Story Archives - Page 562 of 662

To all activists now and in the future

Ashley Lucas February 27, 2006 Ashley Lucas

I woke up this morning in my grandmother’s house in the middle of the farmlands of rural west Texas. I drove alone through miles of cotton fields and watched the men on John Deere tractors harvesting this year’s crop. They carve intricate patterns in the red earth as they strip the white puffs of cotton. Miles of these fields surround the prison where my father is being held. He can see little else beyond the fences and concertina wire, so the planting and harvesting of the fields provide some of the only non-prison activity in view. read more

Jarhead Nation

Jerry Lembcke February 23, 2006 Jerry Lembcke

Commenting on films nominated for this year's Academy Awards on his February 5, 2006 show, Chris Matthews noted that films are important for what they say about the times in which they are made. For example, Good Night and Good Luck, he said, is about the current Bush Administration's attempts to suppress the truth of governmental malfeasance, even though the film is set in the McCarthyite climate of the 1950s. Munich, he observed, speaks to our on-going anxiety about national security even though its story is about the Olympic Games of 1972 and the events that followed.

21st Century Slaves

Eric Tsetsi February 22, 2006 Eric Tsetsi

In America there are disturbing trends emerging, which highlight the expanding inequality and shrinking class mobility of the country's people. Poverty has been steadily increasing since the turn of the century. Household income has decreased. Inflation consistently outpaces compensation gains; simultaneously, productivity expectations are increasing. Manufacturing and high tech jobs continue to go overseas and the prison population has reached its highest level in U.S. history.

Another Way Called Venezuela

Juan Carlos Vallejo February 21, 2006 Juan Carlos Vallejo

I thought that I would die without living and knowing a revolution. I came late to the Cuban Revolution, since I was born a few years after it. I witnessed the ephemeral triumph and then the drowning in blood and fire, by the government of Ronald Reagan and his "contras," of the Sandinista Revolution. I had wanted, like John Reed, to be in the middle of the explosion of the great revolutions.

WTO vs. Europe: Less – and Also More – Than it Seems

Brian Tokar February 20, 2006 Brian Tokar

In the late Spring of 2003, amidst the political fallout of "Old Europe's" refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threw down a gauntlet that threatened to permanently aggravate transatlantic hostilities. As a political favor to its agribusiness allies in the Midwestern farm belt, the administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking to overturn Europe's de facto five-year moratorium on approvals of new genetically engineered crop varieties. The governments of Argentina and Canada also signed on to the complaint; together these three countries grow roughly 80 percent of the world's genetically engineered crops.

Double Lives: The Dilemma of Education and Work under Capitalism

Matt Dineen February 16, 2006 Matt Dineen

"Whatever you do, just don't get stuck in a dead-end job." These words had a powerful effect on me and have occupied my consciousness over the past seven years. It was the summer after my high school graduation and this advice was given to me while I was working in the mechanized bakery of a large grocery store chain. My coworker had been there for over 20 years and now, in the midst of back problems and middle-age, she was unhappy with her life and urged me not to make the same mistake.