Owen Thompson, Author at Toward Freedom

The American Harvest Film and The “Pro-Immigration”, Anti-Worker Argument

Owen Thompson July 30, 2008 Owen Thompson

A few weeks ago, I attended the premiere of "American Harvest," a new documentary by an independent Rochester, New York, filmmaker. The promotional materials for the film promised viewers an "even-handed," "non-political" look at the agricultural industry in the United States, with an emphasis on the role played by immigration. What we got instead was a naïve, incomplete, and shamefully ignorant portrait of agriculture in the United States-with the same skewed approach to the immigration question that has been all too popular in recent years.

Why Are There So Many Radicals in New Orleans?

Owen Thompson March 1, 2006 Owen Thompson

In my two weeks volunteering with the anarchist-friendly Common Ground Collective this past January, I met a lot of people who considered themselves progressives, radicals, and/or anarchists, enough to make it clear that a lot of them saw their sociopolitical views as having some connection to their volunteer work in New Orleans. That work consisted (and consists, as Common Ground will continue to drawn in hundreds and maybe thousands of new and returning volunteers in the coming months) mostly of gutting houses for residents of the devastated Ninth Ward and other impoverished areas, but also of providing medical services, distributing supplies (food, clothing, hygienic products, cleaning supplies, etc.), and doing outreach in an attempt to help the community organize its response to the city's controversial rebuilding plan.