Bends Toward Justice

Written Initially Several Years Ago,  Published this Week for the Anniversary of the Portland Rum Riot The Gathering Crowd Bricks thudded against the door of Portlandʼs City Hall. Fifty to 75 young men, most under 20 stood, shouted, and occasionally hurled bricks at the door on the Middle Street side of the building in the early evening of June 2, 1855. Another five- or six-hundred stood about the area, drawn by the ruckus or called out by the earlier fire alarm. Some, like Elbridge Hall had followed Deputy Marshal Oren Ring, “with no more object or interest than to see him seize an Irishman.” Others had come intent on seeing Mayor Neal Dow, “The Napoleon of Temperance” fined and imprisoned, given “a taste of his own medicine.” All would be disappointed. Some would be injured. One would be killed. The 'Maine Law' Background In the early nineteenth century Portland, Maine was a drinking city. In his memoirs Dow claimed, "It was normal for workers to drink on the j...

Is President Trump a Fascist? Recently on FaceBook I shared a comic, “How to Spot Fascism Before It’s Too Late,”  that listed elements of fascism, and illustrated many of them with images and quotes from President Trump.  Some of my right-leaning and Trump-supporting friends and their friends objected to the characterization.  I also feel uncomfortable with throwing around such a vague term; the connotations are so strong!  Like comparing someone to Hitler, or calling them a Nazi, it isn’t discussion or argument, just hyperbole. I said the comic showed why educated people are nervous.  So, I wasn’t claiming that Trump is a fascist, just that there are enough similarities to make someone nervous.   What I’d like to do here is establish some kind of definition of fascism, with a list of identifying characteristics, then compare President Trump’s statements and policies and actions to them.  I want to try do it in a way that minimizes emotional ...

My sophomore ELA classes are writing research reports on possible genocides.  I composed the article below while modeling the process.  So this is my attempt at writing a HS sophomore paper.   Introduction In the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, as WWI raged, more than a million non-combatant Armenians died.  Thousands more fled for survival.  To most who pay attention to such events, this is known as the Armenian genocide and diaspora.  Turkey asserts that there was no genocide, and some other governments in the world have not named it so; however, the slaughter in Turkey led directly to Raphael Lemkin coining the word “genocide,” and thus to the U.N. Convention on Genocide in 1948.  By comparison to the definition of genocide and to Gregory Stanton’s eight stages of genocide, the following pages will show that Turkish actions at the time constitute genocide. Historical Background For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire dominated the land ...