Common Natures, Shared Fates: Toward an Interspecies Alliance Politics
by Dr. Steven Best
Can we have a diverse political struggle that also is unified? Can we overcome the debilitating divisions of postmodern identity politics? Can human and animal rights communities come together, or are their interests antagonistic? In this groundbreaking article, Steve Best explores how common grounds and shared fates can become the basis for a New Enlightenment, a new definition of community, and a new "interspecies alliance politics."

From the Editor: by Craig Mazer
Alternative energy now!

Notes From the Cultural Wasteland by Morris Sullivan
Paranoid or not, we all need to worry about the Homeland Security bill.

Over-Priced Musings: by Don Pflaster
Marijuana Inches Closer to Legalization -- Despite the defeat of pro-marijuana measures across the U.S. this past election, the movement is growing.

Comic Relief: The Muddlemarch by Neal Skorpen
Choose: Democrats in Elephant's Clothing | Opposition Party?

Dead Man Walking - U.S. Struggles With the Death Penalty
by Kari Lyndersen
For good reason, the death penalty has come under national scrutiny in the past few years, as questions have been raised about its constitutionality, the racism and classism inherent in the criminal justice system, prosecutorial and police misconduct, and the growing number of innocent people released from Death Row.

Who Is The Real Enemy? by Peggy Butler
One fact is of utmost importance in understanding the problems of African-Americans at the present: the seeming unawareness of the prevalence and perniciousness of Black-on-Black violence to the Black community.

Quickies by various writers
A little bit on a whole heck of a hell of a lot of CDs.

Advertiser Index: The businesses that make this magazine possible; includes lots of cool music-label links.

This issue's quotes:

"Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."