Anne-Marie Cusac

Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter whose absurdist and realistic works displayed a despair and defiance about the human condition, has died. Here's one of the most illuminating and political interviews he ever gave.read more

It was September 19, 2001. Elizabeth McAlister had not heard from her husband, Philip Berrigan, in more than a week. Such silence on Berrigan's part was "most unusual," she says.read more

From the June 2005 Issue

I had an unfortunate introduction to Saul Bellow. In 1988, as a college senior, I took a contemporary novels course with one of my favorite professors, a discerning, fervent, word-loving Shakespeare expert.read more

When I first saw the photo, taken at the Abu Ghraib prison, of a hooded and robed figure strung with electrical wiring, I thought of the Sacramento, California, city jail. When I heard that dogs had been used to intimidate and bite at least one detainee at Abu Ghraib, I thought of the training video shown at the Brazoria County Detention Center in Texas.read more

May 2005 Issue

High-powered tasers are the new fad in law enforcement. They are becoming ever more prevalent even as their safety is increasingly in question. The proliferation of tasers in police departments across the country has led to unconventional uses. Among those hit by tasers are elderly people, children as young as one year old, people apparently suffering diabetic shock and epileptic seizures, people already bound in restraints, and hospital mental patients. Police used tasers against protesters at the 2003 Miami Free Trade Area of the Americas demonstration and against rowdy fans at the 2005 Fiesta Bowl. School systems are employing the weapons, with some officers carrying tasers even in elementary schools.read more

November 2003

Since September 11, 2001, the nation has been on alert about the vulnerability of chemical facilities. And while the Bush Administration claims that homeland security is a priority, time after time, it has opted to do nothing dramatic to improve the security of U.S. chemical facilities. All along, it has followed the wishes of the U.S. chemical industry--at our peril.read more

May 1, 2003

When the Bush Administration orders male Muslim immigrants to report for what is called Special Registration, it often interferes with their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The men have to appear at designated immigration offices for fingerprinting, photographs, and questioning, but their interrogators don't want their lawyers around.read more

April 2003

"This is where I come to hide," says Sam Hamill as he pulls the car into the grove of fir and cedar surrounding the house and studio he built himself. But he is not hiding. He has scheduled his Progressive interview hard upon his return from New York City, where, during a blizzard, he and poets Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Martín Espada, and others read to a large and enthusiastic audience at Lincoln Center. read more

February 2003

The most basic labor right--the right to organize a union--does not exist in actual fact in many workplaces across the country. During industrialization, some labor activists gave their lives so workers could join unions and get better pay and safer working conditions.read more

March 2002

On October 24, Muhammed Butt died of a heart attack at the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny, New Jersey. Butt, a Pakistani national, was detained on September 19 by the FBI as a suspect connected with the September 11 attacks. He was then transferred to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which charged him with a visa violation.read more

December 2001

When the Bush Administration orders male Muslim immigrants to report for what is called Special Registration, it often interferes with their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The men have to appear at designated immigration offices for fingerprinting, photographs, and questioning, but their interrogators don't want their lawyers around.It was September 19, 2001.read more

July 2001 issue

Last August, Wanda Yanello of Plano, Texas, was terribly worried. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Heather King, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The illness seemed to be accelerating. Heather was punching holes in the wall and was gone for days on end.read more

July 2000

In prisons and jails across the country, inmates with HIV or AIDS are being denied proper treatment. In many cases, guards and medical staff have blocked inmates from getting their vital drug regimens, sometimes for months at a time, or have prescribed regimens that are dangerous. Such negligence can lead to drug resistance. It can also lead to death. "We routinely get letters from people who are not getting their medications," says Christine Doyle, research coordinator for Amnesty International, U.S.A.read more

Bush is doing in Guantanamo what guards are doing in the U.S. Intended as a restraint, it has led to torture and death.read more

Here the speaker of "I Stand Here Ironing" looks back on the difficulties of young, single motherhood: "She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily's father, who "could no longer endure" (he wrote in his good-bye note) "sharing want with us."read more