Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/rich-broderick/page/7/)
On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.
Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence…
Continue Reading
The following is an excerpted conclusion of Martin Luther King’s prophetic — and sadly, prescient — address at The Riverside Church in New York City on the evening of April 4, 1967.
My 22-year-old daughter is learning some harsh realities about America’s dystunctional politico-economic system.
In December, Emma graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double-major in psychology and child psychology. Even though she completed her B.A. in just three and a-half years, she finished up with honors and a GPA just shy of 4.0.
March 2, 2009 — In our apparently endless debate about health care reform, we have lost sight of the fact that what is being debated is not really “health” or even “health care,” but proposals to modify — slightly — the American system of access to health care insurance. Period. Continue Reading
James Ray, self-help guru, bestselling author of The Secret, and close personal friend of Oprah and Dr. Continue Reading
And so they set out again, José and Maria,
hurried, still ill-prepared for the journey,
his tools packed in a canvas bag,
her swollen body eased up on the back
of a donkey where she winces
at each contraction. Continue Reading
December 3, 2009. Between the fall of the Roman Empire and 1945, Europe was convulsed by almost perpetual armed conflict.
Invasions across the marchlands of one fiefdom or another, crusades sent off to murder residents of other parts of the world, dynastic struggles, revolutions, imperial conquests, religious wars, civil wars, peasant uprisings, explosive arms races triggered by fantasies about striking a “balance of great powers” – virtually every form of mass violence one can think of, interrupted only by brief intervals of exhausted “peace.” Continue Reading
November 25, 2009. In yet another setback to the 222 year old Middle American Peace Process and the search for a permanent treaty between the United States and Native Americans, Barak Obama has apparently turned his back on earlier pledges to put an unconditional end to increased Euro-American settlements on Indian land.
In the mid-1960s, when American cities erupted in rioting that left dozens dead and billions of dollars of devastation, many people rightly perceived the events as a sign that the unprecedented violence of the War in Vietnam was “coming home to roost.”
What better way to perceive the killings this week at Fort Hood?
Ground Zero – Writer, poet and social activist, Rich Broderick taught college journalism for nine years, served on the board of the Twin Cities Media Alliance, and sometimes still finds time to write for the TC Daily Planet.