties. From clambakes, carnivals and barbeques, Boston, during the Democratic Convention, is like a frat-boy's ultimate wet dream. You could literally party all week long, day in and day out, and not feel so bad about it because you could hit up a panel here or there and pretend like you had contributed to the political process.

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Latest Release: Saturday, October 30, 2004

The Magic 8-Ball: Dumbing Down of Political Discourse in America

Morgan Southwood

It has occurred to me, while watching President Bush give a statement to the press on television the other day, that the man is a sort of human Magic 8-Ball. You're probably familiar with these Magic 8-Balls. Sold at toy and novelty shops, you proffer the 8-Ball a question ("Does so-and-so have a crush on me?" for instance), then shake the Ball and flip it over, where one of half-a-dozen answers appears on the bottom. You can't guess with absolute certainty what answer the 8-Ball is going to give you, but you know damn well that it's going to be one of those half-a-dozen possibilities.

Well, President Bush is just like our good friend the Magic 8-Ball. Put the man before a camera and ask him a question of any sociopolitical relevance whatsoever, and you can bet your sweet ass that you're going to get one of perhaps fewer than a dozen possible answers.

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Latest Release: Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Stemmer

Yollanda Carrington

It's a hot, sweaty, steamy day.
It's gonna be a real long day today.
I stand rigid as a pole at my station, my place if you will
Stripping these leaves, as fast as I can go---No, faster than I can go, or should go

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Bush and God

Terry Jones

"George?"

"Yes?"

"This is God here ..."

"Hi, God. What can I do for you?"

"I want you to stop this Iraq thing, George."

"But you told me to do it, God!"

"No I didn't, George ..."

"But you did! You spoke to me through Karl, Rumsey and Dick and all those other really clever guys!"

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Latest Release: Friday, October 22, 2004

Purchasing Individuality in America

M. Junaid Alam

Bracing against the Marxist menace, America erected a powerful pantheon of ideas where the deities of Capital received frequent and fulsome tribute. Foremost among these deities was Individuality. The scripture inscribed at the base of this particular god was unmistakably clear: Americans, unlike their enslaved Soviet counterparts, were free. Uninhibited by draconian government, unimpeded by drab tyranny, their horizons were limited only by their individual willpower, work ethic, and imagination.

New enemies have stepped out from battered caves and Babylonian crevices to replace the old, but the sanctity of Individuality still stands, untarnished by time. Striking down oily terrorists abroad and grubby miscreants at home, Individuality inveighs against all enemies of Capital with unmatched fury: as an integral part of their quest for 'uniqueness,' Americans hold a natural right to pursue infinite power and wealth, without regard for fellow Americans or human beings elsewhere. And if this power and wealth happens to become amassed in the hands of a select few - if, by the very procurement of immense profit by these few, many more are fated to suffer misery, that is simply the nature of the game - Kings crowned and paupers parsed out by the forces of the Great American Way.

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Latest Release: Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Identity

Yolanda Carrington

I want to be Ella Baker/I want to be Billy Bragg
I want to make a difference/I want to make a killing
Rage is my Brother/Revolution is my Grandfather
I claim them all---passion, anger, fear, and (noun please)

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Our Entertocracy

John N. Cooper

Kathleen Hall Jameison, of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication, has observed that the problems facing this country are so daunting, so refractory to simple solutions, no politician aspiring to (re-)election dares broach an honest, straight-forward discussion of them for fear of rejection by an alienated, disappointed or disillusioned electorate. As a consequence, our electoral decisions are based largely on side issues - the past, trivia, matters of appearance - rather than those issues of crucial substance urgently confronting the country. Rather than being addressed when they are first perceived and recognized, these issues tend to be buried, only to fester and inflame into crises when they are mature. Americans have become addicted to being shielded from facing unpleasant truths until it is much more difficult, if not too late, to address them effectively. Why?

