Police Accountability Report, hosted by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, is a weekly show that seeks to expose and hold to account one of the most powerful institutions in this country—the police.

The show shines a critical light on all facets of American policing, exploring the systemic and political imperatives that put law enforcement at odds with the communities they purport to serve.

The Man with No Name (Italian: Uomo senza nome) is
the antihero character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in
Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" of Spaghetti Western
films: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More
(1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He is
recognizable by his poncho, brown hat, tan cowboy boots,
fondness for cigarillos, and the fact that he rarely talks.

While the character is universally known as "the Man with
No Name", he was called "Joe" by another character, and
listed in the credits as such, in the first film, and given
nicknames by other characters in the other two such as
"Blondie."Despite this, he never refers to himself with
any moniker, and, when asked for a name in the third
film, is reluctant to answer as the question is dismissed.

When Clint Eastwood was honored with the American
Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, Jim
Carrey gave the introductory speech and said: "'The Man
with No Name' had no name, so we could fill in our
own."In 2008, Empire chose the Man with No Name as
the 43rd greatest movie character of all time.

Kent Nerburn

• Author of spiritual stories and essays
• Educator involved in Native American issues
• A sculptor who now crafts books
• Featured in The Practicing Democracy Project

Kent Nerburn is an author, sculptor, and educator who has been deeply involved in Native American issues and education. He developed and directed an award-winning oral history project on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation in Northern Minnesota. In addition to being a program evaluator for the Minnesota Humanities Commission and serving on their selection board, he has served as a consultant in curriculum development for the American Indian Institute in Norman, Oklahoma, and has been a presenter before various groups, including the National Indian Education Association, and the President's blue ribbon panel on Indian Education.

[video:https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nwnd/397754396]

Nerburn has served as project director for two books of oral history — To Walk the Red Road and We Choose to Remember. He has also edited three highly acclaimed books on Native American subjects: Native American Wisdom, The Wisdom of the Great Chiefs, and The Soul of An Indian. He is the author of a series of sterling books of essays and personal stories that reveal the deep meaning to be found in family, art, nature, and everyday spirituality.

Kent Nerburn holds a Ph.D. in both Theology and Art, and lives with his family in northern Minnesota.

… what it’s like to be America’s wildest coyote.

Coyotes are “people smugglers” who help immigrants like these cross the border from Mexico to the United States. (These immigrants are crossing the Rio Grande beneath the International Bridge, leaving Matamoros, Mexico, and entering Brownsville, Texas.)
Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic

Journalism Becomes Art

Brigham Young meets Breaking Bad

Between 1987 and 2001, one American crossed over 1000 migrants from Mexico into the United States, using a variety of wild, comical and harrowing schemes to outwit authorities on both sides of the border. This is the story of a legendary man and unlikely hero, Elden Kidd, who supported his family of five as a Coyoté and gave countless others a chance at a better life.

“We all live in a prison, and we all hold the key,” Chagdud Tulku wrote. More patronizing bullshit, Jarvis thought. You do not live in prison. I live in prison. You may have a key, but the keys to my cell are hanging off my jailers’ belts."

“Meditation is hardest when we're most afraid, because it forces us to face our fears when all we want to do is run from them. But it's the only way out of our misery."

Rev. Campbell was reportedly the only white person present at the founding in 1957 of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization then led by Martin Luther King Jr. and other major figures in the movement. Initially, some of the black organizers argued against admitting him.

“Let this man in,” said Bayard Rustin, one of the leaders, according to an account published in the Nashville Tennessean. “We need him.”

When King was assassinated in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Rev. Campbell rushed to the scene. Photos captured by a photographer for Life magazine show him standing, weary and seemingly dumbstruck, on the hotel balcony and grieving with the black leaders left to carry on.

Later, Rev. Campbell drew criticism from some in the civil rights movement when he visited James Earl Ray, King’s assassin, in prison, and when he ministered to a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon in jail.

⬛ An interview with Charles Raison on new treatments for depression
⬛ A short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
⬛ Essays by Stephanie Austin, Hank Stephenson, and Steve Edwards
⬛ Poems by Kenneth Hart and Molly Bashaw
⬛ A photo essay on “Salt of the Earth”
⬛ Readers Write on “Consequences”

And more . . .

Gloria Baker Feinstein took this month's cover image in Hood River, Oregon, while Feinstein was hiking what locals call the Whoopsie Daisy Trail.

Boxing, the historian Gerald Horne argues in his engaging and meticulously researched new book, was effectively weaponized by Blacks in the battle against white supremacy.

Toxic masculinity and other offshoots (including homophobia) are a major theme of this book and the author does not neglect women boxers–and wrestlers too—whose skills were honed in day-to-day battles with the pestilence that is male supremacy.

This book traces the story of Black dominance in the sport, from fighting en-slavers in Africa, through the brutal “battle royals” of slavery when enslaved men were placed in a ring blindfolded and forced to fight until one man was left standing, while, at the same time, it exposes the gross exploitation of fighters and the gargantuan profits garnered by the likes of Don King, Bob Arum–and a former Atlantic City casino poseur named Donald J. Trump.

I choose to call myself PhillyBluesFan out of a great appreciation for that earthy American musical tradition and because my wife and because I spent 15 good years living just on the edge of metropolitan Philadelphia. You could reach our former home by taking the second exit off I95 just across the Delaware state line. It is interesting that we were sandwiched between Chester, Pa on one side and Swarthmore, Pa on the other.

Among my fondest memories of that experience would have to be the evenings I spent teaching decision making to one inmate at a time inside a prison in Chester and the days I spent helping put together a small independent magazine that was published on a shoestring in what used to be a North Philly rowhouse ... the original location of THE SIMPLE WAY.

One of the other unique to Philadelphia paces I used to frequent was the Quaker retreat center at Pendle Hill. I'd sit in their quiet library, listening to a podcast on my smartphone or reading books from the stacks.

After this bit of personal introduction, I invite you to listen in on a recorded Zoom conversation with Shane Claiborne. He lives in the neighborhood where we assembled CONSPIRE

Joseph Campbell and the Myth of the Hero's Journey

We explore the relationship between mythology and the unconscious, and look at the monomyth Joseph Campbell called the myth of the hero's journey.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (highlights reading)

“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces