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"We Want To Be Heard!"
| by Robert Joe Stout | Winter 2011 |
Uniformed agents of Mexico’s Federal Investigative Agency (AFI for its initials in Spanish) yanked three inmates out of their cells in the minimum-security state prison at Ixcotel, Oaxaca in November, 2008 and transported them to San Bartola Coyotepec, another Oaxaca state prison, for "interrogation." One of the three inmates, Victor Hugo Martínez, told activist friends that the federal investigators beat him and threatened to "make your family pay" if he didn’t confess in full to crimes of which he’d been accused two years before and for which
1937/8 in the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party
| by Mike Wood | Winter 2011 |
Introduction
A Personal and Political Tribute to Phyllis Jacobson
| by Lynn Chancer | Summer 2010 |
IT’S A STAPLE of American comedians to make fun of in-laws in general and mothers-in-law in particular. But, in my case and with no offense to Michael, I could have married my husband simply for his parents.
A Realistic Post-election Strategy to Modify NCLB
| by Michael Charney | Winter 2005 |
Thank God for Utah. The potential triumphalism of George Bush and his hold the course view of No Child Left Behind can be blunted. The Utah legislature set the tone in early 2004 with its frontal assault on the arrogance of the federal government in micromanaging the accountability standards of Utah's classrooms. The Utah legislature was on the verge of totally rejecting the federal funds following NCLB before the U.S. Department of Education sent emissaries to Salt Lake City to calm down the cry for state control.
A Reply to Stephen Steinberg: Finger-Pointing Toward "Freedom Now!"
| by Michael Hirsch | Winter 2006 |
I imagine Stephen Steinberg astride a muscular white horse, whip in one hand, pistol in the other, riding to scourge the American left of its racial amnesia. Or he's a biblical prophet, imbued with the divine spirit and setting the highest standards for the community. Sometimes the need for such a seer is self-evident, and sometimes Steinberg fairly meets it. Sometimes.
A Socialist Campaign in Ohio
| by Dan La Botz | Winter 2011 |
The Dan La Botz Socialist for Senate Campaign in Ohio in 2010 was one of the most successful socialist electoral campaigns in more than 60 years. The 25,000 votes cast for La Botz compare favorably with earlier Socialist Party candidacies in Ohio, with other socialist parties, and with reformist parties to the left of the Democrats. The La Botz campaign, in fact, compares favorably with all Socialist, Communist and Socialist Workers Party and other leftist party campaigns since the heyday of socialism. Only Eugene V.
A Special New Politics Symposium: NCLB: A Progressive Response
| by Lois Weiner | Winter 2005 |
With overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans, the Bush administration employed the rhetoric of equity and accountability to forge a legislative package called "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). NCLB was an omnibus bill that contained numerous provisions that made federal aid to low-income schools and children dependent on schools' accepting new regulations on a host of school policies, from qualifications for teachers to the kinds of instructional materials that can be used.
A Young Radical’s View of Marriage
| by Amy Littlefield | Summer 2011 |
A University of Michigan study[1] found that becoming a wife creates seven added hours of housework per week for women. For men, housework decreases by one hour per week after marriage. Another way to say this is that gender roles some like to claim are dead are in fact alive and well. The study took a "nationally representative" sample of couples (including, presumably, some who believed they were flouting the division of labor) and relied on time-diary data from 2005.
Adoption
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2007 |
A country's economic system and its cultural practices shape its adoption practices. For example, in Western societies adoption practices are very different from those in the preliterate subsistence economies of Eastern Oceania.
Affirmative Action -- 2003
| by Reginald Wilson | Winter 2004 |
I
After Israel's Invasion: An Eyewitness Account from Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel
| by Marie Kennedy | Summer 2009 |
Gaza: War on Civilians in the World’s Largest Open-air Prison[1]
After Wojtyla: Thoughts for the Times on Democracy and Faith
| by Chris Rhoades Dykema | Winter 2006 |
The spectacle of adoration following the death of Karol Wojtyla, also known as Pope John Paul the Second -- maudlin and baleful as it was -- was also time wasted by the American left. What incremental analysis it fostered came from the ranks of the faithful, not of the irreverent.
Albert Shanker's Legacy: Comment on Norm Scott and Vera Pavone's Review in #45
| by Michael Hirsch | Winter 2009 |
LEON TROTSKY’S TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM begins with words that have made the left nuts ever since. “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat,” the old exiled Bolshevik and Red Army founder wrote.That analysis was arguable in 1938, when it was written, less so in the 1960s, when the United Federation of Teachers was formed. Would that it were remotely plausible today.
Albert Shanker's Legacy: Reply to Michael Hirsch
| by NORMAN SCOTT and VERA PAVONE | Winter 2009 |
MICHAEL HIRSCH’S CRITIQUE misleads, or outrightly distorts, many of the points we made in our review.*
Shanker and NCLB
Alliances Needed
| by Ron Hayduk | Winter 2006 |
Steve Steinberg highlights a critical issue at an important time. Steinberg is right to draw our attention to the impact of immigration on the project of progressive politics, particularly as it relates to the plight of African Americans.
America's soft power dysfunctions: When Arab problems are allowed to wash up on American shores
| by Emad El-Din Aysha | Winter 2008 |
Our political organization is thoroughly rotten, almost non-existent. It is Carthagian... Never was there such an absurd waste of power, such ridiculous inconsequence of policy—not for want of men but for want of any effective central authority or dominant idea to make them work together.
André Siegfried, England's Crisis, 1931
Another American Dilemma: Race vs. Immigration
| by Gilbert Jonas | Winter 2006 |
Ever since America's negro slaves were emancipated after the Civil War, our nation's generous immigration policies have worked against the interests and advancement of African Americans.
Are U.S. Unions Ready for the Challenge of a New Period?
| by Kim Moody | Summer 2009 |
BY NOW IT SEEMS CLEAR that the United States has entered a new period of contradictory trends that presents a profound challenge to organized labor. First there is the deepening world recession that is bringing down some of American capitalism’s most high profile institutions from Wall Street to Detroit. At the same time, of course, it is wiping out millions of jobs, 4.4 million from December 2007 to February 2009.
Art for the People? Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates"
| by Jesse Lemisch | Summer 2005 |
Holy saffron! From February 12 to 27, New York City's Central Park was the site of an exhibition called "The Gates: Central Park New York 1979- 2005," by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude (C/J-C). The Gates consisted of 7503 vinyl structures straddling 23 miles of park pathways, each gate 16 feet high, resting on steel bases (the equivalent, the city boasted, of two thirds of the steel used in the Eiffel Tower), with orange drapes (described by C/J-C as "saffron") hanging down from the tops.
Attack and Burn!
| by Robert Joe Stout | Winter 2008 |
THEY GRABBED ME, THEY HIT ME, they yanked me by the hair and threw me in the back of a pickup. They sprayed me with tear gas and held a knife to my back. They said they were going to rape me and throw me in the ocean. They said other police were raping my novia (girlfriend) right then.
Bolivia: Latin America's Experiment in Grassroots Democracy
| by Nancy Romer | Winter 2008 |
A NEW ALLIANCE OF DEMOCRATICALLY-ELECTED GOVERNMENTS with a range of socialist programs is sweeping Latin America. New trade agreements that embrace the possibility of pan-regional alliances are being forged. Venezuela, Ecuador, and to a significant extent Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, and Brazil articulate some policies of uplifting the poor and challenging US and neoliberal hegemony. Other nations are making their way to this list.
Can a Progressive Democrat Make a Difference?: Running Against Hillary
| by Jonathan Tasini interviewed by Michael Hirsch, and Joanne Landy | Winter 2007 |
Jonathan Tasini made enemies when he ran against Senator Hillary Clinton in New York State's September 2006 Democratic primary. Some liberal Democrats called his effort a quixotic and self-referential campaign, one that would accomplish nothing beyond potentially harming Clinton's own political standing. Others to Tasini's left wrote off his campaign as a diversion, a way of co-opting critics of neo-liberalism onto a narrow path while draining resources from potentially insurgent third party efforts.
Can The Left Become Relevant To Islamic Pakistan?
| by Pervez Hoodbhoy | Summer 2010 |
The left has always been a marginal actor on Pakistan’s national scene. While this bald truth must be told, in no way do I wish to belittle the enormous sacrifices made by numerous progressive individuals, as well as small groups. They unionized industrial and railway workers, helped peasants organize against powerful landlords, inspired Pakistan’s minority provinces to demand their rights, set standards of writing and journalism, etc.
