As movements highlight the perils of global warming and the inaction of governments in the face of it, what types of mechanisms could and should be considered to slow down the ravages of climate change? Geographer Holly Jean Buck argues that, as fraught as it is, the left needs to recognize the need for the … Continued
The US-Mexico border is often in the news. But what’s usually missing is the cost of the border, both in human terms, and in terms of the political economy of the region itself — the deep entanglement of the livelihoods of people who live in places like Douglas, Arizona with the border industrial complex. Scholar … Continued
The failed German Revolution, in which he was a participant, marked the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse for life. But unlike some of his more pessimistic colleagues in the Frankfurt School, particularly after the rise of fascism, Marcuse did not give up on liberatory possibilities. In the 1960s, Marcuse became one of the key philosophers of … Continued
We think of public utilities operating for the public good — it’s right there in the name. But most public utilities are investor-owned and, like corporations as a whole in this country, have enormous power to dispossess poor people through government-backed mechanisms like eminent domain. Sociologist Loka Ashwood discusses how such dispossession, along with state-sanctioned … Continued
The resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline galvanized a generation of activists. It involved hundreds of tribes and thousands of people, standing up against not just the companies that would pollute the region’s water, but to the militarized forces of the state. As Native historian Nick Estes argues, the No DAPL efforts brought into sharp … Continued
America has long been the country of endless promise, of open vistas, and a sense of providence about its place in the wider world. That optimism has always cloaked the brutality of imperial expansion and limitless growth. And now that centrist ideal of boundless expansion, according to historian Greg Grandin, may be coming to an … Continued
The birthrate in the U.S. has hit a historical low, with fewer babies being born than that necessary to replace the existing population. Organizer Jenny Brown argues that that’s because the social support for women and families is so meager, that women have stopped having children or have reduced the number of kids they’re having. … Continued
Socialist Yugoslavia was born out of resistance to fascist occupation during WW2 and ended in dismemberment and civil war. Today, Yugoslavia’s demise is much better remembered than what came before it. Yet socialist Yugoslavia forged a different path from that of the Soviet Union, which broke with it, and experimented with a form of workers’ … Continued
What are the origins of modern conservatism? The failed Goldwater campaign? Or the Cold War era discontent of midwestern small capitalists? Historian Kathryn Olmstead argues that it should be located even earlier, in the intense and massive labor unrest that took place in the fields of California in the 1930s. The response by growers and … Continued
Dockworkers the world over have a long tradition of both power and militancy, able to block the flow of cargo and jam up the workings of capitalism. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the San Francisco Bay Area has been one of the most radical of American unions. Historian Peter Cole discusses the fascinating … Continued
