Just two years ago, the sky was the limit for progressives: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a Sanders’ candidacy for president. There was serious talk of forgiving student debt, of free community college, paid parental leave, finally lowering the costs of essential medicines and more. Now, the best progressives can muster is primarying the treacherous, corporate, bought-and-paid for Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema. What a difference a couple of years make! This was all entirely predictable. The Democratic party has mainly functioned since the 1930s to demobilize left movements, and these latest weren’t even movements… | more…
To begin with, the Bay Area’s Mr. Hochschild probably should read the New York Times too, for he repeats the misleading critique of this work—taken up with a vengeance by certain mainstream scholars—that slavery had little or nothing to do with the revolt against British rule in 1776. | more…
Winslow studied at Warwick University under E. P. Thompson, the undisputed pioneer in this approach, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In his Introduction he cites another founder of the new labor history, Herbert Gutman, to the effect that ‘Studying a single event cannot answer the basic questions, not even the general strike … We need the background, of the discontent of working people in the Pacific Northwest as well as of the Seattle social and economic structure.’ This Winslow provides in considerable detail… | more…
Co-authors Rosalind Petchesky and Esther Farmer of Jewish Voice for Peace-NY, and their guests Sara Abou Rashed, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh and Sagiv Galai discuss their contributions to “A Land With A People” and demonstrate the power of anti-Zionism. (Scroll down for a sneak peek at their contributions to the book). | more…
On this recent spot on “Cosmonaut,” Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina discuss communes in both urban and rural settings, and their role in the transition to socialism, the questions around oil and the economy, the economic problems of the revolution, the shadows of bureaucratization, the differences between the cities and the countryside and possible way forward for the revolution. | more…
“The Punishment Monopoly” explores the function of land as a means of production and site for the social construction of power, paying attention to the racial and gendered dimensions of land ownership and the authority it confers to punish nonelites. | more…
“I never choose activism. It chose me,” Riham Barghouti began. “It’s like I was born into royalty, but in my case the exact opposite…I was born into a people being dispossessed, a history being erased, a culture being appropriated, a land being confiscated.” | more…
Gerald Horne is this year’s winner of the ABA, awarded by the Before Columbus Foundation, for his book “The Dawning of the Apocalypse,” a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. | more…
As part of its survey of POWs in society, the book delves into movie treatments. The antiwar prisoners were obscured by Hollywood, which preferred films on the POWs and “Missing in Action” (MIAs) who were supposedly left behind, or which dwelt on the trope of the deranged veteran…. | more…
“It’s the best program we have probably adopted in this country, certainly beloved by many people. But I wanted to say this to our audience, that — much of our audience is younger than I am — this is going to sound, on its face, boring, but this is one of the most important shows that we’ve done for you.” | more…
What would — what should — getting beyond capitalism look like? Many scholars and activists have advanced strategies for moving toward a postcapitalist future. | more…
Yates takes a decidedly unorthodox approach. He spends a fair amount of time explaining the importance of reclaiming common spaces and “commoning” practices…. | more…
Without trivializing the hardships of often several years in jail, Wilber and Lembcke dissect personal accounts by former POWs. They point out contradictions, distinguish between physical punishment measures and deliberate violence, reconstruct different phases in the history of the prisons, and conclude that brutal treatment and torture were less common and systematic than purported. | more…