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Personal Voices

A Nation of Wanna-Be Authors

By Esther Cohen, Pacific News Service. June 8, 2005.
In a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans reported wanting to write a book. It seems now more than ever before, we want to tell our stories.

Untruthfulness and Consequences

By Andrew Borene, AlterNet. May 27, 2005.
A continued refusal to honestly show the real human cost of the war will only alienate the troops from the American people and civilian leadership.

Star Wars III: The Curse of Pregnancy

By Kimi Eisele, AlterNet. May 25, 2005.
Why does Padme spend this movie sentenced to an idle life at home in tearful silence? Is this what pregnancy does to women?

A Journey into Red AmericaA Journey into Red America

By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet. May 23, 2005.
A San Francisco progressive begins her four-month journey through the so-called Red States. Her first stop: the bluest town in Texas.

Dispatches from a Teenage Feminist

By Aviva Ariel, Ms. Magazine. May 20, 2005.
WireTap: I want to make it so that when my daughter goes to high school and says she's a feminist, everyone in the school, just yawns and says, yeah, who isn't?

Heart of Darthness

By Cathy Resmer, Seven Days. May 19, 2005.
Movie Mix: While most girls our age were playing house, my friends and I were playing Star Wars. And I was always the hero, Luke Skywalker.

The Baron's Last Exit

By Murray Waas, AlterNet. May 18, 2005.
Why did the public relations man who represented Saddam Hussein and Mobutu Sese Seko fling himself off a parapet? Perhaps his conscience finally caught up with him.

An Open Letter to Bill Ford, Jr.

By Cindy Sheehan, AlterNet. May 9, 2005.
Environment: As manufacturer of the world's worst fleet when it comes to fuel efficiency, it's time for you to take immediate action to help break our oil addiction.

One Mother's Story

By Cheri O'Donoghue, AlterNet. May 6, 2005.
DrugReporter: Why were two white boys treated so humanely, while my son, a black boy, was set up, dismissed, and discarded into the prison system?

Confessions of a Listener

By Garrison Keillor, The Nation. May 6, 2005.
Media and Technology: When the iPod steals the last of Clear Channel's audience, the crazy, quirky and beautiful will return to radio -- and Garrison Keillor will welcome them.

National Defeat Day - National Liberation DayNational Defeat Day - National Liberation Day

By Andrew Lam, AlterNet. April 29, 2005.
April 30 became the birth date of an exile's culture, built on defeatism and a sense of tragic ending. But through the years, that date has come to symbolize something entirely different to this Vietnamese American.

Money Can't Buy HealthMoney Can't Buy Health

By Norma Barragan, Silicon Valley DeBug. April 27, 2005.
WireTap: In East Palo Alto, Caifornia, an area where one in four teens suffer from asthma, one young woman announces, "big fines don't fix environmental racism in my community."

The Party of New Ideas

By Tom Cosgrove, AlterNet. April 19, 2005.
Americans may know what group we stand against -- Republicans -- but they do not know what ideas we have for change or what principles and moral values we share as a party. An open letter to Howard Dean.

Crystal Crisis

By Mubarak Dahir, AlterNet. April 18, 2005.
DrugReporter: A circuit party incident shows just how rampant 'Tina' has become -- and just how indifferent gay men seem to be about it. 

Mourning Marla

By Jill Carroll, Christian Science Monitor. April 18, 2005.
World: Intrepid humanitarian aid worker Marla Ruzicka died in Baghdad Saturday when her car was caught in an insurgent attack.

Counting On MarlaCounting On Marla

By Tai Moses, AlterNet. April 18, 2005.
Politicians and government officials learned the hard way how relentless this sweet-faced girl, barely out of her teens, could be.

Remembering a Friend

By Medea Benjamin, Kevin Danaher, AlterNet. April 18, 2005.
Marla Ruzicka was a bright, shining light whose work focused on bringing some compassion into a war zone.

One Of a Kind

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. April 18, 2005.
To say Marla was unique may seem a cliche, but in my many years of political work and journalism, I have never known anyone quite like her.

The Face of the Frontier

By Marisa Arrona, AlterNet. April 17, 2005.
Rights and Liberties: Border vigilantes and their talk of "protecting the frontier" obscure the real faces of Mexican immigrants and their contributions to the United States.

GodAssault

By Lisa Lambert, Tomdispatch.com. April 16, 2005.
Calvary Chapel-style Christianity is a complex system with intricate rules. Think of it as God's game.

"FOBs" vs. "Twinkies": The Language of Intraracial Discrimination

By Grace Hsiang, Pacific News Service. April 15, 2005.
Rights and Liberties: A young Asian American woman examines the sometimes-bitter debate among her peers between holding fast to one's heritage or embracing a more dominant culture.

Good Morning, Baghdad

By Riverbend, Baghdad Burning. April 7, 2005.
World: A young Iraqi blogger reveals the latest weapon in the U.S. occupation's arsenal: bad television.

