In the first few chapters of Health Care Under the Knife, this image is torn asunder and the reader is given a peek into a world I know well—a world of endless paperwork and meaningless trainings, billing and coding requirements, and patient reviews that determine your hospital’s reimbursement. … | more…
On January 14, Mimi Rosenberg, host, with Ken Nash, of Building Bridges, NYC’s longest running labor & community affairs radio program, interviewed Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, authors of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (2nd edition). What follows is a fascinating conversation of a “huge and complicated issue,” laden with illuminating facts… | more…
An apocalypse is ‘damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,’ and Gerald Horne traces the transcontinental social devastation wrought in the 17th century both by the usual-suspect perpetrators—slave traders and owners—and by their unindicted co-conspirators, champions of mercantile and political freedoms in the British Isles and prerevolutionary American colonies… | more…
Thursday, February 7, The Marxist Education Project in Brooklyn, NY begins the first of five sessions studying Michael D. Yates‘s latest book, Can the Working Class Change the World? | more…
Last August, the world lost a great Marxist theorist, Samir Amin. Amin was politically engaged throughout his life, worked in planning agencies in Mali and Senegal, and contributed to the theoretical elaboration of Marxist theory. Amin published dozens of books that cover a wide range of topics, including, amongst other topics… | more…
The hegemony of neoliberalism has involved the propagation of a particular narrative concerning the purpose of education; how it should be assessed in terms of success or failure and, crucially, who should take the credit for the former or, as is more usually the case, blame for the latter…. | more…
Over the past year, the Trump administration’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational program garnered $300 million in pledges from big tech companies. Implicit in this push is the commonly accepted though questionable notion that millions of cutting-edge STEM jobs await US workers… | more…
There is much discussion on the left about the connections and relative importance of class, race, gender, and the environment. Some, like political scientist Adolph Reed, take a class-first approach and criticize those who place an emphasis on race and gender as engaging in an identity politics that often shades into support for the neoliberalism that has wreaked havoc on working people for the past several decades…. | more…
Howard Watizkin, author, with the Working Group on Health Beyond Capitalism, of Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health, spoke about his life and his work, December 4, at the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine Colloquia Series… | more…
Fasanella’s father delivered ice to people in his Bronx neighborhood and his mother worked in a neighborhood dress shop drilling holes into buttons. In her spare time, she was an anti-fascist activist. The family’s experience informed his art just as Michael Yates’s working class roots and long career as a labor activist and educator shapes his latest book… | more…
One local human rights group has claimed 59 people have been killed, while some local residents and opposition politicians claim an even higher death toll. ¶ Because Washington backs the current Haitian government, however, you won’t have heard too much about this in the mainstream media…. | more…
The World Turned Upside Down? poses overarching questions for the new period opened by the Trump election and the continued growth of right-wing nationalisms. These questions are addressed through a series of essays that carefully map the national, class, racial, and gender dimensions of the state, capitalism, and progressive forces today. Sober assessment is crucial for the left to gain its political bearings in this trying period and the uncertainties that lie ahead. | more…
If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the problems facing working people on seemingly every front, economist and labor educator Michael Yates has written a timely book. In Can the Working Class Change the World? he makes the case that the working class — and only the working class — can indeed overcome economic inequality, eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, and meet the challenge of environmental degradation and climate change…. | more…