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Latest Release: Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Reagan's Dead

Yolanda Carrington

There I am, folks---a four-year-old girl/baby/child
Standing too close to the Zenith set
Watching President Reagan speak to somebody about something
There I was, a four-year-old girl/kid/little sista
Watching Reagan, The President, talk to me

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Last Release: Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Defying the "Jockocracy"

Dave Zirin

Howard Cosell once said, 'Rule Number One of the 'Jockocracy' is that pro-athletes and politics should never mix.' But in these times of war and resistance, a new wave of sports stars are demanding to be heard. In Major League Baseball, Blue Jays slugger Carlos Delgado has come out against the occupation of Iraq. At the Olympics, the Iraqi Soccer Team publicly refused to be a symbol for a war they opposed. In the NBA, all-star guard Steve Nash and forward Josh Howard have said that they were "for shooting jumpers not people." Now we can add NBA center/power forward Etan Thomas to the list of those athletic anti-war rebels who are rewriting the rules of the "Jockocracy".

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Last Release: Monday, September 20, 2004

Combining Revolution with Art in Palestine

Macdonald Stainsby

When the world learned of the death of Aisha El-Zaben, 55, a participant in the hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners held by the state of Israel, it was a sobering reminder of the tragedy of the struggle in the Middle East. So too, is the music of Al-Awda, a band from Palestine whose members were on a North American tour when the death was announced.

Having just recently finished the Canadian wing of the tour � to Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto � the traditional as well as modern musical band is enthralling audiences with powerful songs from Egypt, Jordan and of course, Palestine itself from across the history of the 20th century. Once they began to play the audience was hooked with powerful rhythm, even before a note was sung.

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we danced the anarchist waltz

Jared McBride

with the stereo humming apocalyptic tunes
we danced the anarchist waltz
listened to presidential addresses
fire alarms and campaign speeches
stock lines, financial updates
marked down-dates (days)(as if you knew)
health(who)cares programs
and homeland security programs
we pissed on them all...

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Last Release: Monday, August 30, 2004

The Sickness of Shopping

Morgan Southwood

I very seldom engage in the ubiquitous, hallowed national pastime of shopping. The primary reason I do not shop is that I am starving-student poor, often spending the last week before payday in a comic exercise at the grocery store trying to figure out how to purchase adequate rations of both food and vodka. The other reason I don't shop is that shopping invokes in me feelings of guilt and anger at the knowledge of being manipulated. I am suspicious of my material desires. I recognize them for what they are.

My suspicion and recognition does not always save me, however. Periodically when delivering lunch to a friend who works at my local shopping mall, I pass a clothing store and am seized by the mannequin's dress in the window, by the new pair of boots, the smart, fashionable overcoat. I stop and stare, and I want it. The desire is impulsive, strangely automatic, and it is strong. I want it. I want that sky-blue summer halter dress, and I imagine how cute I'd look it in. I think that it would be just the thing to wear out with my girlfriends at Ladies Drink Free till Ten night.

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Last Release: Thursday, August 20, 2004

Screaming Without A Voice: Black Women in the Crosshairs of Repression

Yolanda Carrington

The invisibility of Black women in American society, coupled with continuing racial and gender oppression, renders African American women as a whole voiceless, with a few minor exceptions such as intellectuals bell hooks and Alice Walker. Because of the intentional denial of our voice by the plutocracy-controlled media, Black women and girls are robbed of fully developed intellectual and analytical tools, and as such have a difficult time expressing how misogynistic and racist domination has impacted our sense of self. Although this state of intellectual repression could well be true of all women of color, I focus on African-descended women for two reasons: (1) because of centuries of slavery and legal apartheid, the history of Africans in the United States is very specific and has a direct consequence on the lives of today's Black women (2) African American women's lives are the one human reality that I am most intimately acquainted with.

How is it possible to be both omnipresent and invisible?

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Last Release: Sunday, August 01, 2004

Democracy At Last

Jared McBride

Rubber bullets
(whizzing past)
Thank God, Democracy I found at last

Tear gas
(burning my eyes)
Democracy, were you just hiding in disguise?