Can the Left Ignore Gay Liberation?
| by John D'Emilio | Summer 2008 |
THE JESUITS TRAINED ME WELL. My high school speech and debate coach taught me how to speak in complete paragraphs and to construct what he described as a "seamless" argument. Many years later, a close friend and fellow historian used the same word in reference to my historical writing. He described one of my books as a "seamless" narrative. Well, that skill, if I have it, has eluded me as I've tried to compose my contribution to this discussion. So, instead, I offer a series of disconnected, but I hope relevant, observations.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
The Passive Revolution
Sometimes the story is just an appendage to the back-story. What it means for Sisyphus to watch his rock roll back down the hill can't be understood unless we know it was not exactly the first time. Organized labor's recent effort to move the Employee Free Choice Act -- popularly known as "card check" -- up Capitol Hill involves a similar back-story.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
The Passive Revolution
Sometimes the story is just an appendage to the back-story. What it means for Sisyphus to watch his rock roll back down the hill can't be understood unless we know it was not exactly the first time. Organized labor's recent effort to move the Employee Free Choice Act -- popularly known as "card check" -- up Capitol Hill involves a similar back-story.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
The Passive Revolution
Sometimes the story is just an appendage to the back-story. What it means for Sisyphus to watch his rock roll back down the hill can't be understood unless we know it was not exactly the first time. Organized labor's recent effort to move the Employee Free Choice Act -- popularly known as "card check" -- up Capitol Hill involves a similar back-story.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
The Passive Revolution
Sometimes the story is just an appendage to the back-story. What it means for Sisyphus to watch his rock roll back down the hill can't be understood unless we know it was not exactly the first time. Organized labor's recent effort to move the Employee Free Choice Act -- popularly known as "card check" -- up Capitol Hill involves a similar back-story.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
The Passive Revolution
Sometimes the story is just an appendage to the back-story. What it means for Sisyphus to watch his rock roll back down the hill can't be understood unless we know it was not exactly the first time. Organized labor's recent effort to move the Employee Free Choice Act -- popularly known as "card check" -- up Capitol Hill involves a similar back-story.
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment? (part 2)
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
Economic Foundations of Business Unionism
Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment? (part 2)
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2010 |
Economic Foundations of Business Unionism
Child Labor in the World Economy
| by Glenn Perusek | Winter 2004 |
A world away from us, in the straits of Malacca, between Indonesian Sumatra and Malaysia, approximately 2,000 fishing platforms, known as jermals, operate miles from shore. Fewer than 400 are officially registered with the Indonesian government; the rest operate illegally. These small fishing platforms are built from giant logs that are sharpened like stakes and dropped from barges into the sea floor in water up to twenty meters deep. They form an open-ended rectangular stockade to which smaller timbers are lashed horizontally.
China: End of a Model…Or the Birth of a New One?
| by Au Loong Yu | Summer 2009 |
CHINA’S THIRTY YEARS OF NEARLY UNINTERRUPTED HIGH GROWTH has encountered great challenge as the global economic crisis has hit China’s export hard. Since China’s trade as a percentage of GDP is as high as 70 percent, the export-led growth mode has practically ended. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aware of this. Back in April, 2008 President Hu Jintao spoke of the need to change the mode of development from export-led growth to domestic-led growth by expanding domestic demand. In November the 4 trillion RMB (rinminbi, “people’s currency”) of rescue package followed.
Class Struggle: Section 17, The Annunciation by Carlo Crivelli
| by Robert Kelly | Winter 2006 |
This is the Renaissance,
everything is for sale. The poor man
is greedy (that's why he's poor –
does Ficino tell us this, or Bruno?),
ill-dressed, his hair a mess.
Yet this transaction is directly underneath
the glory of God.
These characters (dubious seller,
too-comfortable doubtful buyer)
are closer to the Divine Light
than Mary is. What does this mean?
Co-opted?
| by Bhaskar Sunkara | Winter 2011 |
Venezuela, a moderately prosperous nation with rosy relations with both the United States and global capital, was an unlikely setting for a socialist renaissance. The 1998 election of Hugo Chávez appeared to be nothing more than a parliamentary victory for a bombastic social democrat, surprising but hardly epochal.
Confronting Horror: Writing About Torture
| by Kristian Williams | Winter 2008 |
I DID NOT DREAM OF BEING TORTURED.
But I did dream of being caged, of being bound and blindfolded, of being kept cold and naked in a small steel box. I dreamed of terrible footsteps, always approaching, and the chilling sound of metal clanging against metal. I dreamed of endless screams, and of shadows that stretched toward me, and of hands holding instruments that I could never quite see.
The dreams ended, always, before the pain could become real. But that is a small matter. The fear was real enough.
Constructing a Critical Political Theory
| by Stephen Eric Bronner | Summer 2009 |
CRITICAL THEORY HAS ITS POLITICAL roots in what has been termed “the heroic phase” of the Russian Revolution. This was the period from 1917-1923 in which the radical democratic vision of workers’ councils — or “soviets” — dominated both the communist movement and its radical offshoots.
Darfur: The World's Most Famous Humanitarian Disaster
| by Steven Fake and Kevin Funk | Summer 2010 |
The emergence of Darfur as a cause célèbre in the West has been one of the more notable propaganda achievements in recent memory. Though the Darfur region of Sudan has been the scene of great human suffering, a death toll of perhaps 300,000 and a population of displaced persons numbering well over 2 million qualifies Darfur as serious but — regrettably — hardly unique for the scale of its violence in the first decade of the 21st century.
Derrick Bell: Fighting Losing Battles
| by Stephen Steinberg | Winter 2012 |
When Derrick Bell published Gospel Choirs in 1996, he sent me a copy with this inscription: "Our job is to turn out the truth. God’s help is needed to get the truth accepted." This epigrammatic note — principled resolve, on the one hand, and pessimism born of despair, on the other — encapsulated the two sides of Bell’s world view.
Does Buhle Ask Union Democracy to Save the World?
| by Herman Benson | Winter 2005 |
It is difficult to know just what Paul Buhle is driving at; it's even more difficult to figure out what relevance his remarks have to what I wrote in New Politics about the undemocratic leanings of the New Unity Partnership.
Does Immigration Hurt U.S.-Born Workers?
| by Martin Oppenheimer | Winter 2008 |
1.
Eight Kinds of Strength
| by Marcia Gallo | Winter 2009 |
A Tribute to Valerie Taylor, Lesbian Writer and Revolutionary
Marcia Gallo
The Sweet Little Old
Gray-Haired Lady in Sneakers1
I am a woman,
a lesbian,
a poet,
poor,
handicapped,
radical,
Indian,
over seventy --
an eight-time loser.
How shall I not be
a revolutionary?
Empowering People with Disabilities
| by Ravi Malhotra | Summer 2006 |
When most on the left think about the politics of caregiving, they think about finding a caregiver for their elderly parent or daycare for their preschool child. Or they think about the (frequently romanticized and flawed) feminist debates that interrogate whether there is a feminist ethic of caring and the implications of this for feminist politics.
End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran; Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran
| by Campaign for Peace and Democracy | Winter 2011 |
We, the undersigned, oppose the U.S.-led campaign to impose harsher sanctions on Iran, and the ongoing threat of war against that country. Despite Washington’s claims, its policy is clearly not animated by a genuine concern for protecting the world from the threat of nuclear war; otherwise how could Washington support such nuclear-armed states as India, Israel, and Pakistan, or maintain its own huge nuclear arsenal? Nor is U.S. policy driven by the goal of defending democracy.
Feminism in "Waves": Useful Metaphor or Not?
| by Linda Nicholson | Winter 2010 |
By the early 1990s, it had become clear that the kind of feminist activity that had blossomed from the late 1960s through the late 1980s in the United States was no longer present. Consequently, many began to ask: what was the present state of feminism?
Fields of Battle, Fields of Play
| by Bill Littlefield | Winter 2011 |
For much of the late summer and into the fall and winter, American football, aka smash-mouth football, as the game’s adherents sometimes gleefully call it, overlaps with the game most of the rest of the world calls football … soccer.
The Cowboys, the Bears, and the Giants are in action at the same time Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest, the Seattle Sounders, and the Columbus Crew are taking the field.
Finland Is Soft on Crime
| by Dan Gardner | Summer 2007 |
AS PRESSURE GROWS in Canada to adopt the American justice model of harsh prisons and long sentences, Finland has saved millions and prevented centuries of human misery doing the opposite.
Foosball with the Devil: Haiti, Honduras, and Democracy in the Neoliberal Era
| by Adrienne Pine | Summer 2010 |
From the perspective of Honduran and Honduranist scholars, the most common reference to Haiti is as a point of hemispheric comparison. Whether measuring GDP per capita, state legitimacy and citizens’ political tolerance, or corruption, the phrase “Honduras ranks last…after Haiti” seems to be de rigueur. This is no coincidence: the policies and structures that have effected extreme poverty and highly concentrated wealth in both places are very much connected.
Foster Care
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Summer 2006 |
Victorian philanthropists didn't mince words when they talked about poor kids -- those kids were dangerous or perishing -- that is, in danger of becoming criminals or already sunk in crime. The philanthropists formed charity schools, "Ragged Schools," and Sunday Schools to teach these children some morals and a little reading -- not enough to give them big ideas about their station in life, but enough to get them to work a little more efficiently and obediently. Boys got a little math; girls didn't because they were headed for domestic work.
