The Ann Arbor Independent Editorial Team 2223 posts 224 comments

by Ari Leveaux Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other ––Neal Cassidy In the middle of the night, partway through a cross-country drive, I unfolded myself from…

by Susan Demas, Michigan Advance There’s an unfortunate stereotype that conservatives just aren’t very creative, probably because they’re always yammering that the National Endowment for the Arts is a boondoggle and museums would make…

by Tara Richards and Justin Nix Domestic violence rose globally in 2020 – so much so that doctors have called it “a pandemic within a pandemic.” The National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, a team of national…

by Patricia Lesko On April 19, 2021, in a move that the Ann Arbor City Attorney Stephen Postema called "unprecedented," Jeff Hayner (D-Ward 1) was stripped of his seats on seven boards and commissions, including the Parks Advisory…

Updated: CM Ali Ramlawi (D-Ward 5) issued a statement in which he withdrew his support for the actions of the Mayor, CMs Grand and Eyer. “The truth always arrive too late, because it walks slower than lies. Truth crawls at a snail's…

by Patricia Lesko When I ran for office against John Hieftje in 2010, a man named Phil Volk, then a leading member of Ann Arbor's gay community, published an opinion piece in which he said I was an "embarrassment to the gay community."…

by Dr. Claudia Finkelstein It’s the moment we thought we were all waiting for…or is it? We were cautiously optimistic about the end of the pandemic in view of increasing vaccine availability and decreasing case numbers…

by Susan Demas, Michigan Advance As Michigan leads the nation in the number of cases and the highest rates of hospitalizations for COVID-19, the head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending new health…

by Patricia Lesko The majority of domestic abusers are poorly-educated, white men. In the case of Mitchell Irwin, the abuser is a 1 Percenter Poster Boy, an educated, rich, 68-year-old white man, a former Michigan State Senator,…

The Michigan Secretary of State's Bureau of Elections is investigating a campaign finance violation complaint filed against Mayor Christopher Taylor in March of this year. The complaint alleges that Taylor, a Democrat who has served on…