by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

If I had my way, the trailer for Chris Jordan’s documentary Midway would be pumped into every computer in this nation so that people have no choice but to see it. They would have no way to stop or even to pause it.  

It would be shown in every classroom, every church, temple, mosque, and other “house of worship.” It would be broadcast on TV continually until people wake the hell up and see that what we…

by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

There’s nothing original about the Jesus story. By the time the Christians came along (and they were latecomers, by Mediterranean standards, to the business of pushing a new religion), the virgin birth and the death and resurrection routine had, as they say, been done before. Ad nauseam, in fact.

Consider Horus, the Egyptian god that was worshipped about thirty centuries before Jesus: he was born of a virgin on December 25, had 12 disciples,…

It would be ironic except that it’s tragic. In fact, I’d say it’s a crime. But it’s a crime for which no one’s being prosecuted. Nor will they ever be. 

In Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the tech boom, where millionaires, like stars in the vast reaches of space, are being created every day, poverty is on the rise. You read that right. Amid all that incredible wealth (and as stock prices jump and more and more employees are added to companies), the rate of poverty is…

by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

There were some tough women in my life when I was a kid growing up in South Philly in the 50s and 60s. 

Those women were made of iron and steel and concrete. They had to be. The circumstances of their lives demanded it. I was born into a poor neighborhood in South Philly where you survived only if you knew how to fight. You couldn’t be afraid. Fear was the worst weakness.

Those women were descended from peasant women who…

by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which eliminated racial discrimination at the polls in the South, is “racial entitlement.” Could have fooled me. I thought it was part of “American entitlement.” As in the right of everyone to vote.

Isn’t that what this country stands for? 

Of course not. It never has. When this country started, only white landowners could cast a ballot. Everyone else (including…