History is not the past. It is the present -- James Baldwin
Allen, Danielle, et al. "What is Education For?" Boston Review (May 9, 2016) ["Preparation for democratic citizenship demands humanities education, not just STEM. ... In 2006 the highest court in New York affirmed that students in the state have a right to civic education. It was a decision thirteen years in the making, and it spoke to a fundamental question: What is an education for? Lawyers representing the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), which brought suit, argued that the purpose of education is to develop not only vocational capacities, but also civic agency. Students, in other words, are entitled to learn in public schools the “basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury.”"]
Baldwin, James, et al. "I Am Not Your Negro." Making Contact (November 8, 2017) ["Master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, Remember This House. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and flood of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for."]
Bandele, Asha and Patrisse Khan-Cullors. "'When They Call You a Terrorist': The Life of Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors." Democracy Now (January 16, 2018) ["We turn now to a powerful new book, released today, that tells the story of one woman as she fights back against the impacts of social and racial injustice in America on her family. That woman is Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. The book, titled “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” is both an account of survival, strength and resilience, and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent black life expendable. Patrisse’s story follows her childhood in Los Angeles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as her mother worked three jobs, struggling to earn a living wage. And it puts a human face on the way mass incarceration and the war on drugs hurt young black men, including her relatives and friends. Patrisse’s father was a victim of the drug war. He died at the age of 50. Her brother spent years in prison for nonviolent crimes stemming from his battles against mental illness. He was once even charged with terrorism after being involved in a car accident. The police would target Patrisse, too—raiding her house without just cause. In 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Patrisse co-founded Black Lives Matter along with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. The movement began online but soon spread across the country. "]
Beauchamp, Scott. "War Games: The Cozy Relationship Between Perpetual War and Total Entertainment." The Baffler #39 (May 2018) ["The specter of the military-industrial complex that Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his 1961 farewell address has metastasized into something even the former chief of the European theater in World War II couldn’t begin to imagine. After spending the better part of a century faithfully mimicking the civilian global supply chain that moves cheap consumer goods and raw materials along webs of commercial transit, the Pentagon also deepened its financial entanglements with America’s largest corporations. The resulting Leviathan of force no longer really requires the modifiers “military” or “industrial,” journalist Nick Turse, for one, has simply taken to referring to it as “The Complex.” The Department of Defense’s fingerprints are on everything from the internet to candy bars, from professional sports to consumer electronics."]
Brown, Adrienne Marie. "Love as Political Resistance: Lessons from Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler." Bitch (February 14, 2017)
"Buying the War: How Did the Mainstream Press Get It So Wrong." Bill Moyers Journal (2007)
Chang, Jeff. "On Revolutions in Seeing and Being." Making Contact (October 11, 2017) ["“From almost every kind of responsibility and tie from engagement and from faith. So the artist–our task is to move ourselves and the rest of us in the opposite direction. Toward more engagement, towards stronger ethics, toward a social that’s open and inclusive to all toward seeing each other in full, to challenge us to recognize the debts, and yes, the reparations that we owe to each other.” – Jeff Chang offers ideas to reinforce the importance of art and artists in today’s sociopolitical climate. Chang presented a keynote address for the Art and Race conference, that took place at Oakland Impact Hub earlier this year."]
"Chelsea Manning Talks with Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)." Talkhouse (April 26, 2018) ["The program includes a talk by Manning on resisting “the data-driven society and the police state”; a conversation between her and Tolokonnikova on their experiences in resistance, incarceration and prison reform; and a talk by Tolokonnikova on bringing “punk feminism” to Russia and the problems with Putin. The two also share their views on how neighborhood communities have better answers than think tanks, the ways empathy can help make real change, and — powerfully — how political action can be more than voting."]
Coll, Steve. "Directorate S: Steve Coll on the CIA & America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan & Pakistan." Democracy Now (February 8, 2018) ["The U.S. is intensifying its air war in Afghanistan as U.S. Central Command has announced it is shifting military resources from Iraq and Syria back to Afghanistan, where the United States has been fighting for over 16 years in the longest war in U.S. history. U.S. Air Force Major General James Hecker recently said Afghanistan has “become CENTCOM’s main effort.” The news comes after a particularly bloody period in Afghanistan. Despite the spiraling violence, President Trump recently ruled out negotiations with the Taliban during a meeting of members of the United Nations Security Council. We speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll about his new book, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan."]
Coombs, Wayne. "Analysis: The Pharmaceutical Colonization of Appalachia." The Daily Yonder (February 7, 2018)
Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003. ["With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for “decarceration”, and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole."]
Dellums, Ron. "Ron Dellums (1935-2018): Organizing for Peace Forces Us to Challenge All Forms of Injustice." Democracy Now (July 31, 2018) ["Ron Dellums, the legendary politician and anti-war activist who fought against U.S. intervention around the globe, apartheid in South Africa and the Vietnam War, has died at the age of 82. During his nearly three decades in Congress, Dellums opposed every major U.S. military intervention except a bill in 1992 to send troops to Somalia. This legacy began when Dellums pushed for the House to conduct a probe into U.S. war crimes committed in Vietnam shortly after taking office in 1970. When this effort failed, Dellums held his own ad hoc war crimes hearings. The celebrated congressmember once said, “I am not going to back away from being called a radical. If being an advocate of peace, justice, and humanity toward all human beings is radical, then I’m glad to be called a radical.” We remember Ron Dellums’s legacy by airing his 2015 speech at the “Vietnam: The Power of Protest” conference in Washington, D.C., where he was introduced by Democracy Now! co-host Juan González."]
