(Greensboro) The photo above was taken in 1981, almost two years after I left Boston with a woman named Nancy Garner. Thank you, Nancy Fox, for this and much, much more; our two adult children, Ana Maria and Nate, and Ana’s son Jordan. I chose the photo because “This Week in Black and White” ends with this column, and Gate City Revue will also disappear. After 40 years here, the city I will always call Read more…
We are closer to a crisis of class rule. Trump & Co., which now includes the Republican Party that Donald J. Trump owns and controls, used his convention to accuse the Democratic Party “Establishment” led by the Biden/Harris ticket – it does indeed exist – of a socialist political agenda that will destroy our democracy from within. This was the main rocket in Trump’s convention booster. There is simply no way to minimize the clear Read more…
(Greensboro) This has been a difficult year for most of us, no? A crisis of unprecedented magnitude is upon us and taking its toll in countless ways. It sure feels that way to me. I am told repeatedly of being overly sensitive to this gargantuan mess. Get a grip, Michael. Alright, I say to myself, which neighbors might overhear and wonder about the fool living next door. Let me try again just for today, I Read more…
(Greensboro) Former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick of Sen. Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and the first person of Asian descent to be nominated for high office by either major party, now signals that democratic forces can bring the immediate fascist onslaught led by Trump & Co. and the Republican Party to a halt. It also means that Trump’s fascist counterattack will be more brutal, more calculating, more venomous, and more capable of lightning Read more…
(Greensboro) I’ve felt heavy doses of anticommunism most of my professional life as a journalist and historian, and politically and personally as a community activist here and elsewhere. I’ve even been nudged by musicians to keep politics out of conversations during breaks on gigs or at rehearsals. Keep the radical stuff to yourself, man, they will say, or you’ll fuck things up for yourself. Guys just want to play. They don’t want to hear about Read more…
A little more than two weeks ago I tested positive for COVID-19. I was retested a few days ago and got the results last night. I am negative. Was the first test a false positive? Or maybe I just got better? Who knows? Except for fatigue, which is more or less chronic for me, I never had obvious symptoms of coronavirus. For once, I was asymptomatic of something. Of course, I was restricted to my Read more…
Greensboro has been my longest holdover as an adult. I arrived in June of 2016 to take a job with UNCG. Since I finished my bachelor’s degree in May of 2000, I’ve never lived anywhere longer than three consecutive years, and North Carolina is the seventh state I’ve lived in since 2000. I lived in Boulder, Colorado, for nine years overall, but that was over four separate periods of time between August of 2001 and Read more…
“Gate City Revue is writers, musicians, artists, and other citizens gathering their vision. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, a gateway city from the South to the West, our mission is transforming community challenged by radical change.” Such is the mission of Gate City Revue. Its launching marks the starting point for an online magazine aimed at transformative and radical change. The editorial stance of Gate City Revue is grounded in its faithfulness to the city’s Read more…
In one of many notebooks I have from years of reading and research for topics I have written about, I found this on the first page of one of them. The entry is dated May 25, 2007, and is remarkably readable and coherent given that notes I take are usually stuff only I can make out. So this is what I wrote more than a dozen years ago and how it appears: All indicators of Read more…
The closing of THE PROJECT is complete physically and virtually but not in spirit, and so comes its successor, Gate City Revue. It seemed like a good choice for several reasons. First and foremost, Greensboro became known as the Gate City in the early 1890s when local business leaders and newspapers hailed it as a gateway to the South and West and, as it was reported, 60 trains rolled in and out of the city Read more…
