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Dead Young Men: Mississippi, Israel, Palestine

Rabbi Arthur Waskow The Shalom Center
Even when change is still necessary, even when injustice still continues, there can be an upward spiral, growing from past transformations into future ones.

Ruby Dee, Leftist Activist

Jackie DiSalvo The Indypendent
Ruby and Ossie were extraordinarily generous and bold, lending their celebrity to a host of leftist causes and holding affiliations with a variety of groups including some associated with the demonized CP. They fought Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt and supported its victims, organized to restore Paul Robeson's passport, rallied for the Rosenbergs, and Che Guevara. While the media celebrates her life as an actress, they don't acknowledge the obstacles she faced.

Waiting for SCOTUS

Rob Hunter Jacobin
In the liberal political imagination, the Supreme Court is an institution that must vindicate principles rather than practice politics. As the philosopher Richard Rorty once acknowledged, liberals “turn to the judiciary as the only political institution for which we can still feel something like awe.

Labor in History: Mobtown and the Stirring of America’s Unions

Bruce Vail Working In These Times
The six-week-long "Great Railroad Strike" involved an estimated 100,000 workers in more than a dozen states, and succeeded in paralyzing much of the nation’s transportation system. The strike was brutally crushed by state and federal troops with more than 100 dead and thousands injured. The strike itself may have failed to achieve the B&O employees’ original goal of wage restoration, but it stimulated the growth of unions, particularly among rail workers.

Seeking Justice—or At Least the Truth—for ‘Comfort Women’

Christine Ahn and Foreign Policy In Focus The Nation
Not only has Japan failed to compensate the surviving comfort women, but Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has led a nationalist campaign to adamantly deny Japan’s shameful criminal past, has revised history textbooks that previously contained information about Japan’s military sex slaves and is also threatening to revise the Kono Statement.