Morbid Curiosity: Reviewing Jarrod Shanahanโs Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help
Iโve been a fan of Jarrod Shanahanโs work, but only with his new essay collection Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help: A Decade of Rebellion, Reaction, and Morbid Symptoms, published by PM Press, did it occur to me just how long Iโve been reading him. Well, I guess it’s been a decade. I …
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Refinery Reflections
One night in March of 1983, I had dinner on the stove and was building a fire when the phone rang. It was the foreman Charlie from the ARCO Refinery at Cherry Point, Washington. I was living in Bellingham then, about thirty miles away, and supporting myself by painting houses and working the occasional shutdown …
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They Picked Up Each Otherโs Children: Chicagoโs Spontaneous Resistance
An interview with Kingsley Clarke on resistance against Trumpโs War in Chicago. Hard Crackers: Earlier this week theย National Guard and ICE were deployed to San Francisco, followed by a flurry of messages, alerts, and coordination as people tried to figure out whatโs coming. As we know, the Trump administration has already called off the operation. …
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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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From the Archives
Rebellion, Routinized
When the Kenosha verdict dropped in November 2021, the 2020 uprising in my city was still limping along. The actions were led by the same thirty or so people and attended by the same hundredish. The call to protest the verdict was shared widely on social media but the animating rage of summer 2020 had …
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“Phillip My Dear”: The Mighty Sparrow Turns 85
In the early 1980s when I was cabbing for a living, there was a NYC radio station that devoted all of its Sunday programming to reggae and calypso music. The deejays knew their stuff, and they covered a lot of ground, from the famous artists like the Wailers to the more select acts, such as …
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