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Last Release: Thursday, July 29, 2004

Taking out the Trash: Ayn Rand and The False God of Objectivism

Dimitrije Kostic

Objectivism is a nominal "philosophy" molded around the turgid, unreadable novels of one Ayn Rand. The main characters of Rand's novels extol the supposed virtues of selfishness, egotism, and capitalism. For instance, John Galt, the protaganist of Atlas Shrugged, leads a strike of intellectuals and the discord--resulting, of course, from the subsequent slide into socialism--illustrates the central importance and virtue of the industrialist class. This self-canonized high priestess of Objectivism waves her wand, and confidently intones that, for example, "city smog and filthy rivers...are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be." [1] Her flock of true believers--typically white, wealthy, spoiled brats in college who've never anything about capitalism not written by her--take their cue and respond that "multiculturalism is racism in a politically correct guise." [2]

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Last Release: Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Double Think: The Bedrock of Marine Corps Indoctrination

Chris White

I left college after a semester and a half, tried my hand at construction, waiting tables, pizza delivery, and security work, during which time I applied for several law enforcement positions, hoping to become a California Highway patrol officer, like my uncle. I soon enough reached the point of dissatisfaction with waiting to start my life, when my father submitted an off the cuff suggestion: "You could always join the Marines." The idea was that I could do that for four years and maybe gain the necessary credentials to become a police officer and to gain a foothold for myself that I had not attained up to that point. Without giving it second thought, I called the recruiting station and made an appointment to see about my options. They were very nice, but more than that, they were confident, young men, and not much older than myself (I was 20).

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Silencing the Voice of an Angel

Richard Moreno

Linda Ronstadt, the 58-year-old 10-time Grammy Award winner, while on stage dedicated the classic rock ballad "Desperado!" to an award winning documentary filmmaker during her sold out concert at the Aladdin Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. Innocuous enough, so one would in normal times think. However, in response, an Aladdin crack security team swept Ms Ronstand off the premises and, moreover, barred her from her suite as if she were some common vagrant begging for alms at some Republican cocktail party.

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Last Release: Sunday, July 12, 2004

An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Nikki Marterre

Dear Michael Moore,

Whw I don't even know if you will get this email - Farenheit 9/11 was brilliant and I am sure you are caught up in all the hullabaloo. However, I recently read an article by you to the left called "Is the left nuts?". I understand where the frustration must come from. Many members of the left are very sectarian - they can't see beyond their own books on Hegel. However, there are many members of the left that are not that way at all. They are going out, talking to real Americans and taking up what regular people are concerned about. Should the left be concerned about real working class issues?

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Last Release: Thursday, June 24, 2004

A Solution to the Iraq Quagmire

Richard Cranium

As a decent freedom-loving American, I was really hoping Bush was going to come up with a winner when he made that speech a few weeks ago outlining his plan to wrap things up in Iraq. But as he mumbled and stumbled his way through, it became clear that this was the usual mumbo-jumbo, the same-old-shizzle just wrapped up in a five-point plan format to sound more concrete or something.

I was bummed out like you wouldn't believe. After all the crap that's gone on, this guy still doesn't have a clue? He couldn't even pronounce Abu Ghraib correctly ("Abu Ga-a-a-ra-a-aaaabeee")! It all got me thinking, you know, because if he doesn't have a plan, someone has to come up with one.

A little after all this, I was sitting around reading the New York Times. I came upon an interesting article, and all of a sudden a grand solution to the fiasco in Iraq came together in my head like a huge explosion played in rewind�

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Last Release: Sunday, June 13, 2004

How Ray Charles Got Over

Seth Sandronsky

Ray Charles, the superb African American musician who died on June 10, got over in more ways than one.

He appealed to Americans of all ages and backgrounds. For five decades, they enjoyed Charles' music.

He expressed his people's efforts to transcend the racial lines of America, a struggle recognized around the world. Credit should partly go to Charles for this global recognition.

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April in the Empire

Nikki Marterre

April is the cruelest month
Forgotten skies haze over the atrocities
That keep coming without blinking
The large eye that watches
The large eye that blinds us
With night-vision and yellow flashes
And in that haunting
The roar
That imperceptible second
When all that is lost is forgotten

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El Che

M. Junaid Alam

Last Release: Saturday, June 06, 2004

In America, Can I Get A Whiteness?

Seth Sandronsky

My family began to arrive in the U.S. from Eastern Europe and Russia just over a century ago. Then as now, the capitalist system was changing people�s lives. That change disrupted my ancestors� daily rituals and rhythms. They were part of a wave of U.S. immigrants with distinct ethnic identities who did not initially see themselves as members of a white race.

