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Richard Walker, Pictures of a Gone City in SF Chronicle, SF Commonwealth Club

"The Bay Area has gone through an astonishing growth spurt in the 2010s, with the region’s gross domestic product rising by nearly 50 percent from $323 billion in 2009 to $470 billion in 2016. The Bay Area is the unrivaled world leader in information technology, with the biggest concentration of firms, startups and risk capital. Silicon Valley now stretches around the bay and is home to the first trillion-dollar corporation, Apple, and corporate behemoths such as Google (Alphabet), Facebook and Salesforce....So what could be wrong? Quite a lot, it turns out.

Political paralysis: The Bay Area tradition of progressive politics has frayed badly. Too many of the elite are self-satisfied, too many techies are naive libertarians, and too many activists end up in Portland, Ore. A shabby record of kowtowing to the tech industry puts local politicians in a poor position to lead the country forward. The Bay Area’s blue tilt is now mostly attributable to the new working class of color, which wants basic needs met, such as good education, health care and transit.

This coffee table book is not ashamed of its 43 abortion stories.

"The expectation of silence around abortion isn’t just interpersonal, it’s cultural. Collectively, we need art to help us get comfortable with the reality of complex issues like abortion—it’s easy to act like something isn’t happening when it’s not happening in films, on television, in music.

I think we should be making and engaging with all sorts of creative work about abortion, and of course fashion is part of that. It has been since the beginning. The way I see it, the conversation about abortion is starting to percolate to the surface in all kinds of ways, and stuff like abortion positive t-shirts are a part of the overall change.

It might seem too radical for some people; that’s fine, we will keep doing it until it’s not considered radical. Culture doesn’t just stay in a perpetual state of shock about things like this. We evolve. Seeing your first abortion dress is going to shock you like your first gay pride parade is going to shock you."—Brie Ripley, KUOW.org

The Global Imagination of 1968 in The San Francisco Bay View, Foreword

"Political organizing must be directly in the interest of the people, and the issues involved must be organically linked to the oppressed community. And Comrade George Katsiaficas, in his latest book, called “The Global Imagination of 1968: Revolution and Counterrevolution,” provides an answer to the many questions our revolutionary movement is struggling with every day.

Movement people must start reading the great works from the past that give us the first steps of understanding how we can set this oppressive and neo-liberal world on fire. One of the good things about the book “1968” is how it delineates for 21st century revolutionaries the international composition of revolutionary activity in every country on the planet.

It shows why this struggle, to be successful, must be international in scope and range..."—Shaka Zulu, San Francisco Bay View

The right wing is not a monolithic force - Insurgent Supremacists in Truthout

No, the right wing is not a monolithic force. One of the key points Matthew N. Lyons details in his book Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire is that the right wing is composed of groups with different historical roots. Trump, Lyons argues in this interview, is a right-wing populist....To be clear, Trump isn’t just more of the same. He builds on his predecessors (Republican and Democrat), but he is qualitatively worse than them. Trump is accelerating the decline of the United States’ liberal-pluralist system (often mislabeled “democracy”), and his rise has helped to mobilize popular forces that have the potential to turn toward more insurgent forms of right-wing politics. In this situation, it’s important for leftists to join with others in opposing the growth of repression, demonization and supremacist violence. At the same time, it’s also important for us to strengthen and amplify our own critiques of the established order, our own visions of radical change — and not let far rightists present themselves as the only real opposition force.

Read more
Buy Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire

Upcoming Events

Thursday, Sep 27

Ward Churchill, Matt Meyer, Matthew Lyons, Jai Sen, & more @ PJSA Conference in Philadelphia, PA

Friday, Sep 28

Michelle Cruz Gonzales (The Spitboy Rule) @ Creative Mornings in Oakland, CA

Friday, Sep 28

George Katsiaficas & PM Press @ 1968 Revisisted in San Francisco, CA

PM Press @ Baltimore Book Festival in Baltimore, MD

Saturday, Sep 29

Symbols of Resistance A Tribute to the Martyrs of the Chican@ Movement screening @ New York, NY

Sunday, Sep 30

Silvia Federici (Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women) @ Brooklyn, NY

Saturday, Oct 06

PM Press @ 924 Gilman Zine Fest in Berkeley, CA

PM Press @ Teaching for Social Justice in San Francisco, CA

Latest Blog Entries

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French Labor's Historical Defeat; U.S. Teachers' Surprising Victories Richard Greeman
As the French get ready for the “rentrée” – the annual back-to-school/back-to-work day following the August vacation – social peace appears to reign in the land.

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By Jon Curley, New Jersey Institute of Technology. A requiem for Sacco and Vanzetti on the ninety-first anniversary of their execution in Cambridge, MA on Wednesday, August 22nd.

The Guardian hack, lies and distortions Leon Rosselson
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How One Woman Became an Activist With the Hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion j. stephanie pasvankias
Founder Amelia Bonow started a movement with just one post.

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Sankara Gabriel Kuhn
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Workers of the World Indeed Gabriel Kuhn
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Antiimperialist Comeback Gabriel Kuhn
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'1968' and all that: Left legacies and the counter culture of remembrance j. stephanie pasvankias
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Shakespeare in the Age of the Tyrant JJ Amaworo Wilson
Stephen Greenblatt's new book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power, is a timely tome. As Greenblatt well knows, we're living in an age of ruthless strongmen. The world's recent and lamentable swing to the right is embodied by all-powerful authoritarians.

Working Class Heroes project Mat Callahan
Dear Friends: Two important items this month. First, progress with Songs of Slavery and Emancipation. Second, progress with a new project: Working Class Heroes.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF OUTRAGE: MOHAMMAD HAMAD AND HOPE Susie Day
I wanted to talk to Mohammad Hamad because, in the midst celebrating Gay Pride, it may be time to look at some of our prejudices....

TRUMP, LYNCH, AND WHO WE CALL ANIMALS: A SAFETY ALERT Susie Day
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In March 1970, Jean Genet, the radical French author, lifelong rebel and supporter of deviant causes, began touring US college campuses known for their activism with members of the Black Panther Party, hoping to win support for the Black Panthe...

Human Flow: a film by Ai WeiWei JJ Amaworo Wilson
For a film with ‘flow’ in its title, the only surprise in this superlative documentary is that the most powerful images are those of stillness. An old refugee woman sits incongruously on a bench in the middle of nowhere. A young man...

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In my last blog I suggested that Israel’s staunch supporters are infected with a brain disease called Zionusitis. It was, of course, a joke. Or maybe it wasn’t. Since then, there has been another enactment of the absurdist farce ca...

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New book portrays a short-lived organization of “council communists, left radicals, syndicalists, and anarchists” in post-World War I Austria.

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Only a couple of years ago, the New York State Parole Board was a draconian gimmick to keep people in prison – regardless of how they had grown and changed over their years inside – until they died of systemic abuse or neglect or, if t...

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The dynamic power of so many prison memoirs, acounts, and anecdotes is paradoxically reliant on the monotony and stasis of the prison environment. The fertile conscience keeps mobile despite the body forced to be stuck and remote.

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