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The Roundup Top Ten for January 14, 2022

Nine Decades Later, Critics of DuBois's "Black Reconstruction" Rehash Old Claims

by Martha S. Jones

For a new wave of critics, it's 1935 all over again, proving the ongoing vitality of DuBois's pioneering work. 

Teachers’ Unions Are Making Totally Reasonable Pandemic Safety Demands

by Josh Mound

Chicago's teachers, like those elsewhere, have led the way in making demands for students to return to safe classrooms. The media are scapegoating them for the failures of politicians to meet or even consider those demands, while advancing a privatization agenda.

Abortion is Vulnerable Because it was Never Assimilated into Mainstream Medicine

by Carole Joffe

Because mainstream doctors and their professional organizations stigmatized the providers of illegal abortions before 1973, they were neither willing nor able to provide a strong defense of abortion rights after Roe v. Wade. 

Online Christian Martyrs

by Peter Manseau

"Imagine if all the energy, resources, and marketing that have been used to inject ideas of martyrdom into issues of public health and safety had instead gone toward making real change."

Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection

by Melinda Cooper

Trumpism's base includes significant leadership and financial support from a faction of capitalists who own and lead private companies and shun many of the concessions made by publicly-traded corporations toward liberalism. 

Don’t Make Meat Cheaper. Make It Much More Expensive

by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg

The Biden administration hopes to score political points by making the meat industry more competitive and lowering prices. This is ignoring the horrible costs of cheap meat. 

Will Omicron Break Up America's Unhealthy Cycle of January Gym Resolutions?

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

Could one positive effect of the Omicron surge be that people are separating their personal motivations to exercise from the commercial imperatives of the fitness and diet industries?

We Must Fight the New Lost Cause Myth Trump has Birthed

by David Blight

"Yes, disinformation has to be fought with good information. But it must also be fought with fierce politics, with organization, and if necessary with bodies, non-violently."

Sidney Poitier Gave More than He was Given

by Samantha N. Sheppard

Sidney Poitier's gift and burden as an actor was to constantly deliver more than his scripts contained, pushing the limits of Black representation in Hollywood films. 

Secularism: The Essential, Fatally Weak Guardrail of Democracy

by Jacques Berlinerblau

The framers of the US Constitiution failed to build in the protections against religious belief overpowering the rights of others or the security of the state that Locke and other political theorists thought were urgently necessary. This oversight might imperil democracy.