A sense of the arguments and perspective that drive Jeb Sprague’s detailed study of paramilitarism in Haiti from the early 1990s to 2004 is given in the following quote, which comes in a closing chapter: “As with all historical processes, Haiti’s recent history cannot be reduced to pure good versus pure evil—the popular Lavalas movement had its own contradictions and failures. Even so, right-wing paramilitarism and its backers have produced, by far, the most victims of political violence in Haiti in recent history” (p. 281). Sprague supports this point—and at the same time aims to expose layers of political complexity—with an intriguing assessment of the role of paramilitary organizations in ensuring that popular movements in the Caribbean republic are kept hobbled. | more…

Henry A. Giroux is the author of America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, recently published by Monthly Review Press. This video was recorded on August 19, 2013, at his keynote address to the Third Ontario Common Front General Assembly.  | more…

Nancy Stout, author of One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution, will be speaking in the Minneapolis area, at the invitation of the Minnesota Cuba Committee. Click here for more information.  | more…

Socialist intellectuals (e.g., Bayard Rustin) and radical labor leaders (e.g., A. Philip Randolph) were trusted advisers and allies of Martin Luther King Jr. Their social-democratic economic ideas … embodied in the “Freedom Budget” … called for the elimination of poverty by 1976 through programs to create full employment, eliminate slums, and ensure a minimum standard of living for all. The book ends with a proposed updated version of the Freedom Budget; the budget includes federal programs for full employment, a restructuring of education and job-training systems, and more. … Invaluable for restating the influence of the American left on King’s views and enriching the historical record. | more…

Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, an oral history of the iconic revolutionary couple and their struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He is interviewed by Walter Turner for Africa Today on Berkeley’s KPFA, also available to stream online.  | more…

(Michael Lebowitz is the author of The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”.) Why did ‘real socialism’ and, in particular the Soviet Union, fall? Let me note a few explanations that have been offered. With respect to the Soviet Union, one very interesting explanation that has been suggested is that it’s all the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev. And not simply the errors of Gorbachev but the treachery. Those who offer this explanation rely in particular upon a document which is sometimes described as his confession. | more…

“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The “Freedom Budget” was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the “Freedom Budget”—people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.—understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves | more…

In America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Henry A. Giroux focuses on the dysfunctional nature of US culture and politics. Giroux offers an alternative to the corporate-teaching model prevailing in US K-12 schools now. To this end, he analyzes mainstream assumptions and conclusions about the social purpose of education. He terms our present moment as an era of “casino capitalism.” In this time of an ultra-rich minority calling the cultural and political shots, Giroux is a vital voice against corporate education reformers that talk progress for students and fund tests that restrict classroom curriculum and subvert critical thought. | more…

As two excellent new books about the march and the men and women who made it happen — “The March on Washington” by William P. Jones and “A Freedom Budget for All Americans” by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates — make clear, the march was initially conceived in late 1962 primarily to spotlight the growing unemployment, underemployment and job discrimination plaguing African Americans in northern cities. Only when all hell broke loose in Birmingham, Ala., in the spring of 1963 — with Bull Connor loosing attack dogs on black schoolchildren demonstrating for equal access to public accommodations — did the focus of the march expand to the civil rights demands with which it is linked in popular memory today. | more…

Henry Giroux is the author of America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, recently published by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by Ted Asregadoo of Truthout in this video, published on August 22, 2013. | more…

Three years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a number of its core organizers projected a new stage of the struggle for equality — expanding and deepening it, creating the economic and social foundations needed to realize Martin Luther King’s dream. Their program, “A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” was issued by the A. Philip Randolph Institute in fall 1966. In his foreword, King called the document “a moral commitment to the fundamental principles on which this nation was founded.” Chances are you’ve never heard of it.  | more…

Despite recent efforts to efface its history through the practice of renaming, the area of mid-west Manhattan that real estate agents now call the Clinton Historic District (or even ‘Clinton Heights’) remains – to many existing residents and to the popular imagination at large – Hell’s Kitchen. Just how and why this moniker and all that it conjures have stuck is part of the story that Joseph Varga tells in Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space, a nuanced and theoretically-sophisticated history of the social relations and spatial imaginaries that produced this area in the turbulent decades from 1894 to 1914. Though this period of American urban history – the era of Progressive reform – has received considerable attention from historians, Varga adds a much-needed dimension to the discussion by engaging directly with critical spatial theory. The result is not just an eminently readable history of Hell’s Kitchen, but a fascinating example of how ‘taking space seriously’ can alter our historical understandings and perspectives in powerful ways. | more…