In Otero

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Emilien Bernard and Pauline Laplace are two alternative free-lance journalists working for the Marseille critical monthly CQFD, which has a substantial French global distribution (about 10, 000 copies) and argues for an anarchist perspective. CQFD means Ce Quโ€™il Faut Dรฉmontrer. The two journalists travelled to the USA to report about the southern wall.  A special dossier โ€œUSA: droit dans le murโ€ …

A History of Pan African Revolt cover.

Reading Pan-African Revolt

โ€œI mean, weโ€™re talking about the last twenty years. Thatโ€™s most of our lives. Maybe even all of yours!โ€ Tentative silence. Itโ€™s always hard to gauge how this kind of direct appeal will go over. Then again, itโ€™s hard to know what works on a Monday morning in a classroom of college students. In November. …

First as Tragedy, Then as Slop

…I think itโ€™s safe to identify MrBeastโ€™s primary schtick as the fusion of two favorite ultra-rich past times, philanthropy and decadence. MrBeast is far from the first tycoon to master these crafts. However, his Frankenstein brand of philanthropic decadence is the novelty that has propelled him to the top of YouTube, becoming the first โ€œbillionaire YouTuber.โ€
Since When Has Working Been a Crime

Since When Has Working Been a Crime?

The Hard Crackers STORE has a new item for saleโ€”โ€œSince when has working been a crimeโ€–a new version of a pamphlet produced and distributed by the Sojourner Truth Organization in 1977 during an earlier wave of the persecution of โ€œworkers without papers.โ€ The pamphlet is available for free downloading as a PDF document and for …

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Rise of the Right in the U.S. Heartland: a Bibliographic Essay

Since Iโ€™ve only made brief visits to other parts of theย country, this is my quest to understand the rise of right-wing reactionaries in the hinterlands, andย why they are sympathetic to white nationalism and have electorally supported Donald Trump.

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Triumph of the Swill

Fridayโ€™s event was my first Trump rally in a sporting arena, which, I soon learned, is where he makes the most sense. The scene outside Milwaukeeโ€™s Fiserv Forum set the tone for the eveningโ€™s entertainment; while Democrats may dispute Trumpโ€™s claims to have created some 7 million jobs as president, nobody can deny that heโ€™s now providing employment for the dozen or so merchants who trail his events selling bootleg merchandise, including some of the only Black men to be found outside the average Trump rally. The latest designs include: โ€œSupport Diversityโ€ alongside a row of different sized bullets; a heavily-armed Smoky Bear saying โ€œOnly You Can Prevent Socialismโ€; Trump clutching cats alongside the message โ€œMake Pets Safe Againโ€ in reference to the campaignโ€™s anti-Haitian blood libel; an austere looking Trump standing with open arms outside the White House beneath the bolded pink announcement โ€œDaddyโ€™s Homeโ€; a heavily stylized Western illustration of Trump and Vance in cowboy hats labeled โ€œThe Outlaw and the Hillbillyโ€; and a rendition of Kamala Harrisโ€™s face with a line through it, as part of the message โ€œSay No to the Hoe.โ€ There are also the ubiquitous Trump hats, which more attendees than not showed up already wearing, creating a striking visual effect thatโ€™s also a bit disconcerting, especially when viewed from the center of it.

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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 …

“Phillip My Dear”: The Mighty Sparrow Turns 85

In the early 1980s when I was cabbing for a living, there was a NYC radio station that devoted all of its Sunday programming to reggae and calypso music. The deejays knew their stuff, and they covered a lot of ground, from the famous artists like the Wailers to the more select acts, such as …

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