Over the last twenty-five years, economic inequality in the US grew. As the gap between haves and have-nots worsened, social injustices and tensions increased. As usual, politicians in power have devised projects and campaigns designed to distract attention from these realities. Opposition politicians wonder whether they dare attack growing inequality and champion programs for less […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Showdown in the Andes: Bolivian Election Likely to Shift Latin America Further to Left
In Washington, he’s been referred to as a “narco-terrorist” and a “threatto stability.” In Bolivia, he’s simply called “Evo.” For many in the Andean country, presidential candidate Evo Morales represents a way out of poverty and marginalization. He has pledged to nationalize the country’s natural gas reserves, reject any US-backed free-trade agreement, and join the […]
Conspicuous Consumption of a Mad Activist
Dear Panasonic Corporation, I have in my possession one of your fine DVD players, model no. DMR-ES40VS. The one with the built-in VCR that has a “powerful recording device to capture your favorite shows and much much more.” Well, it got smashed. Through no fault of my own, naturally. It was totaled during one of […]
UE Files ILO Complaint: Complaint filed with UN Agency Accusing North Carolina of International Labor Law Violations
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and UE Local 150, which represents thousands of public employees who work for state agencies and municipal governments in North Carolina, filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO) on December 9, 2005, charging the U.S. government and the State of North Carolina with […]
Terrorists Wear Suits
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 Peace among others. He can be contacted at […]
The Doctor Makes His Diagnosis*
I have two cities but only one home that is my mother’s womb with one long umbilical cord that reaches across thousands of frequent flyer miles. I have two apartments and one window filled with pleats of light and a sooty curtain that no matter the color is a checkered gray. I have “an abiding […]
Saturday, December 10, 1960: The Debate That Never Happened
At 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, December 10, 1960, NBC television was supposed to broadcast something truly exceptional: a debate on the topic of “U.S. policy toward Latin America” between liberal theorist A. A. Berle and the radical “Texas wobbly” sociologist C. Wright Mills. To the enduring loss of the world, the scheduled debate […]
Western Canada Labor Battles Show Need for Solidarity
Thirty-eight thousand public school teachers in British Columbia voted on October 23 by seventy-seven percent to end a sixteen-day strike that had brought the province to the brink of a general strike. The teachers, members of the BC Teachers Federation, walked off the job on October 6. Bargaining for a new collective agreement was going […]
Stillborn (a poem of occupation)
Somewhere . . . in the backstreets of Mosul (or maybe Falluja) it happens like a meteor streaking across the pre-dawn horizon A girl — Bint al-Ard — standing before a window conjures a new thought that has never been thought by any man before a new seed, if planted, that might shake the earth […]
“Isn’t He a Bit like You and Me?”
It’s easy to remember the date, especially this year with all of the mainstream media trying to cash in on the date. December 8, 1980. I was sitting at a friend’s house in Berkeley, California listening to music and talking. Another fellow was in the house kitchen talking with his parents who lived in North […]
Not Even to Save Our Lives
On a Thanksgiving visit home two years ago to his family in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Jim Loney tried to explain to his father why he wanted to go to Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams. He told his Dad about a grade school chum, Rick, sent to Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces, who narrowly […]
Art, Truth, & Politics
In 1958 I wrote the following: There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do […]
Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief
Part 3: Systematic Bias “…an ingenious strategy for recycling natural disaster as class struggle” Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear Michael Hoover, “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent” (28 November 2005) and “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 2: Politics: The Electoral Connection and […]
From the Fields to the Factories: Central American Free Trade Deal Hits the Region’s Women Workers Harder
Despite union opposition in several countries, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) squeaked through the House of Representatives by only two votes on July 28, after passing the Senate a month earlier. CAFTA expands NAFTA-style free trade to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica — with the possible later addition of […]
The WTO Road to Neo-Liberal Development — On Keeping Alive the Alternatives
The merchant-minister caravan of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has moved to Hong Kong for its ministerial conference. What really is another round of multilateral negotiations to advance the cause of “free trade” had been designated a “development” round. Not surprisingly, development has been conceived as a mere corollary of free trade, never mind […]
One Man’s Spirit
An awesome thing So personal, yet universally A peace it brings To all, the seen and unseen A mighty thing So much a part of humanity Divinity in our being That, at all times, must be seen A powerful thing So simple, yet connected to deity The soul that sings One man’s spirit can change […]
Head Start: Working for a Program That Works!
Who would have ever thought I would still be working as an Administrative Assistant here at the Head Start program in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, 28 years later? When I started here on February 16, 1977, I was 28 years old, married with two young daughters in elementary school. My husband was employed, and I thought that […]
The New Cooperative Movement in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Process
I arrived in Caracas in July 2005 with a few contacts at different cooperatives, anxious about how I would sort through the more than 70,000 cooperatives that the Superintendencia Nacional de Cooperativas (National Superintendence of Cooperatives — SUNACOOP) had referred to in its recent press statements. Indeed, I found cooperatives everywhere. Between one night and […]
Change to Win or Win for a Change?
From a working person’s point of view, the recent (and to most of us) completely unexpected split in the AFL-CIO leaves a lot of unanswered questions in its wake. Not that anybody has ever asked me, but I’m a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, so I have my own questions, too. To […]
“How Can You Say That You Support the Troops If You Support the False Ideas They May Die for?”
Paralyzed from the chest down, Iraq war vet Tomas Young speaks out against the war and occupation. Tomas Young Pfc. Tomas Young, 25 years old, was sent to Iraq last year with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. He joined the military for college money to further his education and, in his own words, “to […]
