Racism

After years of debate, the EU unveils its first high-level policy document on the Roma. Now it’s up to national governments to fill in the outline.

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Angela Kocze has been a firsthand witness to all the calamities that have befallen her fellow Roma over the two decades since Central and Eastern Europe rid itself of communist rule.

Nevertheless, Kocze is the rare voice to somehow muster “cautious optimism” about the first unified European Union policy to target the plight of the Roma, Europe’s largest, most-despised and most-marginalized minority.

DEVECSER, Hungary – It was just past noon, last Oct. 4, when Karoly Horvath returned home from fishing a local lake, here in provincial western Hungary. His wife and 12-year-old daughter were home to greet him, too – just as the waves of red sludge crashed through the door and windows.

Within seconds, the toxic mud was above their waist, burning the skin. Unable to move, Karoly could only watch mother and child screaming in agony.

Preempting the Left Forum's opening plenary with Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Laura Flanders, and Paul Mason, JK Fowler and I interviewed Cornel West at the pre-conference cocktail party.

Preempting the opening plenary with Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Laura Flanders, and Paul Mason, Shaun Randol and I speak with Cornel West at the pre-conference cocktail party. We discuss the international day of action scheduled for tomorrow, 03/19, occurring on the anniversary of the Iraq War and the potential of the Libyan invasion on the horizon, white supremacy and the labor movement, the role of the religious left and Barack Obama's right-leaning economic policies related to the current and ongoing economic crisis. 

Dr. Cornel West's Bio

Behind the banner of The Slovak Brotherhood: "For God and Nation!" (Photo: mjj)

BRATISLAVA – On the first sunny Saturday of spring, we stroll across downtown Bratislava to a friend’s afternoon party.

MOSONMAGYAROVAR, Hungary – The Hungarian restaurateur in a Harley Davidson jacket wants you to know he’s not a fascist. Nor a racist. And certainly no anti-Semite.

He has a Jewish friend, he says, and expresses sympathy for his Holocaust-surviving father.

“Zsuzsa!” he suddenly calls out to one of his restaurant workers – a Romani woman wearing a white cap, t-shirt and apron.

“How do you feel here?” he asks tenderly, touching her shoulder. “Does anyone bother you?”

“No, never!” she says, flashing a smile, but with a look of understandable bewilderment.