T.A. Frank: All Publications, Events and Press

Obama's Celebrity is a Good Target

Articles — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:49:00 -0400

John McCain's television ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears will be chronicled by no sane historian, and even those of us who have seen it must curse the expense of time and neurons involved in viewing it or reading about it or, God forbid, writing about it. (There goes my memory of the subjunctive of "être", for example, dislodged to make room for McCain's latest.) But those of us determined to follow this race without fail - at work, at home, in our beds, in our showers - can say we saw something this week, and that was the coalescing of McCain's anti-Obama… more

T.A. Frank on KCRW Radio | 'Which Way L.A.? - Can California Integrate Its Prisons Without Violence?'

Communications — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:08:00 -0400

New America in the News:

States like Texas and Oklahoma long ago ended racial segregation in their prisons. Now it’s California’s turn, after the Supreme Court ordered change. State prison officials have to bring white, black and Latino inmates together and still prevent rampant violence.

T.A. Frank, Editor of the Washington Monthly and a Fellow of New America Foundation, discusses how California begins to desegregate its prisons. LINK to audio

Inmates and Integration

Articles — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:16:00 -0400

To be honest, it didn't look like racial segregation. I was standing among long rows of metal bunk beds in a room where 36 men of different races -- black, white, Latino -- live together more or less peaceably. But the setting was a dormitory for minimum-security inmates at the Sierra Conservation Center, a prison in Tuolumne County near Yosemite, and in such places, unwritten rules apply. One of the rules is that each bunk must be shared by two men of the same race. The bunks are close together. A white inmate could probably shake hands with a black inmate in a neighboring bunk… more

T.A. Frank in the New Republic Online | 'The Mugabelogue'

Communications — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:22:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Who's interested in Zimbabwe, and why? How should Westerners understand the situation there? And could this all be Jimmy Carter's fault? T.A. Frank and James Kirchick discussed the situation over IM...

T.A. Frank: For me, what's grimly riveting about Zimbabwe--as opposed to other nations under tyrannical rule--is that it's had such a fast and senseless decline. Sure, it's probably worse to be in North Korea, but yesterday in Pyongyang was the same as today. Zimbabwe, by contrast, was a highly developed, prosperous country until even a decade ago. Mugabe took the "jewel of Africa" and obliterated it ... LINK

Confessions Of a Sweatshop Inspector

Ron Tang — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:53:00 -0400

I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage -- orange peels, tea leaves -- and the only way for anyone to bathe was to fill a bucket with cold water. In a… more