Eventually, my family whitened, as did other immigrant groups. One was the Irish who had lost their land to British invaders. For a time, Irish immigrants were seen and treated as a separate race after arriving in the U.S. Noel Ignatiev details that change In How the Irish Became White.

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Last Release: Saturday, May 22, 2004

If you give us no choice, We will give you no option: A Poem

Alison Seidman

Mr. President,

Allow me to introduce you to
My body
The sanctuary of foreign lands you righteously
Don't mind dropping bombs within
Legally, mind you -
Or so we are taught to learn
There is an unmeasured sex in my body
A growth of estrogen stretching my limbs
From the pop, smack
Of a broken condom on the wounds of my insides

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War on Terror: Digital Artwork

M. Junaid Alam

Last Release: Sunday, May 9, 2004

the greatest sunset in history (a poem)

Josh Saxe

it's a normal tuesday evening for the people of L.A. - millions - mostly working folk, sitting in their cars in the choked arteries of the freeway system, necks stiff with exhaustion. the unemployed sit at home feeling empty, harried single mothers prepare simple dinners for their kids who play in the dirty streets. at first almost no one notices the sun descending beyond tired residential low-rises - the sky catching flame, sun jets swimming through salmon clouds in straw rivers that roar down olympic, pico, and wilshire soaking crevices in ghetto sidewalks, bathing stacks of unwashed dishes in rusty sinks, washing cigarette stained carpets, filling thin spaces between glass cups and smudged restaurant tables. streams of amber laced purple sailing from where sky meets sea through sheets of smog, splashing on graffitied walls and ice cream trucks, lighting tarred eyes of little girls on rusty swings, softening syringe wrappers, 40oz bottles and used condoms in macarthur park, spreading over the LA river like an exotic burning oil

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Last Release: Wednesday, April 28, 2004

For My Friend in Iraq

Pankaj Mehta

One of my best friends is in Iraq. He is a medic in the Navy Reserve. On January 2nd, he was told that he would be deploying to a stretch of desert West of Baghdad. At his request, I will refrain from using his name. I do not know how long he will be in Iraq; I am not sure that even the Pentagon knows. I do not know for how long I will have to wake up everyday and scour the web to make sure that he is not one of the really unlucky ones, killed in a helicopter crash or caught in an ambush.

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Last Release: Thursday, April 22, 2004

Arab Eyes: A Poem

M. Junaid Alam

Glares of the oppressed
Shoot out from shadows writhing
under black war boots strapped on white skin
Arab-dirtied in desert sands.

Rising in the nascent sandstorm
of national struggle
can these angered Arab eyes
these twin towers of Resistance
stare down
buildings stretching into the sky
and empires digging into the (s)oil.

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The Resistance: A Poem

Victor de Serna

He is alone in the loneliness of the night of the Occupation
His children were killed like flies in the siege of Fallujah

He kneels like a priest on the sorrowful ruins of his family's home
The ash and rubble float like bitter smoke
And the remnants of his blasted walls lean up from the ground like jagged teeth

The night cannot touch him

- (Read full)

Last Release: Saturday, April 17, 2004

The Impact of Cars on Society

Yves Engler

A couple months back I came across a phenomenal statistic; there are 1.02 cars in the U.S. for every person of driving age. (1) The New York Times confirmed this in an article that said there are 230 million cars and trucks in the U.S. and only 193 million licensed drivers. (2)

Surely it's more cost effective to call a cab when a breakdown occurs rather than having a backup vehicle? Or have the robots learned to drive?

But in all seriousness, car prevalence has, to put it mildly, many drawbacks. It also contributes significantly to shaping a country and says something about a society.

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Eight Hours: A Poem

Ian Werkheiser

Hold, release
Hold, release
Things that seemed without effort
A vice tightening with each repetition
Hold, release
Hold, release
There are only twenty incubators, they said
Sanctions and bombing had reduced us to only this, they said
Hold, release
Hold, release
You held your nephew in your arms, struggling to breathe on his own
Trying so hard.
They told you one would be available. A promise.
Hold, release

- (Read full)

Last Release: Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Sony: A Short Story on Palestine

Macdonald Stainsby

"Fauzia! Fauzia!" The scream ripped through the air, though the sound of bullets was still too thick for one to even think. Her body lay slumped in a heap on the ground, a bullet having just pierced through her kidneys and her left cheek. Her hijjab covered her vision so she could no longer see, and she was losing consciousness fast.

