Reading with Gratitude
Tearing down the Confederate flag, loving the Lakers, Secretary Deb Haaland, the hazards of a global supply chain, and more
November 24, 2021
This week, Public Seminar is giving thanks for the essays we’ve loved over the past year. If you enjoy them, don’t forget to
“Downtown, men peddled memorial shirts. Pictures of you and Gigi hugging each other. And on the 405 a Bryant Jersey hung from a crane. The garish colors of purple and gold were everywhere, lighting up buildings and the color of our mourning clothes.” In a tribute to Kobe Bryant, Anna Reagan shared what it meant to cheer for the Lakers star. (January 26, 2021)
Matthew Pratt Guterl celebrated the Black artists and activists who use the Confederate Flag to defy white supremacy. “The image that should stick in your mind these days isn’t the flag itself—it’s the Black activist enthusiastically tearing it down in broad daylight.” (February 11, 2021)
“Coming to the agency after Trump appointees who aggressively sought access to the mineral wealth of Indian Country, Haaland’s appointment marks a significant break.” Joel Helfrich and Michael Leroy Oberg discussed why Deb Haaland is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior we need. (March 24, 2021)
In the wake of a global supply chain slowed by one very stuck container ship, Aaron Jakes explained how the Suez Canal expanded from a channel for world commerce to “a small revolution in how labor in one place became money elsewhere.” (April 2, 2021)
Mónica Salmón Gómez interviewed two Guatemalan asylum seekers stranded at the U.S.–Mexico border. “Their stories of political persecution at the hands of the Guatemalan military and other economic forces are the result of their environmental and human rights activism to defend their land, their territory, their traditions, and their communities from historic mechanisms of exclusion and dispossession.” (April 15, 2021)
“The National Strike has put into relief the decline of the so-called ‘Centaur state’ that embodies Uribismo: the repression of the many that is causally linked to benevolence towards the few.” Julián Gómez Delgado charted the struggle for true democracy in Colombia. (June 1, 2021)
Public Seminar founder Jeffrey C. Goldfarb gave thanks for the generosity of Michael E. Gellert, patron of this publication and gifted listener. (August 23, 2021)
“Not everyone agreed on when, or whether, the Revolution went right or wrong, or who or what was responsible for its success or at fault for its failures.” Michael J. Bustamante examined the competing accounts of Cuba’s history. (August 24, 2021)
In a trip to a childhood vacation spot in Maryland, Mark Williams discovered a history of slavery intimately bound up with the nations’s founding—and found joy in a legacy of Black resilience. (October 6, 2021)
Join us in showing your thanks and