Robert C. Koehler
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, September 17, 2020 Life in Cancer Alley Shut up and let corporate America—and also, for that matter, corporate Taiwan—get on with its business. We have ethane to crack and plastic to produce. We dare not let America run out of shopping bags! Environmental racism? Don’t be ridiculous. This is the message the activists of Louisiana’s “... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 10, 2020 Standing up To Trump . . . and Biden When I ponder the likelihood of looming electoral chaos—uncounted votes, a defeated president who won’t leave office, the possible termination of American democracy (coming soon!)—I can’t avoid putting it into a larger context: We’ve always been, at best, a partial democracy, skewed in favor of the... Read more |
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Views Friday, September 04, 2020 Is There Life Beyond Plastic? “Plastics!” Yeah, it’s everywhere...not just in grocery store aisles and department stores and every other commercial outlet you can think of, not to mention your own cupboards and closets and trashcans, but on the grass and on the sidewalks, in the landfills, in the lakes and rivers, in the oceans... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 27, 2020 This Looks Like the Beginning of a Civil War This looks like the beginning of a civil war. The chaos and violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin are unfolding as I write. I feel as though I’m watching some natural disaster develop, suddenly overpowering any hope for social change “before it’s too late.” Is it already too late—that is to say, too late... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 20, 2020 War, Peace and the Democrats “There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .” Or is it? Day one of the Democratic National (virtual) Convention. Bernie Sanders had just told his supporters: “Together we have moved this country in a bold new direction,” pointing out that “all of us . . .yearn for a nation... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 13, 2020 Learning From the Hibakushas “They were covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and the flesh was hanging from the bones. Parts of their bodies were missing, and some were carrying their own eyeballs in their hands. And as they collapsed, their stomach burst open.” But war is necessary, right? The speaker,... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 06, 2020 Election Theft and the Reluctant Democracy As election 2020 draws ever closer, the flawed, easily gamed nature of the American quasi-democracy becomes increasingly visible, thanks, of course to Donald Trump, our Fluhrer wannabe, who sees no need to hide his contempt for any result in November other than his own victory. Election theft could... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 23, 2020 Standing Up to the Armed and Inarticulate Here’s a quietly unsettling moment from the current cries for change churning across the nation: A teenage girl is at a grocery store in the small town of Marion, Virginia. Her brother, Travon Brown, age 17, had recently become both beloved and hated — the center of controversy — in the town,... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 16, 2020 We’re So Certain of Our Colonialist Selves That We’re Destroying Our Own Planet "There are so many . . . primitive tribes—they don’t understand anything." The global movement to end racism must turn its attention to the world’s most vulnerable cultures—the indigenous people of Planet Earth—who are still enduring the forces of colonial genocide. They are, after all, still... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 09, 2020 When All the Protesters Have Guns Change. Now. I get that, and understand the symbolism of packed heat. A gun says: We mean business. But that symbolism stops as soon as the trigger is pulled. What the armed protesters could wind up with is a bitter present-day civil war and the blood-stained illusion of change. The country—and the... Read more |