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Last Release: Friday, April 2, 2004

Digital Artwork: Chaining Palestine

M. Junaid Alam

Last Release: Saturday, March 27, 2004

Reflections on Welfare

Morgan Southwood

I don't understand why there's so much public outcry against welfare.

I myself come from a somewhat comfortable upper working-class background. I attend a public state University that is subsidized by taxes (federal welfare!). My undergraduate tuition is generously subsidized by my relatives (subsidized education!). I live in a little apartment that is owned by my uncle, and while I do have to pay rent monthly, if I'm a few weeks late I can call him and he will gracefully wait for the check without throwing my ass out (subsidized housing!).

Once or twice a month my mother gives me charity food subsidies in the form of a little ground beef, milk, juice, and vegetables to supplement my starving-student diet of pasta, peanut butter, and cheap beer (food stamps!). I paid for my twenty-year-old little beater car myself, but a relative fronted me the lump sum at the time of the car's purchase so that I could buy it and have a way to get to and from school and work (subsidized transportation!).

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Last Release: Wednesday, March 09, 2004

My Uncle's Declaration (Short Story)

Siamak Vossoughi

I felt like taking a long walk when I heard my uncle say that if the United States were to invade our country next after Iraq, that he would go and fight them there himself. I felt like taking a long walk and thinking about America and Americans and how if one of them had happened to be walking by as he had said it, they might conclude that he was a terrorist, and the thing that made me sad was that even though I didn't want anybody invading anybody and I didn't want anybody having to fight against anybody invading anybody, there was still a lot of beauty in a sixty-two-year-old man saying that he would go and fight against any invaders himself, and I figured that American wouldn't see any of it.

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Last Release: Wednesday, February 25, 2004

An interview with Joel Andreas, author of comic book expose, "Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism"

Nicole Aschoff and Pankaj Mehta

What inspired you to write "Addicted to War: Why the US Can't Kick Militarism"?

The first gulf war in 1991. The war, and the media's coverage of it, were outrageous. People didn't understand what was actually going on and didn't understand the underlying causes of the war, I felt I had to do something. People weren't getting information from the mainstream news media. I wanted to make a different kind of information available to people. My father actually suggested the idea for the book. The initial idea was just to write an 8-page commentary on the war. When I started writing I realized that in order to really understand the war peopled needed an historical understanding of US foreign policy. I had written a comic book in the 70's called: "The Incredible Rocky"- an unauthorized biography of the Rockafeller family. It was distributed widely through progressive grassroots networks; it sold over a 100,000 copies. My father was familiar with this earlier book and suggested I create something similar about the Gulf War.

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Poem by a Palestinian Youth: Eye to Eye

You think you know all about terrorism
But you don't know it the way I do.
So let me define the term for you.
And teach you what you thought you knew.

I've known terrorism for quite some time,
Fifty- four years and more.
It's the fruitless garden uprooted in my yard.
It's the bulldozer in front of my door.

- (Read full)

Last Release: Thursday, February 11, 2004

The Brick-Layer. Himself Like a Mosaic Pattern

A Poem by Elder Zamora

The brick-layer, himself like a mosaic pattern on the floor,
on the sand-blown concrete, his body in full geometric magnificence,
left arm extended in a soft curve, head back,
in the style of the Byzantine, or some ancient Etruscan master.

His hand, burnt into a tight fist, still holding a sword,
a spade, covered not in blood but in that days mortar,
baked hard by the sun, and the heat of burning rooftops,
which cry out to announce the bombing of Baghdad.

(Read full)

Last Release: Wednesday, January 30, 2004

Summer in Guatemala (Short Story)

Josh Saxe

"Pam, you don't just take pictures of people without asking them," I say.

Lake Atitlan stretches wide and blue in front of us, bounded by jagged mountains and foregrounded by a group of indigenous girls spreading their laundry out on the sand. They're clothed in rainbow striped embroidered cloth, and the way they carry themselves, flock and wear their faces is stolid and foreign. Pam is already snapping off photos. (Read full)

Last Release: Wednesday, January 07, 2004

The Poor Have Become Invisible

K. Morgan Southwood

One of the most disturbing changes in television media that it has been my misfortune to observe during the duration of my admittedly brief life has been the gradual omission of poor and working-class issues from mainstream television fare. Certainly there are other profound and disturbing trends-the blatant and unapologetic meshing of news journalism, entertainment, and commercialism a la The O'Reiley Factor, Keith Obermann News Countdown, and CNN Entertainment News, for instance. The expulsion of the working class from entertainment sitcom programming is a somewhat more subtle but no less frightening tendency that exemplifies the cultural and economic values of the new 21st-Century America. (Read full)

Last Release: Wednesday, December 17, 2003

A Prison Inspection at Guantanamo (Screenplay)

Lindsay M. Levesque

TED

I'm Red Cross Worker Ted, and there's a man in there who needs help. Can't you hear that?

GUARD
Hear what?

PRISONER (OS)
No, please! I don't know anything!

More WHIPPING.

GUARD TWO
Who needs help?

A CORPSE flies over the wall and lands at Ted's feet.

GUARD
You're obviously mistaken. Just move on there, Cowboy. (Read full)

Living Outside, Looking In: Alienation in Popular Music

Ryan Graham

In his classic ode to hip-hop "I Used to Love H.E.R", Common diagnosed the marketplace as an undermining factor to the essence of an art form that formerly provided him bliss. While we can surely acknowledge the point behind his troubled lament, a question arises with regard to the medium by which Common and others have voiced their concerns: Is not the content of popular music largely subject to the capricious whims of a public that would prefer not to deal with matters of social relevance? (Read full)

Last Release: Friday, November 21, 2003

Iraq's Spears

A Poem by M. Junaid Alam

Behold, the army of (shock and) awe!
Spears, swords, canons, cavalry
tipped, tainted, powdered, and pruned
in the arrogance of empire
(Read full poem)

Release Date: Monday, November 17, 2003

Dead Prez: Get Free or Die Trying

Review by Ryan Graham

During the late 90s' hip-hop witnessed a resurgence of advocacy for revolution and black self-love that hadn't been heard since the heyday of Public Enemy. Dead Prez is one of the better groups to emerge from this new school that melds social revolution to the urban realism of thug life. As Dead Prez conceives it, thug living does not revolve around the self-cannibalism of gangsta rap, but rather a need to politically enhance the lives of black and brown men who struggle for survival in America's inner cities. (Read full review)

Bye-Bye Birdie: A New Presidential Seal

A Play by Lindsay M. Levesque

VICE PRESIDENT

(Dubya stares at him blankly.)

VICE PRESIDENT

A Couple Anti-War Raps

M. Junaid Alam

Download "No to War" here and "Liberate Iraq" here.

(Quicktime or Winamp recommended; to download to hard drive, right-click link, and press "Save Target As")

Launch Release: Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Thanks, America: Letting Us Die For You

A Screenplay by Lindsay M. Levesque

AHMED
I thought the war was over, Sir.

DONALD
Oh yeah�About that�Just get out there and keep your head down. Lotta guys lose their heads the first day.

AHMED
You can trust me, Sir. I paid close attention to the thirty-minute training video your American troops showed at the bombed-out movie theatre. I'm ready to keep the peace. (Read full screenplay)

Musa Goes to Jerusalem

A Short Story by Josh Saxe

A gagging silence smothered the Palestinian city of Bethlehem that Monday night, enforced by adolescent Israeli soldiers manning hulking tanks and razor-wire checkpoints. It was a tense silence; Palestinians dreaming of street executions, broken families and house demolitions, gun butts, Friday market strip searches, murdered siblings; although many still dreamt cautiously of the stuff of everyday life. Musa dreamt of his six year old sister, and when he awoke at 4AM to the familiar smell of shit dripping from his water-warped ceiling into a plastic bucket, his heart pumping, he felt his hand clutching hers. She lay heaving and groaning next to him- she could not live more than a few days and push or shove they would have to get her to the hospital. A resolve to make this happen hardened within him, he had made his decision in his sleep, it felt irreversible. (Read full story)

The Master Race Marches

A Poem By M. Junaid Alam

Slaves of Man, arise:
The Master Race marches.
Can you not hear the clanging of your chains
Or the beating of Their breasts?
(Read full poem)