Social media streams are currently overrun with images and videos of mace, tear gas, and rubber bullets being savagely deployed against unarmed citizens.
Category: Racism
Socialists Must Fight to Defund the Police
The murder of George Floyd by police has sparked protest and outrage across the country. Emma Caterine writes on how socialists can connect the movement against racist police violence to a broad socialist program through the struggle to defund the police.
Racist Police Murder of George Floyd Leads to National Rebellion
This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.
The video recording of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, a black man strangled to death by a white police . . .
In Honor of George Floyd – Thoughts in the Aftermath of the Brooklyn Protest
The Black liberation struggle is once again ripping open the pandora’s box of American capitalism. This rebellion is exposing the brutal, sick and twisted priorities of American capitalism to the entire world.
Cornel West: America Is A Failed Social Experiment
“We’ve reached a point now a choice between nonviolent revolution — and by revolution what I mean is the democratic sharing of power, resources, wealth and respect…[or] if we don’t get that kind of sharing you’re going to get more violent explosions.”
From Detroit to Minneapolis: Police Brutality is Key to Containing Revolutionary Possibilities
An exclusive excerpt from A People's History of Detroit.
Coronavirus and Racism
This crisis is exposing all the problems of capitalism—especially racism. In our fights for personal protective equipment, unemployment benefits, healthcare for all, safe work environments, rent relief, etc., we should link these issues together with the systems which produced it.
Fifteen Years of Urban Entrepreneurialism: Lessons from New Orleans
It has been fifteen years since Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf Coast, leaving mass destruction in its wake. New Orleans, one of the places most severely hit, was left eighty percent under . . .
Human Rights Violations in New York City and the Urgency to Alleviate Suffering
On January 31, 2019 Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio conducted a rushed press conference where they signed an agreement between Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the New York City Housing Authority . . .
Why is Biden Winning?
Joe Biden turned out to be the big winner on Super Tuesday. While not all of the votes have been counted, Biden seems likely to end up with a majority. He is now positioned to do well in the rest . . .
Race, Class and Electoral Politics: A Book Review
The main purpose of this book is to guide the messaging of Democrats as they run for office. In spite of this it has useful insights about popular consciousness and how to move people against racism.
What are the Lessons of the UK Election?
There have been many articles attempting to explain the crushing defeat of the Labour Party in the UK election of 12 December 2019. Some of them are very insightful, and list reasons that undoubtedly played a part in that defeat. . . .
How Mayor Lumumba was Bought: The Closed Bloomberg Meeting in Jackson, Mississippi
The saying that politics makes for strange bedfellows is a statement that speaks to the many allegiances, alliances and compromises that one must make when engaging in electoral politics. One might think that there could be no more stranger bedfellows . . .
Continuing the Discussion on Black Politics
Replying to Cedric Johnson: I think Johnson over-diagnoses the problem. Where he sees danger, I see opportunity and where I see opportunity, he sees danger.
From the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Black Lives Matter
On SNCC’s 60th Anniversary
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began as an organization of students from black colleges in the South to integrate lunch counters that refused service to blacks. The tactic they used was the nonviolent direct action sit-in. What began . . .
Anti-colonialism and Humanism
Anti-colonialism is understood to be both a group of historical events and a critical analysis of past and ongoing imperialisms.
Are You a Settler?
Settler-colonialism, Capitalism and Marxism on Turtle Island
The politics of solidarity on display during the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline have raised the issue of Indigenous liberation more and more sharply to people on the left.
Sudan’s Revolution of 2019
At the Crossroads of Africa and the Arab World
Sudan’s revolution is not only Arab but also African in a way not seen in the 2011 Arab uprisings. The old regime combined Islamism and a racist form of Arabism with military rule, touching off in response a . . .
Noel Ignatiev, 1940–2019
A Life Defined by Political Engagement
This article by John Garvey on the late Noel Ignatiev was originally posted by The Brooklyn Rail as an introduction to a piece by Ignatiev on Frederick Douglass. Given Ignatiev’s importance as a writer on race and class in the . . .
New Film about the First Rainbow Coalition
Many young people are unaware that the Black Panthers sought out and formed alliances among Black and white, Puerto Rican and Native American working people. The first “Rainbow Coalition” was created in the 1960s in Chicago and became an example . . .
How Should the U.S. Left Think about China?
Editors’ note: This is the second of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.
[Interview with the author on Democracy Now.]
On the U.S. left, China is treated for the most part as an afterthought, an . . .
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