On a visit to Bogotá in 2006, riding on the then new TransMilenio bus rapid transit system, I discovered that it sponsored Libro al Viento (Books on the Wind), a series of free publications ...
Tag: Social Movements
Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons
Is it legal? Is it constitutional? Is it just?
When the Klan Returns
For nearly a century, the 1920s Ku Klux Klan has seemed an exception that proves a rule. Far-right movements typically eschew electoral politics, as earlier and later waves of the Klan also did. But ...
Indian Queer Futures
The landmark Delhi High Court verdict in 2009 striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code—the section criminalizing homosexual sex—heralded a significant shift in queer activism and queer ...
The Big Picture: Building a Climate Coalition
Donald J. Trump has given notice of US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement of December 2015 and made clear that his administration is committed to dismantling the government-based scientific ...
The Problem with Philanthropy
In The Self Help Myth, Erica Kohl-Arenas shows how hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and decades of advocacy have failed to address the poverty ...
The Art of Protest
I marched with thousands on the streets of New York, asserting that “Trump is Not Our President” and “Love Trumps Hate.” So far we are free to assemble on Union Square in New York, to march up Fifth ...
All Ireland in a Grave
A hanged man was never more popular. One hundred years ago, the British government executed Roger Casement for his participation in a rebellion in Ireland, the Easter Rising of 1916. This year ...
On Accelerationism
At a time when the future seems to belong to Chicago-school economists and the Internet to Google and the NSA, a new movement calls to re-imagine left politics from top to bottom.
Tell Us How We Did
In 1928, Eric Blair, an unemployed, itinerant writer and former British colonial policeman, went to work as a dishwasher in a Paris hotel. Five years later, under the pen name George Orwell, Blair ...
Community Politics and Grassroots Activism During the 1920s: An Interview With Shannon King
This month, I interviewed Shannon King about his new book, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era. Dr. King is Associate ...
The Limits of What Is Thinkable
One viewer at the Democratic Primary debate in Des Moines last October asked the candidates a question: “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?” The same question has been on the lips of many ...
On Frantz Fanon: An Interview With Lewis R. Gordon
This article was originally published by The African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), and is reprinted here with permission. Lewis R. Gordon is Professor of Philosophy and ...
A Sit-In in the House of Representatives
I was fortunate enough, as an intern this summer for Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX-33), to witness last week’s historic sit-in by Democrats on the House floor. I was at a hearing of the House Armed Services ...
A Black Power Method
A half-century ago this week, “Black Power” entered America’s mass consciousness. In early June 1966, James Meredith launched his “March Against Fear,” a one-man demonstration down the 220 miles of ...
The Gay ’70s
Is being gay just about sex? It’s difficult to imagine anyone asking the question today. If the taglines used to market lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans to the country’s ...
The Fabric of the Times
In recent years we have watched hoods become wholly emblematic of social uprisings, political movements, and unrest. Sometimes overt, at other moments they work silently in the background—not wholly ...
An Interview with Former Black Panther Lynn French
Lynn French was a member of the Black Panther Party from 1968–1973, working in Chicago, Berkeley, and Oakland. In the Party, she worked in newspaper circulation, labor ...
A Map of Lost Longings
This is an archive. I’ve found the remains of his voice, that map of longings with no limit. —Agha Shahid Ali, “The Country without a Post Office” It has been a peculiar month to be an Indian ...
On Writing and Restaurant Labor
December 1, 2015 — In the late summer of 2010, Eleven Madison Park, a four-star restaurant in New York City catering to the tastes of the super-rich, decided to temporarily shutter and rebrand ...