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This Week in People’s History, June 20 . . .

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President Reagan giving a speech about smuggling arms to the Contras
CIA impunity in 1988. U.S. imperialism's baby steps in 1898. Free speech for Nazis in 1978. U.S. responsibility for Vietnam War in 1971. Smallpox-infected presents in 1763. Voting wrongs, not rights, in 2013. Haymarket prisoners pardoned in 1893.

Of Potato Latkes and Pedagogy

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall Perspectives on History
The process of examining recipes and cooking instills concepts more deeply than traditional modes of assessment; learning about Jewish women just by reading texts would be particularly ahistorical.

What Juneteenth Looks Like for Prisoners

Antoine Davis and Darrell Jackson Waging Nonviolence
As Black men in prison, we live the tension between celebrating the abolition of slavery and struggling inside the system that replaced it.

Tidbits - July 3, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Detroit denied water access; Whither the Socialist Left? Round 2; Dead Young Men: Mississippi, Israel, Palestine; Music Changes the Way You Think; Whole Foods Busts Unions; SCOTUS; Harris v. Quinn; Education - Obama's Failed Approach; Karl Marx Is Making a Comeback; Verify Nuclear Weapons-With Math; Ruby Dee; Friday Nite Videos

Is There a Ma Joad for the Piketty Era?

Katie Baker Daily Beast
In the 75 years since novelist John Steinbeck published his masterpiece about the Okie migration, the towering Ma Joad has faded from archetype to anachronism. Ever since Steinbeck published his opus on the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants in 1939, readers have warmed to Ma as a paragon of folksy integrity - "an unforgettably vigorous figure, like Mother Courage without the corruption or rapacity," - and, more recently, praised her as a feminist icon...

Walter Dean Myers, Children's Author, Dies at 76

Felicia R. Lee The New York Times
Walter Dean Myers was lauded for his work, which often centered on young black people struggling in tough environments. Myers, a best-selling children's book author whose crystalline prose often depicted the gritty lives of young people, died on Tuesday in Manhattan.