Subjects Archives: Race

This piece provides an overview of the bitterly polarized and consequential political moment in which the United States, along with many other countries, is embroiled in. It also suggests a strategic approach for U.S. progressives and the left to maximize our contribution to defeating the Trump and the far right, and advancing toward racial and social justice.

Within a timeframe of hardly four years, Stokely Carmichael’s organizational efforts evolved from the mobilization of black voters in Alabama and Mississippi to building a large movement resisting the military draft at the height of the Vietnam war, culminating in the SNCC’s “Hell No! We Won’t Go!” campaign.

An election of “firsts:” Women, LGBTQ, Muslims, African-Americans and Native Americans score seats in the House and Senate.

Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship is yet another attempt to make the U.S. a “White Man’s Country, and threatens all people of color.

Corporate rule imposes a duopoly system in which one party is overtly white supremacist and the other party refuses to tackle racial oppression–but both pursue austerity and war.

Is the collapse of Democratic fortunes due to economic anxiety? Of course. Just ask black Milwaukeeans.

“In Chicago instead of funding healthcare, the things we need, we have been divested from. And that’s part of a neoliberal project that’s been hegemonic since the 1970s… capitalism sets the conditions for everything that’s happened.”

Garcia’s series highlights the imposition of racism as an insidious paradigm, defining who is, and what makes, an “American.”

Sorry to Bother You threw down the gauntlet. We can no longer afford to stick to the script.

In 1980, the magazine Tricontinental, published by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), dedicated its issue no. 119 to Haiti. The editors wrote, ‘Very little is known about the Haitian people’s struggle,’ as the imperialists have ‘erected a wall of silence around Haiti.’

Israeli operatives and their U.S. lobbyists sprang into action when the Movement for Black Lives came out in support of the boycott Israel movement.

This marvelous work of history is a must read for anyone trying to understand the dynamics of slavery in the United States in the pre-Civil War period. Walter Johnson locates slavery as playing a central part in the development of a particularly racialised and oppressive capitalism in the slave states.

The search for explanations of our current political climate, especially the rise of nationalists like Marine LePen in France, Narendra Modi in India, and our own president in the United States, has led pundits to return to the concept of “authoritarian” tendencies as a psychological phenomenon.

Marxists have long understood that the workplace is the primary strategic site of class struggle, and that class struggle is essential for cohering a radicalized working-class majority with the capacity and will to overthrow capitalism in favor of socialism. At the same time, Marxists recognize our moral responsibility to oppose—and the strategic necessity to fight—all forms of exploitation and oppression.

The sight of thick-skulled, Nazi-tattooed thugs growling threats as they stormed through the city center, chasing and beating up presumed “foreigners,” unfriendly journalists or any other foes; invoked memories of Charlottesville a year ago—or Germany in the 1930’s.

In this episode, we speak with Emma Caterine (@emmacaterineDSA), a law graduate and writer with more than a decade of experience working within economic justice, feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice movements. We talk Democratic Socialists of America, MMT, the advantages of a federal jobs guarantee over a universal basic income, the place for sex work in a jobs guarantee program.

Ten eventful days in Germany set alarm signals clanging louder and louder—worst of all in the East German state of Saxony—but in Berlin as well!

Sorry to Bother You director and musician Boots Riley on Spike Lee’s, BlacKkKlansman: “It’s a made up story in which the false parts of it to try to make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression. It’s being put out while Black Lives Matter is a discussion—and that is not coincidental. There is a viewpoint behind it.”

Tom Broadwater, a brother, recently wrote a commentary titled “Democrats’ Immigration Dogma is Damaging African American Communities.” It appeared in the Afro American newspaper and in Newsweek.

About a dozen fascists stormed into the bookshop close to the shop’s closing time, attempting to intimidate staff and customers as they destroyed books and materials.