How to jump start a progressive movement
Sam SmithDefine your politics issue by issue, not icon by icon. One reason progressive politics fares so poorly is because we spend too much time on individual campaigns and not enough on issues. While...
View ArticleThe story Spike Lee didn't tell
Sam Smith - Watching Stokely Carmichael pictured in BlacKKKlansman brought back memories of sitting in a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee meeting in the mid Sixties listening to Carmichael...
View ArticleThe end of home rule
Speech by Sam Smith at the conference of DC New Democracy, February 25, 1995 Whatever it was that was optimistically called home rule is now gone. It died when our mayor offered to give much of it...
View ArticleCorruption as a culture as well as a crime
Sam Smith - Corruption is not just a crime, it is a culture. And, by its nature, it can have different effects. I have become convinced, for example, that contemporary culture is, in no small part, the...
View ArticleMultitudes: The unauthorized memoirs of Sam Smith: Forward
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large -- I contain multitudes -- Walt Whitman FORWARD Sam Smith - On a warm September evening in 1994, approaching the corner where...
View ArticleSummer
From Multitudes: The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith During the war, summer was much the same as winter -- only hotter. Even if you could afford to leave town, gas was rationed. But as the war wound...
View ArticleHow humans may go extinct
Sam Smith - I have recently come to the conclusion that humans may not become extinct thanks to warfare or climate change but rather that they may starve to death owing to the number of forms they...
View ArticleConfront the strong but convert the weak
Sam Smith, 2020 – One of the problems I have with activism these days is that we seem to have lost both the capacity and desire to convert the weak. Too often there is a style I’ve come to think of as...
View ArticleCivil rights substance and symbols
Sam Smith, 2016 On the civil rights front, in recent years there has been a shift in action from substantive improvements to symbolic cleansing. While the two should not, in principle, be in...
View ArticleBefore the lies of Donald Trump
Sam Smith – Long before the arrival of Donald Trump, America was into lies. For example, Wikipedia reports: In Propaganda (1928), [Edward] Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a...
View ArticleGeorgetown
From Multitudes:The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith As I lay in my bassinet at Washington's Garfield Hospital in the late fall of 1937, I was of course unaware that the world was rushing towards...
View ArticleIntroduction
The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself I am large -- I contain multitudes --Walt Whitman On a warm September evening in 1994, approaching...
View ArticleFrom anger to action: dealing with ethnic relations
Sam Smith One of the sad things about the ethnic conflict that has increasingly defined our land is the lack of movements that produce change rather than merely more anger. While the victims of such...
View ArticleThe failure of liberal evangelicalism
Sam Smith, 2016 – Lately, I’ve been feeling real glad that I got into activism in the early 1960s because I’m increasingly getting the sense that I wouldn’t be good enough to be an activist by today’s...
View ArticleSome tips for young writers
Written by Sam Smith in 2017 as part of a local Maine high school writing contest Writing isn’t about winning; it’s about saying things that others understand, learn from and appreciate. They may be...
View ArticleJust a thought: What churches could do on Saturdays
Sam Smith – As a seventh day agnostic, I share most Christian values albeit regarding where they allegedly came from as far more myth than reality. The other day I heard of a minister describing...
View ArticleJazz and democracy
Sam Smith – During four decades, most while engaged in journalism in Washington, I also played in jazz bands. I recommend this to any journalist who finds their work over-stressful. But the other thing...
View ArticleLawyers don’t get to define virtue
Sam Smith - One of the ways in which the current scandals have altered our thinking is a broad acceptance of the notion that it all is mainly a matter of law. What will judges and juries decide? We...
View ArticleThe different ethnic tales of Washington DC
Sam Smith – I was born and lived most of my life in Washington DC. In recent years I have been repeatedly reminded of how little non-residents know of the non-federal aspects of the capital city. For...
View ArticleCora Du Bois
Sam Smith, 2015 I only took one course from Cora Du Bois, but when I heard about Susan Seymour’s new biography of the anthropologist - who had come to Harvard about the same time as I did - I...
View ArticleThe hidden power of us
Sam Smith – Last May I wrote about a discovery that deer in the field behind our house had made for me: We live next to a Maine field that is periodically used by up to a dozen deer. Watching them and...
View ArticleThe liberal virtue standard: words rather than action
Sam Smith – Although your editor graduated from Harvard magna cum probation, I do feel compelled to say a word on behalf of that college’s president who is currently under attack for committing the...
View ArticleEternal fundamentals of leadership
Sam Smith, 2011 - I have been trying to understand the eternal fundamentals of leadership according those who see government and non-profits as badly in need of corporate principles. Here’s what I’ve...
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