This publication marks the 100th issue of Social Justice. Thirty-one years after the initial copy of Crime and Social Justice came off the presses, we have printed over 150,000 copies of Social Justice and other publishers have issued additional thousands of copies of our journals in book form. Over time, our Internet presence will easily dwarf those numbers in terms of reach. We are proud to have maintained a genuine degree of financial independence through the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. administrations. In the 1,300 articles and editorials that have appeared in our pages, some by Nobel Prize-winning authors, each of these administrations has been excoriated on issues ranging from U.S. militarism and intervention abroad, the counterinsurgency and racial implications of the War on Drugs, the long-term effects of the use of torture, the police use of deadly force, the damaging effects of penal warehousing and the discriminatory use of the death penalty, the hidden injuries of welfare and education reform in terms of class and race, the scourge of interpersonal predatory crime, including rape, the attack on labor globally, as well as global threats to genuine human security in the form of environmental harm and the use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of foreign policy.

The list is long and the human costs appalling, but we can scarcely recall an instance as saddening as this Republican administration's callous handling of every aspect of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and safeguarding the public in its aftermath. Our hearts go out to the survivors and victims. This tragedy revealed to the world the core values of this administration, its blindness to the hardships of the poor and people of color, and the national insecurity generated by its deliberate attempt to undermine the safety net, the national infrastructure, and essential public services through tax cuts for the rich, foreign military adventures financed through deficit spending, and pork-barrel subsidies to industries that have underwritten Republican dominance of all the major centers of power in the U.S. The effect has been massive structural violence and "The shaming of America," as the banner reads on The Economist's cover (September 10, 2005, edition), which pictures the crying face of an African-American hurricane victim in New Orleans. These events again bring into relief that racism is a component of structural violence.

This issue of Social Justice features an eclectic blend of contributions. However, each reveals a facet of the many forms that violence takes in today's world, as well as potential courses of redress at the local level. In "Engaging the Past: Charles M. Goethe, American Eugenics, and Sacramento State University," Tony Platt brings to our attention a Sacramento banker and philanthropist who was honored during the institution's formative years. Concealed were his strong ties to Nazi eugenics scientists, his discriminatory business practices against Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, his bankrolling of racist, anti-Japanese campaigns, and his campaigns against the "Oriental penetration" of the United States. Platt's research and student activism persuaded the administration to remove Goethe's name from the campus arboretum. A companion piece by Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval on pedagogy, activism, and social change takes a look at a college-level class on "Racism in American History." The author describes the challenge of generating a shift from merely studying racism to actively working against it.

The next four articles examine the link between neoliberal policies, U.S. militarism, and torture. In "How the U.S. War in Iraq Threatens the Rule of Law," Ronald Kramer, Raymond Michalowski, and Dawn Rothe systematically debunk every Bush administration justification under international law for the preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003 and show that the U.S. and its allies have routinely been guilty of violations of international humanitarian law in their conduct of the occupation of Iraq. Laurie Taylor discusses torture, social control, and our extraordinary capacity to deny with sociologist Stan Cohen, who has spent his life analyzing and opposing injustice and inhumanity. Special attention is given to Israeli-Palestinian relations. In "Neoliberalism and Militarization in Latin America," activist-scholar Jasmin Hristov traces the weakening position of Latin American countries in the global hierarchy of power as a result of neoliberal policies. In case studies, she exposes the increased militarization, state-sanctioned violence, and repression that have accompanied the consolidation of neoliberalism in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Next, Anthony W. Pereira and Jorge Zaverucha examine the role of military justice in the democratic transition in Chile. This comparative article examines attempts to reform the judicial system in Chile and concludes that they have failed due to continuities in the power of the military. These developments are relevant to American citizens, given the increasing use of military tribunals in the prosecution of suspected terrorists. The authors note that, to varying degrees, fascist regimes that arose in Europe between the world wars (especially Nazi Germany, Italy, and Spain) generally expanded the jurisdiction of military courts. Moreover, in the 1960s and 1970s, military regimes in Latin America widely used military courts to prosecute those deemed to be threatening to "national security." Once in operation, military courts gradually acquired more power and a larger jurisdiction. Only recently have attempts to hold those accountable for the "dirty wars," or state terrorism conducted under these policies, begun to gain traction.

In her article on "Criminalizing the Care Work Zone," Donna Baines argues that neoliberal policies have aggravated workplace violence. She addresses the restructuring of work and the welfare state in Canada, where care workers in nursing homes and group homes experience rates of nonfatal workplace violence second only to police officers and taxi drivers. The author explores strengths and weaknesses of four major legal remedies available to this largely female workforce. State-sanctioned murder is the topic of Michael Lenza, David Keys, and Teresa Guess' case study on "The Prevailing Injustices in the Application of the Missouri Death Penalty, 1978 to 1996." The authors analyze data pertaining to homicides to test the effectiveness of judicial reforms instituted by Gregg v. Georgia. They conclude that considerable race and class disparities persist in Missouri's death sentencing, which ranks fourth in the United States in executions in the post-Furman era, and that the Gregg reforms focusing on jury composition and instruction were misplaced.

In the second of a series (see also Social Justice Vol. 30, No. 1), Dennis Broe analyzes the intersection of class, labor, and the detective in American novels and cinema. The author looks at how the detective of the 1940s often challenged the law, but during McCarthyism and the postwar crackdown on labor, the vantage point shift to the defenders of law and order, even to the violent vigilante wearing a badge, a phenomenon echoed recently in the war on terror. Broe predicts that the literary detective form will again highlight class tensions and inequality, if the African-American detective novel is any guide.

Finally, essays by Gregory Shank, Jeff Sommers, and Rod Bush give personal accounts of their friend and colleague, Andre Gunder Frank, who passed away this year.