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D.H. Melhem, Art and Politics/Politics and Art

The back cover this eighth book of D.H. Melhem’s poetry posts this trenchant observation by fellow poet Philip Appleman:

Steve Brouwer, Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care

Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation

Benjamin Shepard and Greg Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City’s Public Spaces

Steve Early, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old?

Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied (Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press & Media LLC, 2011)

Every year I teach classes on US social policy and community health. We usually watch the film Unnatural Causes, a documentary about the ways inequalities in wealth are reflected in our health. The film explores indicators of inequality including social determinants of health among various populations, examples of excess death in low-income communities, high pre-term births among African American mothers, and overall high rates of infant mortality across the board.

After three years of economic crisis that has caused increasing economic hardship for most of the world population, the year 2011 started with a blast of hope in the form of a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the Arab world. This wave swept through more than fifteen countries in northern Africa and the Middle East and inspired similar uprisings throughout Europe.

Istvan Mészáros, Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness. Volume I: The Social Determination of Method; Volume II: The Dialectic of Structure and History (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010, 2011).

Many racism theorists believe that color-blind ideology, which became prominent during the late 1960s-early 1970s, is the dominant racist ideology of the 21^st century, becoming. Unlike earlier racist ideologies, color-blind ideology rests on the seemingly positive belief that we should not judge one another by the color of our skin. In fact, we should not notice skin color at all. This kind of thinking has a way of translating into racism-evasiveness so that not only do we try to deny differences in skin color; we deny the existence and significance of racism.