Truth And Privilege

A fascinating comparative history of the legal arguments and strategies used to regulate expression in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia.

Mary Mapes's Truth (previously published as Truth & Duty) was made into the 2015 film Truth, starring Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Topher Grace and Elizabeth Moss. A riveting play-by-play of a reporter getting and defending a story that recalls All the President's Men, Truth puts readers in the center of the "60 Minutes II" story on George W. Bush's shirking of his National Guard duty. The firestorm that followed that broadcast--a conflagration that was carefully sparked by the right and fanned by bloggers--trashed Mapes' well-respected twenty-five year producing career, caused newsman Dan Rather to resign from his anchor chair early and led to an unprecedented "internal inquiry" into the story...chaired by former Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh. Truth examines Bush's political roots as governor of Texas, delves into what is known about his National Guard duty-or lack of service-and sheds light on the solidity of the documents that backed up the National Guard story, even including images of the actual documents in an appendix to the book. It is peopled with a colorful cast of characters-from Karl Rove to Sumner Redstone-and moves from small-town Texas to Black Rock-CBS corporate headquarters-in New York City. Truth connects the dots between a corporation under fire from the federal government and the decision about what kinds of stories a news network may cover. It draws a line from reporting in the trenches to the gutting of the great American tradition of a independent media and asks whether it's possible to break important stories on a powerful sitting president.

This book explores the ways in which a diverse group of feminist and participatory action researchers experience, create meaning,and respond to the challenges of engaging in collaborative processes of reflection, action, and change. While headed in similar directions, rarely have feminist researchers and participatory action researchers acknowledged each other as collaborators with mutually important contributions to the journey. Through the work presented in this volume, the contributors hope to influence feminist scholarship to be more participatory and action-oriented, and participatory action research to be more grounded in feminist theories and values. This book has two distinct yet interrelated and intertwining aims. First, it creates a space for a diverse group of educators, researchers, and scholars to grapple with the multiple and complex issues that are threaded throughout feminist and action research. Second, it seeks to examine how action research and feminist research can complement each other in developing strategies for engaging in collaborative research that is rooted in activism and productive change.

Understanding White Privilege delves into the complex interplay between race, power, and privilege in both organizations and private life.

Top 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017–The Washington Post “Privilege”—the word, the idea, the accusation that is nearly impossible to disprove—is the new rhetorical power play. From social media to academia, public speech to casual conversation, the word is utilized to brand people of all kinds with a term once reserved exclusively for those who came from wealth and old money—inherited advantage. Today “privileged” applies to anyone who enjoys an unearned advantage in life, inherited or not. White privilege, male privilege, straight privilege—those conditions make everyday life easier, less stressful, more lucrative, and generally better for those who hold one, two, or all three designations. But what about white female privilege in the context of feminism? Or fixed gender privilege in the context of transgender? Or weight and height privilege in the context of hiring practices and salary levels? Or food privilege in the context of widening inequality for single-parent families? In The Perils of “Privilege,” Phoebe Maltz Bovy examines the rise of this word into extraordinary potency. Does calling out privilege help to change or soften it? Or simply reinforce it by dividing people against themselves? And is privilege a concept that, in fact, only privileged people are debating? The Perils of “Privilege” explores how this word is deployed, and offers ways to begin anew so many of the conversations it has silenced.

This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.