Palestine is today’s Vietnam. Five decades ago, it was Vietnam’s anti-colonial struggle for independence—first against the French colonists and then against the US imperialists—that sparked international protest and solidarity. “Vietnam” became a synecdoche of the global Third World Liberation movement. … Continue reading “Palestine Is Today’s Vietnam”
These photographs show the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine from the perspective of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. All photographs were made in Lviv between February 19-23, 2014. The Euromaidan revolution began as a public protest in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on … Continue reading “Revolution in Ukraine: The View from Lviv”
One of the members of my working group, The People’s Think Tank, recommended me as a good person to speak to young activists last week at the Civil Rights Student Summit in New York organized by Teaching Matters. The folder they gave to the set of people they brought in to speak to the students, most of whom were in eighth grade, said “community activist” on the front. Reading that brought me back to a discussion facilitated by the Think Tank on May Day, where we got to talking about what it meant for us to be activists. When it was my turn to speak, the only words on offer were something like “I really don’t like to think of myself as an activist. I kind of want to think of myself as a normal person.
On arriving in Madison some years ago, I went to the huge farmers’ market that winds round the Capitol. Startled by the slow-moving procession of orderly, white shoppers all pacing in the same direction, I dubbed the market throngs “The … Continue reading “Which Way Wisconsin? The Meaning of the Madison Movement”
By now we should all recognize the global economic effects of neoliberalism. David Harvey reminds us that free market policies have led, first and foremost, to a dramatic class realignment in which the relative egalitarianism of the post-World War … Continue reading “The Neoliberal Crisis and the Open University”
Dancing in front of the May Day march against the state of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration laws down Broadway in New York City, one protestor in festive spring drag.
