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Republicans Have a Secret Weapon in the Midterms: Voter Suppression

By Editors' Choice

After losing in 2012, the GOP enacted the harshest limits on voting since Jim Crow. It could make the difference this year from Florida to North Dakota. By Jay Michaelson, Daily Beast — With Democrats furious over Donald Trump, and many Republicans furious over the treatment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the 2018 elections are likely to see the highest turnout of midterm voters in recent history. But those voters will be confronted by…

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Senator Lindsey Graham berating Democratic colleagues in defense of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, September 27, 2018.

White Men Have Good Reason to Be Scared

By Commentaries/Opinions

We’re coming for their power. By Kai Wright, The Nation — Hell hath no fury like a white man scorned. If you take nothing else from the Senate’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, take that much. Know that the angry hysterics of Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch were a continuation of the long, howling tantrum that began when Donald Trump descended from his tower in 2015. It is…

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William F. Buckley, Jr., Conservative Party candidate running for the office of Mayor of New York City, is shown outside the Overseas Press Club on Oct. 20, 1965. Buckley and his National Review magazine helped shape conservatives' self-conception of their racial positions.

Conservatives’ self-delusion on race

By Commentaries/Opinions

How the right created the illusion of colorblindness. By Joshua Tait, The Washingtion Post — Americans are at an impasse in their understanding of racism today. The activist slogan “Black Lives Matter” is met by the rejoinder “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protest about racial injustice is perceived only as an anti-American blast. President Trump tells reporters he is “the least racist person” they will…

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Sketch of a flag used by the rebel slaves

Two hundred years since the heroic Barbados slave rebellion

By Reparations

By Christian Høgsbjerg, The Socialist Worker — April 2016 marks the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, a heroic uprising against the British Empire in its oldest colonial territory. But this month also marks the bicentenary of an earlier and less well known heroic “Easter rising” against the brutality of imperial domination in another longstanding British colony. This took place in Barbados in 1816, where it has come to…

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19th Century illustration of British massacres in India

An empire bathed in blood: when Britannia ruled the waves

By Reparations

In a desperate bid to head off a Scottish Yes vote, David Cameron evoked a mythical British Empire that had given democracy to the poor and freedom to the slaves. Here Ken Olende looks back at what life was really like when Britannia ruled the waves. By The Socialist Worker — The British Empire was the largest ever known. It covered a quarter of the world’s land mass and ruled…

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Engraving of the women pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read by Benjamin Cole, circa 1724

Motley mutinies, popular pirates and slave revolts at sea

By Reparations

Historian Marcus Rediker spoke to Ken Olende about the struggles that took place aboard the ships of early capitalism. By The Socialist Worker — The first strike wasn’t in a factory or an office. It wasn’t even on land. US historian Marcus Rediker explains how sailors in England fought against a wage cut in 1768. “They went from ship to ship and took down the sails. That’s called striking the sails….

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John Warner Barber’s 1840 engraving of the rebellion. Though the violence of the imagery upset abolitionists, it is sympathetic to the rebels. The Africans are individualised as the artist had met and drawn them in New Haven prison. Cinque is on the left with a raised machete. The cabin boy Antonio is keeping out of the fight in the rigging on the far left, as he did in the real rebellion. The cook’s body can be seen in the background.

‘I’d rather die than be a white man’s slave’ – the story of the Amistad Rebellion

By Reparations

The Amistad Rebellion tells the story of a group of slaves who rose up. Ken Olende looks at a revolt that caught the imagination of poor people everywhere—and showed slaves could win By The Socialist Worker — In July 1839 the Amistad set sail from Havana in Cuba. It was carrying 49 men and four young children, slaves recently bought in West Africa. After four days at sea the slaves…

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