At the Bus Stop
Itโs a quiet afternoon at work, but Iโm worn out from not sleeping well and decide to head home early. The regional rail is all messed up right now, so I take two subways and then walk a few blocks to wait for the bus. As I get to the stop, a woman asks if …
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An amazing meeting of miners and environmentalists from across โYugoslaviaโ
We came together on a playing field beside a derelict Olympic size open air swimming pool built by the local miners. We are in the small mining town of Breza, about half an hour’s drive from the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. The swimming pool, its construction by miners after WW2, and its present decay is a …
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Interview with Palmira Figueroa of National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON)
Hard Crackers reached out to NDLON after we had read, in a New York Times article, about the organizationโs involvement in the protests after the death of Roberto Carlos Montoya, a day laborer who had been waiting for work outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles. We interviewed Palmira Figueroa who is NDLONโs Communications Director. …
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Unbuild these Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition
Interview with Silky Shah Silky Shah has been an immigrant justice organizer for over two decades. She is currently the executive director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition working to abolish immigrant detention in the U.S. We met up recently in Chicago at the annual Socialism Conference. We were both on a panel with other …
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Flashpoints and Righteous Struggle: A Call for Submissions
Trumpโs One Big Beautiful Act, which ironically was passedย on July 4th, will provide billionsย of dollars in funding to ramp up the federal governmentโs wide-ranging military-style campaign against unarmed civilians across the country. Prior to the billโs passage, masked and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were already raiding workplaces, ambushing individuals going …
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What Gets Passed Down
This piece tells a story of rural Southern Missouri through the forms of knowledge inherited when the state offers nothing: no direction, no infrastructure, no recognition. The author is from Douglas County, where his family still hunts and welds and buries its dead. Electricity came late. Broadband still hasnโt come at all. Seth comes from the Western Cherokee Nation of Arkansas and Missouri, a tribe erased not just by settler removal but by federal recognition itself.
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From the Archives
“Shit-Life Syndrome” (Oxycontin Blues)
The drug crisis is hard to ignore in the South – and not just in the rural areas. People keel over waiting for buses or lie slouched and zoned out in cars, as if some zombie-inducing viral contagion out of a horror flick suddenly descended. Overdosing has become such a part of the fabric of …
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Defining Hard Crackers: From the Editors
1. Modern American society is a ticking time-bomb where an impending social explosion is hinted at by everyday violence of all kindsโ the abuse of children; physical and sexual attacks by men against women, against other men and against those who do not conform to conventional images of men and women; the mistreatment of animals; …
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