Bill Moyers's Blog, page 8

In West Virginia, Coal Miners' Slaughter

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"In West Virginia, Coal Miners' Slaughter"

By Michael Winship

The high cost of energy in America was paid in human lives this week, with the deaths of more than two dozen miners in a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. It's the worst mine disaster in a quarter of a century.

Upper Big Branch is owned by Massey Energy Company, which operates 47...

Bill Moyers Rewind: Sherman Alexie (2002)

Recently, Native American author Sherman Alexie won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for his short story collection WAR DANCES.

In 2002, Alexie appeared on NOW WITH BILL MOYERS. Click below to watch video of that segment.

Towards a More Just Society?

(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with social justice advocates Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander about the persistence of systemic racial inequalities in American society and Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of a more just society.

Michelle Alexander described her view of a criminal justice system that she sees as discriminatory against minority groups:

"Individual black achievement today masks a...

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Dr. King's Economic Dream Deferred

Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee. To those of us who were alive then, the images are etched in painful memory: One day, Dr. King is standing with colleagues, including Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; the next, he's lying there mortally wounded, his aides pointing in the direction of the rifle shot.
Then we remember the crowds of mourners slowly moving through the...

Reforming Health Reform?

(Photos by Robin Holland)

This week, Bill Moyers spoke with journalist John Nichols and women's advocate Terry O'Neill about the health reform President Obama signed into law on Tuesday.

Nichols said that the reform in and of itself is not sufficient, but that it's an important foundation and that activists must now demand further improvements to the nation's health system:

"For a hundred years we tried to create a project. We tried to take...

Can Washington Rein In Wall Street?

(Photo by Robin Holland)

In this week's JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson about the financial reform legislation that lawmakers are crafting in Washington.

Morgenson said that the proposals she's seen have been insufficient to rein in many of the Wall Street abuses that helped bring on the economic meltdown.

"I think that the bills we have seen have been so half-baked and really do not address some of the...

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: The Unbearable Lightness of Reform

That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as "the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago - to the relief of the American political class of his day, one assumes - but in an eerie way he was forecasting America's political culture today. It seems like most efforts to reform a system that's gone awry - to clean house and make a fresh start - end up benefiting the very people who wrecked it in the first place.

Which i...

Preserving Planet Earth

(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with famed scientist Jane Goodall, best known for her groundbreaking work with Chimpanzees in Tanzania.

For the past two decades, Goodall has devoted much of her time to environmental advocacy, convincing audiences that saving the wilderness and wild creatures needs to be a priority for all of us, and that individual citizens can make a profound difference. She told Moyers:

Do Americans Suffer From an "Allergy to Thought?"

(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers talked with New York University president John Sexton for a wide-ranging conversation about religion, the role of higher education in a globalizing world, and the troubling disintegration of civil discourse in today's society.

Sexton suggested that America increasingly exhibits what he calls an "allergy to thought" and that universities are the key to restoring nuance to public discourse:

What's Your Favorite Poem?

Bill Moyers concluded the JOURNAL this week by mentioning his favorite poem, "Yes To Blue" by Jim Haba. It's reproduced below:

"Yes to blue after trying

to separate green from yellow

and hoping that everything

will get simpler each time

you bring an idea closer

to the light which is always

changing always being

born

day after day

year after year

again and again

now"

Please share your favorite poem in the space below.