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Left History - Gil Green: Mensch and Mentor

Michael Myerson Monthly Review
The politics Gil fought for in 1934 informed his entire life. For the thirty years following his release from prison, Gil argued against the sectarianism of the Communist Party. Countless times he said, “You can’t have a united front with yourself..

The Enduring Lessons of a New Deal Writers Project

Jon Allsop Columbia Journalism Review
The goal of a new Federal Writers Project would be economic and cultural, putting writers to work capturing stories of the pandemic and this broader moment, while also serving as an archive for the existing work of local newspapers and non-profits.

books

Whitewashing the Great Depression

Sarah Boxes The Atlantic
The preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image. This collective portrait contributed to the misbegotten idea, still current, that the soul of America, the real American type, is rural and white

If Biden Wants to Be Like F.D.R., He Needs the Left

Jamelle Bouie New York Times
Radical agitation helped bring Social Security and much of the New Deal into being. Simply put, an ambitious, active left is one that widens the scope of reform. It’s a left that, even if you disagree with it, helps clear the pathways for action.

Why Does Essential Work Pay So Little... And Cost So Much?

Rebecca Gordon TomDispatch
bus driver waering mask and gloves Students tend to measure fair compensation on two scales. How many years of training and/or dollars of tuition did a worker have to invest to become “qualified” for the job? And how important is that worker’s labor to the rest of society?

labor

How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic

Jane Mayer The New Yorker
The secretive titan behind one of America’s largest poultry companies, who is also one of the President’s top donors, is ruthlessly leveraging the coronavirus crisis—and his vast fortune—to strip workers of protections.

Coalitions of Convenience, Periods of Polarization

Van Gosse Organizing Upgrade
The Democrats are the through-line in U.S. political history, which is the first reason we need to understand them. A second reason is that figuring out the left’s relationship to the Democratic Party is crucial for left strategy today.

books

Monopoly and Its Discontents

Gerald Berk The American Prospect
It's no Marxist critique of class power--would that it were--but Matt Stoller's Goliath, aimed at moving the Democratic Party off dead center, slams all the right enemies in urging the resuscitating of the anti-monopoly tradition of the 20th century
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