Race

No Image

Democracy, Green Party, National Politics, occupy, peace, political corruption, Race, Social Justice, Socialism March 27, 2015

Eugene Puryear: A Revolutionary Perspective on Why the Left Should Engage in Electoral Politics

Black Agenda Report by Marsha Coleman March 25, 2015 “Building political instruments that people most oppressed by this system can believe in is a precondition for actual change.” Eugene Puryear, a 29 year-old African-American activist, was the vice presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the 2008 election. He recently ran for an At-Large seat in the DC Council with the D.C. Statehood Green Party. Puryear is the National Organizer of the anti-war ANSWER coalition and has helped organize large protests against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Puryear and the ANSWER coalition were involved in the…

No Image

Democracy, National Politics, Race February 3, 2015

Astigmatism Afflicts Our Nations Racial Vision

by Asa Gordon “The practical construction of American life is a convention against us. Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may. Examples are painfully abundant ” ~ Frederick Douglass It is painfully abundant in the contemporary examples: #HandsUpDontShoot; #ICantBreathe; and #BlackLivesMatter. The problem is that there has evolved a consensus focus of Liberal and conservative pundits on a distorted vision that our broken judicial system does not value the view that “Black Lives Matter”. That astigmatized consensus is blind to our judicial systems’ historical legacy that systematically devalues the testimony of…

No Image

Climate Change, Environment, Fracking, Labor, New York, Race, Social Justice January 19, 2015

A Green State of State Message on MLK Day

by Howie Hawkins New York Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address comes as we are celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday. Unfortunately, half a century after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the dream of equality and prosperity for all remains unrealized. Income inequality in New York is the highest in the nation, with one-sixth of New Yorkers living below the poverty line. In upstate cities, more than half of all children live in poverty. New York has the most segregated housing and schools in the country, worse than Mississippi or Alabama. More than a million New Yorkers…

Democracy, National Politics, Race January 20, 2014

The Martin Luther King, Jr. You May Not Know

More than a Civil Rights Leader Dissident Voice by Brian J. Trautman January 20th, 2014 Most Americans know Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of the twentieth century’s most revered voices for racial equality, the charismatic leader of the American Civil Rights movement, who gave the famous “I Have A Dream“ speech. Perhaps they even know a thing or two about his role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Birmingham Campaign. This knowledge by and large derives from compulsory education and mainstream media. It is significantly less likely, however, that very many Americans know much at all,…

National Politics, Race July 15, 2013

The Zimmerman Verdict

by Phil Huckelberry There’s a man free in Florida today. He’s a stupid man, a racist, a product of the culture which surrounds him, a culture which made him feel scared by a young black man and yet emboldened by a small black gun. If all of the people who are furious about one verdict would step back and redirect their energy toward confronting  the culture, we would all be better off. But it sure feels like that’s too hard. It’s a lot easier to decry racism generally without confronting one’s own tendencies. It’s a lot easier to “blame Florida” as though…