Today's Liberal News

The Last Stop

Illustrations by Miki LoweThe poet Adam Zagajewski spent his life trying to make meaning of what he had lived through. When he was a child, his family was relocated within Poland after World War II; as a young man, he was exiled from the country altogether for writing protest poems against the country’s authoritarian government. “I lost two homelands,” he once said, “but I sought a third: a space for the imagination.

Where Is My Mother’s Safety Net?

My dad didn’t believe my mom when she announced that she was leaving him. Desperate, after years spent begging him to accept treatment for a worsening mental illness, she threatened to move out if he didn’t comply with his doctor’s recommendations. “Where will you go?” he asked.A former stay-at-home parent of five grown children, all just beginning their careers around the country, my mom had no money of her own and no job.

Employers Have Been Offering the Wrong Office Amenities

Before you read any further, take a long, slow, deep breath. Congratulations! If you’re sitting in a typical American home, office building, or school, about 3 percent of the air you breathed in recently came out of the lungs of the people in the room with you right now.Breathing in one another’s air is kind of nasty when you think about it. We would never drink from the same cup of water that every one of our co-workers had just sipped out of.

The Atlantic Daily: Five Podcasts for the Weekend

Getty; The Atlantic
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.Fall is here, and the air is getting crisp, which means it’s the perfect time to snuggle up and press play on a new work of audio storytelling. I asked writers and editors from around our newsroom to recommend a podcast episode worth your listen.

In Netflix’s Squid Game, Debt Is a Double-Edged Sword

For the chance to escape severe debt, the characters in Netflix’s hugely popular survival drama Squid Game would risk anything, even death. Take the protagonist Seong Gi-hun. Unemployed, he spends his days in Seoul gambling on horse races and has signed away his organs as collateral to his creditors. His deficits, both financial and personal, hurt the people closest to him: He hasn’t paid child support or alimony to his ex-wife; he mooches off his elderly mother.

Jeff Bezos Is Being Knocked Back Down to Earth

On the night he went to space, Jeff Bezos threw a party for his employees. The hotel restaurant in Van Horn, a town in West Texas not far from the launch site, was thrumming. Inside, someone had cut into the frosted Blue of Blue Origin on a big vanilla sheet cake. Outside, a live band jammed beneath a tent skimmed with café lights. Everyone was a little buzzed and a lot relieved. They had just launched their boss to space from the middle of the desert.

Colleagues of Michael Ratner Blast Samuel Moyn’s Claim That He Helped Sanitize the “War on Terror”

Friends and relatives of the late radical attorney Michael Ratner respond to the recent controversy over Yale University professor Samuel Moyn’s claim that Ratner “prioritized making the war on terror humane” by using the courts to challenge the military’s holding of prisoners at Guantánamo. Ratner’s longtime colleagues blast Moyn for failing to recognize how the late attorney had dedicated his life to fighting war and U.S. imperialism.

Don’t Pursue War, Pursue War Crimes: Michael Ratner’s Decades-Long Battle to Close Guantánamo

We look at the life and legacy of the late Michael Ratner, the trailblazing human rights lawyer and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, with three people who knew him well: Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Vince Warren, the organization’s executive director; and ​​Lizzy Ratner, Ratner’s niece and a senior editor at The Nation magazine.

Missing White Woman Syndrome: Media Obsess Over Some Cases as Black, Brown & Indigenous Women Ignored

Wall-to-wall coverage of the case of Gabby Petito — a 22-year-old white woman and blogger who went missing while traveling with her fiancé Brian Laundrie and whose remains were found in a national park in Wyoming — has renewed attention on what some call “missing white woman syndrome,” the media’s inordinate focus on white female victims and the disparity in coverage for women of color.

Community Spotlight: Is your story hiding its beauty under a drab headline?

Isn’t it time to stop sabotaging your excellent story with a crappy headline? You write because you have something to say to readers, and it’s discouraging when a thoughtful story sinks without enough interaction. While no magic formula can ensure your story is noticed among the thousands published every month on Daily Kos, you can improve the odds of attracting readers by practicing some basic headline-crafting principles.

California becomes first state to require COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible K-12 students

Just like mumps, just like chickenpox, just like measles.

As reported by The Washington Post, Californians have another reason to be thankful that Gov. Gavin Newsom will remain in charge of their state government, rather than some Trump-worshiping Fox News personality. Newsom announced Friday that, once the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants full approval, the Golden State would enact the first statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for eligible schoolchildren.

Reproductive justice advocates can’t afford to ignore how abortion bans affect Asian Americans

by Jenn Fang

This story was originally published at Prism.

Texas’ abortion ban, known as State Bill 8, is by far the harshest in the nation and has already all but eliminated abortion access in Texas. With an estimated nearly 250,000 Asian American adults who identify as female residing in the state, the ban is certain to disproportionately impact their communities. While the ban now faces a legal challenge from the U.S.

The latest conservative hot take: Greta Thunberg is like Hitler

Dave Rubin is a political commentator and talk show host who appears on YouTube and BlazeTV, a conservative network that also hosts famed Algonquin Diaper-Changing Station members Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and, erm, one of those Duck Dynasty dudes. You know, the one with the shitty beard. No, not the shitty Rip Van Winkle beard. The other one. The one that looks like a rent-by-the-hour motel for boisterously horny sea otters. You know, that  guy.

Two health care worker strikes highlight a broken system, this week in the war on workers

Around 2,000 health care workers at South Buffalo Mercy Hospital are on strike after weeks of negotiations left them without a deal. The workers’ own health care costs are at issue, as are staffing ratios to ensure the best care of patients. There’s an important point made in the tweets below:

My wife gets the travel nurse notices for these kinds of gigs. The pay is insane to scab.