Since its inception, one of the main preoccupations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been black rebellion. From the early days of the Harlem Renaissance until at least J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1972, the FBI has had a fascinated fear of African American literature. William J. Maxwell discusses how the FBI extensively surveilled … Continued
For Americans who are concerned about the ways that big agribusiness grows our food—whether it’s the pesticides in vegetables, the ecological impact of food being shipped around the country, or the tastelessness of much mass produced food—local food production on family farms seems like a holistic alternative. But, as political scientist Margaret Gray argues, there’s … Continued
Santiago, the capital of Chile, was a hotbed of radical, non-sectarian organizing in the early 1920s, when a repressive backlash led to the death of poet José Domingo Gómez Rojas. Historian Raymond Craib tells the story of anarchists and communists, students and workers, radicals and reactionaries, the pursuing and the pursued, whose politics echo down … Continued
Every day, the police kill someone in America. But in the last several years, widespread anger about police violence had led many to take to the streets — and the prevailing model of policing, known as broken windows, seems to be in crisis. What will replace it? And how should we understand the role that … Continued
Movements like Black Lives Matter have turned a spotlight on the mass criminalization of people of color in the United States. But are we any closer to understanding why the American state locks up its residents in record numbers? Radical scholar Jordan Camp discusses working class insurgency from below—from the Watts Rebellion to the Los … Continued
In these anti-utopian times, many of us long for a place that’s free from the reach of capitalism and the repressive arm of the state. But we assume such things, even in partial form, don’t exist. Historian Andrej Grubacic discusses the spaces where people have attempted to operate outside of the state and market—and some … Continued
Are children inherently creative? What might be taken as a given is actually a relatively new notion. And, as Amy Ogata argues, it took hold in the United States under particular circumstances: driven in part by Cold War anxieties about the health of the nation, along with the desire by toy manufacturers to sell products … Continued
Political decolonization was one of the signal events of the twentieth century, but according to Michael Denning, it was prefigured by the decolonization of the ear. The cultural historian discusses the moment in the late 1920s when insurgent sounds swept the globe, spurring resistance to empire, and shaping the place of music in our lives … Continued
If you’re like most Americans, you probably feel overworked and underpaid. Americans, on average, labor 300 hours more per year than their counterparts in Northern Europe. And even workers in Europe, with some notable exceptions, have not seen substantial reductions in their hours for decades, despite increasing labor productivity. So what’s going on? Sociologist Christoph … Continued
What are the origins of modern conservatism? The failed Goldwater campaign? Or the Cold War era discontent of midwestern small capitalists? Historian Kathryn Olmsted 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 other elites pioneered … Continued
