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August 31, 2022

The Stakes of Cultural Assimilation

A few years ago, my mother and I spent some time looking through old photographs of our family. We observed how our community evolved over time. One thing that stood out to both of us was the fact that in the 1980’s and 90’s, most Mexican men from our community sported longer hair. If we look at some of the earliest photos in our possession—dating to the 1950s—our male family members did not have this hair style. My father was of this immigrant cohort. With curiosity, we asked him why he chose to wear long hair during this period. Most of the pictures in question documented his experiences in different parts of the United States as a migrant agricultural laborer, which was his first source of employment. His response communicated what should have been obvious to us: there were no Spanish-speaking stylists in the places he worked. They only had access to English-speaking stylists but feared discrimination or were just too ashamed to go into a space that seemed so foreign and unwelcoming to them. They preferred to just let their hair grow out during their stints in the US. We must recall that this was only a couple decades removed from de jure segregation was formally abolished in the country.

August 16, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

The Long Shadow of Michael Harrington: A Review of A Failure of Vision

Doug Greene’s new biography of Michael Harrington brings crucial historical context to debates on the socialist Left today. It is essential reading for newly minted socialists and seasoned activists alike.
Even among socialists, Michael Harrington is an obscure figure, but his work has enormous relevance today, for better and for worse. Harrington rose to national prominence as “the man who discovered poverty” with his 1962 book The Other America, a moving expose on poverty in the United States. In today’s context, his most important contribution is his role as the prominent founder and ideologue of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA has in the last few years become the largest self-described socialist organization in the U.S., since the heyday of the Socialist Party in the early 20th century.

August 5, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

Toward a Sensuous, Suffering, and Passionate Materialism

In his 2022 book, Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking, theoretical physicist and mathematician Leonard Mlodinow argued that “emotion shapes virtually every thought we have.” Antonio Damasio’s neuroscience research, first published in his 1994 book Descartes’ Error and in many books thereafter, has shown that the distinction between feelings and emotions is, fundamentally speaking, not scientifically accurate.

What’s more, turning to Columbia University historian William V. Harris in his 2001 book, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, perpetuating the idea that reason had to control feelings and emotions “was for the most part in the interest of all who benefited from the smooth functioning of the state or the family.” To put it another way, the necessity of supposedly masculine “reason” to control the chaos of “emotion” has been used to justify hetero-patriarchy, class oppression, white supremacy, and colonization for thousands of years.

July 19, 2022

by Justin Akers Chacón

The Making of a System in Crisis: the ungovernability of 21st century capitalism

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained in their foundational exposition of historical materialism and the dialectics of social transformation, a mode of production in crisis does not collapse under the weight of its own malfunction; it has to dismantled and replaced through the self-conscious action of a rising revolutionary class.
The multiplying crises of capitalism have led to internal dysfunction and debilitations that render its operations increasingly out of sync with the needs and basic sustenance of the vast majority of humanity and the rest of the natural world. It is rapidly reaching the limits of its own capacity for self-reproduction, and cannot seem to persist without inducing even greater calamity and instability. As the capitalist system trudges on in this linear trajectory, a cumulative transformation is well underway: where more will have to be sacrificed so that capitalism may live on.

June 30, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

Victory for Colombia’s Left, but the Fight is Just Beginning

In a historic outcome, Gustavo Petro, a self-declared socialist and former guerrilla, has been elected president of Colombia. After decades of bloody repression against the left, Petro is considered to be Colombia’s “first leftist president.” While the mainstream press is rushing to stoke fears of Petro as a threat to democracy in Colombia, some on the Left are eager to hail the victory as a model for an electoral path to power for “left populism” and a vindication of the politics of “pink tide” social democracy.

May 30, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

The Revolutionary Passion of Those Who Suffer Most

Most people know who Karl Marx was, at least to one extent or another. Remarkably and, yet also unsurprisingly, it’s Jenny Westphalen (aka Jenny Marx) whose understanding of the world we desperately need right now. The sensuous materialism she briefly expressed in her letters to husband Karl illuminates a path of hopeful imminent communal revolution.

Roughly a year after they married and less than a month after the birth of their first child, Karl unfortunately left Jenny for Paris to cosplay as revolutionary less than three years after completing his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Awaiting him was a meagerly paying job as an agitational socialist journalist. In June of 1844, less than a month after he left, she wrote to him that her “heart is yearning” and for even just “a few words to tell me that you are well and are longing for me a little.”

May 23, 2022

by Diana Sierra Becerra

Toxic Tears: White Women’s Power in Nonprofits

My first political lesson was at age five. I had recently migrated to the United States, when I witnessed a white woman refuse my mother a glass of water as she cleaned her home. I will never forget how my mother’s hands smelled of bleach or the many times she called me sobbing while locked inside her employer’s bathroom. My experiences as a former undocumented immigrant and survivor of domestic violence led me to work in the immigrant rights and labor movement.

May 13, 2022

by Norell Martinez

Brujas and the Long Struggle for Reproductive Justice

Since the leaked document that surfaced last week of the Supreme Court Justice’s vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, many have rightfully declared that a ban on abortion will not stop people from having abortions. Indeed, history has shown that even under the most violent and oppressive conditions, before modern technology existed, women had knowledge of the reproductive body, of herbs, plants, and other methods to induce abortion and prevent pregnancy. Across cultures and communities, mainly women were the keepers of this knowledge, specialists in the field, whose gifts provided reproductive health services to women in their community. They were midwives, nurses and counselors.

April 17, 2022

by Gianpaolo Contestabile

Una Caravana Zapatista Contra el Despojo del Agua: las luchas de los pueblos unidos contra la guerra del capital

Una caravana indígena, campesina y popular recorre México. En cada etapa, desde la sierra hasta la costa, desde las montañas hasta los suburbios urbanos, le dan la bienvenida comunidades en resistencia quienes con el puño en alto la saludan gritando “el agua no se vende, se ama y se defiende”. En algunos territorios se detienen a hablar con unos pocos campesinos y trabajadoras que luchan contra un basurero contaminante, una granja intensiva o el avance de la agroindustria, en otras comunidades la acogida es ofrecida por cientos de personas organizadas según el principio neozapatista de “mandar obedeciendo”.

March 29, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

Reactionary Theater of the Absurd

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is in the midst of confirmation hearings to become the next Supreme Court justice. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman on the Supreme Court. The liberal press is already hailing her nomination as a triumph, while Republicans in the Senate are frothing at the mouth at the chance to publicly attack her. The whole charade is a farcical exercise, which only serves the interests of both capitalist parties.
Out of the judges linked with the nomination, Ketanji Brown Jackson is thought to be one of the most progressive. Her politics, in addition to being a black woman, makes her a perfect target for Republicans eager to demonstrate their right wing bona fides to their reactionary base.