France: Crescendo of the Class Struggle
| by Vincent Presumey | Winter 2004 |
In France we have just experienced a great wave of strikes that directly addressed matters of political power. French history is defined by explosions of militancy which, for our governing class and for most of our journalists, are a "French sickness" that would be good to get rid of: before 2003 there was 1995; before 1995, 1968; before 1968, 1953 and so forth, all the way back to the Revolution. But this time there is something new: the latest wave of militant action is not an end to itself and is only an introduction.
French Workers Face the Crisis
| by Léon Crémieux | Summer 2009 |
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL SEITZ
GUADELOUPE HAS MADE AN IMPRESSION . . . but not yet on the French union movement.
The capitalist crisis affects France as it does all industrialized countries.The ingredients are the same:
From "Hope" to Hopeless: The Democrats’ Debacle
| by Lance Selfa | Winter 2011 |
For more than a year, it had been obvious that the Democrats would face a debacle at the polls on November 2. And they did. In the largest congressional midterm landslide since 1938, the Republicans captured more than 60 seats, ending the four-year Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the World: The Emergence of a Mass Movement
| by Dan La Botz | Winter 2012 |
The Occupy movement has changed the American political landscape. We are at the opening of a new mass movement and a radicalization that presage an era of coming social upheaval and class conflict that require the left to both analyze these developments and to develop a strategy to intervene. The left today, small, divided, and weak, must develop an approach that will make it possible for it to grow and unite so that it can influence events.
From the Editors
| by Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2007 |
For more than 150 years socialists have insisted that only workers themselves can make any fundamental change in social relations because only workers organizing themselves in the process of struggle to become a governing class can ensure that the old class society isn't reproduced by a new class of exploiters; the new society created by them would have democratic workers' control over the means of production. Revolutions in such countries as China, Cuba, Vietnam, and N.
From the Editors
| by Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell | Summer 2006 |
Exactly 40 years ago we received an article from Poland with views of the Soviet system close to ours: We saw it as a new form of exploitation, and we opposed it with the same vigor we opposed capitalism. We published the article, by Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski, in our spring and summer '66 issues as "An Open Letter to the Party." When both men were released from prison, they founded KOR, an organization that succeeded in uniting workers and intellectuals. From that came Solidarity.
From the Editors Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Women
| by Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell |
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anaïs Nin, Diary, June, 1941
(during the darkest days of World War II)
Gay Leftie Seeks Straight Friends
| by Martin Duberman | Summer 2008 |
THE PRESENCE ON MANY CAMPUSES of a significant number of liberals ("Of course gay people are entitled to the full rights of citizenship") proved critical in allowing lesbian and gay studies to gain a toehold. But as I kept discovering, unpleasantly, a willingness to grant us basic rights wasn't remotely the equivalent of actually wanting to know about our lives -- let alone of believing that our distinctive perspectives might have anything of importance to say to them.
General Strikes and Massive Demonstrations Challenge Neoliberal Reforms in France
| by Richard Greeman | Summer 2011 |
Since the Crash of 2008, European governments and the banks that control them have been trying to make the working people pay the bill for the massive bailouts that saved the financial markets from near-total collapse. As in the United States, a previously undetected "debt crisis" has been declared while traders continue to pay themselves fabulous salaries and bonuses. Suddenly there is "no money" when it comes to paying for the health, education, retirement, and social services that benefit the general public.
Getting Out of Iraq
| by Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom | Winter 2006 |
[Editors' Note: The article "On John Murtha's Position" is reprinted here from ZNet, Nov. 21, 2005, followed by a postscript written especially for New Politics.]
On John Murtha's Position
Global Governance and Revolution in the 21st century: Strikes, Austerity and Political Crisis
| by Steven Colatrella | Summer 2011 |
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE IS ARGUABLY THE NAME for what might pass these days for "a committee for the management of the affairs of the bourgeoisie as a whole" – though we should recall that the much repeated phrase by Marx and Engels stated that "the executive of the modern state" filled this role, not, for instance, the legislature or other state institutions.
Good Neighbor Imperialism: U.S.-Latin American Relations under Obama
| by Walt Vanderbush | Summer 2011 |
THE EXPECTATIONS FOR CHANGE in U.S. policy toward Latin America when Barack Obama was elected president seemed as high among most governments and citizens of Latin America as the expectations of the voters in the United States who cast their ballots for him. Many analysts believed that the relationship between the region and the United States had reached a new low point during the two terms of Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush.
Green Is the New Green: Social Media and the Post-Election Crisis in Iran, 2009
| by Negar Mottahedeh | Summer 2010 |
The Persian language blogosphere is rich, varied, and dynamic. Of the 100 million blogs registered around the world in 2005, 700,000 were Persian language, either inside Iran or in the diaspora. Of these, over 60,000 are updated frequently. With over 20 million Iranians connecting to the internet, and over 600,000 Iranians signed up on Facebook by the presidential election of the summer of 2009, the Iranian cyber community is by far the most dynamic such community in the Middle East, and one that is unambiguously diverse.
Herman Benson and the New Unity Partnership
| by Paul Buhle | Winter 2005 |
Anything Herman Benson writes on the labor movement is provocative and useful for discussion -- even if on occasion, in my view, it also happens to be somewhat skewed. When organized labor faces the prospect of a turning point as potentially large and also as disappointing as that of ten years ago, the implications loom before all of us.
Homeless Shelters: A Feeble Response to Homelessness
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Summer 2007 |
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE SOMEONE to say to you, "Come with me into the bathroom? I want to watch you pee into this paper cup to see if you have been taking drugs." That is what is happening in some shelters for homeless families in Massachusetts. Steve Valero, a lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services, is indignant about this and has been telling shelters that it is an illegal practice. Some shelter directors claim they had no idea it was illegal. They thought it would be better to have all residents tested for drugs rather than singling out one person.
Human Rights and the Colombian Government: An analysis of state-based atrocities toward non-combatants
| by James J. Brittain | Winter 2006 |
The Colombian civil war, similar to other Latin American conflicts over the past 50 years, has had a large portion of non-combatants mortally affected by the horrors of conflict. However, those killed or injured in Colombia are not indirect results of the discord but are in-themselves strategic military targets (Stokes, 2005; Lernoux, 1982). The reasoning behind invoking this aggression against the unarmed Colombian populace is due in part to the ever-increasing strength of the primary insurgent movement within the country.
Hyde Amendment: The opening wedge to abolish abortion
| by Marlene Fried | Summer 2007 |
Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue have made sure that the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 22 is highly visible. Supporters and opponents use the date to rally their forces. In contrast, September 30, the date in 1976 that federal Medicaid funding for abortion was banned by the Hyde Amendment, has not gained the same attention.
Immediate U.S. Withdrawal and the Hope for Democracy in Iraq
| by Joanne Landy | Summer 2005 |
The peace movement should call for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and the closing of all military bases there: no temporizing, no negotiations, no timetables -- just bring the troops home, now. Peace activists should say to the American people that the occupation is part and parcel of an imperial U.S.
Immigration, African Americans, and Race Discourse
| by Stephen Steinberg | Summer 2005 |
|
We believe this article begins an important conversation on the left. We will be publishing various responses to it in our next issue, along with a reply from Stephen Steinberg. In addition, this article will be published in the Winter issue of New Labor Forum, together with a different set of responses and a reply from Steinberg. We urge readers to follow this debate in both venues. -- Eds. |
In Defense of Public Education
| by Megan Behrent | Summer 2011 |
Anyone living in the United States today has, undoubtedly, been bludgeoned over the head with the key argument of those who don the false mantle of education reform, despite never having set foot in a classroom themselves: that the biggest obstacles standing in the way of education today are teachers and their unions.
In Defense of Tactical Voting (Sometimes)
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Summer 2004 |
The November election poses a dilemma for leftists. Both major parties embrace the agenda of corporate America. Neither challenges the assumptions of American empire, and politics as usual will be followed by a Washington regime that will be at best agnostic toward the needs of progressive social movements if not hostile to it. Against this, Ralph Nader is again launching a crusade against both parties.
In Defense of Washington and Wall Street
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2009 |
1. The Crisis of 2007-2008
THE VERY ELDERLY ARE PRONE TO FALL. And unlike infants who also tumble frequently, each time seniors stumble, they risk a disabling or even a fatal injury. On August 9th 2007, after an unparalleled quarter century long expansion, which had been checked in the developed countries only mildly and briefly, capitalism finally tripped and lost its balance with predictable results: banks tottered, while credit and commercial paper markets writhed in paralysis.
In Sweden, When the Voters Turn Right, the Right Turns Left
| by Steven Saxonberg | Winter 2012 |
With the electoral losses of left-leaning parties in the past year in Germany, the UK and even in the model social democratic country, Sweden, recent events do not seem encouraging for those engaged in progressive politics. Given the meltdown of the financial markets and the rising consensus against free-market policies, even within the business community and business magazines, such as the Economist, one might have expected the Left to do much better and even see some kind of renaissance.
