Now available from Jim Shultz and SUNY Press
The learnings of a lifelong progressive activist who becomes a columnist in a conservative small town in the Trump Era.
Welcome to The Writer
I didn't realize until my 60s that not everyone is constantly stringing together words in their head, as I have done since the first grade. For decades I have written many things, memos for politicians, opinion articles, and books. Here is a selection of that recent work. Enjoy!
My Other Country: Nineteen Years in Bolivia
A Family Memoir About Life in a Different Place
Many people dream of living outside their country, to see the world through different eyes. Among those who do, many just move for a short time or transplant themselves to a place not so different than home. Then there is Bolivia. My Other Country is a family memoir, the story of a young couple from San Francisco who moved to a valley in the Andes and stayed for almost two decades. It is a story about a family coming together, about falling into the center of a South American revolution, and about a handcrafted life in a very different place.
The Writer: My Column in the Lockport Union-Sun and Journal
Selections from my bi-weekly column in the local daily in one of the most conservative counties in western NY. Some politics, some human interest, and always provocative.
An Activist in Lockport NY
Holding Public Officials to Account
In 2017, after nineteen years in Bolivia, my family moved to Lockport, a small, conservative city in the far northwest corner of New York. In addition to my weekly columns for the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, I have made a practice of holding local public officials to account. The most notable example of this is fighting the Lockport School District's foolish plan to put facial recognition surveillance cameras in our schools (here is the coverage of that local battle in the NY Times). We eventually succeeded in winning a statewide ban. I also speak before our city council, county legislature, and board of education. You can find some clips of that here.
A Study in American Kleptocracy
A public-owned agency that controls gaming in Western New York is supposed to fund local governments. Instead, a local elite has turned it into a master class in graft. My exposé in the New York Review (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The Buffalo Tops Killings, Two Years Later
Two years after the horrific shooting and deaths of Black shoppers at a Tops Grocery in Buffalo, a look at the heroes and cowards. Published in the Lockport-Union Sun & Journal.
The Writer: The Story Behind the Name
I have been a writer for a long time: books, articles, and more. A while ago I had a public tussle with some local officials in our town and learned that in private they never referred to me by name, only as ‘the writer’. I thank them for helping me name both my column in the local newspaper and this Web site.
The Renewable Energy Rebels
In rural New York State, big wind and solar energy projects are running into determined local opposition. What will it take to win public support for a smart way forward?
New York Review of Books.
A Liberal in Trump Land
Much has been written in the era of Trump about the dividing of America, that we have retreated into enclaves of the like-minded, liberals with liberals, conservatives with conservatives. I do not have that problem. My interview with the New York Review of Books.
Activism
Activism
From California to Bolivia and beyond,
stories from four decades in activism.