About Benj Demott

Your editor struck up a correspondence with the author of this article after we both responded to a group email from William Greider linking us to one of Greider’s recent pieces. It led to an exchange about the Affordable Care Act and to this piece of “samizdat” detailing one desperate senior’s angle on ACA (and … Read more

What follows is an exchange between George Scialabba, essayist and editor of The Baffler, and longtime First of the Month contributor, Fredric Smoler. The subject of their debate (which was sparked by Smoler’s article “Democracy Now.”) is the controversy surrounding Michael Kinsley’s Times review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, … Read more

I’ve been expecting you to rain on “Obamamania” for years so your Harpers piece last month didn’t come out of the blue. Though it feels a little inapposite to mention…me since your analysis nicely eschews authorial narcissism. You don’t go in for the sort of brazen self-aggrandizement that makes other wannabe-prominent leftist critics of our … Read more

Newark has been accused of corruption. Often such extreme characterizations, like Booker’s twisted opponent in the NJ Senatorial races, Lonegan, talking about bodies floating in the Passaic, or his fascination with Booker’s sexuality, have specific partisan political uses. There was, though, Hugh Addonizio, Newark Mayor in the 60s, whom the courts indicted and convicted of … Read more

This twenty gun salute to Lawrence Goodwyn—late, great historian of social movements and exemplary democrat—amps up echoes from the memorial celebration that took place last month at Duke University in Durham. There are texts here of talks given by those who honored him then along with reflections by many other comrades. (F.Y.I.: Larry’s old friends … Read more

Lawrence Goodwyn—great American historian of democratic social movements (and First friend)—has died. The Times‘ respectful obituary covered Larry’s “authoritative” work on American populism, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America, his role in the Civil Rights movement and Texas politics (where he once served as an advance man for Senator Ralph—“Put the jam on the … Read more

April 14, 1876 Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. Delivered at the Unveiling of The Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln Friends and Fellow-citizens: I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have today. This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise … Read more