I just finished reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, with a forward by Cornel West (The New Press, 2012). I urge people to read this essential book.

This morning I read that an ardent member of the Occupy Los Angeles movement has been arrested and charged with lynching.  You might think the protester, Sergio Ballesteros, attacked and hanged someone.

I wish to thank the people who have commented on my last blog about the current administration’s policies and the looming environmental catastrophe. I received many thoughtful observations from a variety of sources including the RFC’s website, Facebook and the online site OpEdNews.

I have no intention of voting for Obama in November. Based on what I’ve learned about environmental sustainability and the military industrial complex, as well as a series of discussions I’ve had with my wife, Elli, about this over the last year, I’ve come to understand that:

2011 ushered in a new era of activism; although from the mainstream media’s perspective the wave of global protest didn’t crash upon our nation’s shores until the fall. Perhaps at the RFC we should have been aware of its impending arrival, because we noted an uptick in new applications starting at the beginning of the year. We weren’t swamped with requests from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in 2011 because it was still in its infancy when our fall application deadline passed in early October.