This interview of Ashley Smith was conducted by Joseph Daher for the newspaper of the Swiss socialist party Solidarités, and the French leftwing website, Contretemps.
Category: Social protests
Mexico’s AMLO Is No Leftist, as His Handling of Covid Demonstrates
Not only is AMLO’s government not socialist, it is not democratic, it is not competent, and it is not socially responsible. AMLO is a populist with a leftist image and rightist policies.
When NYC Jewish Organizations Enthusiastically Supported Boycotts
The Jewish establishment has condemned the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for asking candidates if they would forgo plans to take trips to Israel as an act of solidarity with Palestinians. Of course it’s a croc. It’s also hypocrisy.
Presidential Candidates and Society Debate Protest and Violence
Protest, sometimes with conflict between anti-racist and rightwing groups, continues in various U.S. cities—Portland, Louisville, and Rochester—over 100 days since the killing of George Floyd. America has not seen such street fighting since the 1960s.
Commercial Surrogacy: A Reply to Sara Lee
This is the final entry in a debate that began in our Summer 2020 issue, sparked by Holmstrom-Smith’s review of Sophie Lewis’ recent book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019).
Comrades and allies: An interview with Donna Murch
Sherry Wolf interviews Donna Murch, activist and author of “Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland,” about the Black Lives Matter uprising and questions of organization, solidarity, and strategy.
“They are all implicated”: An Interview with Joey Ayoub on the Beirut Explosion
On August 4th, an explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, left more than 170 dead, thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands homeless.
No Justice, No Peace! Raising the Social Cost through Direct Action!
Growing numbers of individuals and growing social movements that have broken with the ideology that there is no alternative to neoliberalism (TINA) and acting on the belief that there is a liberatory alternative to racial capitalism is central to raising the social cost.
A Life in the Shadow of the Bomb
I am a child of the atomic age. The atomic bomb, that is, the threat of nuclear war and mass destruction, has been in my consciousness—sometimes in the background but frequently in the foreground—nearly all of my life.
Statement on My Being Shot by Federal Troops
Since June, I’ve been attending peaceful protests in Portland neighborhoods in support of Black Lives Matter. I have gone with family and friends. I am a 52-year-old mother. I am a history professor. I was protesting peacefully. So why did federal troops shoot me in the head Monday night?
Race, Class, and Crisis in Higher Education
Higher education is structurally racist in large part because the working class needs it but does not have access to it, nor do they have the social support to succeed once they are there.
Portland Protests: A Chronology of Police Repression
Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and possibly other federal agencies are deployed in Portland as this article is being written. They are assisting the Portland Police Bureau to brutally squash the rebellion against business as usual.
The Syrian Revolution: A History from Below
The Online Summer Institute titled “The Syrian Revolution: A History from Below” is a webinar series about grassroots politics, class struggles, and state violence in Syria since the 1970s up until the present.
Lessons From Gezi Park
The experience of the 2013 Turkish uprising in Gezi Park opened possibilities for the rise of new Left in Turkey and offers lessons for the U.S. in the midst of its own anti-racists uprising
Pandemic, Depression, and Authoritarianism
We Must Fight for the Future
The United States confronts an uncertain future in the face of an unprecedented situation.
Puerto Rico Faces Crises: COVID, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Drought
The United States has suffered 135,000 deaths from COVID-19 and has tens of millions of unemployed and both crises continue now into the fifth month, but nowhere has the economic crisis been greater than in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico.
Organizing After Bernie — Activists Respond
THE HISTORIC SANDERS CAMPAIGN has come to a close, and the strength of social movements will be critical after November, whether to build the left in the face of a Democratic president carrying out the party’s neoliberal policies or to . . .
The Movement for Black Lives Is Different This Time
An assessment of the ongoing protests and developing movement following the murder of George Floyd.
Pacifism by Every Other Name: The Political Ethic of the Anti-Racist Movement Against Systemic Violence
A genuine pacifist movement is a movement against systems of violence, and in that sense the on-going wave of anti-racist movements are decidedly pacifist—even including instances where protesters engage in looting, burning, and tactical violence.
The Whitney Took Down My Mural
They never asked us to paint on the plywood barrier built to protect the building during the recent protests. But for a few nights we painted. Mine was a mural about police brutality toward protestors. Now the Whitney has taken them all down.
On the Attack on Robert Cuffy at the Mass March to Defund the NYPD
While leading Monday June 29th’s Mass March to Defund the NYPD & Abolish the Police, Robert Cuffy was filming the march when he was blindsided and tackled by an unidentified man who then slammed Robert into another car, dislocating his shoulder. Police released the attacker without charges.
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