“I’m the Outcast . . . the ‘distinguished’ chap/Who puts it all in poetry/I’m more than half crushed to bits / Between the Bourgeoisie and the Worker/I’m the bloke whose work one hates/I’m a closet of Grief/I’m the Artist, the Dreamer/The Leper of Democracies” – “Les Soliloques Du Pauvre” Back in the day, when libraries […]
Louis Proyect Reviews Hard Crackers
We are reprinting here two reviews of Hard Crackers by Louis Proyect, columnist, film reviewer and blogger, one from last week and one from two years ago: September 28, 2018 The latest issue of Hard Crackers is out, a magazine that is a continuation of “Race Traitor” and the embodiment of editor Noel Ignatiev’s sensibility. Around […]
Unnamed Harlem resident finds old letter
In the dusty book shelves of an unnamed Harlem resident’s basement we uncovered this letter written in 1912 from the man later known as Ho Chi Minh to his father back home. Dearest father, I wanted to write to you because I know you must be worried about my whereabouts. I am safely living in […]
Google User Reviews of US Jails and Prisons
People across the US are taking to Google user reviews with grievances about the jails and prisons where they and their loved ones are held.
“Stand Up and Be Counted”: Aretha, Sixties Soul, and Power
I was never a fan of Motown and sixties R&B; it came a decade before I came of age and I was never retroactively especially drawn to it. But that musical era still brings back memories as an early teenager growing up in a majority Black neighborhood in northwest Baltimore, of the one-room corner record […]
The future of labor unions
Heard on the radio this morning: Gus Atsas, newly-elected president of United Steelworkers Local 1014, which has about 2,020 members at U.S. Steel Gary Works (which once employed 27,000 people and where your correspondent had the honor to work from 1971 to 1975) announced that the members had voted to authorize a strike. (For those […]