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India's Middle-Class Failure
By Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Prospect
India's economy is soaring, and so is its middle-class, now numbering some 200 million. But as Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad notes, 'everything and its opposite is true in India.' For all of India's financial successes, some 300 million people in the country continue to live on less than $1 per day. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad reports sharp class divides are accentuating old castes, and a sense of civic duty remains woefully weak among the country's nouveau riche. -- Eric Kelsey
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9776

Why Aren't US Cities Burning?
By Michael B. Katz, Dissent
Since the widespread riots of the late 1960s, American social unrest has been relatively tame. Violent protests erupted in France in each of the past two years, but rampant injustice in the United States isn't drumming up much of a response. Historian Michael B. Katz wonders where America's fury has gone, dismissing the argument that Americans are less violent. Instead, Katz posits that marginalized Americans are simply better managed than the poor in other countries, though inequality continues to grow. -- Eric Kelsey
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=859

All Through the Night with Strom Thurmond
By Joshua Zeitz, American Heritage
Fifty years ago, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond secured his place in American history with the longest filibuster ever: a 24-hour-and-18-minute attempt to talk the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to death. The landmark bill ultimately passed, and even some of Thurmond's fellow Senate segregationists thought he was 'grandstanding.' Nevertheless, it was, American Heritage notes, a seminal moment in American politics, presaging both Thurmond's and the South's abandonment of the Democrats for the Republicans. -- Eric Kelsey
http://tinyurl.com/3cjpor

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