India: General Elections 2009 and the Neoliberal Consensus
| by Ravi Kumar | Winter 2010 |
The General Elections 2009 have further entrenched the rule of neoliberal capital.[1] This entrenchment has happened due to certain factors, two discussed here in detail. These two factors include the distancing of the Left from working class politics towards electoralism, which resulted in absence of a long term mobilizational politics along class lines; and the role played by identity politics in the consolidation of the neoliberal regime.
Intellectuals and Anti-Fascism: For a Critical Historization
| by Enzo Traverso | Winter 2004 |
We are witnessing today a paradoxical and unsettling phenomenon: the rise of fascist-inspired political movements in the European arena (from France to Italy, from Belgium to Austria), accompanied, in the heart of intellectual circles, by a massive campaign to denigrate the entire anti-fascist tradition.
Introductory Note to Onfray
| by Doug Ireland | Winter 2006 |
Michel Onfray, the brightest star among the younger French philosophers, is a brilliant prodigy, a gifted and prolific author who, at the age of only 46, has already written 30 books.
Iran: Reform and Revolution
| by Yassamine Mather | Summer 2010 |
Recent news about Iran has been dominated by U.S. attempts to increase sanctions, and one could be forgiven for thinking the world hegemonic capitalist power is preparing war against a major nuclear power. The reality is far different: all the fuss is about a country where nine months of mass protests have not only weakened the state but also divided the ruling circles, making reconciliation at the top impossible.
Iranian Workers say: "We have nothing to lose but our unpaid wages"
| by Yassamine Mather | Winter 2010 |
Half a year after the demonstrations of June, 2009 in Iran, it is probably easier to examine in more depth the events that changed the country's political landscape. The bourgeois media in Iran and abroad is unanimous: the presidential elections of June 2009 and predictions of a Moussavi victory gave hope that change within the exiting regime was possible; millions of Iranians took part in the elections; the regime rigged the results; the rest is history.
Iraq and the Idea of Freedom
| by Peter Hudis | Summer 2005 |
Wadood Hamad is correct that many today are "stuck between two inadequate visions" -- either apologizing for U.S. imperialist actions or "cheering any misguided ‘apparent' resistance to imperialism." Avoiding these false alternatives is not only needed to develop a successful antiwar movement; it is needed to ensure that the idea of freedom is not forsaken by today's radicals.
Iraq and the Third Camp
| by Barry Finger | Summer 2005 |
The Third Camp alternative is ultimately expressed by the potential of the Iraqi working class assuming the leadership of the anti- imperialist movement. We do not and cannot claim that this third camp is presently a conscious alternative on the part of those who will make it possible.
Iraq: The Case for Immediate U.S. Withdrawal
| by Joanne Landy | Summer 2004 |
IT'S HARD TO SEE HOW the Bush administration is going to win the war in Iraq. Despite all the official bravado, a cloud of doom is descending on the White House, and with good reason: international outrage is mounting at U.S. behavior at Abu Ghraib prison and throughout Iraq, more and more Americans are concluding that the war is going badly, and Iraq is proving uncontrollable with reports, in May, that only 35 percent of Iraqis want U.S.
Iraq: The Democrats to the Fore
| by Barry Finger | Summer 2007 |
IN HIS BRILLIANT SATIRE of the plight of the Palestinians as a captured nation, Emile Habiby introduced Saeed, the ill fated pessoptimist. His beleaguered hero explained his inability to differentiate between optimism and pessimism in this way: "When I awake each morning I thank the Lord he did not take my soul at night. If harm befalls me during the day, I thank Him that it was no worse. So which am I, a pessimist or an optimist?" In an analogous way, the Democratic Party, choking in the grip of power politics, has in short order revealed itself the ill fated pranti-war party.
Is the Bush Administration Fascist?
| by Matthew N. Lyons | Winter 2007 |
The idea that the Bush administration is imposing fascism on the United States has become increasingly commonplace in leftist and liberal circles. It's often taken as a given in political discussions, at protest rallies, and on the Internet. Sometimes this is little more than name calling, but over the past six years, a number of critics have offered serious arguments to back up the claim, and the claim deserves serious attention.
Jean Meslier and "The Gentle Inclination of Nature"
| by Michel Onfray | Winter 2006 |
translated by Marvin Mandell
I. Of a Certain Jean Meslier
Keeping the Communist Party Straight, 1940s-1980s
| by Bettina Aptheker | Summer 2008 |
GROWING UP IN A COMMUNIST FAMILY and in Communist circles in New York City in the late 1940s and 1950s sexuality of any kind was never discussed, ever, in any context, for any reason. I am not laying claim to any kind of universal experience in saying this; I am only commenting on the absence of discussion in my own experience.
Landrum-Griffin Act at 50: Has It Been Good or Bad for Unions?
| by Herman Benson | Winter 2011 |
As soon as I acquired the hefty 2005 edition of The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, I lugged it onto the coffee table and opened to its comments on two fascinating cases: Marbury v. Madison and the Dred Scott decision.
Latin America: A Resurgent Left?
| by John L. Hammond | Winter 2008 |
LEFTISTS WON PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN 2006 across Latin America: starting (at the end of 2005) with the stunning victory of Evo Morales in Bolivia, through the election of Socialist Michele Bachelet in Chile, the predictable reelection of Lula in Brazil and Hugo Chàvez in Venezuela (though Lula, winning less than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, was forced into a runoff), and the runoff victory of Rafael Correa in Ecuador.
Leaving Public Schools Behind
| by Stan Karp | Winter 2005 |
It is a measure of how far the right is reaching that the left today finds itself defending the very existence of public education from the forces of privatization, commercialization, and even federal policy. Just four years after 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole campaigned on a platform of abolishing the Department of Education, the Bush administration came into office with a massive expansion of the federal role in education as its number one domestic priority.
Left Politics and Posturing in the Presidential Race
| by Michael Hirsch | Summer 2004 |
|
The November election poses a dilemma for leftists. Both major parties embrace the agenda of corporate America. Neither challenges the assumptions of American empire, and politics as usual will be followed by a Washington regime that will be at best agnostic toward the needs of progressive social movements if not hostile to it. Against this, Ralph Nader is again launching a crusade against both parties. |
Left-wing Homosexuality: Emancipation, Sexual Liberation, and Identity Politics
| by Jeffrey Escoffier | Summer 2008 |
Socialism without fucking is dull and lifeless.
-- The heroine, WR: The Mysteries of the Organism,
a 1971 film directed by Dusan Makavejev.
Letter from Ireland: Zoom, Zoom The Irish General Election 2011
| by Lily Murphy | Summer 2011 |
Zoom zoom zoom zoom / The world is in a mess
With politics and taxes / And people grinding axes
There’s no happiness.
— So sang Ella Fitzgerald all those years ago
LGBT Political Cul-de-sac: Make a U-Turn
| by Sherry Wolf | Winter 2009 |
Electoral Cul-de-sac
Making Sense of Latin America's "Third Left"
| by Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly | Winter 2008 |
EMIR SADER EMBODIES, to the extent any one person can, the trajectory of Latin America's left movements. A Marxist sociologist with a long track record of studying Latin American politics, currently Executive Secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), Sader is Brazilian by birth but fled Brazil at the end of the 1960s as the dictatorship tightened its grip. In Chile, he then participated in the electoral path to socialism preached by Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government, until the 1973 coup forced him to flee again.
Mar del Plata, Argentina: The (People's) Summit of the Americas
| by Lois Weiner | Winter 2006 |
On November 2-5, as two dozen heads of state gathered in Mar del Plata, Argentina for a hemispheric summit to negotiate trade agreements, thousands of global justice activists, I among them, participated in a concurrent "People's Summit" ("cumbre de los pueblos") or "counter-summit" ("contracumbre"). The official summit meetings were moved to Mar del Plata, a seaside resort which is a five-hour bus or train trip from Buenos Aires, to deter mass protests.
Marx and Weber: Critics of Capitalism
| by Michael Lowy | Winter 2007 |
In spite of their undeniable differences, Marx and Weber have much in common in their understanding of modern capitalism: they both perceive it as a system where "the individuals are ruled by abstractions (Marx), where the impersonal and "thing-like" (Versachlicht) relations replace the personal relations of dependence, and where the accumulation of capital becomes an end in itself, largely irrational.
Middle East Developments
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Winter 2007 |
"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is ... the birth pangs of a new Middle East...."
-- Condoleezza Rice, July 21, 2006
Mobilizing Immigrants and Blacks
| by Peter Drucker | Winter 2006 |
As Stephen Steinberg says, "There is nothing progressive about flooding the lower echelons of the labor market with desperate immigrants who depress wages . . . It is also problematic when the nation imports workers to fill higher echelons of the job pyramid. . . ." Progressives should support elements of his policy agenda such as vigorously enforcing anti-discrimination laws, expanding affirmative action and creating a job corps for minority youth.
More Democracy, Less Poverty
| by Larry Patriquin | Summer 2011 |
Amongst the richest countries, the United States has some of the highest rates of indigence, especially for children; levels of poverty that are exorbitant for visible minorities and single mothers; a growing maldistribution of income and wealth; and seemingly never-ending increases in the use of soup kitchens and food pantries. As many have observed, a successfully prosecuted "War on the Poor" was launched in the last few decades, initiated by the Reagan administration and accelerated by Clinton, the Bushes, and their allies in Congress.
More War, No Debate: Progressives Give Clinton a Free Pass
| by Howie Hawkins | Winter 2007 |
1, 2, 3, 4,
Clinton voted for the war!
5, 6, 7, 8,
That was not a real debate!
Music of Change: Politics and Meaning in the Age of Obama
| by John Halle | Winter 2012 |
In a classic essay George Orwell describes himself as "amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations." Rather it leads to "orgies of hatred" as "young men . . . kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators."
NCLB: A Parent Perspective
| by Michele Brooks | Winter 2005 |
Ask any parent what their hope is for the education of their child and they will tell you "a good education is one that provides my child with a broad range of opportunities and experiences to gain the knowledge and skills to be successful in life." Parents, especially those in disadvantaged communities and parents of color, whose children attend underperforming schools, want accountability.
Neoliberal Strategies to Defuse a Powder Keg in Europe: the "Decade of Roma Inclusion" and its Rationale
| by Bill Templer | Winter 2006 |
Empire is characterized by the close proximity of extremely unequal populations, which creates a situation of permanent social danger and requires the powerful apparatuses of the society of control to ensure separation and guarantee the new management of social space.[1]
Neoliberalism, Teacher Unionism, and the Future of Public Education
| by Lois Weiner | Winter 2005 |
With overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans, the Bush administration rewrote the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 2001, drastically changing public education. One of the key initiatives of the Johnson-era "war on poverty," ESEA has been the main source of federal aid to schools serving children in poverty.
Neoliberalism, Teachers, and Teaching: Understanding the Assault
| by Mary Compton and Lois Weiner | Summer 2008 |
TEACHERS IN EVERY PART OF THE WORLD are in the forefront of the struggle to ensure that children receive an education -- whether in U.S. cities, the mountains of Chavez's Venezuela, in civil war-torn Nepal, in Europe's towns and countryside, or in the refugee camps of Sudan. In prosperous nations, identified by global justice activists as the global north, teachers' wages, their voice in policy, and the quality of their working conditions have been reduced.
No Blank Checks
| by Staughton Lynd | Summer 2005 |
Barry Finger, Wadood Hamad, and Glenn Perusek all appear to demand the immediate withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq. (Finger, 26: "we demand an immediate withdrawal of occupation forces"; Hamad, 34: "We must demand a timely schedule for the withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq over a fixed, limited period").
No Child Left Behind: A Brainchild of Neoliberalism and American Politics
| by Carlos Alberto Torres | Winter 2005 |
Neo-liberalism and neoconservatism are in the driver's seat right now and this is not only happening in education.
Michael Apple
Nor Meekly Serve Her Time: Riots and Resistance in Women's Prisons
| by Victoria Law | Winter 2010 |
IN 1974, WOMEN IMPRISONED at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Prisoner organizer Carol Crooks had filed a lawsuit challenging the prison's practice of placing women in segregation without a hearing or 24-hour notice of charges. In July, a court had ruled in her favor. In August, guards retaliated by brutally beating Crooks and placing her in segregation without a hearing. The women protested, fighting off guards, taking over several sections of the prison, and holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours.
Notes Toward a Vision of The Workers' Movement in Mexico
| by JORGE ROBLES | Summer 2009 |
TRANSLATED BY DAN LA BOTZ
To the memory of Dale Hathaway and Antonioin Villalba
IN ORDER TO EVALUATE AND UNDERSTAND the current situation of the workers’ movement in Mexico as power has shifted from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the National Action Party (PAN), it is important to understand the character of the Mexican regime and its historical development. Does a change in the ruling party represent the beginning of a democratic transition and a change in the system?
Oaxaca Uprising
| by John Gibler | Winter 2007 |
"Ulises nos decia: 'ni marchas ni plantones'. Aqui le demostramos que somos mas cabrones."
("Ulises told us: no marches and no protests. Here we'll show him that we're more badass than he is.")
The Oaxaca Uprising began as an annual, peaceful teachers' strike and exploded into an unarmed uprising after Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz refused to dialogue with the teachers, instead sending in 1,000 riot police to violently lift their protest camp in Oaxaca City's town square, or Zòcalo.
Obama and Empire
| by Thomas Harrison | Summer 2009 |
AS NOAM CHOMSKY OBSERVED, “Obama’s message of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ offered a blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes” (Znet, Nov. 25, 2008). Millions voted for Barack Obama in order to reverse the brutal and catastrophic foreign policy of the Bush Administration, especially the war in Iraq. But as far as fundamental change is concerned, his first months in office (this is being written in mid-April) offer no real grounds for hope.
Obama's Foreign Policy: The View from Canada
| by Derrick O'Keefe | Summer 2010 |
Canadian author Margaret Atwood famously described the border between our country and the United States as the world’s longest “one-way mirror.”
Obama, Austerity, and Change We Really Can Believe In
| by Jack Gerson | Winter 2012 |
Barack Obama took office three years ago on a euphoric wave of aspirations.
On Socialism and Sex: An Introduction
| by Christopher Phelps | Summer 2008 |
PREFATORY NOTE: While researching a book on African-Americans and the anti-Stalinist left in the archives last summer, I stumbled across a striking and long-forgotten document, "Socialism and Sex," in a 1952 discussion bulletin, The Young Socialist. In one page, its author H. L. Small -- almost surely a pseudonym -- provided an elegant, concise exposition on behalf of destigmatizing consensual sexuality between same-sex lovers.
Paid Family and Medical Leave
| by Randy Albelda and Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2010 |
How many people can afford to take time off from work without being paid? Not many. When a worker gets sick or a child or parent gets sick; when a woman is giving birth or when a parent needs to go to a conference with a teacher, leaving work can not only cost a day's pay, but it can cost advancement in a career. Women, who do most of caregiving, are particularly disadvantaged.
Pakistan: The Myth of Civilizing War
| by Adaner Usmani | Summer 2010 |
It would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that, today, in the baleful shadow of the Great War on Terror, one central site of intra-progressive discord has been the question of the broad Left’s relation to political and militant Islam.
Palling Around with Terrorists: Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Summer 2010 |
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama was accused of palling around with terrorists.
This Republican canard was focused on the former Weatherperson, Bill Ayers, but also on Rashid Khalidi, the respected Palestinian-American scholar who had been a friend of Obama’s in Chicago.
Pentagon Strategy, Hollywood, and Technowar
| by Carl Boggs | Summer 2006 |
With the growth of U.S. imperial power and its military reach, warfare today extends across the cultural as well as the institutional and battlefield terrains, the result of great technological changes now altering the very character of modern combat. Expanded military influence within the corporate media and popular culture is an inevitable outgrowth of the largest war machine the world has ever seen.
Public Sector Workers and the Crisis
| by Barry Finger | Winter 2011 |
Workers are in no way responsible for the economic crisis of capitalism. This would be or at least should seem to be obvious to socialists. Noncontroversial as it may now be, this has not always been the case. There have been socialists — quite outspoken in their time — who had attributed past turndowns to a profit-squeeze triggered by cumulative decades of militant wage demands.
Queer Reflections
| by David McReynolds | Summer 2008 |
LET ME USE MY SPACE in part simply as memory, reflections by a homosexual whose sexual orientation, at 78, is academic.
Questions for the Peace Movement: The U.S. Occupation of Iraq
| by Joanne Landy | Winter 2004 |
This article is part of an ongoing discussion of the Iraq war and its aftermath. Various New Politics editors will be writing on this subject in future issues, not always with identical viewpoints, and we welcome contributions from our readers.
Race and the Obama Era
| by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | Summer 2010 |
It has been more than a year since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African- American president of the United States. Despite the obvious historic significance of his election, Obama’s actions to date make it very doubtful that his presidency will alleviate the persisting conditions of racism, discrimination, and general inequality that continue to shape the experience of most African-Americans in the United States.
Race Relations: the Problem with the Wrong Name
| by Stephen Steinberg | Winter 2001 |
Which deception is most dangerous? Whose recovery is more doubtful, that of him who does not see or of him who sees and still does not see? Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?
— Søren Kierkegaard
Reintroducing the Black/White Divide in Racial Discourse
| by Gregory D. Squires | Winter 2006 |
Does it matter that most of the problems that disproportionately affect black Americans don't stem from racism -- or at any rate, modern day racism? . . . These issues just aren't particularly black anymore. William Raspberry[1]
Reinventing a Queer Left
| by Peter Drucker | Winter 2009 |
AS SEVERAL OF THE PARTICIPANTS in Part I of this symposium noted, the association between lesbians, gays, and the left was a constant through much of the 20th century. It is an open question whether that connection will amount to much in the 21st century. As in many countries, there is a push in the United States today to incorporate lesbians and gays into the prevailing sexual and familial order. Given how that order is structured under capitalism, probably the best it can offer us is second-class citizenship.
