Three Poems
Brown Fields One by one by one, they take The hollow factories down. It gives The sons of sons of sons Of workers work to do. They donโt Just blast or bash the buildings all to pieces: The job is difficult and careful. First, the guts come out, and then The skin comes off, sheet-metal …
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Call for submissions
Weโre looking for stories that cut through the noise โ from people living the contradictions of this moment: layoffs and rent hikes, ICE raids and border patrol crackdowns, automation, strikes and small acts of defiance, survival and solidarity. If youโve seen or lived something that speaks to how working-class people make sense of these times, …
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Whatever It Takes
it is a warm spring afternoonin the politically drunk 1950sin the little Virginia mill townstuck like a birdโs nestin the fork that splitsthe James and Appomattox riversboth rivers slapping their mouthstogether in a rough wet kisschurning and swirling the tidearound the high banks of City Pointinheriting their tidal swoon and swayfrom the inland Chesapeake Baythe …
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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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From the Archives
THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT (WITHOUT GUITARS*)
On the Outside Agitators Question Governors, Mayors, Police Chiefs, and many network TV journalists with their security experts are all set on promoting the idea that the uncontainable sectors of the enormous protests that are engulfing America are made up of sinister โoutside agitatorโ elements.ย These breakfast table theories vary from a slightly sophisticated knowledge …
Special Treatment
1990’s Chicago was not Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980’s. The music of The Specials, while of a specific context, still contained elements which would resonate quite loudly across the sea of time and space, and allowed kids of the future to vibe with their music and message. I was one of those kids. Terry Hall, …
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