“I’ll never get used to this hospital smell of antiseptic, not even after all the times I visited Alice in Bellevue. It’s the smell of the grave. Think of something without that smell. Think of something that hasn’t any smell at all, think of something blue. Blue and green.” Kenneth Rexroth famously described Kenneth Fearing […]
Italian Auto Workers Demand Red Card
The mega-rich Italian Agnelli family has bulging coffers. They own the Fiat Chrysler Corporation, Ferrari, and have a controlling interest in Turin’s Juventus football team, one of the premier clubs in Europe. The Agnellis aren’t exactly friends of the working person. Last week, Juventus splurged about $130 million to purchase the contract of one Cristiano […]
#NYCStripperStrike: Race, Class and Women’s Work
“Honey, I guess you can sum up this business in one sentence,” stripper Bobbie Bruce told reporter Jack Griffin at Minsky’s Rialto Theater, a hub of early-1950s Chicago burlesque. “You grab as much sex as the law is allowing at the time, and throw it across the footlights as hard as you can.”1 In the […]
“A New Life Awaits You . . .”: Alabama Tenants’ Counter-Narratives to Landlord Hype
When you look at apartment websites, you are always greeted with pictures of immaculate living rooms right out of “Good Housekeeping,” smiling middle-class families, sparkling swimming pools and accolades such as “exquisite apartment homes.” But beneath this carefully crafted veneer lies a different reality documented in reviews by actual Alabama tenants. Because Alabama law favors […]
Pennsylvania Sheriff Warns: Accept No Imitation
Earlier this month a mysterious call came through to Dr. Mark Cruciani’s office in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The caller identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy from Lackawanna County and informed Cruciani that he had missed a court date, and now had two options: he could pay an outstanding fine of $1,000, or he’d face a criminal […]
Marx and Engels on Civil War: New Collection
Review by Marcelo Badaró Mattos The Civil War in the United States, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Edited by Andrew Zimmerman. New York: International Publishers, 2016. Paper, $14.00. Pp. 256. This book is the second American edition, largely modified, of a collection of Marx’s and Engels’ writings on the Civil War. The first edition, […]