Author Archives: David Rovics

The politics of moral outrage

It seems like a good moment for a little reflection on the past couple of years. A lot has happened, and a lot hasn’t. What has happened, among other things, has been a whole lot of police brutality, racially-motivated killings by police, a whole lot of media coverage of this sort of thing, a whole lot of protests and riots, and a whole lot more media coverage of that. What hasn’t happened—what hasn’t been reflected in all of this—are significant political or economic changes that might begin to address the ever-deepening inequities in this extremely polarized society. Continue reading

Refugee ancestors

Listen to the news this week, and it’s full of stories of Afghan refugees, and stories about Vietnamese refugees half a century ago, along with refugees from Latin America being beaten back at the Mexican border with Guatemala, and the impending wave of refugees that may soon be flowing from places like Madagascar, where climate chaos has ensured that the crops no longer grow. Continue reading