National Magazine Award Nomination

Some personal news. That article I wrote for the Boston Review, "Death In Texas," has been nominated along with the magazine and its editors, Deb Chasman and Joshua Cohen, for a National Magazine Award in the Public Interest category.

Here's the link to the announcement: http://magazine.org/ASME/ABOUT_ASME/ASME_PRESS_RELEASES/nma-2010-finalists-list.aspx

This type of article is rare, mostly because there are few publications and editors that provide the kind of moral support and freedom to delve into a topic that the Boston Review did for me.

The Public Interest category certainly fits this piece, which is also just a small part -- in many ways a product -- of the inspiring public interest advocacy on these issues by such groups as Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, ACLU, and Justice Strategies.

I have a new article in the latest issue of another Boston-area publication, Dollars & Sense, that explores the evolution of the military-industrial complex. Here's a link to the magazine's table of contents: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0310toc.html It's titled: Synergy in Security: Rise of the National Security Complex.

Concern about the uses and crimes of this complex is how many of us got involved in progressive politics. Most of those concerns remain, decade after decade, but what's so shocking and difficult to comprehend is why we accept, decade after decade, that billions, trillions of dollars are wasted in the name of national security. I will circulate the article here when there is an online version.