April 2022

Civics 101: The First National Park

The land had been cultivated and lived on for millennia when geologist Ferdinand Hayden came upon the astounding Yellowstone "wilderness." It wasn't long before the federal government declared it a national park, to be preserved in perpetuity for the enjoyment of all. Ostensibly. How did Yellowstone go from being an important home, hunting ground, thoroughfare and meeting place to being a park? 
Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone, Mark David Spence, author of Dispossessing the Wilderness and Alexandra E. Stern, historian of Native peoples and Reconstruction are our guides to this rocky start. 


​May 2021


​October 2020

Are We About to See a Landslide, a Reelection, or a Civil War?

In his inaugural address four years ago, President Donald Trump declared a crusade against the "carnage" he said his predecessors had wrought on the nation, lining their own pockets while creating a nation of "forgotten men and women." Five hours later, fired up and triumphant, Trump filed for re-election, the earliest incumbent to do so in memory.
Neither [Trump's] memo nor an enforcing document released later by Attorney General William Barr cite any precedent or existing law allowing the designation of an outlaw jurisdiction...Stern, the CCNY professor, said that when the federal government was squeezing out Native Americans in the late 19th century, there was “never a formal legal designation like with what the [Justice Department] is doing right now. Still, the general idea of an anarchist jurisdiction is very similar to 19th-century Indian policy in a number of respects.”

​In fact, law and order had become a political pretext for an extension of Manifest Destiny. “Most of the crime/lawlessness in the area was the result of White Americans fleeing state jurisdictions to hide out in Indian Territory,” said Alexandra Stern, a history professor at City College of New York. “But politicians and Americans in general didn’t really care about who was the cause of lawlessness. They really wanted to organize Indian Territory, which would open up much of its land to white American settlement."


​July 2020

June 2019