Place: United States

“Unions are killing the economy” says Henry Blodget at the Business Insider. He gleefully applauds the firing of every teacher in a Rhode Island school for their arrogance. How dare workers, teachers especially, think they have a voice in their working conditions or salaries? How uppity of teachers to sneer at the bosses’ absolutist control of the workplace. Let’s recall that Henry Blodget was indicated for insider trading.

The first thing that strikes me about this book is the irony of the title: When was affirmative action not white? As Mark Nathan Cohen states in his book, Culture of Intolerence (Yale University Press, 1998), "Affluent white males themselves have always received the most affirmative action, some by law, some by custom and practice, and some by factors so subtle and so deeply ingrained in our cultural training that we generally don't consciously recognize them." He goes on to say, "Critics tend to find affirm

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.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the mass media, which focuses its attention on the way teacher unions impede “educational innovation,” (e.g., standardized testing’s stranglehold; privatization; cuts in funding), we are witnessing a growing swell of reform in teacher unions. Transformation of both national teacher unions is absolutely essential to turn back the neoliberal program that the Obama administration is pushing.

[Editors' note: Howard Zinn, among his multitude of other contributions to the left, was a long-time sponsor of New Politics. We express our deepest sympathies to his family and post here an article by NP board member Steve Shalom that will be appearing in the spring issue of Democratic Left.]

 

Former New Politics editor Kent Worcester has written a nice appreciation of New Politics and its covers by Bob Gill.

     Judi Chamberlin, one of the founders of the mental patients’ liberation movement, died January 2010 at her Arlington, MA home from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a lung disease, at the age of 65.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

To put the Massachusetts Senate win of Republican Scott Brown in context…

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.

1, 2, 3, 4,
Clinton voted for the war!
5, 6, 7, 8,
That was not a real debate!

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.