From Protest to Resistance I didn’t make it to the march on the Pentagon. The storm up and down the east coast of the United States knocked down a thirty foot tree in my yard in Asheville, North Carolina, messed up my flight from Asheville to Washington, DC, and left me with a choice of […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
The Brotherhood of Warriors:1 The Love That Binds Us
We talk often of military service in war as a civic and patriotic duty. But as the realities of combat and of the battlefield become apparent, patriotic sentiments, political ideologies, and mythologies fade quickly beneath the screams of the unbearable pain of the mutilated and the dying. Ultimately, warriors fight, kill, and accept injury and […]
Losing the “Influencers”
In the jargon of military recruiters, “influencers” is the term used to refer to the family members, close friends, and peers of those young women and men who are considering enlistment in the U.S. armed forces. It’s the circle of people in the daily home, school, work, religious, and social life of the potential inductee […]
Life Under Occupation in Iraq
Local 2627, DC 37, AFSCME interviews labor leader Houzan Mahmoud. This interview was conducted on March 5, 2007, at an event sponsored by the Center for Study of Working Class Life and cosponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW). Houzan Mahmoud is the international representative of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in […]
Confronting the War Machine in the Pacific Northwest
When people think of militant political action in the United States, their thoughts usually turn to cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. The South and the Pacific Northwest probably don’t immediately spring to mind. This is despite the rich legacy of militant labor protest in the filed, woods, and apple orchards of the […]
The Beginnings of a New Democratic Nepal?
John Mage of Monthly Review and Bernard D’Mello. deputy editor of Economic and Political Weekly (“EPW”) of Mumbai, India, visited Nepal in February, and trekked into Rolpa, the original base area of the revolutionary “people’s war.” The following account appears simultaneously on MRZine and in the current (March 17th) issue of EPW. Over the last […]
Income Inequalities, Living Wages, and Union Organizing
It is now accepted across a wide spectrum of political thinking that the period of neoliberalism has sharpened income inequalities. This has occurred along a number of dimensions. The capitalist class has seen an increase in wealth from an increasing concentration of assets, a rapid run-up in asset prices, and corporate profits restored to historically […]
Challenging Wal-Mart
Raising the minimum wage and increasing the level of social assistance is a component part of challenging the large, low-wage multinationals that make up the vast majority employers of the working poor. The largest of them all is Wal-Mart. For socialists, Wal-Mart is more than just a series of big retail stores that threaten our […]
Peter Pace Puts It in His Mouth
His foot, that is. After four years of conducting an illegal war in Iraq, which has killed almost one million people, maimed, wounded and dislocated millions more, tortured countless thousands, and in general brutalized and destroyed a once sovereign, secular country, wreaking havoc and disgrace in the world for his own country, the military’s top […]
Comrades in Arms
IVAN’S WAR by Catherine MerridaleBUY THIS BOOK As civilians, we can never understand combat, or empathize with those who have seen it. Samuel Fuller, a World War Two infantryman who saw combat in France — and who later, as a Hollywood director, recalled his trauma in The Big Red One — said it was impossible […]
Oh! What A Lovely War
I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists. They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]
The Students Are Stirring: A Campus Antiwar Movement Begins to Make Its Mark
Folks often ask, rather cynically, where are the students protesting the war? Well, the answer is that they are there — on their campuses and in the dorms — organizing speakers, rallies, and teach-ins. The fact that folks off campus do not hear about these events does not mean that they aren’t happening. What it […]
Leadership Development Unionism
NOTE: The paper below was written in the early months of January 2001. While the paper’s anticipation of the centrifugal forces pulling at the labor movement and the possibility of international unions “literally leaving the AFL-CIO” unfortunately proved prescient of the Change to Win split, it has been even more difficult than anticipated to […]
No War for Oil, No Oil for War
Part I Combine the strengths of the environmental and anti-war movements to defeat U.S. Middle East policy, end the Iraq War, and join the global community in the common struggle for a sustainable future. Communities Uniting for Climate Action Now! This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at […]
Open Letter to an Immigration Judge
February 14, 2007 To: The Honorable Immigration Judge, I’m a 2nd grade Two-Way Spanish Immersion (TWI) teacher at Rosa Parks school in Berkeley. Today is Valentine’s Day. It was my last day with one of my top students, Gerardo Espinoza. His father, Felipe Espinoza Senior, received an order of deportation and is moving the family […]
Ties That Bind: An Interview with Tiya Miles
Tiya Miles, now age 36, came to the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2002. She is an Assistant Professor in the Program in American Culture, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies Program. Miles is the co-editor with Sharon P. Holland of Crossing Waters, […]
U.S. Religious Delegation Finds Hope in Iran
As Christian leaders from the United States, we traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries. We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within […]
A Red in the House
Stephen Fleischman, A Red in the House: The Unauthorized Memoir of S.E. Fleischman. New York: iUniverse, 2004. 366pp, $24.95 paperback. This review is late in coming because it has taken a couple of years for me to understand who this Fleischman fellow is, with the tough, brilliant commentaries on various issues in CounterPunch and elsewhere. […]
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints
All roads may have once led to Rome, but, for the Palestinian people, all roads lead to checkpoints. The latest checkpoint to block the Palestinians is not manned by Israel but the ostensible mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Quartet (which is composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United […]
The Imperfect Sex: Why Is Sor Juana Not a Saint? [El sexo imperfecto. ¿Por qué Sor Juana no es Santa?]
Cada poder hegemónico en cada tiempo establece los límites de lo normal y, en consecuencia, de lo natural. Así, el poder que ordenaba la sociedad patriarcal se reservaba (se reserva) el derecho incuestionable de definir qué era un hombre y qué era una mujer. Cada vez que algún exaltado recurre al mediocre argumento de que […]
