What — apart from the fact that U.S. prisons are pandemic petri dishes and prisoners’ lives are officially regarded as dispensable — does the colossal, ongoing disaster of our criminal justice system have to do with the current disaster of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout?

You might answer that having the world’s largest prison population (indeed, more than 20 percent of all prisoners on the globe are in the U.S. despite having only 4.25 percent of global population) rhymes with having the world’s largest number of COVID cases (more than 25 percent of worldwide cases), and you would be right. …

NOTE: My too-modest friend Francois Matarasso writes about our new monthly podcast series, “A Culture of Possibility,” dropping today. Here’s the link to subscribe on iTunes. Let us know what you think!

I’m not much for patriotic displays, so I was surprised when I teared up during Lady Gaga’s singing of the national anthem at President Biden’s inauguration. And about half a dozen other times. The event pleased me in many ways. Just to see a president call out white supremacy, speak for the power of truth — the sense of relief that flowed through my veins was enlivening, as…

NOTE: This article by Charles-Éric Blais-Poulin was translated from the original French version which appeared on 16 January in La Presse, published in Montreal. I was one of several people interviewed for it. You can find the original version here. The original article described me as “autrice et référence mondiale en matière de démocratie culturelle,” which roughly translates as “author and global reference on matters of cultural democracy.” I just might add that to my website.

Will the President-designate of the United States don his superhero cape to save the cultural sector knocked down by COVID-19 and the Trump era…

The year is almost over, friends, and I have yet to understand exactly what is happening. How about you?

I mean, sure, the COVID numbers, the unemployment figures, the police murders, the packed prisons — all of this can be quantified and at least on the level of sheer numbers, comprehended. But what boggles my mind is the vast cognitive dissonance between conventional wisdom and lived experience. How can it be bridged?

I have a slew of examples, but let’s focus on just one, the federal government. As endless historians have assured us, the framers of this nation’s government created…

NOTE: Today is Human Rights Day. I’m republishing this blog from Human Rights Day 2019 because its message bears repeating. Incidents of racialized violence in the US are as numerous as grains of sand, and in one of the specific categories I mentioned, anti-semitic incidents in the US, 2019 saw a record-breaking total of 2,107, an increase of 12 percent over last year and more than double 2016. The rapid spread of QAnon and other racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories is to blame as is the bigot on his way out of the White House. …

One thing we’ve been hearing a lot about since the quadruple pandemic hit is the hope that instead of trying to restore our civic and market systems to their former flawed and inequitable state, we should see this enforced pause as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make essential change. People see the opportunity to strengthen democracy, social inclusion, racial equity, economic security, environmental healing, and much more.

Amidst all the time-release news about President-Elect Biden’s Cabinet-secretary and department-head choices, there’s been barely a peep about culture. But sooner or later, Biden will make the appointments that put his stamp on federal…

In my last essay, I used the civic frescoes of the 14th-century Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti as a starting-point for scrutinizing the culture of US politics as most appallingly revealed in our recent electoral process.

I’ve heard or read a great many analyses of the election, but there’s a key point most seem to be missing. I’m concerned that the way we do electoral politics — perhaps even more than our substantive disagreements over candidates and policies — is worsening the disinformation, demonization, and polarization that have made our political life so often demoralizing and frightening.

We need to talk…

I have no reason to believe artists are better or smarter than other people, but I know that artists are often skilled at helping others to see the world more clearly, at focusing awareness and attention. Skilled at perceiving patterns, seeing through the surface of things to deeper meanings, using the connections between things as expressed in the language of symbol, metaphor, and allegory — artists often reveal through depictions, writings, music, and movement what otherwise may be hard to discern.

The Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti is best-known for a series of six frescoes in that beautiful city’s Palazzo Pubblico…