By Cliff DuRand, Truthout — Today in the US, as well as globally, we find ourselves in multiple reinforcing crises. There is a crisis of legitimacy in established institutions ranging from Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, to the media, the criminal legal system, organized religion, Wall Street banks and corporations. Along with this, there is a loss of belief in social mobility and fairness. The neoliberal ideology that has dominated…
By Professor Sir Hilary Beckles — Caribbean Prime Ministers witnessed it first-hand. They were gathered in England as a Commonwealth when Prime Minister May tried to take the sails out of the Windrush. They spoke of the crime of citizenship denied; they demanded justice for all West Indians. Prime Minister Holness spoke to the press and held the centre for the Caribbean. There was vexation in his eyes but his…
The white Southern press played a role in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to…
CounterSpin interview with Peggy Case on water rights. ‘People Have to Strengthen the Laws Protecting the Water.’ Janine Jackson interviewed Peggy Case about Michigan water rights for the April 13,…
By A.T. McWilliams — While visiting the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — a hallowed and harrowing enshrinement bearing the names of over 4,000 black people lynched in the Jim Crow South — I was reminded of stories my grandparents told me as a child. Stories of my great-grandfather, once chased by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback before swimming to safety, preferring possible death by drowning…
Alicia Grandey — The arrests of two black men who were waiting for a friend at a Starbucks in Philadelphia have raised questions about how race determines how customers are treated. But does race also affect how the employees are treated within the service industry? Prior research shows that black workers in people-oriented occupations – health care, service and sales – are rated lower by customers and supervisors than are white workers, even when…
By Aryeh Bernstein — Introduction: It has been two-and-a-half years since Ta-Nehisi Coates published “The Case for Reparations,” his Polk Award-winning masterpiece, in The Atlantic. The article makes a detailed and riveting case for the principled justice of reparations payments to Black Americans by the American government for the accrued, exacerbated, and lingering damage of slavery and subsequent manifestations of national plunder of Black Americans, such as Jim Crow laws in the South, and structural…
How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people. By Ed Pilkington in Montgomery, Alabama — Vanessa Croft was driving home after work in Gadsden, Alabama, last month when…
Ian Bremmer sees Trump’s victory, the rise of the far-right in Europe, and more as a backlash to globalism—and he thinks it’s going to get worse. By Jeet Heer —…
A new museum and lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, constitute a watershed moment in the way America remembers its racist past. By Caleb Gayle — When it comes to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, there are two kinds of monuments in America. There are memorials that seek to honor this country’s fitful march toward civil rights. Then there are the statues of generals and politicians—as well as the…
Scholars are mapping the international precursors of Nazism. By Alex Ross — “History teaches, but has no pupils,” the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote. That line comes to mind when I browse in the history section of a bookstore. An adage in publishing is that you can never go wrong with books about Lincoln, Hitler, and dogs; an alternative version names golfing, Nazis, and cats. In Germany, it’s said that…
By Nat Winthrop — As Cuban President Raúl Castro stepped down from office today, Cuba is expected to enter a period of dramatic change. Eager to witness the final days…