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“I Have No Real Politics”: Susie Day Talking Trash
“[S]urviving evil doesn’t make you a good person: Surviving evil and not passing it on does,” writes Susie Day in her recent book Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power. One possible way to not pass on evil is to laugh about it. Day, through her comedic ability and shrewd observations reveals (with a giant spotlight) […]
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Ferguson: The Evils of the Grand Jury System
Over the last 17 years I have represented dozens and dozens of clients who were subpoenaed to testify as witnesses at state and federal grand juries regarding government investigations. A grand jury is a secret tribunal where a citizen is forced to answer questions by a prosecutor, often against their will. Those subpoenaed are not […]
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The Wobblies in Their Heyday, a Hard-headed History of the IWW
Eric Chester. The Wobblies in Their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014. The Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available platform on which to stand in trying […]
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The Spectre of Social Counter-Revolution
5th Dr. BR Ambedkar Memorial Lecture, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, September 27, 2014 I I would like to use this occasion to dwell upon a point to which Dr Ambedkar had drawn attention in his closing speech to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949. In that speech he had underscored a […]
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Colombian Prisons and Prisoners Mirror Class Struggle
Prisoners in Colombia have recently gained new visibility. Prisoner protest actions are one factor. Another is discussion at the Havana peace talks of prisoners as victims of armed conflict. November 2014 marks the two-year anniversary of talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. Beginning on October 20, hunger strikes […]
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Armed Woman Massacres All-Male Harvard Club, NRA Chief Calls for Gun Control
Harvard University remains shut down one day after a lone woman wielding a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle broke through security at the university’s elite, men-only Porcellian Club and shot 14 white male students to death. The female — of indeterminate age, race, and sexual attractiveness — was described as wearing a torn leather jacket emblazoned […]
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Democracy, Hypocrisy, and President Gauck
In the USA Republicans are jubilant. Jubilation here in Germany is about an event twenty-five years ago: “We beat those red SOBs!” But is there not, hidden behind the confetti, helium balloons, and crowing of the victors in both Germany and the USA, an occasional jarring note of anxiety? A man with good reason for […]
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Dead Labor on a Dead Planet: The Inconvenient Truth of Workers’ Bladders
“Once labor has been embodied in instruments of production and enters the further process of labor to play its role there, it may be called, following Marx, dead labor [. . .]. The ideal toward which capitalism strives is the domination of dead labor over living labor.” — Harry Braverman1 “[T]here are no jobs […]
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The Kagame-Power Lobby’s Dishonest Attack on the BBC 2’s Documentary on Rwanda
On October 1, 2014, a remarkable event occurred in Britain. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s BBC 2’s This World telecast Rwanda’s Untold Story, a documentary produced by Jane Corbin and John Conroy that offered a critical view of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and of his and the British and U.S. roles in the 1994 mass killings […]