General Essays

When First Responders Are Victims: Rethinking Emergency Response

Elaine C. Kamarck

Elaine Kamarck analyzes the current legal and political framework governing disaster relief. Focusing particularly on lessons learned from Hurrican Katrina, Kamarck offers suggestions as to how these frameworks can adapt to the reality of increasingly frequent disasters, both natural and man-made.

Success Changes Nothing: The 2006 Election Results and the Undiminished Need for a Progressive Response to Political Gerrymandering

Ronald A. Klain

Incorporating the results of the 2006 election cycle, Ronald Klain argues that Progressives cannot afford to put election reform on the backburner. Rather, Klain suggests that, unless reforms are aggressively pursued, partisan gerrymandering will continue to weaken voter choice and participatory democracy in ways that ultimately hurt progressives in the long run.

Lessons from the Right: Progressive Constitutionalism for the Twenty-First Century

Dawn Johnsen

In deconstructing the Right’s successful fusion of legal and popular rhetoric, Dawn Johnsen finds significant lessons for Progressives.