books

Where's the Outrage?

Rich Yeselson Dissent Magazine
The book under review examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts by workers to resist and the housebreaking of a long-running anti-capitalist ethos from imaginative, frenzied opposition to diffuse, angry, but ultimate accommodation. While a residual 19th century fight-back culture built the CIO and defended the New Deal into the 1960s, it lacked the same emancipatory charge it had earlier, and unions shifted to cautious monitors of the working class

Why the Country Needs a Populist Challenger in the Democratic Primaries

Robert L. Borosage Campaign for America's Future
There are two compelling reasons for a challenge in the Democratic primaries: We need a big debate about the direction of the country, and a growing populist movement would benefit from a populist challenge to Hillary. In fact, there are deep divides between the party establishment and the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. All affirm, finally, that this economy works only for the few and not the many. But after that, the differences are immense.

labor

Populism and the Left: Does UKIP Matter? Can Democracy Be Saved?

Jeremy Gilbert New Left Project
There is no way of addressing the various popular desires which neoliberalism failed to fulfil without a radical programme of democratic reform. Only if publics are genuinely enabled to engage in meaningful, open-ended collective decision-making in a range of spheres can the justifiable sense that things are being done being done to them by people they did not authorise to do them actually be assuaged.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 23, 2014

Portside
Sen. Elizabeth Warren's keynote at the New Populism Conference. John Lennon: Instant Karma. Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. Just Say No ... to the War on Drugs. Drug Tests Must Now Include Females.

What Is the New Populism?

Robert Borosage Campaign for America's Future
This new populism is not something we have to invent. It is already stirring. It is Occupy Wall Street putting Gilded Age inequality at the center of our political debate. It’s exploited low-wage workers protesting fast-food restaurants in over 150 cities. Moral Monday protests against the assault on voting rights and the vulnerable mobilizing thousands in North Carolina and are spreading to Georgia and South Carolina.

Seeds

Jim Hightower Common Dreams
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