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What to Black People is the National Anthem?

Lisa Brock Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
On Veterans day, the idea of the veteran was touted by POTUS and his supporters as an emotional counterweight to the protesting athletes. Dr. Lisa Brock reminds us that African Americans have historically had a conflictual relationship with US militarism.

Year One: When Black Women Lead

Steven W. Thrasher The New York Review of Books
Black women have long known that America’s destiny is inseparable from how it treats them and the nation ignores this truth at its peril.

50 Years On, Steinbeck’s Classic Still Packs a Punch

Barry Healy Green Left Weekly
This year marks the 50th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s great mythic novel of alienation under US capitalism, Of Mice and Men. The story is of lonesome labourers, reeling from the Great Depression, wandering from farm to farm seeking respite from their endless oppression.

The Death of Christianity in the U.S.

Miguel de la Torre Baptist News Global
As a young man, I walked down the sawdust aisle at a Southern Baptist church and gave my heart to Jesus. But I can no longer allow my name to be tarnished by that political party masquerading as Christian.

Yanis Varoufakis’s Doomed Fight Against Austerity

Emmett Rensin The New Republic
This volume is an insider's account of Greece's recent struggle to preserve the general welfare of its people in the fact of the belt-tighening demands of the managers of the international financial system. Reviewer Rensin offers an assessment.

Racism May Have Gotten Us Into This Mess, But Identity Politics Can’t Get Us Out

Briahna Joy Gray New York Magazine
It’s often argued that centering economics means abandoning racial or other identity groups that have fought hard for well-deserved political leverage. But political messaging is not a zero-sum game. The question is not “identity politics or economic justice,” but how to adopt a complementary union of the two.

Iowa Workers Defy Attempt to Weaken Their Unions

Bill Knight Pekin Daily Times
Under a new anti-union law, public-sector unions must re-certify each time they’re scheduled to bargain new contracts, every two or three years. Right-wing backers of the law hoped it would weaken unions by forcing them to devote time and resources to the recertification process and lead workers to drop their membership. But the members of the state's 468 union locals voted overwhelmingly to stick with their union.

Poison Ivies

Chris Lehmann The Baffler
The Paradise Papers, Elite Universities, Endowments, Tax Avoidance, and The Engines of Inequality