The misunderstood class warrior Martin Luther King (tags)
Today, 50 years after his assassination, Martin Luther King is more glorified than ever...The memory of the social revolutionary was politically instrumentalized, King was appropriated. Tto tell the story of the reconciled nation, the dissident had to be erased from memory.
Yet Another Gay/Queer ?History? Book Perpetuates Old Myths (tags)
Yet another so-called ?Gay history? book, Michael Bronski?s ?A Queer History of the United States,? recycles the tired New York-centric myth that the Queer Liberation movement sprung full-blown from the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City. Leo E. Laurence, who was present at the REAL creation of Queer liberation in San Francisco in March 1969, three months BEFORE Stonewall, comments on Bronski?s book and offers Lambda Literary Award finalist Gale Whittington?s ?Beyond Normal? as an accurate source for the real birth of Gay Lib.
The Misuse of Martin Luther King Jr. (tags)
Beacon Press has just published a collection of King’s speeches on labor and economic justice, entitled All Labor Has Dignity.
Prison Abolition In Practice --Part two of an interview with Criminal Injustice Kos (tags)
Let’s get rid of prison rape. Let’s reinstitute rehabilitation. Let’s repeal certain draconian sentencing laws. All good and essential ideas. But very little – in some cases, nothing - will fundamentally change unless those ideas, and more, are advanced within a strategic framework of abolition.
Abolishing the Prison Industrial Complex --An interview with Criminal Injustice Kos (tags)
Focusing on the prison abolitionist movement, we interview two co-editors of an exciting new series at Daily Kos, called Criminal InJustice Kos, a weekly series "devoted to exploring the myths of 'crime', 'criminals', and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/sexuality/age/disability in policing and punishment. Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system." Look for Criminal InJustice Kos every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.
Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal --an interview with Aviva Chomsky (tags)
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history and Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts, and is a founder of the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, which has been working since 2002 with Colombian labor and popular movements, especially those affected by the foreign-owned mining sector. She just returned from a Witness for Peace delegation (May 28 – June 6) that traveled to two regions devastated by coal mining: the state of Kentucky and to northern Colombia.
A COMING POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE? (tags)
“When it happens, it will rock the world..: octogenarian Mubarak, will leave office, either by his own decision or that of Providence, probably within the next three years. So far, few in the West have paid much attention. But Egyptians certainly are getting ready, and we should do so as well”,
Making transsexual lives visible (tags)
Interview with transsexual scholar viviane K. Namaste from The New socialist Magazine, Issue 39: December 2002 - January 2003
The social construction of consciousness (tags)
This paper gives a theoretical discussion of the source and methodology of the social construction of consciousness. The first section introduces the piece. The second establishes the relationship between "interests" and "consciousness." The third describes growing inequality in the US. The fourth develops the structural source of consciousness. The fifth details the interlocking nature of politics and economy in the US. The sixth section discusses how our consciousness can be constructed. The final section offers some solutions.