Response
| by Stephen Steinberg | Winter 2006 |
I knew when I wrote my piece that I was walking through a minefield of controversy, first of all because I challenge the dominant discourse on immigration and call into question many of the orthodoxies of a new generation of immigration scholars. I therefore came prepared to engage in verbal battle with outraged critics whose scholarship has been called into question. Alas, they did not show up at the table!
Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
| by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson | Summer 2004 |
February 2004 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. From September 1978 to February 1979, in the course of a massive urban revolution with millions of participants, the Iranian people toppled the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979), which had pursued a highly authoritarian program of economic and cultural modernization. By late 1978, the Islamist faction led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had come to dominate the antiregime uprising, in which secular nationalists, democrats, and leftists also participated.
Revolutionary Challenges in Tunisia and Egypt: Generations in Conflict
| by Stuart Schaar | Summer 2011 |
The great Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) more than four decades ago called on a new Arab generation to break with their dictatorial, bankrupt, and corrupt leaders and their supporters. Qabbani, from his London exile, hoped that young people would transform the Arab world into a new free and vibrant society where citizens could develop their full potential and flourish.
Revolutionary Prefigurations: The Green Movement, Critical Solidarity, and the Struggle for Iran's Future
| by Danny Postel | Summer 2010 |
A year has now passed since the explosive appearance of Iran’s Green movement in June 2009. Suspecting malfeasance in the official tally of the country’s June 12 presidential election, millions of Iranians took to the streets. The historian Ervand Abrahamian, author of the classic Iran Between Two Revolutions, described the silent rally of June 15 at Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran (London Review of Books, 7/23/09):
Revolutionary Unionism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
| by Dan Jakopovich | Summer 2007 |
THERE IS A CONSENSUS among democratic socialists today that the struggle for deep social change has to somehow reflect the kind of society we want to build, but this remains inseparable from the questions of power, political strength and effectiveness because prefiguration goes beyond the "pure" ethical sphere to include wider issues of ideological/cultural, political and socio-economic hegemony. The revolutionary syndicalist answer to the problem of integral prefiguration represents a specific and important historical (and contemporary) synthesis.
Rip It Up and Start Again
| by Chris Maisano | Winter 2011 |
The curious thing about the 2010 midterm elections is that their results were totally unsurprising and highly illuminating at the same time. They were unsurprising because they confirmed what we all expected would happen. The voters who propelled Democrats to power in the two previous elections in 2006 and 2008 stayed home. Voters dissatisfied with the status quo turned out in droves to support the party out of power as the economy plunged into its worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Roundups, Detention, and Other Phantoms of Lost Liberty
| by Mark Dow | Summer 2004 |
In an Alabama district court a few years ago, the Department of Justice made an argument familiar to those who have read immigration cases: it asked the court to keep its hands off. The department argued for what I call "double deference." First, the court should defer to the executive and legislative branches as a matter of course in immigration matters; and second, the court should defer to the jail where the plaintiff was being incarcerated since prison administrators need wide latitude in operating their lock-ups.
Savior in the Desert: Interview with Lois Martin
| by Barbara Schram | Winter 2011 |
[This interview was originally published in New Politics no 50, Winter 2011, and posted online at that time. This substantially revised version is being posted Nov. 21, 2011.]
Interview with Lois Martin, Volunteer Worker for immigrant support groups on the Arizona/Mexico border (October, 2010)
SEIU Confronts the Home Care Crisis in California
| by Brandynn Holgate and Jennifer Shea | Winter 2007 |
Defining the Crisis
Self-determination and Democracy in the Iraqi Conflict
| by Barry Finger | Winter 2005 |
The demand for national liberation, for the right of self-determination of a people, is understood by socialists to be a demand for radical, consistent democracy. This at once separates us from those who, such as the Buchananite paleocons, place the inviolability of the national principle above all other considerations and who may consistently oppose imperial interventions on that basis.
Socialism and Gay Liberation: Back to the Future
| by Doug Ireland | Winter 2009 |
IN 1865, WHILE MARX, IN HOLLAND, was playing the Victorian parlor game “Confessions” with his daughter Jenny, when asked for his favorite maxim he replied, “Nihil humani a me alienum puto” or “nothing human is alien to me,” a dictum he had lifted from the second century B.C. Carthaginian slave-turned-playwright Terentius (Terence.)
Socialism and Gay Liberation: Back to the Future
| by Doug Ireland | Winter 2009 |
IN 1865, WHILE MARX, IN HOLLAND, was playing the Victorian parlor game “Confessions” with his daughter Jenny, when asked for his favorite maxim he replied, “Nihil humani a me alienum puto” or “nothing human is alien to me,” a dictum he had lifted from the second century B.C. Carthaginian slave-turned-playwright Terentius (Terence.)
Socialism and Homosexuality
| by Thomas Harrison | Winter 2009 |
SAME-SEX DESIRE has always been a part of human life.There is much evidence, though not yet conclusive, that a predominant sexual attraction to members of one’s own sex is innate. But innate or not, we know that it is definitely formed early in life, certainly before the age of ten.
Socialism and Sex
| by H. L. Small | Summer 2008 |
THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM in the United States has been hampered by the lack of imagination of the leaders of socialist thought. The appeal of the socialist has always been to the future, with a paradisiacal vision of economic plentitude and true democratic freedom. That is -- the level of appeal has been a mixture of economic and social goods and leisure in a milieu of democratic-liberal sentiment. This has been good but not good enough.
Socialists, Democrats and Political Action: It's the Movements that Matter
| by Michael Hirsch | Winter 2007 |
The following is a slightly expanded text of remarks given at a pre-election debate on the topic, "Is a Progressive Democratic Party Possible." Michael Hirsch, representing the Democratic Socialists of America, spoke for the affirmative, as did Al Ronzoni of Progressive Democrats of America. The negative argument was given by Howie Hawkins of the New York State Green Party and Danny Katch of the International Socialist Organization. The event was held at New York City's Judson Memorial Church on Nov. 3, 2006.
Starting All Over from Scratch?: A Plea for "Radical Reform" of Our Own Movement
| by Sheila Cohen | Summer 2011 |
The current global crisis of capitalism makes the task set by the Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation* look relatively straightforward.
Stealing Our Schools
| by Jackie Dee King | Summer 2008 |
THE FEDERAL "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" law is in trouble. Critics and supporters alike predict that it will not be reauthorized in this legislative year. A growing chorus of voices from the grassroots and from major national organizations is calling for an overhaul of the law or even scrapping it altogether. Many teachers and parents hope that a newly elected Administration next year will examine the damage being done by the current law and take steps to change it.
Stephen Jay Gould: An Appreciation
| by Clive Bradley | Winter 2004 |
Stephen Jay Gould, the palaeontologist and science writer who died last year, wrote -- brilliantly -- on a bewildering series of subjects, but he is perhaps best known for his contribution to four: general evolutionary theory; the sociobiology debate; the relationship between science and religion; and the study (or critique of it) of intelligence testing.
Still fighting: Interview with Judi Chamberlin
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2010 |
Judi Chamberlin is one of the founders of the mental patients' liberation movement. In 1988, she wrote On Our Own, a book about her own experience with depression 43 years ago, when she was hospitalized against her will. That book became a kind of bible for the mental patients' liberation movement. Now the 64-year-old activist is dying of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an incurable lung disorder. Late last year she stopped hospitalizations and instead opted for home hospice care.
Struggling for Progress, in Iraq!
| by Wadood Hamad | Summer 2005 |
The current armed insurgency in Iraq, erroneously portrayed by some as "resistance" to U.S. occupation, does not -- nor could it ever -- represent a national resistance movement. While it is true that the medley of insurgents espouses "a mixture of Islamic and Pan-Arab ideas," it is inaccurate to insinuate that they "agree on the need to put an end to U.S. presence in Iraq."[1] For if this were true, why are those elements not fighting U.S. operational headquarters and bases in Qatar, and elsewhere in the Arab world?
Sustaining Democratic Life: An Interview with the ACLU's Anthony Romero
| by Anthony Romero, Kent Worcester and Mark Dow | Summer 2004 |
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview conducted by Mark Dow and Kent Worcester with Anthony Romero in April 2004 in his lower Manhattan office.
New Politics: Yesterday during the September 11 Commission hearings, when he was defending some of the Patriot Act measures that have been criticized, Ashcroft said that a lot of what the Patriot Act did was simply to extend measures that were already in existence.
Anthony Romero: Patently false.
Teacher Unionism Reborn
| by Lois Weiner | Winter 2012 |
In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher unionism’s continued existence is imperiled — if what we define as "existence" is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers’ rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it.
The 2004 Elections and the Collapse of the Left
| by Thomas Harrison | Winter 2005 |
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
The Antiwar Movement and Iraq
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Summer 2005 |
The antiwar movement needs to demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and an end to the U.S. domination of Iraq, not because we don't care about Iraqis, but precisely because we do care. And while we support any people's right to resistance, we should not "support the Iraq resistance."
