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Letters From an American – October 31, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American
In 1866 to support his party before the midterms, President Andrew Johnson denounced Congress as an illegal body, called certain Republican members of Congress traitors who should be hanged, and compared himself both Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ

Tidbits-Oct. 29: Reader Comments: Dolores Huerta – Rest in Power; Worldwide Kiss of Death; Vivek Ramaswamy Vile Attack Ad; France’s Youth Ignite a Massive Revolt; Israeli Elections; “Who Built America?” Launch Event: Rethinking U.S. History Textbook

Portside
Reader Comments: Dolores Huerta - Rest in Power; Worldwide Kiss of Death; Vivek Ramaswamy’s Vile Attack Ad; France’s Youth Ignite a Massive Revolt; Israeli elections; Ox-y-moron; “Who Built America?” Launch Event: Rethinking the U.S. History Textbook

Boxcar to Nowhere

Caroline Fraser The New York Review of Books
American lore about hoboes has sugared over the economic and environmental forces that drove people from their homes and onto the rails and roads in the first place, as a new history lays out.

Tidbits-Oct. 1: Reader Comments: Stopping Sexual Violence; So Many Privileged and Protected Kids; Leftist Party Hopes To Turn Back Germany’s Fascist Wave; Mark Carney Taking Aim at Canada’s Labor Movement; Israel’s Elimination Project; Announcements

Portside
Reader Comments: Stopping Sexual Violence; So many privileged and protected kids; Rising Leftist Party Hopes To Turn Back Germany’s Fascist Wave; Mark Carney Is Taking Aim at Canada’s Labor Movement; Israel’s Elimination Project; Announcements;

The Slave’s Power

Drew Gilpin Faust The New York Review of Books
Two recent books employ inventive approaches to read against the grain of the archive left by those who defended and benefited from human bondage.

The Socialist Labor Unionists Who Took On Samuel Gompers

Philipp Corfman Convergence
Though little remembered now, at the turn of the 20th century Cleveland’s socialists heroically fought Samuel Gompers for leadership of the American Federation of Labor — putting forward a revolutionary alternative to Gompers’s conservative unionism.

Labor Day Lessons: Can CIO Best Practices Aid Union Organizing Today?

Steve Early CounterPunch
In his new book, Unions, Race, and Popular Democracy: Building a Progressive Labor Movement (Cornell), sociology professor Kim Scipes examines parallel efforts to build two CIO unions in the Midwest—via the Steel Workers and Packinghouse Workers.
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