A division exists within the leaderless communities at the heart of the Occupy protests. I would describe this as a split between Social Democratic Anarchists and Communist Anarchists. I use these two terms provocatively, knowing that most of those I refer to would not describe themselves as either. Neither the terms Social Democrat or Communist [...]
History aficionados will find “Conquistadora” a fascinating text with detailed views of a Puerto Rican sugar cane plantation in the mid-19th century. By Rafael Ocasio Esmeralda Santiago was born in the working-class neighborhood of Villa Palmeras, in Santurce, in the outskirts of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1948. In 1961, when she was barely a teenager, she arrived [...]
“Jam packed with shocking statistics and revealing interviews with interns and those that employ and coordinate them, “Intern Nation” provides an inside view into the topic and a welcome break from the hordes of self-help books proclaiming the value of an unpaid internship.” By Ben Lear It is clear that the economy has changed dramatically [...]
“A proposal for a better understanding of the global justice movement.” Geoffrey Pleyers, author of “Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age”, writes: I usually really appreciate your website and its articles. As you may imagine, I’m quite disappointed with the review of “Alter-Globalization” that was published on October 3. There is no doubt that [...]
“I felt we needed a language that explained the effects of the War on Drugs and placed them within the broader political culture of the United States, while also enabling comparison between countries, regions or even local contexts.” By Nicki Lisa Cole William Garriott is an assistant professor in Justice Studies and Anthropology at James [...]
Union membership doesn’t increase much due to patient organizing work, as sociologist Dan Clawson explained in “The Next Upsurge : Labor and the New Social Movements”, published in 2003. Instead, it shoots up during upsurges of strike activity, and then levels off. According to Clawson, in the 1980s and ’90s, unions had slowly developed new [...]
Scholarship that fails to analyze the motivations and strategies of most actors in a social movement and instead exalts a group of self-proclaimed “experts,” who the author readily admits were alternately dismissed or hated as charlatans by a broad swath of the movement, does not provide an account that is honest to the history [...]
Occupy Wall Street’s first “official” statement (the quotation marks are theirs) needs work. After about two paragraphs of generic boilerplate (“the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members”) we arrive at the key sentiment: “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, [...]
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