Out Now!
The Bard ISM Student Organization Controversy
| by Leon Botstein | Summer 2011 |
Over the past several weeks, Bard College and I as its president have been the object of unsubstantiated, exaggerated, and often vitriolic accusations regarding a student group on campus that has chosen to affiliate itself with an organization called the International Solidarity Movement. Some of those who have posted on blogs and written emails claim that ISM is a "terrorist" organization committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and its people.
The Change We REALLY Want?
| by Joanne Landy | Winter 2009 |
WITH THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, millions in the United States and around the world are hoping for relief from the dangerous arrogance and destructiveness of George Bush’s foreign policy. President Obama is expected to take important positive initiatives — like closing Guantanamo and lifting the rule denying international organizations receiving U.S. aid the right to let women know about abortion. When the inevitable right-wing reaction to these initiatives comes, it will be crucial for us in the peace movement to defend them.
The Class Struggle in Post-Soviet Russia
| by Boris Kagarlitsky | Summer 2009 |
TRANSLATED BY MICHEL VALE
THE RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM on the territory of the former Soviet Union was accompanied not only by unprecedented attacks on the social rights of the population. (Not only rights characteristic of the Soviet system, e.g., the right to housing, were rescinded, but also many of those that in the West are considered a normal attribute of a civilized attitude toward the wage laborer). No less impressive was the ease with which the new bourgeoisie imposed its conditions on the workers.
The Dead-End of Lesser Evilism
| by Thomas Harrison | Summer 2004 |
|
The November election poses a dilemma for leftists. Both major parties embrace the agenda of corporate America. Neither challenges the assumptions of American empire, and politics as usual will be followed by a Washington regime that will be at best agnostic toward the needs of progressive social movements if not hostile to it. Against this, Ralph Nader is again launching a crusade against both parties. |
The Democratic Party and the Future of American Politics
| by David Friedman | Winter 2007 |
1. Fiddling While Rome Burns
The Essential Bob Fitch
| by Jane LaTour | Summer 2011 |
Of all the profiles written about Bob Fitch during his lifetime—in Forbes Magazine, Monthly Labor Review, etc.—two of the best were penned by student journalists. In typical Fitch fashion, he made time for the students, sharing his experiences, insights and passions. Jessica Johnson met Fitch while interning for the late veteran labor journalist Martin Fishgold, a friend of Fitch and his fierce partisan.
The First Neoconservative: Herman Wouk, the Americanization of the Holocaust, and the Rise of Neoconservatism
| by Joel Brodkin | Summer 2005 |
The justification of the intensive bombing of Serbia in 1999 as part of the need to avoid "another Holocaust" is only a recent event in the Americanization of the Nazi Holocaust: specifically its use as a propaganda theme for the defense of U.S. great power interests.
The Global Crisis and the World Labor Movement
| by Dan La Botz | Summer 2009 |
THE WORLD’S WORKING PEOPLE FACE the greatest challenge in three generations. The economic crisis that began in the banking institutions of the United States last year has rapidly spread around the globe, creating a financial and industrial disaster. In one country after another banks have failed, corporations have gone bankrupt, and millions around the world have lost their jobs.
The Greater Toronto Workers Assembly: A Hopeful Experiment
| by Herman Rosenfeld | Summer 2011 |
It is a sad irony, that in the midst of the deepest economic slump since the Depression, it is working class and socialist political institutions that have been in crisis. Even with the inspiring new movements in a number of U.S. states, the Mideast and some European countries coming up on the political horizon, the larger union movement here has remained mired in a sluggish defensiveness.
The Greek and the European Crisis in Context
| by C.J. Polychroniou | Winter 2012 |
At the beginning of the new millennium, Greece, a weak, peripheral nation in the European economy, was still licking its wounds from the greatest politico-financial scandal in its post-war history — the collapse of the Athens stock exchange. The wild stock market speculation had been fuelled by often-repeated statements from various government officials (with Finance Minister Yiannos Papantoniou leading the chorus) that the upward trend was an accurate reflection of the robust state of the real economy.
The Hamas Victory and the New Politics that May Come
| by Emad El-din Aysha | Summer 2006 |
The title to this article may sound terribly pretentious since, for all we know, in the coming months the Hamas government may very well end up under siege like Arafat and his entourage.
The Immigrant Rights Movement: Between Political Realism and Social Idealism
| by Dan La Botz | Summer 2007 |
MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS took to the streets between March and May of 2006 in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and dozens of other U.S. cities in the largest social and political demonstrations in American history. As the immigrants left work or school to join the marches, in some areas the protests, dominated by Latino workers, had the effect of a general strike, shutting down local businesses and blocking traffic in the centers of major cities. Many carried signs reading, "We are workers, not criminals" and "No Human Being is Illegal."
The Intra-Immigrant Dilemma
| by Alan Aja | Winter 2006 |
"Black people should do more to help themselves. . . . We worked for everything we have. They should too." (Cuban-American Miami resident)
"[Whites] are racists by tradition and they at least know that what they're doing is not quite right . . . Cubans don't even think there is anything wrong with it. That is the way they've always related, period." (African-American Miami resident)*
The Jobs Crisis: How to Solve It and Begin to Fix Our Broken Economy
| by Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and Marguerite G. Rosenthal | Winter 2011 |
The United States has an ongoing jobs crisis that has been crippling our people and our economy for nearly two years. In September 2010, 14.8 million people were officially unemployed, 15.7 million were either forced to work part-time or were jobless and no longer looking for work and another 16.3 million were the working poor. Thus, almost 47 million people were afflicted by unemployment or underemployment (see table 1). Moreover, the numbers multiply when the families of the unemployed are included.
The Labor Origins of the Next Women's Movement
| by Dorothy Sue Cobble | Summer 2005 |
| Dorothy Sue Cobble's book, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2002), retrieves the forgotten feminism of the previous generation of working women. Their reform agenda -- an end to unfair sex discrimination, just compensation for their waged labor, and the rights of their families and communities -- launched a revolution in employment practices that has carried over into the present. |
The New Unity Partnership: Sweeney Critics Would Bureaucratize to Organize
| by Herman Benson | Summer 2004 |
What John Sweeney did unto Lane Kirkland in 1995 may now be done unto him. On September 18, this year, Sweeney announced he would run for reelection as AFL-CIO president, along with Rich Trumka, secretary-treasurer, and Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice-president. But his term of office doesn't expire until mid 2005, almost two years to go.
The Political Economy of Psychotherapy
| by David Singer | Winter 2007 |
In the U.S. today, psychotherapy, or for that matter any study of the psychodynamics or interpersonal processes involved in mental and emotional difficulties in living, is on the wane. The cause of the decline is the subject here, but to understand it, it must be viewed in the context of the changes to health care in general that have taken place in the past several decades in the U.S.
The Popular Front, A Social and Political Tragedy: The Case of France
| by Dan La Botz | Winter 2011 |
Decades since the spring of 1934 when the Communists first proposed the Popular Front as their strategy for fighting fascism and even longer since the summer of 1939 when it was suddenly terminated by the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Popular Front—the alliance of the Communists with Socialists, liberals, and even sometimes conservative political parties—remains an issue for the left.
The Question of Palestine
| by An Interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh | Winter 2008 |
New Politics: 2008 is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel and of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. What do you see as the Israeli goal and has it changed over the years?
The Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews in World War II
| by Rossen Vassilev | Winter 2010 |
On February 13, 1998, Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov accepted on behalf of his ex-Communist nation the Courage to Care Award, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had bestowed upon Bulgaria in recognition of the heroism of its people in saving Bulgarian Jews during World War II.
The Resistance and the Antiwar Movement
| by Anthony Arnove | Summer 2005 |
The key challenge for the left today remains that of ending the occupation of Iraq, which did not end with the January 30 elections. A majority of people in the United States now thinks the invasion of Iraq was not worth the high price that has been paid as a consequence. Yet an enormous gap exists between this sentiment and the level of political activity against the occupation.
The Return of Limits
| by Ashley Dawson | Summer 2007 |
"Nature has a habit of returning with a pitchfork" — Francis Bacon
The Return of Limits
| by Ashley Dawson | Winter 2007 |
"Nature has a habit of returning with a pitchfork" -- Francis Bacon
The Soul of Man Under . . .Anarchism?
| by Kristian Williams | Winter 2011 |
The title of Oscar Wilde’s essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" has long perplexed readers, especially anarchists who rightly feel that the essay belongs in their canon rather than that of the Marxists, the Fabians, or the Labour Party.[1]
The Soul of Socialism
| by Ronald Aronson | Summer 2006 |
If one of the great socialist leaders of a century ago could see us now -- Debs, say, or Luxemburg -- he or she would certainly be puzzled by the state of the world. In every direction they would be able to see struggles for liberation or the fruits of such struggles: of those with whom they would immediately be in solidarity, such as women, former slaves, indigenous people, former colonial people, and racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.
