The Indivisible Committee: Reflections on “Hands Off!” Chicago
A week or so ago, a friend and I attended the Indivisible “Hands Off!” protest in Chicago. Here is a brief description of what I experienced and some brief takeaways. We got there around noon, but about two hours beforehand, I had seen a crowd of marshals and planners in the square setting up. Even …
CATEGORIES:
Review: Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment
When the Assad regime crumbled, almost overnight, last December, there was an upsurge of shock, elation and disbelief – in Syria, and across the globe. In the days and weeks that followed, the world watched on as ordinary Syrians, who had borne the brunt of Assad’s pitiless crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011-12 (and the …
CATEGORIES:
City Time: A Discussion with David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan
David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan’s new book City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island (NYU Press, 2025) offers an insightful look into the daily life of one of the most notorious carceral complexes in the US. Their individual experiences of incarceration are turned into a panoramic view of the minutiae that fill the time …
CATEGORIES:
Onward, Christian Soldiers!
A few weeks ago I received two letters in the mail. They were addressed to me by name and sent to my address on Washington Island, WI. One was from former Vice President of the U.S., Mike Pence. The other was from Edwin Meese, former Attorney General in the Ronald Reagan Administration who is now …
CATEGORIES:
Reflections from January 26th in Dallas
This piece is also posted on Haters Cafe. “A bunch of people just felt free for the first time,” was the immediate reaction of a seasoned comrade to a protest on January 26th, 2025. The demonstration was organized by two Latina high school girls to support migrants against the escalating deportations and racist policies coming …
CATEGORIES:
The Lost and Early Writings of James Connolly
Review: Conor McCabe, ed., The Lost and Early Writings of James Connolly: 1889-1898 (Iskra Books, 2024) “The election of a Socialist to any public body at present”, declared James Connolly in 1894, “is only valuable, in so far as it is the return of a disturber of the political peace.” Born in an Edinburgh slum …
CATEGORIES:
From the Archives
The Moral Economy in the Black Rural South
(Reprinted from the July-August 2019 “The Brooklyn Rail) Once you drive out of Huntsville, within 15 minutes you run into deeply rural areas. Open fields, some cultivated, some wild; mobile homes and modest bungalows mix with a growing number of new suburban houses; fortunately, not enough—yet—to change the social character of the area. The lanes …
CATEGORIES:
“Remember What My Number Is”: RIP Toots Hibbert
54-46 was Toots Hibbert’s prison number. He sang it out loud on the electrifying track 54-46 That’s My Number (1969), one of a crop of tunes that made Toots and the Maytals a household name on the island of Jamaica and soon thereafter in a lot of other places too. Toots Hibbert, the reggae singer, …
CATEGORIES: