An Ordinary White

An Ordinary White: My Anti-Racist Education

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Interview with esteemed labor historian David Roediger about his memoir, An Ordinary White: My Anti-Racist Education.

The Return of the Magonista?–Los Angeles and Borderland Revolt

This article was written in the days immediately following June 6th. The author was not able to participate in the street movement due to geographical distance from Los Angeles. ConquestIn August of 1846, US troops under Stephen Kearney occupied Santa Fe without firing a shot. In January of 1847, a combined force of Hispano and …

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Dancing for FDR: How My Father Met My Mother (and Vice Versa)

A key drama at the heart of all our personal origin stories is the saga of how our parents met. Iโ€™ve known the basics of this piece of my family history as long as I can remember. My mom and dad met, so the story went, when they were paired as dance partners performing in …

The Karen Effect:ย A Cop Town’s Reckoning with Police Power

Americaโ€™s latest referendum on police power is coming from an unlikely place: Canton, Massachusetts, a mostly white upper middle class and pro-police suburb located just fifteen miles outside of Boston. Jury deliberations began this week in the second murder trial of Karen Read, who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend. For the past three years, the case has divided Canton, with a significant number of residents convinced that Read is being framed by the police and the wealthy local families with ties to them. While the case has all the elements of a true-crime saga, its significance lies in that it is shedding a light on the deepening crisis of police legitimacy among white Americans. In addition, it is also revealing–yet again–the pernicious effects of whiteness, as seen by the inability or unwillingness of Karen Read supporters to connect her fight against a corrupt police and legal system to the current anti-ICE/police uprising.

From Anaximander to Marx, part 3

The end of the road of the sect  For quite a few years after Healyโ€™s exposure I, and others, still carried on trying to build โ€˜the partyโ€™ which was really just a small group of self-appointed โ€˜revolutionariesโ€™. I only finally shed this delusion during the Yugoslav war. I was sitting in the cab of a …

From Anaximander to Marx, Part 2

Human society as an evolutionary process Darwinโ€™s โ€˜Origin of the Speciesโ€™ came about from the data gathered during his voyage on the Beagle. A deeply religious man, Darwin was brought almost to the point of mental breakdown because his religious view of the world could not be reconciled with the evidence he had gathered. His …

From the Archives


In the Streets of Philadelphia

A lot can happen in a week. On Saturday, May 30, a beautiful sunny afternoon, we joined thousands of others at the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum to protest the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. This was the first major protest of Floydโ€™s death in Philadelphia, the poorest big city in …

The Fire Down Below

The popular saying is โ€œWhere thereโ€™s smoke, thereโ€™s fire.โ€ย  It is often used to explain the reasons for a rumor, or to describe another firearm metaphor โ€œthe smoking gunโ€ (the hidden truth that will blow the story wide open). The fires we all saw in Minneapolis on Thursday night (May 28th) illuminated a lot more …

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