Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his most radical, the year before he was assassinated, said: “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” That was four decades ago, yet it is perhaps more true today. The greatest purveyor of violence on this earth is my own government. For those […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Becoming Conscious of Our Own Strength: Gabriele Zamparini Listens to Voices of Dissent
An Italian-born former law student, Gabriele Zamparini moved to the States in 1998 where he worked as an Italian teacher and freelance journalist. It was post-9/11 when Zamparini got the idea to make a documentary about “the fast growing, grassroots peace movement” he was witnessing in America. The result was a seven-part film series called […]
Flexibility for Whom?
MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Imagining the workplace as a network of voluntary relationships has dire political implications. For example, in 1997, a California state agency, the Industrial Welfare Commission, bowing to employer pressure voted to reinterpret an overtime regulation dating back to 1918. For almost […]
Induced Failure
The current penal system in America is not working. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that it predisposes prisoners to recidivism (a relapse into a life of crime). Since man is ultimately a product of his environment, the current system’s products speak for themselves: failure. The system’s practices set […]
A Story of Resistance: How a Conservative Rural Community Repudiated the Administration’s Effort to Criminalize Dissent
On March 17, 2003, Saint Patrick’s Day, only days before “Shock and Awe,” four Catholic Workers entered the U.S. Military Recruiting Station in Ithaca, NY, and spilled their blood to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq. They knelt, read a statement in opposition to the war, prayed, and waited to be arrested. Ithaca is home […]
Selections from the Panama Journals of Anthropologist GR
Introduction to My Panama Journals From 1972 until 1999, each field trip I made to Loma Bonita was a time of isolation from my family and friends. Telephone or computer communication was not an option, since electricity did not [and still does not] reach Loma Bonita. Nor did the postal service provide a dependable […]
Farmed Salmon: Marinated in Toxics, Stuffed with Profits
The farmed salmon industry has recently been dealt yet another blow as the world learns about the contaminated product it offers for the public’s dinner plates. In June, 2005, a multi-national aquaculture company, Stolt Sea Farms, confirmed that nearly 320,000 of its farmed salmon from British Columbia were contaminated with the illegal fungicide “malachite green” […]
End the War and Bring the Troops Home Now! Demo Graphics, 24 September 2005, Washington, D.C.
[The photographs below were taken by an MRZine.org reader. — Ed.]
Spinning Wheels of Globalization!
The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the […]
Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Five
[Author’s note: Let me repeat my invitation at the end of Part Four of this series. Readers are invited to submit short essays, about 1,000 words, about their work. What do you do? In what ways is your work satisfying? In what ways is it not? How could it be made better? Send your essays […]
“George Bush Doesn’t Care about Black People”
Watch the Black Lantern‘s video of “George Bush Doesn’t Care about Black People” by the Legendary K.O.:
Enter the Conglomerates: Hong Kong Cinema Does the Hollywood Hustle
Hong Kong’s film industry dominated South East Asian markets for the latter half of the twentieth century. Local productions began declining, however, in the “high anxiety” of the countdown to the “return” of the British colonial city-state to Mainland China in 1997. But when the “handover” had come and gone, expected draconian restrictions failed […]
Lords of War: Arming the World
“I hope they kill each other . . . too bad they both can’t lose.” — Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger (on the U.S. arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s) “Do not support dictators. Do not sell them weapons.” — Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, East Timorese peace negotiator It’s not every […]
New Bargaining Strategies? USWA and the New Economy
The new economy has placed a variety of pressures on collective bargaining in Canada. These pressures should, in the first instance, be understood in the context of long-term Canadian economic under-performance. Lower growth and productivity performance than the US, combined with higher unemployment, has placed extensive labor market pressures on wages in Canada since […]
John Roberts, Stare Decisis, and the Return of Lochner: An Impetus to Jump-Start the Labor Movement
There are some things we take for granted, some things that seem so natural we forget that they were the result of long, hard struggle: the forty-hour work week, weekends off, the abolition of child labor, worker safety laws, and the right to collective bargaining — to name a few. But as John Roberts […]
Saving the Future
Though in my university days I was no more of a party person than I am now, I had friends with other tastes. Visiting one on a morning many years ago, I found him blearily looking for traces of furniture amid the mess he and some others had generated through a long night. “I feel […]
South Korea: The State of Political Struggle
The post-crisis trajectory of the South Korean economy has been a disaster for working people there, and South Korean labor and left movements are engaged in a very difficult struggle to roll back the ongoing neoliberal restructuring. In this essay I discuss some of the challenges these movements face. I do so because workers and […]
Waiting to Be Paid
[What follows is an essay written in response to Michael D. Yates’ call for essays on work. — Ed.] I have a number of jobs. I homeschool a special needs child, I work part-time in a cat shelter, and I work part-time in our family business, a solo CPA practice. My husband works about […]
New Orleans:
The world watched as people of New Orleans were herded into the Superdome, only to find themselves in a wretched and unsanitary place with no food, water, or proper medical care. Those in areas of high flooding fled to their rooftops, begging rescue helicopters to airlift them to safety. Many died trapped in their […]
“We Went into the Mall and Began ‘Looting'”: A Letter on Race, Class, and Surviving the Hurricane
[Peter Berkowitz is a long-time Monthly Review subscriber. He was in New Orleans bringing his son Ernesto to begin his freshman year at Loyola when they were caught in the hurricane. Peter and Ernesto spent five days on the street by the Convention Center. Below is a letter Peter sent to his mother upon […]
