American Turmoil | ModeShift

U.S. Government Shutdown Is A Tripwire — But For What?

by Keith SchneiderOctober 6, 2013June 18, 20143

Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate the president’s second inauguration on Pennsylvania Avenue on January 21, 2013. Photo/Keith Schneider For a time earlier in my career I founded and directed the Michigan Land Use Institute, an advocacy organization that is quite adept at winning important public interest campaigns. The Institute’s policy achievements were due in no small way to how consistently we adhered to our rules of engagement. Respect those who disagree with you. Don’t call …

Just As It’s Always Been, Earth Day Marks Big Problems, Big Choices

by Keith SchneiderApril 25, 2013June 18, 20140

CHATHAM, Mass. — The tides here lay down a walkway of shells — horseshoe crabs, scallops, palm-size crabs — where the water meets dry sand. On Earth Day 2013 a nearly full moon is perched, like a round plate on a pedestal, amid an expanse of cloudless blue sky. Gulls soar and dive in a stout breeze, and in the nearby mudflats men and women with long-handled metal rakes in hand and collars turned up …

Boston Lockdown City

by Keith SchneiderApril 20, 2013June 18, 20145

On Friday before noon the Harvard Square area was empty in lockdown Cambridge. Photo/Keith Schneider CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Hours after the teenage white hat bomber was taken into custody, the rain started. It was a warm rain, a renewing rain. This morning dogwoods were in white bloom. Puddles on the sidewalks were like mirrors, reflecting the grey sky and the long strides of runners along the Charles. It felt like the world had changed. This …

Gun Violence Mounts; So Does Cowardice

by Keith SchneiderApril 17, 2013June 18, 20140

In Florida, supporters sounded off on the need to strengthen gun safety and reduce violence, some of whom also were members of the NRA. This has been a lousy week of murder in America. It’s also been another intolerable and telling week of cultural contrast best described by what President Obama today called “shameful” politics. When a terrorist bomb killed three and injured nearly 180 people in Boston two days ago, we reacted with sorrow …

Boston Marathon Bombing

by Keith SchneiderApril 16, 2013June 18, 20143

The week leading up to April 19 is turning out to be a gruesome one for the United States. On April 19, 1995 Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 680. That attack, McVeigh said, was justified by the FBI assault two years earlier, April 19, 1993, on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Seventy-six people died. Waco and Oklahoma City crystalized menace in several …

The Wreckage Wrought By A Marauding Minority

by Keith SchneiderDecember 26, 2012December 6, 20146

Along the Champs Elysees on Christmas Day, nobody worried about getting gunned down in the street, or about a marauding minority political party bent on wrecking the nation. Photo/Keith Schneider PARIS — Along the Champs Elysees’ on Christmas night, an angels’ envy of rope-thin LED halos — colors shifting from red to blue to white — circled the trees and lit the broad boulevard where thousands of people strolled carefree. Nobody worried about the sick …

Newtown Massacre Is Part of Global Trend: Protect The Rich, Crush The Children

by Keith SchneiderDecember 16, 2012June 18, 20143

In Sichuan Province, southwest China, boys leave classrooms at the end of the day in a country where school can be hazardous. Photo/Keith Schneider RAIPUR, Chhattisgarh, India — News of the Newtown massacre reached this city of jammed streets and honking bedlam as part of the shock wave that struck the United States, and then swept around the world. As the ritual of sorrow and weeping commenced in America and here, the next thought that …

Tracking Skinheads and the Violent White Right

by Keith SchneiderAugust 7, 2012June 18, 20140

When the police mug shot of Wade Page circulated on the Internet over the weekend, I was struck, again, by the unmistakable face of domestic white terrorism. Page, who led a skinhead rock band and was a drunk who washed out of the military and a truck driving job, killed six people in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. I know that face. It’s the face of anguish, and hurt, and violence. I’d seen it almost …

In U.S. Big Ideas Prompt Big “No!” In China, It’s The Opposite

by Keith SchneiderMarch 16, 2011June 18, 20140

In an era of economic turmoil that has produced massive unemployment, accelerated industrial decline, and sowed fear and doubt across much of North America and Europe, China last week offered a much different lesson on growth and development. In the latest draft of its new 12th Five-Year Plan to manage the world’s fastest growing industrial economy, China’s leadership called for restraining the runaway growth that is raising the incomes of more than 400 million people, …

More Fear Sown By Opponents to Clean Energy

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 9, 2011June 18, 20140

About a year ago, while consulting with Traverse City Light and Power on the utility’s plan to generate 30 percent of its energy from renewable resources, I recognized the surprising and damaging trend developing within grassroots environmental groups to sow fear and block clean and renewable energy projects. That trend is growing bigger. Opponents to a big Duke Energy proposal to build the 112-turbine Gail Windpower installation in Benzie and Manistee counties here, many of …