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June 30, 2022

Victory for Colombia’s Left, but the Fight is Just Beginning

In a historic outcome, Gustavo Petro, a self-declared socialist and former guerrilla, has been elected president of Colombia. After decades of bloody repression against the left, Petro is considered to be Colombia’s “first leftist president.” While the mainstream press is rushing to stoke fears of Petro as a threat to democracy in Colombia, some on the Left are eager to hail the victory as a model for an electoral path to power for “left populism” and a vindication of the politics of “pink tide” social democracy.

May 30, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

The Revolutionary Passion of Those Who Suffer Most

Most people know who Karl Marx was, at least to one extent or another. Remarkably and, yet also unsurprisingly, it’s Jenny Westphalen (aka Jenny Marx) whose understanding of the world we desperately need right now. The sensuous materialism she briefly expressed in her letters to husband Karl illuminates a path of hopeful imminent communal revolution.

Roughly a year after they married and less than a month after the birth of their first child, Karl unfortunately left Jenny for Paris to cosplay as revolutionary less than three years after completing his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Awaiting him was a meagerly paying job as an agitational socialist journalist. In June of 1844, less than a month after he left, she wrote to him that her “heart is yearning” and for even just “a few words to tell me that you are well and are longing for me a little.”

May 23, 2022

by Diana Sierra Becerra

Toxic Tears: White Women’s Power in Nonprofits

My first political lesson was at age five. I had recently migrated to the United States, when I witnessed a white woman refuse my mother a glass of water as she cleaned her home. I will never forget how my mother’s hands smelled of bleach or the many times she called me sobbing while locked inside her employer’s bathroom. My experiences as a former undocumented immigrant and survivor of domestic violence led me to work in the immigrant rights and labor movement.

May 13, 2022

by Norell Martinez

Brujas and the Long Struggle for Reproductive Justice

Since the leaked document that surfaced last week of the Supreme Court Justice’s vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, many have rightfully declared that a ban on abortion will not stop people from having abortions. Indeed, history has shown that even under the most violent and oppressive conditions, before modern technology existed, women had knowledge of the reproductive body, of herbs, plants, and other methods to induce abortion and prevent pregnancy. Across cultures and communities, mainly women were the keepers of this knowledge, specialists in the field, whose gifts provided reproductive health services to women in their community. They were midwives, nurses and counselors.

April 17, 2022

by Gianpaolo Contestabile

Una Caravana Zapatista Contra el Despojo del Agua: las luchas de los pueblos unidos contra la guerra del capital

Una caravana indígena, campesina y popular recorre México. En cada etapa, desde la sierra hasta la costa, desde las montañas hasta los suburbios urbanos, le dan la bienvenida comunidades en resistencia quienes con el puño en alto la saludan gritando “el agua no se vende, se ama y se defiende”. En algunos territorios se detienen a hablar con unos pocos campesinos y trabajadoras que luchan contra un basurero contaminante, una granja intensiva o el avance de la agroindustria, en otras comunidades la acogida es ofrecida por cientos de personas organizadas según el principio neozapatista de “mandar obedeciendo”.

March 29, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

Reactionary Theater of the Absurd

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is in the midst of confirmation hearings to become the next Supreme Court justice. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman on the Supreme Court. The liberal press is already hailing her nomination as a triumph, while Republicans in the Senate are frothing at the mouth at the chance to publicly attack her. The whole charade is a farcical exercise, which only serves the interests of both capitalist parties.
Out of the judges linked with the nomination, Ketanji Brown Jackson is thought to be one of the most progressive. Her politics, in addition to being a black woman, makes her a perfect target for Republicans eager to demonstrate their right wing bona fides to their reactionary base.

March 22, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

Left Conformity to the Settler Cult

In his book, Fascism: Theory and History, lawyer and historian David Renton outlined what he called “the anti-fascist wager.” It was a gamble the German left made against Hitler, the extent to which the social democratic (SPD) and communist (KPD) parties accurately perceived the uniquely dangerous threat the Nazi’s posed. This is like the gamble we make within settler Amerikkka against resurgent fascism today. Lives hang in the balance, which is why we start with the above quote from an April 2020 interview Noam Chomsky did with Medhi Hasan, who was then still at The Intercept.

March 15, 2022

by Justin Akers Chacón

Empire at Ground Zero in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the quickening of a regionwide war assemblage presents itself in classical Euro-Atlantic form as the dress rehearsal for the next world war. The incessant building up of the stage and setting that counters the rival imperial houses, the alignment or realignments of supporting actors and bit players, and the clichéd tonalities of righteousness and evil; all giving way to the thunderous violence of death and destruction in an enlarging war theater.

February 12, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

Moving Beyond Settler Colonialism to Oppose Resurgent Fascism in Ameri(kkk)a

Over a year has passed since the January 6th insurrection in DC and, sadly, it’s unclear what we’ve learned. Shortly after that multifaceted coup attempt, sociologist Waldon Bello warned us as to what was coming. Reflecting on his own experiences of US-backed fascism in Chile and the Philippines, he pointed to their source. “America Has Entered the Weimar Era,” he said, that the insurrection “underlies the face of crises to come.”

Fast forward to today; Newsweek warns of the potential for a violent coup come 2024. Generals in the military warn of their own internal civil war, so their ability to “Choose Democracy,” like many hoped in the case that Trump refused to leave, is now off the table. Despite the chorus of warnings, our supposed left leadership chooses to put their heads in the sand. Instead, we must place revolution back on the table, one at the intersection of Clara Zetkin and Ella Baker.

February 2, 2022

by Richard Velázquez Perales

Recovering Radical Tejas: Mexican revolutionaries against settler-colonial capitalism

Racist populations have lived in Texas (or Tejas as it was originally named when part of Mexico) since the onset of Spanish colonization, only to escalate in intensity during Anglo colonization. This reality has indisputably remained the unfortunate reality for non-white Texans. The state continues to be controlled and dominated by a very reactionary minority of people whose actions reverberate across the country. I would argue that Texas is now the vanguard of the settler colonial project. This reality is not new but a continuity from the period studied in this project. The goal is to demonstrate that a radical alternative has been imagined, debated, and that many people have been moved to action for this better world for over a hundred years regardless of the state’s hostility.