Cattle barons carved up Texas with barbed wire in the late 19th century, separating poor farmers and landless cowboys from vital resources for their struggling cattle herds. So the cowboys formed fence-cutting gangs to preserve the open range.
While industrial capitalism got rid of the landlord class, capitalism still had economic rent, but instead of being paid to the landlord class, it is now paid to the banks in the form of interest.
Throughout the United States, racial separation remains a common feature of collective life. The consequences are significant for left political organizing aimed at building a multiracial working-class majority.
When objectivity is impossible, and other media mishugas
A century after violent efforts to suppress resistance to class exploitation, the nation has learned to think about people and the economy with a language that favors the wealthy and elides issues of power.
Dalit activist and writer Gogu Shyamala’s debut collection of short stories, Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But . . . , explores caste, tradition, and exploitation in contemporary India without romanticism.
Soul City was a boondoggle—not a story of lost or forgotten roads tragically not taken.
The poor are what Dr. King once called “a new and unsettling force” capable of transforming “our complacent national life.”
Throughout U.S. history, class has been bound up with other forms of oppression—so the disenfranchisement of Black men after Reconstruction decisively shifted class relations.
The stories in Standing Up are linked thematically and appear in chronological order, beginning with 1970. For those of us who have similarly spent time as organizers, the book feels like an anthropological field trip into the past.
Spread the word