Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist; Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, Princeton University

The New Progressive Agenda: A Return to Citizenship
Posted: 05/12/2015 3:07 pm EDT Updated: 05/13/2015 3:59 pm EDT
Editors' note: On Tuesday, May 12, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled his "Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality," a 13-point plan framed as the political left's answer to Republicans' 1994 "Contract With America," in a speech outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Below, Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Toni Morrison reacts.

excerpt:

The Progressive Agenda seeks to return us to citizenship, the happily adult responsibility of being citizens to each other. It's concerned with how to ensure a livable wage for all of us; how to improve schools in all our neighborhoods; how to protect working-class jobs and pensions from predators who rely on exploitation and selfish behavior; how to welcome the immigrant, the "huddled masses" we all (except for Native Americans and slaves) once were.

This new Progressive Agenda reimagines citizenship and is far, far more than worthy; it is crucial.