Ben Wyskida

Early 2010 updates.

Thanks for visiting. I realized I haven’t updated this site in ages – most of my blogging has been elsewhere. I have been busy:

• I wrote frequently in 2009 about the heathcare reform debate,  and about the Obama Administration’s communications strategy. You can read those pieces in my archive at Huffington Post.
• The Nation, slowly but surely, is starting to roll out a number of new multimedia features. That’s been a big project for me. You can search for “The Nation” in Itunes or see The Nation’s youtube channel for some of our recent work.
• Stirling and I have put a hold on our humor site, Pinko, for now, while Stirling raises his newborn and I concentrate on some other writing projects. Still, you can see the highlights here.

Also I had the great pleasure of doing PR for “Going Rouge: An American Nightmare,” at the end of 2009. Buy it!

Lastly I’m on twitter: @benwyskida

Also? I spent a lot of time in Iceland in 2009, which is why I posted that pretty picture of Iceland top right.

More to come on this site, including a redesign and some more frequent posts.

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Colbert, The Nation.

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Some updates.

A few quick things: If you didn’t see Barack Obama’s speech from South Carolina, you should. Also this weekend I’m “guest hosting” RadioNation with Laura Flanders on Air America; I produce the show regularly. “Hosting” is in quotes because we’re acutally just running an edited panel discussion from an event last night in Los Angeles. Still, I will be talking into a microphone and introducing the panel. The show airs 2-3 Saturdays and 1-2 Sundays on Air America, or up at The Nation every Monday. The panel is a good one:

Lastly Pinko is rolling along. We have added several contributors and have some good pieces up on carbon calculators, Haley Joel-Osmont and “hope-boating,” a term I think we coined relative to the current election.

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Hitchens and Hanukkah

Wrote this up for Jewcy.com last month; hopefully I’ll be blogging for them a bit more next year. While it does veer into a brief fantasy involving softball, its mostly a response to Christopher Hitchens recent screed against the festival of lights.

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Aimee Allison and Military Counter-recruitment

Last Fall I helped run Aimee Allison’s brave campaign for City Council in Oakland. Allison, a conscientious objector and peace activist, ran a hard fought outsider campaign that I still believe could have transformed Oakland. We fell just short. Linked is a piece I wrote about the campaign, but the real reason for noting her is to plug her book, Army of None. Co-authored with David Solnit, it’s billed as an “activists guide to combatting military corecruitment.” I wish the “activist” label wasn’t on there, because it should be required reading for a much broader population, particularly high school educators whose kids might be on the Army’s radar screen.

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Juvenile Justice and the Governator

In 2006 I wrote this piece (links after the jump) for Mother Jonesabout Governor Schwarzenegger and the failing juvenile justice system in California. At the time I worked with Books Not Bars, a remarkable advocacy organization working to reform the system. Books Not Bars has had a very good year, writing and passing their own legislation that gets families more involved in the rehabilitation of their kids. Schwarzenegger? Not so much. His indifference to the issue is still a blot on his record, and his lack of leadership on public safety could come back to haunt him if he ends up as Bloomberg’s running mate next summer.

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Welcome!

Almost a new year, and thanks to a little help from the brilliant Stirling McLaughlin I’ll be posting here more often. BenWyskida.com is the home for all of my writing. Hopefully anything I do, anywhere, will show up here. I’ll be posting articles, linking to blog posts from some of my other ventures (Pinko Magazine, Huffington Post and others) and at some point adding some creative non-fiction essays. Please do drop a line and say hello, and thank you for reading.

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