The Brooklyn Rail

In the Battle of the Open Heart

An old music can be heard in Zuccotti Park that hasn’t been heard around these parts in a very long time—it’s the music of human dignity, solidarity, and individuals being transformed into one.

Child of War, A Memoir

It was the beginning of the 80s and my dad Drake had made a fortune—legally, for the most part—in the business world. Vance, his identical twin brother and an outlaw, had made a bundle in the pot biz. Everyone was loaded. We moved from Houston to Santa Fe, where I started St. Francis Junior High in the middle of the seventh grade.

Why I love The Pittsburgh Steelers

Me and my old man were watching the first Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl. Mean Joe Green crushed Christian Roger Staubach and I screamed that I loved the Steelers forever.

Suicide by the Bathtub Light

My shrink says that she understands where I’m coming from because she reads the New Yorker. I tell her the New Yorker says nothing about my life. She says okay, then tell me about your life. I tell her that I’m choking on fear.

My Wounded Constitution

I have memories of who I once was, but they are beginning to fade from me. I hear words like lawyer and writer and they fall from me like dead fruit.

The People v. Barack Obama

When a significant right is threatened it is strange to think that our Supreme Court would suddenly abandon its ideals.

CASE NO: 1

IN THE EXTRA CONSTITUTIONAL EXISTENTIAL COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In Conversation

WEED WARRIOR
KEITH STROUP with Jason Flores-Williams

In the long dark night of American politics, there are still rock’n’roll splashes of life, a burning vibe where victories are won and the cool, pungent smell of liberty fills the air.

The Manifesto of the Whistleblower Defense League

This is an authoritarian democracy. Our rights to protest and to speak freely are sacred until they have a subversive effect on the running of an institution, at which point all is shut down so that not a tweet can be heard.

Farewell to CBGB's

This is where Richard Hell and Joey Ramone took on The Man. The punk rock values that came out of CBGB’s made me who I am. And now it’s gone.

Thanksgiving

I’m eating tofurkey and creamy yams while watching charred and dismembered Iraqis on TV. “We’re a sick country,” I say. “We gorge like pigs while we destroy other people.” Everyone puts down their forks in solidarity.

Big Spring

Big Spring is at the heart of the prison-industrial complex in America. The total population of the West Texas town is little more than 20,000, but there are two full prisons and an immigration facility that, in total, house no fewer than 4,000 prisoners.

Rocky Mountain Lows: Bringing Secession to the Red States

The pool at the Grand Hyatt Downtown Denver burns with chlorine. Three businessmen are playing at being big shots. They lean back in their lounge chairs, make sweeping arm motions, and laugh too loud. I can feel them checking me out.  They’ve got energy invested in this way of life. They puked on each other to join a frat. And here I am swimming laps.

Walkin’ to New Orleans

I was representing a 19-year-old homeboy who had beaten up an eight-year-old for his bicycle. He was late to court so I had to beg the judge not to issue an arrest warrant. He walked in like a total thug, but with his girlfriend following him holding his new baby.

Secession: A Five-Point Program

In the February issue of the Rail, Jason Flores-Williams issued his “Call to Secession.” In this issue, the writer outlines his battle plan.

FORECLOSURES: A Legal Racket

Every morning since I’ve set up my little law practice here in Santa Fe, I’ve gotten absolutely terrified phone calls from Northern New Mexicans about to lose their homes to foreclosure.

Breach the Contract

This generation has come to vicious crossroads. Do we give in to the hole we’re in, or claw our way into the twilight? Do we lower our heads and keep going along with the plan, or take a hard look in the mirror and try and salvage what we see?

The Billionaires are Back

Watching the news, grinding your teeth, complaining that America is apathetic and people should really be out doing something…

In Search of the American Soul

I am a complicit, disappointing little asshole. This is my thought while sitting in the dirt, staring out at Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont.

Mexico City Punk

Hotshit Latin-American film director pulls up in front of my six-room pension in a massive SUV. His Nicaraguan wife breaks once from her cell phone to ask if I brought a jacket as we drive into Condesa, a shiny district that could be South Beach, the Meatpacking District, etc. We go into a lounge: all white décor, beautiful people, gold earrings. Hotshit tells me how Subcomandante Marcos has been rebuked for criticizing the new leaders of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution). This makes him happy.

THE DRUG WAR INSIDE

The drug war is a constant reminder that the United States government can jail your body and try to own your soul.

Inside Denmark

1. I went to a sex club in the suburbs of Copenhagen last night. A Danish brunette named Heidi sucked my dick through a glory hole while some Swedes stood around, then I fucked a Norwegian while her husband jacked off on my back. I know it sounds like a good gig, but it was joyless and mechanical.

On Liberals

I was on Air America with Janeane Garofalo. The Republicans were coming to New York City. Our generation was giving birth to a new activism. I went off about the need to hit the streets, hard.

An Oration on Secession

I don’t care how it comes down, whose name gets in the paper, or whose turf gets stepped on: I want progressive change. Real change.

Meet the New Boss

I wanted Barack Obama to be inaugurated today as much as anyone. I spent two months going door to door for him in New Orleans where this trailer park chick with a baby in her arms and a cig in her hand told me: “I’m a Christian, I ain’t gonna vote for no goddamned Muslim” then invited me into her double wide for a beer.

A Holiday Letter From Santa Fe

I’m trying to cut down on the drink during the holidays, so I went to go see two movies this past weekend: Exit Through The Gift Shop and Inside Job.

Inside Denver

I walk alone into Sputnik, a standard retro dive bar. I sit down at a booth and the bartender recognizes me. It makes me feel better because I’m weak.

A Call to Secession

When I was 13, my life was ripped apart by the United States government’s war on drugs. From the back of a courtroom I watched them sentence my father to 35 years in prison.

Your Words Have Iron in Them

I never paid attention to commercial writing. It said nothing to me about who I was or how to survive in this bullshit factory. But in the last ten years, I’ve noticed a blurring of the lines.

from Character and Fitness

I drink my coffee and stare out the window at the cars passing by on the highway. I remember the old Kerouac line: whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny automobile?

Character and Fitness: a serial novel

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapters 7 and 8

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy. The novel explores the alienation and estrangement that working class, thinking people feel in America.

Character and Fitness: Chapters 5 and 6

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 11

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 3

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 9

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 12

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 4

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapter 10

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.

Character and Fitness: Chapters 13 and 14

Character and Fitness is a semi-autobiographical novel about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy.