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Welcome to Minnesota: A Conversation about Immigration and Human Rights

May

26

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Rich Broderick

About me

Rich Broderick (email richb@lakecast.com) lives in St. Paul and taught journalism and mass communication at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. He is a writer, poet, actor, and social activist, whose journalism and literary writing have won numerous honors, including several Page One Awards from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists, a Minnesota State Arts Board literary fellowship, and a Minnesota Book Award. He is currently a reseach fellow at the Thai Khadi Institute at Thammasat University in Bangkok where he is writing a book on Thailand.

Favorite Places:

the Black Dog Cafe listening to The Fantastic Merlins, the A-Z Gallery, Crosby Park, on an Express Ferry on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Willow River State Park, a hammock, standing in front of Rothko's "Untitled (Purple, White, Red" at The Art Institute of Chicago, having dinner with my family, walking along the Mississippi with my friend Mike Finley

Column:

Ground Zero

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Atlas Shirked: the teenage revolt against “the nanny state"

By Rich Broderick

Now that Paul Ryan has backed away from his fervent embrace of Ayn Rand, claiming that she is merely one of many influences on his political thinking despite video of him declaring that she was his primary reason for engaging in politics, and despite the fact that he requires all of his staff members to read her work, it’s possible the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead will begin toMORE »

By the Waters of Babylon: 10 years later

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

Author's note: I first posted this a few days after September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, it seems just as relevant today.MORE »

Mubarak and Murdoch: The Arab Spring gives way to the Anglo-American Summer

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

Picture it: a pair of aging despots, each in his 80s.

One of them has already witnessed the previously unthinkable unraveling of his evil empire. The other is witnessing the first irreversible steps in the previously unthinkable unraveling of his evil empire.MORE »

Independence Day for Thai Women: The luck of Yingluck Shinawatra

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

On Sunday, July 3 something truly remarkable happened in Thailand. The country woke up a venerable patriarchy and went to bed having elected the first female Prime Minister in the nation's history.
MORE »

Red Black and Blue: Anarchists get behind state GOP’s lawsuit

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

A new organization of radicals calling itself the Coalition for Restoring Anarchist Principles has come out with an endorsement of the Minnesota GOP’s lawsuit asking the State Supreme Court to order a shutdown of all Minnesota state government functions in the event that the Minnesota Legislator, controlled by the Republican Party, and DFL Governor Mark Dayton cannot rMORE »

Out of the closet: Michele Bachmann as new American boogeywoman

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

Over the past few weeks as Michele Bachmann’s star has risen in the firmament of GOP presidential hopefuls, I have been reading a flurry of emails, blogs, and Facebook status updates from fellow Minnesotans of a leftish bent decrying Bachmann not only for her extremist ideology but for being “insane” or “crazy.” Last week she was even treated to MORE »

The Recline of the West: striking out at Wat Po

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

A few days ago, I made a trip to Wat Po, a huge complex of Buddhist temples, stupas and learning halls attached to the Royal Palace in the center of Bangkok. I was there not to gain enlightenment, however, but a Thai massage. In the end, I got some of both.MORE »

The Ferry Godfather: a Bangkok misadventure

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

She was a young farang -- or Westerner -- and I could see that she was failing to make herself understood by the security guard at Bangkok's Thammasat University where I am newly installed as a research fellow.MORE »

Viva la Muerte: Mobs and Power in the US of A

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

In his masterpiece, Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti proposed that one of our primal fears is of unwanted contact with strangers. Out in public places, he observed, to be touch, jostled, even brushed against, can trigger something akin to panic.MORE »

Reflections in a Dark Mirror: GWB and OBL

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

Even before the sudden passing of The World’s Most Wanted Man, I was struck by how many parallels there are between the life and crimes, the individual and cultural pathologies, of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden.MORE »