The United States in the Middle East The Evolution of Its Israeli Policy
| by Immanuel Wallerstein | Summer 2008 |
In 2007, the United States has no foreign policy involvement greater and more significant than its military presence in Iraq. And in 2007, the United States has no closer ally and co-actor on the world scene than Israel. The relationship is arguably closer than the vaunted U.S.- British link. Neither an involvement of the United States in the Middle East nor the close links the United States has forged with Israel have always been the prevailing policy. On the contrary, both current realities are the outcome of a long and sinuous trajectory.
The Ups and Downs of the Swedish Welfare State: General Trends, Benefits and Caregiving
| by Helen Lachs Ginsburg and Marguerite G. Rosenthal | Summer 2006 |
[Note: This is a corrected version of the footnoted article that was earlier posted on the web.]
The Wages of Care: Change and Resistance in Support of Caregiving Work
| by Deanne Bonnar | Summer 2006 |
Industrialized societies have done some things well. They increased the standard of living for large numbers of people, they opened up opportunities for knowledge not found in most agrarian cultures and they have advanced technology to the point where we can explore the solar system and transplant a human heart. This is not to argue that there are not major problems with the systems of distribution and the exploitation of the planet's environment, but by in large they have succeeded in increasing the production of the material basis of life.
The World Social Forum and the Emergence of Global Grassroots Politics
| by John L. Hammond | Winter 2007 |
[This is an expanded and documented version of an article that appeared in New Politics, no. 42.][1]
There is Good News and Bad News: Religion and Politics
| by Harvey Cox | Winter 2006 |
Once upon a time, just a few decades back, culture critics were confidently predicting the demise -- or a least the decline -- of religion. Technology, literacy, education, science would take their inevitable toll. Religion would survive, perhaps, in small enclaves, family rituals, and folk festivals. But religion would never be a factor in the public sector, the "political realm." The dead would bury the dead.
Three Elegies for Susan Sontag
| by Ellen Willis | Summer 2005 |
1. Art
Torture and Historical Memory
| by Robert Pallitto | Summer 2011 |
North Americans seem to believe that torture has no history here. It happened in medieval Europe, at the command of dictators in far-off places, or as part of leftist insurgencies. For the United States, torture is anathema to our way of life, violative of our liberal-democratic commitments. From George Washington to George W. Bush, U.S. presidents have denounced torture unequivocally. Or so it was, as the story goes, before the September 11 attacks.
U.S. Libraries and the "War on Terrorism"
| by Mark Hudson | Summer 2004 |
In the days and weeks following the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the northeastern United States, there was a sudden proliferation of U.S. flags and other patriotic imagery in public libraries across the nation. U.S. public libraries have traditionally displayed U.S. flags inside or atop their buildings, even though they are financed by local and state tax money and receive little if any federal funding. But the new patriotic décor went well beyond any simple statement of solidarity with the nation in a time of crisis.
Unraveling Iraq: The Sociopolitical and Ethical Dimensions of Resistance
| by Wadood Hamad | Winter 2005 |
Iraq, as one long conversant in its fervent political history remarked to me, is much like the earth resting underneath a giant rock laid there for a very long time. The U.S.-led invasion of 2003 destabilized -- if not moved -- this rock and unleashed a multitude of organisms that were unknown even to local residents.
Venezuela's PSUV and Socialism from Below
| by Interview with Orlando Chirino | Winter 2008 |
ON MARCH 24, 2007, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez announced to a gathering of about 3,000 supporters that he was creating a Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The following interview was conducted (by the Venezuelean group aporrea) on April 13, 2007, with Orlando Chirino, national organizer of the UNT (Union Nacional de Trabajadores—National Union of Workers). Chirino is the leader of C- Cura--the United Autonomous Revolutionary Class Current—within the PSUV.
Village Elections in China -- Democracy or Façade?
| by Richard Levy | Winter 2010 |
Do elections of self-governing Village Committees in China's signify a major step towards democracy? How, if at all, do these elections affect power relations among various groups, class strata, and nascent or even actual classes in the Chinese countryside? Inside and outside of the villages, who makes decisions about how the village will evolve or develop?
Visiting Raúl Castro's Cuba
| by Samuel Farber | Summer 2007 |
ON JULY 31, 2006, THE CUBAN government announced that due to a serious illness, the nature of which was declared a state secret, Fidel Castro was stepping aside as the head of state. His younger brother Raúl, officially designated as his successor since the early days of the 1959 Revolution, was "temporarily" replacing the commander-in-chief.
Voices from Prison and a Call for Repeal: The Hudood Laws of Pakistan
| by Abira Ashfaq | Winter 2006 |
In 1979, there were seventy women in prisons all over Pakistan. By 1988, this figure was six thousand. The reason -- the Hudood Ordinances. Promulgated in 1979 by military dictator Zia-ul-Huq in an effort to Islamize the laws of the country, these have been the subject of much controversy and debate.
We Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan!
| by CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY | Winter 2010 |
THIS MAY BE A TURNING POINT for the expanding U.S./NATO wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a time when speaking out clearly and unambiguously against war can make a crucial difference. Today we see signs all too reminiscent of the step-by-step deepening of the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. In response, we declare ourselves firmly against military escalation in the region and for the withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Pakistan now. We also call for an end to drone attacks in both countries.
We Can Do It! The Case for Single Payer National Health Insurance
| by Joanne Landy and Oliver Fein | Summer 2008 |
[Ed. Note: This is a chapter in a forthcoming book Ten Excellent Reasons for National Health Insurance, eds., Mary O'Brien, M.D. and Martha Livingston, Ph.D. (New Press).]
THE TIME HAS COME for single payer National Health Insurance in the United States. We have excellent hospitals, skilled practitioners, the technological infrastructure -- and we're already spending enough money to insure everyone and to improve access to care for many who are covered today by inadequate plans. All we need is the political will.
Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack!
| by Jesse Lemisch | Summer 2006 |
I attended part of a January 20, 2006, "day workshop of interventions" -- aka "a day of dialogic interventions" -- at Columbia University on "Radical Politics and the Ethics of Life."[1] The event aimed "to stage a series of encounters . . . to bring to light . . .
What Happened to the American Working Class?
| by Dan La Botz | Winter 2010 |
The collapse of the financial sector of the United States detonated the current global economic crisis, and its auto industry was soon crumpling as well.[1] Yet, though it all began here, American labor unions and workers have been slow to respond and their response has been weak. Millions of workers in hundreds of French cities have struck and demonstrated repeatedly against their government and against the banks and corporations throughout the spring of 2009, and the story was similar in Italy and Greece.
What Is Union Democracy?
| by Robert Fitch | Winter 2011 |
I’d like to begin by asking a question that has probably occurred to you already: How come despite the biggest economic downturn since the 1930s, and not withstanding the Obama victory which was supposed to have created a center-left realignment, American public opinion has veered to the Right; not the Left? Why have middle class and some working class people been attracted to the Tea Party; not towards progressive organizations; or towards organized labor? According to Gallup and Pew, support for organized labor has actually fallen sharply.
Why We Need a Global Green New Deal
| by Ashley Dawson | Winter 2010 |
The United States, and with it the rest of the world, is experiencing the initial stages of an unprecedented emergency brought on by three intertwined factors: a credit-fueled financial crisis, gyrating energy prices linked to speculation about the future peaking of oil supplies, and an accelerating climate crisis.
Why We Publish
| Winter 2011 |
New Politics is an independent socialist forum for dialogue and debate on the left.
Wisconsin’s Cheesehead Revolt
| by Paul Buhle | Summer 2011 |
By this time, the usual New Politics reader may well have seen dozens if not hundreds of Youtube videos revealing the demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, during February and March, not to mention sights and sounds of solidarity-with-Wisconsin rallies around the country and in their own community. (Being good New Politics readers, they would have joined in.) The details have been hard to follow, even close to the scene.
Women’s Work, Mother’s Poverty: are men’s wages the best cure for women’s economic insecurity?
| by Gwendolyn Mink | Winter 2010 |
In the 2008 Democratic Party platform, the only provision with women in the title was one promising "Opportunity for Women." The provision pledged "that our daughters should have the same opportunities as our sons,"1 confining measurement of women's equality to our access to men's jobs and men's wages. The nomination, then election, of the first African-American presidential candidate portended and promised great change.
Wrestling on Shaky Ground: Israel, Palestine, and the Decline of a Superpower
| by Adam Keller | Winter 2012 |
Since the beginning of 2011, Israeli politicians, generals, and diplomats displayed a growing nervousness in anticipation of "September," i.e., the proclaimed Palestinian intention to seek a full United Nations Membership for the State of Palestine.
You've Been Well Cared For
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Winter 2004 |
I was sitting in the homeless unit of the Grove Hall Department of Transitional Assistance (welfare department) chatting with some women. One was living in a homeless shelter in Saugus, a town on the north shore of Massachusetts; the other was applying for shelter. They were ashamed to be here. They said that they had worked and held responsible jobs. Life had dealt them raw blows. One had to leave her job because of an injury to her spine that seemed to require endless treatment, and she did not know when she could return to work.