In 1853, traveling was full of danger. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. Pedestrians were regularly attacked by the Five Points' gangs. Rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were all part of the daily street scene in old New York. Yet somehow, they endured and transformed a trading post into the Empire City.

"No Natives or Dogs Allowed," blared the storefront sign at Elizabeth Peratrovich, then a young Alaska Native Tlingit. The sting of those words would stay with her all her life. Years later, after becoming a seasoned fighter for equality, she would deliver her own powerful message: one that helped change Alaska and the nation forever.

From 1953 to 1969, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren brought about many of the proudest achievements of American constitutional law. The Warren declared racial segregation and laws forbidding interracial marriage to be unconstitutional; it expanded the right of citizens to criticize public officials; it held school prayer unconstitutional; and it ruled that people accused of a crime must be given a lawyer even if they can't afford one. Yet, despite those and other achievements, conservative critics have fiercely accused the justices of the Warren Court of abusing their authority by supposedly imposing their own opinions on the nation.

"It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness."—Mary Wollstonecraft

Finance is the evil we cannot live without. It governs almost every aspect of our lives and has the power to liberate as well as enslave. With the world's total financial assets—valued at a staggering $300 trillion—being four times larger than the combined output of all the world's economies, there is, apparently, plenty to go around.

“Dovey Johnson Roundtree set a new path for women and proved that the vision and perseverance of a single individual can turn the tides of history.”
—Michelle Obama

The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism

A speech on the radio. A high school literature class. A promise made to a mother.