Chosen by Default

I had been called for jury duty before, and the results were always the same: everyone in the room where the lawyers questioned prospective jurors would laugh when I said that I worked for the Democratic Socialists of America or I would raise my hand when asked whether anyone had a problem with New York State's mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Either way, I was out of there. Even though now I worked for a magazine that didn't have the "S" word in its title, I thought Dissent might get the same reaction.