Large congratulations for their fine work go to:
Stefano Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, who won the 2017 Paul M. Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association for their book, The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, which was based on their 2014 article in MR magazine, “Capitalism and the Commodification of Salmon”…… | more…

Black Perspectives is hosting an online roundtable on Gerald Horne’s wide-ranging scholarly contributions to African American history and the black radical tradition. “Gerald Horne’s Black Radical History” will assemble a diverse group of scholars to reflect on pressing themes in black history’s global reach. It begins on Monday, June 5, 2017 and concludes on Saturday, June 10, 2017. During this week-long forum, each scholar will address various aspects of Horne’s scholarship, including his books on slavery, Caribbean history, and transpacific black history, along with his biographies, and works on W. E. B. Du Bois.

The forum will feature essays by Yuichiro Onishi (University of Minnesota,

“The English working class ‘did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.’ In frequently quoted lines from the preface to The Making of the English Working Class (1780-1832), E.P. Thompson endeavored to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.’ ¶ More broadly, Thompson sought to elucidate class as a historical phenomenon that involved changing human relationships over time, rather than being a static structure or simple category of analysis….”… | more…

Salvage, a startling new quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters, brings us “Ragpicking Through History: Class Memory, Class Struggle and its Archivists,” an article by Tithi Bhattacharya, in which James Boggs’s The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook receives notice…… | more…

For unions in corporate America, it’s always been hard times. Even in labor’s heyday—the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s—unions had to struggle for everything. Plus, back then organizers risked being tarred as stooges for Moscow. ¶ Historian James Young makes those points clear in his readable new book Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania. But the book offers more than history—it’s instructive, showing how a progressive union can survive in the incredibly hostile and toxic environment of corporate America.… | more…

U.S. immigration has been the subject of furious debates for decades. On one side, politicians and the media talk about aliens and criminals, with calls to “deport them all.” On the other side, some advocates idealize immigrants and gloss over problems associated with immigration. Dialogue becomes possible when we dig deeper and ask tough questions: Why are people in other countries leaving their homes and coming here? What does it mean to be “illegal”? How do immigration raids, prisons, and border walls impact communities? Who suffers and who profits from our current system—and what would happen if we transformed it?… | more…

Tuesday, May 30
5:00-7:00pm
2027 42nd Ave.
Oakland, CA 94601
With Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the helm, teachers, parents, and students have every reason to organize! But what exactly are we up against? Let’s talk about that with Howard Ryan, author of Educational Justice: Teaching and Organizing Against the Corporate Juggernaut, who will offer an analysis and organizing stories that can help our work.… | more…

In his book Big Farms Make Big Flu, the evolutionary ecologist Rob Wallace draws a direct link between the growing threat of zoonotic diseases, and the agricultural practices that neoliberalism has encouraged—notably, the expansion and consolidation of agribusinesses, and the vertical integration of different stages of food production. The food we eat is produced by an ever-shrinking number of ever-growing mass-production units, in which vast herds or flocks of hybrid animals are packed into megabarns, forced to mature in a matter of months, and then slaughtered, processed and transported around the world.… | more…

As the Greek Parliament approves fresh austerity measures and protests rock Athens and Thessaloniki, author Helena Sheehan arrives on the East Coast, just in time to discuss this explosive situation and her new book, The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left. Over the next two weeks, Sheehan will appear in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, then back to NYC for the Left Forum. Here is a short summary of her tour…… | more…

Gerald Horne, historian and author of several books, including Confronting Black Jacobins, Race to Revolution, and the forthcoming The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, talks to RT Moscow about Trump’s hypocrisy vis-à-vis Islam, money, and military arms, and how the president is reaching new lows in mixing business with politics…… | more…