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Opting Out Together

by Miriam Axel-Lute April 24, 2013

This week and last week New York state students in grades 3–8 underwent hours and hours of new standardized testing as part of the state’s implementation of the new “Common Core” learning standards. The tests marked ...

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If You Really Meant That Sign . . .

by Miriam Axel-Lute April 11, 2013

My feelings about marriage equality were well summed up by Feminist Hulk: “HULK SUPPORT QUEER AND FEMINIST CHALLENGES TO MARRIAGE AS INSTITUTION. HULK ALSO CHAMPION SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. HULK VAST, CONTAIN MULTITUDES.” But nonetheless, these are momentous ...

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More Than “Insensitive”

by Miriam Axel-Lute March 28, 2013

“We support the residents of Ida Yarbrough.” That was the central theme of the 50-person community response rally that gathered on the corner of Livingston Avenue and North Pearl Street on Tuesday evening. Many residents of ...

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What Is Safe Sleeping?

by Miriam Axel-Lute March 13, 2013

It was with great disappointment that I saw the new Albany County advertising campaign on “safe sleeping” for infants, which discourages bedsharing and repeats the old, inaccurate canard that “babies sleep safest alone.” There are few ...

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Dear Labor, WTF?

by Miriam Axel-Lute February 28, 2013

To “Big Labor,” especially the AFL-CIO, from the diverse and rapidly growing climate change movement: So the past few years have been going pretty well for you and us, we thought. We got your back in ...

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Ten Books To Blow Your Mind

by Miriam Axel-Lute February 13, 2013

It’s a good reading season, this six-more-weeks-of-winter-at-least time of year. So since I’m in the middle of a book that makes me repeatedly collar whoever is in the room with me to share the insights ...

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Stop Segregating the Rich

by Miriam Axel-Lute January 30, 2013

“Gentrification will reduce crime and violence—but only if poor people stay.” That’s the title of an interesting recent blog post on MetroTrends describing a move some urban researchers are making toward taking a public health approach ...

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Acceptable Victims

by Miriam Axel-Lute January 16, 2013

As we start to emerge from the horror of the Newtown school shootings, I keep finding myself returning to the other half of what I thought to say when I wrote about it back in ...

Today the Kitchen, Tomorrow the World

by Miriam Axel-Lute January 3, 2013

Sometimes our most satisfying triumphs are embarrassingly small. One weekend, I tackled our pantry floor, with its towering crates of jars and plastic storage containers. I had for years bemoaned the lack of an easy ...

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Get It Done

by Miriam Axel-Lute December 20, 2012

The deadliest school violence in this country happened in 1927, when a school board official in Michigan blew up a school building, and his car, killing 38 children and 6 adults. Leonore Skenazy of the Free ...

Stumbling to Solidarity

by Miriam Axel-Lute December 6, 2012

It’s been an exciting year in labor organizing, between the Chicago teachers strike, Port of Oakland shut downs, Wal-Mart walkouts, and New York City’s multi-chain fast food workers’ walkout. Healthy, progressive labor organizing is essential ...

I Am Thanksome

by Miriam Axel-Lute November 20, 2012

This year we’ve instituted what seems likely to become a yearly tradition of a Thanksgiving tree. It’s taped on the wall of our front stairs, trunk and branches made out of brown paper. Each day, ...

Mandate! Now, For What?

by Miriam Axel-Lute November 8, 2012

It’s the demographics, stupid. Also the economy. And climate change. And women’s rights. Tuesday was a rout. It was more of a rout than the numbers and the results show, because let’s remember that the progressive ...

They’re Not Like Us

by Miriam Axel-Lute October 25, 2012

I was sitting in the Atlanta airport last week waiting at a crowded gate for a flight home after a long week of traveling. A news segment came on about a 20-year-old Afghan woman who ...

Shake It Harder

by Miriam Axel-Lute October 10, 2012

A couple weekends ago I went out to pick apples from a neighborhood tree with my six year old. We came armed with a seven-foot ladder and a cardboard box. Upon arriving we found the ...

Bank On It

by Miriam Axel-Lute September 26, 2012

Albany has a vacant buildings problem. The number may fluctuate depending on who you ask, and how you define “vacant,” but the latest count by the city puts us at over 800. This certainly not unique ...

Solidarity With Chicago

by Miriam Axel-Lute September 12, 2012

First of all, if you’re reading this on the day it comes out, and you haven’t voted in the primary yet, put it down, go vote, and then come back. Please and thank you. OK. That ...

The Privilege of Protest

by Miriam Axel-Lute August 30, 2012

I took some time I didn’t feel like I had on Monday to join the anti-fracking rally and march that gathered in the Corning Preserve by the Hudson River, made a stop at the DEC ...

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