---. "On the Vietnam War, How Hollywood Reframes U.S. Imperialism & More." Democracy Now (May 4, 2018)
---. An Indigenous People's History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2014.
Elba, Mariam. "How Islamophobia was Ingrained in America's Legal System Long Before the War on Terror." The Intercept (May 6, 2018)
Gupta, Arun. "Anthony Bourdain (1956 - 2018)." Jacobin (June 11, 2018) ["Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on."]
Hewitt, Annie. "Why unarmed civilian protection is the best path to sustainable peace." Waging Nonviolence (July 6, 2018) ["Unarmed civilian protection is a proven alternative to armed UN peacekeeping that can save lives, empower communities and secure strong and lasting peace."]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Jauch, Herbert. "How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) Destroyed Africa." News Rescue (May 26, 2009)
Kelley, Robin D.G. "Black Study, Black Struggle." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["The university is not an engine of social transformation. Activism is."]
---. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017) ["Cedric Robinson’s critique anticipated the political currents in contemporary movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter."]
Lederach, John Paul. "The Art of Peace." On Being (July 8, 2010) ["What happens when people transcend violence while living in it? John Paul Lederach has spent three decades mediating peace and change in 25 countries — from Nepal to Colombia and Sierra Leone. He shifts the language and lens of the very notion of conflict resolution. He says, for example, that enduring progress takes root not with large numbers of people, but with relationships between unlikely people."]
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Roberts, Neil. "Race, Injustice, and Philosophy: An Interview with Tommie Shelby." Black Perspectives (January 2, 2018)
Robertson, Campbell. "A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It." The New York Times (April 25, 2018)
Slavery By Another Name (USA:Samuel D. Pollard, 2012: 90 mins) ["A documentary that recounts the many ways in which American slavery persisted as a practice many decades after its supposed abolition."]
Susstein, Cass R. "It Can Happen Here." The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2018) [Published responses to the essay.]
Taibbi, Matt. "If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too: America's Rage-Sickness Trickles Down from the Top." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2018)
Terry, Brandon M. "MLK Now." Boston Review (January 8, 2018)
The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins (Canada: Geoff Bowie, 2001: 76 mins) ["This feature documentary is a portrait of Peter Watkins, an Oscar®-winning British filmmaker who, for the past 4 decades, has proved that films can be made without compromise. With the proliferation of TV channels, documentaries are enjoying an unprecedented boom fuelled by audiences seeking an alternative to infotainment. But now documentary filmmaking, too, finds itself constrained by the imperatives of television. However, there is a rebel resisting this uniformity of the spirit. Pre-eminent among today's documentary filmmakers concerned about this mind-numbing standardization, Peter Watkins has never strayed from either his principles or the cause."]
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism." Democracy Now (August 1, 2018) [I was meditating today on a river bank thinking about the impact of technology (especially SM) on my psyche. I was wondering what it is doing to us as humans and what are the questions we should be asking about that influence/time/impact. Then, later, while I was cleaning my house I listened to this interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan and my thoughts were pushed further and more questions arose. I was first concerned about my own psyche even as I thought about it on a larger social level. Then, because I am preparing for classes, I began to think of a pedagogical exercise. Introduce my classes to Vaidhyanathan's ideas in this interview and initiate a conversation about the impact of social media on how we operate in and understand our world. I'm thinking that I would ask my students to attempt to have a social media fast for an entire week (I would, of course, participate). To keep a record of our successes and failures, to think about how being disconnected in this way affects us, to keep a record of questions and conclusions. With all of that in mind, I would like to hear any responses to this interview and/or this conception of a pedagogical exercise. Also, would others be interested in doing this exercise at the same time - individually or collectively? I know this can come off as hypocritical as I am on SM. I have to honestly admit that when I was engaged in my higher education as the Internet (and later SM when I was a professor) appeared, and later dominated, I was excited (and bought into the rhetoric about its revolutionary possibilities) by the radical possibilities of being able to communicate with people from all corners of the earth (how many of you remember long distance charges on landlines) and to freely access information (including that which is purposely being censored or disappeared). Even as this fantasy dissipated in the wake of corporate colonization of the Internet, I still clung to a belief that if we just used it intelligently, modeled higher thinking, used it to connect to our loved ones, that it could be changed for a better purpose. More and more I am becoming cynical about that possibility..... I think we have to ask some hard questions. I will accept all positions with no judgement and in open discussion (as long as when you make conclusive/factual claims you back them up). Peace.]
Zollman, Florian. "Fake News by Design." Monthly Review (March 7, 2018) ["Mainstream news media reporting and the manufacture of bloodbaths in Libya and Syria"]
Framing the Picture: Perspectives on Islamophobia in American Sniper and The Reluctant Fundamentalist from Matt Marlin on Vimeo.