Artsline || December 20: Local arts and culture events, performances, classes, and exhibitions for the Richmond area, curated each week by VPM's Artsline.
Race, Police and Power in Small-Town America propublica.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from propublica.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rolling Stone George Floyd’s Body Is on Trial for Its Own Murder
The defense for former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin is relying upon centuries of racial stereotypes and health inequities to make a case for his acquittal
By Megan Varner/Getty Images
During the two weeks that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been on trial for murdering George Floyd, the legend of John Henry has come to mind. According to the great American folk ballad, the railroad laborer was working in West Virginia in the early 1870s when his company bought a steam drill. It could dig deeper and faster than any man, they claimed. Accepting a challenge, Henry matched up against the machine and defeated it, at the cost of his life. The effort Henry expends proves fatal.
The Social Order
Like other great metropolises, New York seems prone to crises. A full list of them, ranging across the city’s four-century history, would require a thick tome and make one wonder how a city beset by such horrors could survive, much less thrive.
Defining a crisis, though, is subjective. Some, like 9/11 or the Covid-19 pandemic, clearly fit the bill. But what about the Great Garbage Strike of 1968, when 7,000 sanitation workers refused to collect trash for nine days? Or the summer of 1977, which included an infamous blackout, followed by rioting and looting while serial killer David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) terrorized the city?
The Enduring City | City Journal city-journal.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from city-journal.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.