January 1, 2010
It is now universally recognized within science that humanity is confronting the prospect—if we do not soon change course—of a planetary ecological collapse. Not only is the global ecological crisis becoming more and more severe, with the time in which to address it fast running out, but the dominant environmental strategies are also forms of denial, demonstrably doomed to fail, judging by their own limited objectives. This tragic failure, I will argue, can be attributed to the refusal of the powers that be to address the roots of the ecological problem in capitalist production and the resulting necessity of ecological and social revolution.
January 1, 2010
The Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci makes, in his Prison Notebooks, the following insightful remarks regarding the character of critical work and reflection. He states: "The beginning of a critical elaboration is the consciousness of that which really is, that is to say a 'knowing of yourself' as a product of the process of history that has unfolded thus far and has left in you, yourself, an infinity of traces collected without the benefit of an inventory. It is necessary initially to make such an inventory." In what follows I will undertake such a task.
January 1, 2010
John Malpede has never worried much about transgressing the line between brave and crazy. Otherwise, he would not have started a theater company in Skid Row Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, when few services existed there, and most people, including his own theater members, predicted the idea would never fly. Nor would he have thought it a cool idea to join members of his L.A. troupe with Bolivian actors this August to tour Bolivia—where coca is a major cash crop—with a play about the War on Drugs.
January 1, 2010
Denise Bergman is the author of Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller's teacher, which was translated into Braille and made into a Talking Book, and Keyhole Poems, a sequence that combines the history of twelve specific urban places with the present. An excerpt of one poem from that series, "Red," is permanently installed as public art in Cambridge, MA.
January 1, 2010
Michael D. Yates, In and Out of the Working Class (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2009), 217 pages, $19.95, paperback.
Okay. Let's get the disclaimers out of the way right now. I am a longtime fan of Mike Yates. A big fan. I have used his materials with community and labor activists, made some contributions to a few of his works, and answered his call to write for Monthly Review on other occasions. So it will come as no surprise that In and Out of the Working Class did not disappoint. This personal reflection and journey through the world of Mike Yates from the early 1950s to the present has made me an even bigger fan.
