‘“One Battle After Another” is much more than the movie of the movement’
Alyssa Rosenberg at MSNBC
The new film “One Battle After Another” has been “quickly hailed as the movie of the moment,” says Alyssa Rosenberg. But it’s “something more subtle and perhaps more important: an argument about the risks of turning politics into an aspect of personality rather than a serious means of pursuing change.” The film “concludes that while it’s important to keep hope alive, politics are no substitute for stable personalities or familial love.” That’s “not an argument for retreat.”
‘Why trying to hide history of World War II Japanese American imprisonment is an affront to liberty’
Karyl Matsumoto at the San Francisco Chronicle
At the Japanese-American concentration camp Mananzar, visitors are being “asked to report all but the rosiest and most charitable historical accounts of the injustices that occurred there,” says Karyl Matsumoto. This is “not a simple case of bureaucratic overreach or a good-faith historical debate.” It’s a “coordinated effort to whitewash our history, to muzzle the stories of those who suffered in the service of a flawed ideal of national unity. It is nothing less than historical censorship.”
‘The world recognizes Palestine, yet it treats the Palestinians as stateless’
Ayah Najadat at Al Jazeera
The “vast majority of the world accepts the Palestinians have a state,” but “they continue to be treated as if they do not, with many experiencing the soul-crushing reality of statelessness at borders,” says Ayah Najadat. For “Palestinians, especially from Gaza, borders are not merely lines on a map — they are walls of steel.” The “dream of freedom and dignity collapses into fluorescent-lit detention centers, and deportation becomes a journey not towards safety but towards another closed door.”
‘Stop the political hijacking of Miami-Dade’s future for a presidential library’
Miguel B. Fernandez at the Miami Herald
Florida’s government “announced plans to take control of a critically important parcel of land in downtown Miami, land secured years ago by Miami Dade College,” and they “want to transform this valuable public asset into the future site of the Trump Presidential Library,” says Miguel B. Fernandez. This is “not just a land dispute. It’s a direct theft of educational opportunity for political gain.” What “benefit will come from turning over land meant for education into a political shrine?”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
