I just got back from Loyola Chicago Law School's Norman Amaker Public Interest Law and Social Justice Retreat upstate in Woodstock, IL. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the speakers and made many friends. I wish I could make all of my classmates go because it's almost impossible to listen to these speakers talking about poor people, ethnic minorities, LGTBQ people, tenants, etc. being completely screwed in the United States without wanting to do something about it, or at least be angry.
And to my liberal friends who think they're above current events and domestic day-to-day politics because they only want to have fun philosophizing about "big picture" issues, I wish I could make them listen to Joel Rogers talk about how important state and local laws and government are for changing the country, and how conservatives, with their organization ALEC, have made excellent use of it to destroy the progressive movement in the United States. Here's one thing he wrote that overlaps with his presentation to us, about his new answer to ALEC called ALICE.
I would talk about how amazing Norman Amaker was, but that would take up several more paragraphs. To be brief, he was the only non-white person in his classes at Amherst University and Columbia Law, he worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and smuggled out the famous letter he wrote from jail in Alabama, and he worked as an NAACP lawyer doing amazing things there, among other accomplishments. He died when he was 65 in 2000 and I wish I could have met him and talked to him. He also really should have a Wikipedia entry, geez.
Anyway, I'll have more interesting things up here soon, including the launch of my webcomic on a separate site.
