Uncle Jimmy Weinstein
Rothschild, Matthew
Editor's Note Matthew Rothschild Uncle Jimmy Weinstein I was at the Media Reform Conference in St. Louis in May, and I ran into Salim Muwakkil, a senior editor of In These Times magazine. "How's...
...And then once a month, we gather for a brainstorming session to come up with story ideas and match those with prospective writers...
...Jimmy could be bristly, and he could have treated freelancers better...
...But he does show how cynical her husband's policy on gangs truly is...
...Apeek at our process: Every week, Ruth Conniff, Anne-Marie Cusac, Elizabeth DiNovella, Amit-abh Pal, and I meet to go over editorial submissions and to make sure we're on schedule...
...But distance from victory never deterred him...
...In the last fifteen years, In These Times also has taken environ-mentalism seriously, seeing in it a way to sing beyond our choir...
...Rodr?guez does not take the easy way out and trash Laura...
...He leaves behind now a generation or two of leftwing journalists and that vital independent voice still out of Chicago, In These Times...
...He'd even go to the batting cage a week or two beforehand to get his swing down...
...He's dying...
...James Weinstein, historian, editor, activist, founder of In These Times, man of the left, died on June 16...
...And the ideal writer we found for it was Luis Rodr?guez...
...How's Jimmy doing...
...But he was always Jimmy to me, an old, funny, cantankerous uncle I'd see once a year at the annual In These Times-Progressive baseball games that we kept going for more than a decade...
...And I heard him speak once in Madison about his work with gang youth...
...At first, In These Times billed itself as "an independent socialist newspaper," but it dropped the "socialist" after a while and discarded the idea of being a newspaper...
...There he is, intent on getting us all out with his slow, looping pitch...
...He devoted his heart and soul, for sixty years, to making this country and this world a better place to live in...
...It did not have the screaming headlines of the sectarian leftwing publications, and it had a lot of interesting reporting...
...Needless to say, we are a ways from there today...
...It was at just such a session that Liz proposed an article on Laura Bush and the Administration's anti-gang policies...
...Under Jimmy's leadership, In These Times made three commitments that distinguished it from other magazines: It covered the labor movement, it covered race, and it covered pop culture...
...In his last book, The Long Detour (which I reviewed captiously, I now admit with some remorse), he upheld "socialist principles in the Post-Industrial Era," and he called for a "worldwide program of demilitarization, led by the United States...
...I can still see Jimmy and his skinny legs on the mound...
...Two years ago, we ran his powerful poem, "My Name's Not Rodr?guez...
...I liked it immediately...
...It still does...
...But he was quick and clever and shrewd and wise and lovable...
...He's got brain cancer...
...And Jimmy paid attention to electoral politics at a time when some publications, including this one, neglected that arena...
...Not well," Salim said, shaking his head...
...I've been reading In These Times ever since Joe Schwartz, a graduate student at college, showed me a copy twenty-eight years ago...
...I asked...
...I've admired Rodr?guez ever since I read his memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A...
...He liked the action, and he savored the bratwurst and the blueberry pie almost as much as the bragging rights...
...But Jimmy never dropped the dream of a democratic socialism, which he studied as a scholar and advanced as a journalist...
Vol. 69 • August 2005 • No. 8
