Richard D. Vogel, “NAFTA Corridors: Dividing the Nation to Multiply Profits” (MRZine, 4 February 2006) As required by law, the State of Texas has finally posted the long anticipated 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement for the Texas leg of the I-35 NAFTA corridor on the Internet. Access to the document is limited by the digital […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out: Neglected for Decades, Released on DVD at Last
After more than twenty years in the film industry, Joseph L. Mankiewicz was at the top of his profession in 1950. He had won two Oscars in March for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and had completed filming All About Eve (1950) which would be released in October and go on […]
A Note on Immigration and the U.S. Workers [Una nota sobre la inmigración y los trabajadores estadounidenses]
Si el pueblo trabajador en Estados Unidos ha de alcanzar unidad, autoconfianza colectiva e independencia política en el futuro próximo (¡y cuanto nos hacen falta!), la demanda del movimiento de los trabajadores inmigrantes de derechos plenos debe ser el primer punto en su agenda. El pueblo trabajador en este país necesita darse cuenta de lo […]
Massachusetts Health Reform Bill: A False Promise of Universal Coverage
Listen to Steffie Woolhandler on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News radio show (6 April 2006). Read David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, “Mayhem in the Medical Marketplace” (Monthly Review 56.7, December 2004). It’s a stirring scene. The Governor, legislative leaders and leaders of Health Care for All standing in the State House Rotunda declaring […]
Why Leaving Iraq Now Is the Only Sensible Step to Take: A Review of Anthony Arnove’s Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal
IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal (Hardcover) by Anthony Arnove (Introduction by Howard Zinn)BUY THIS BOOK Coherent. That’s the one-word review of Anthony Arnove’s latest book, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (New Press, April 2006). Incoherent. That’s what Washington’s policy in Iraq seems to be. What makes Arnove’s book so important is that he dissects that […]
Lessons of a Left Victory in France
France’s leading bureaucrats, from President Jacques Chirac on down, have been defeated. French neo-liberalism — the dismantling of its welfare state in favor of business — has suffered a serious blow. A powerful alliance of high-school and university students and of organized labor achieved the victory against the government’s law that undercut job security for […]
Minneapolis-St. Paul, 9 April 2006
Yiwen Cheng lives in Kansas City, and Stephen Philion lives in Minneapolis.
Washington, D.C., 10 April 2006: The Awakened Giant Goes to Washington!
10 April 2006 was the National Day of Action for immigrant rights. Millions marched nationwide on 9-10 April 2006 in opposition to HR 4437 (which would make undocumented immigrants — and those who help them stay in the United States — felons for the first time in the nation’s history) and in support of legalization […]
Victory: Withdrawal of the CPE [Victoire: retrait du CPE]
« L’article 8 de la loi Egalité des chances va être remplacé par un dispositif en faveur de l’insertion professionnelle des jeunes ». C’est en ces termes que le Président de la République signifie l’abrogation du CPE. C’est un authentique succès de l’action syndicale et de la mobilisation unie des étudiants, des lycéens, des salariés […]
“Let Them March All They Want, as Long as They Continue to Pay Their Taxes”
Click on the image for a larger view! Doug Minkler is a San Francisco Bay Area artist specializing in fundraising, outreach, and educational posters. Minkler has collaborated with ILWU, Rainforest Action Network, SF Mime Troupe, ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, CISPES, United Auto Workers, Africa Information Network, ADAPT, Cop Watch, Street Sheet, and Veterans for […]
Zoned Out: The Politics of Community Exclusion
Michael Hoover, “Whose Domain? Private Power, Public Policy, and Local Politics” (17 March 2006) Local government initiatives to deal with housing and community development issues coincided with the expansion of industrial capitalism in the late 19th century. New York City became the first to enact building codes following a cholera epidemic (the city’s third since […]
German Leftists on a Political Roller Coaster
Those hoping for left-wing unity in Germany have been on an emotional roller-coaster ride in recent months, with many dramatic ups and downs. The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) which has already renamed itself The Left (to which the letters PDS are usually added), has about 70,000 members, who are divided on many issues but […]
“Make Marc Mayor”: Songs for Political Action
The April issue of Monthly Review contains a biographical profile of Vito Marcantonio. Marcantonio, or Marc as he was known, was the product of one of the worst slums in early twentieth-century New York. Through seven Congressional terms in the 1930s and 40s, he was an indefatigable voice for his poor and oppressed constituents and […]
The “Dirty Thirty’s” Peter McLaren Reflects on the Crisis of Academic Freedom
Peter McLaren David Gabbard and Karen Anijar Appleton, “Fearless Speech in Fearful Times: An Essay Review of Capitalists and Conquerors, Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, and Teaching Peter McLaren,” MRZine, 30 October 2005 Peter McLaren is Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University […]
Declaration of the Unions of College Students, High School Students, and Workers [Déclaration des organisations syndicales d’étudiants, de lycéens et de salariés]
Les formidables mobilisations unitaires de ces deux derniers mois, le succès encore plus important des arrêts de travail, grèves et manifestations du 4 avril, avec plus de 3 millions de manifestants, le développement du mouvement dans les universités et les lycées, confirment la conscience profonde de la gravité de la situation par les salariés, les […]
Katrina’s Aftermath Transforms Work in the Gulf Region
Six months after Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast struggles with a new challenge — who will do the rebuilding? The region is awash in clean-up and reconstruction projects, but with more than 1.5 million people displaced by the hurricane, ready hands are in short supply. In many areas, the tight post-Katrina labor market has already […]
Pinko Plague Panics President
(PU) After years of government indifference to viral epidemics, President Bush today called an emergency press conference to launch a federal campaign against the “Human Altruist Virus,” which threatens to blight the nation. “Make no mistake,” stated the President, “this is a terrorist microbe. Compared with HIV, which mostly kills people we don’t care about, […]
April 4, 1968
April 4, 1968. I was watching TV that Thursday night when a bulletin flashed across the screen. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead, shot dead in Memphis. By the time I woke up the next morning to deliver papers, cities were on fire across the land. The all-news radio station kept replaying part of a […]
Business as Usual: Black Males Left Behind
“I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on the plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. . . . I don’t see […]
Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics
Since my essay on the Danish cartoons was published on 21 February 2006, I have received dozens of emails supportive of my argument that racism has no place on the left. Additionally, comments on the article posted on MRZine show that there are people willing to stand up against anti-Muslim bigotry. However, what is deeply […]