The Progressive Disability Perspective

By Josie Byzek, AlterNet. March 30, 2005.
When looking at the Terri Schiavo case, I ask my fellow progressives to tweeze the disability perspective out of the culture war rhetoric of either "life at all costs" or "better dead than disabled."

The Tom DeLay Litmus Test

By Cenk Uygur, AlterNet. March 29, 2005.
The question that the Democrats need to ask Republican legislators in the Blue States is: Are you with Tom DeLay or against him?

Tragedy At Red Lake: A History of Self-Hate Among Indian Youths

By H. Mathew Barkhausen III, SNAG Magazine. March 24, 2005.
WireTap: "I can only wonder how things might have turned out differently if Weise had had a traditional Ojibwe upbringing, was well-acquainted with his native tongue and traditions."

Picking Up the Pieces

By Mai Wang, VOX: Atlanta's Teen Newspaper. March 24, 2005.
WireTap: "The real-life examples unfold like plotlines from B movies: freshman girls who sleep with football players hoping to gain notoriety but only gain ridicule. Friends who are distraught after losing their virginity at the wrong time. I have been the objective bystander, the consoling friend, and frankly, I am tired of picking up the pieces of shattered girls."

Anti-war Youth Activism Explodes

By Adam Waxman, Foreign Policy in Focus. March 17, 2005.
WireTap: What do pacifist student activist have in common with "red state" military families and war veterans? In North Carolina – home of the Ft. Bragg military base – they're both looking forward to the biggest demonstration against the Iraq War their area has ever seen.

In a Green MoodIn a Green Mood

By Sabrina Ford, Pop and Politics. March 16, 2005.
WireTap: The fact that McDonald’s markets their chemically-engineered goodies to black people using people who look like us is nothing new. But their latest efforts – ads featuring the Williams sisters and bootleg spoken word – is just wrong!

Do You Puff, Daddy?Do You Puff, Daddy?

By Larry Smith, AlterNet. March 16, 2005.
DrugReporter: What to tell the children about past – and, in many cases, current – drug use isn't easy. Where do you draw the line between being a hypocrite and protecting your kids?

Betting on the Future: Youth and the Labor Movement

By Ben Waxman, WireTap. March 15, 2005.
WireTap: The labor movement needs to start paying attention to young people if it wants to rebuild its strength.

Artists Against the Drug War

By Anthony Papa, AlterNet. March 15, 2005.
DrugReporter: A unique benefit art exhibit aims to help stop the madness of the war on drugs.

The Real Choices Women Make

By Karen Rosenberg, AlterNet. March 15, 2005.
Rights and Liberties: The real stories of women who have had abortions can't be pigeonholed in a propaganda debate. They surprise even a seasoned activist and could change minds in unlikely places.

Comprehensive Sex Ed Helps Teens Make Smart ChoicesComprehensive Sex Ed Helps Teens Make Smart Choices

By Anna Bialek, SEX, ETC.. March 10, 2005.
Sex and Relationships: We hope our health classes would at least provide the facts. But the truth is, many schools use “abstinence-only” sexuality education, which means that a lot of vital information is either deleted—or worse—distorted.

The Joy Of Six Milligrams

By Alexis Luna, IntheFray.com. March 8, 2005.
DrugReporter: For my monthly prescription of Xanax, there wasn't much I wouldn't do. My shrink prided himself in his knowledge of drugs and dosages, yet I was playing him for a fool.

Between Black and RightBetween Black and Right

By Makani Themba-Nixon, ColorLines. March 1, 2005.
Rights and Liberties: My father's story represents the long tradition of black conservatism in this country. And if we are to truly understand the increasing number of African Americans joining their ranks, we will have to go back a lot further than this election.

Gimme Truth

By Marah Eakin, WireTap. March 1, 2005.
WireTap: What happens when cutting edge anti-tobacco programs actually work? Big tobacco companies no longer need to bankroll them.

A Star in Mosul

By Aunt Najma, Clamor. February 28, 2005.
World: A 16-year old describes the perils of every Iraqi teenager's life: bombs, kidnappings, shortages, and, of course, acne.

Regaining My Humanity

By Camilo Mejia, AlterNet. February 28, 2005.
World: Conscientious objector Camilo Mejia: "I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place."

Rebuilding Labor

By Dan Carol, AlterNet. February 23, 2005.
As the AFL-CIO convenes its convention in Las Vegas next week, an open letter to Andy Stern: Let's not just reorganize, let's re-brand, dammit.

Monuments to Decent Lives

By Joseph H. Cooper, Christian Science Monitor. February 21, 2005.
It takes a special kind of following to warrant being memorialized on a postage stamp, let alone on coin or currency – or Mount Rushmore. Still, each of us, in our own way, carves out a bit of history that should be set down.