Rebecca Gordon
Rebecca Gordon is the author of "American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes" (2016) and previously, "Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States" (2014). She teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the War Times/Tiempo de Guerras collective. You can contact her through the Mainstreaming Torture website.
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Rethinking Employment in the Biden-Harris Era A year ago, just a few weeks before San Francisco locked itself down for the pandemic, I fell deeply in love with a 50-year-old. The object of my desire was a wooden floor loom in the window of my local thrift shop . Friends knowledgeable on such matters examined photos I took of it and assured me... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 09, 2021 The Looming Fires If you live in California, you’re likely to be consumed on occasion by thoughts of fire. That’s not surprising, given that, in last year alone, actual fires consumed over four and a quarter million acres of the state, taking with them 10,488 structures, 33 human lives, and who knows how many... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 19, 2021 The Rubble of Empire: A Fine Time To Begin Thinking About What Might Be Built in Its Place How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco. Directly across the street, I can see a collection of tarps and poles (along with one of my own garbage cans) that were used to construct a makeshift home on the sidewalk... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 17, 2020 It's Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11: Can We Finally Stop Marching to Disaster? It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing , had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 05, 2020 Our Work Is Just Beginning In the chaos of this moment, it seems likely that Joe Biden will just squeeze into the presidency and that he'll certainly win the popular vote, Donald Trump's Mussolini-like behavior and election night false claim of victory notwithstanding. Somehow, it all brings another moment in my life to mind... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 20, 2020 Guns, Germs, and Smoke "Look, folks, the air quality is in the red zone today. The EPA says that means people with lung or heart issues should avoid prolonged activity outdoors." That was J.R. de Vera, one of two directors of UNITE-HERE!'s independent expenditure campaign to elect Biden and Harris in Reno, Nevada. UNITE-... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 23, 2020 Why Does Essential Work Pay So Little... In two weeks, my partner and I were supposed to leave San Francisco for Reno, Nevada, where we’d be spending the next three months focused on the 2020 presidential election. As we did in 2018, we’d be working with UNITE-HERE, the hospitality industry union, only this time on the campaign to drive... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 30, 2020 Failed State: The Sudden Descent of the United States You know that feeling when you trip on the street and instantly sense that you’re about to crash hard and there’s no way to prevent it? As gravity has its way with you, all you can do is watch yourself going down. Yeah, that feeling. I had it the other day on my way to a Black Lives Matter... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 02, 2020 How the Credibility Gap Became a Chasm in the Age of Trump These days, teaching graduating college seniors has me, as the Brits would say in the London Underground, “ minding the gap .” In my case, however, it’s not the gap between the platform and the train I’m thinking of, but a couple of others: those between U.S. citizens and our government, as well as... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 20, 2020 Strange Attractors: On Being Addicted to Trump and His Press Conferences My partner and I have been fighting about politics since we met in 1965. I was 13. She was 18 and my summer camp counselor. (It was another 14 years before we became a couple.) We spent that first summer arguing about the Vietnam War. I was convinced that the U.S. never should have gotten involved... Read more |