Joseph Walzer recently interviewed Dawson Barrett on his new book, The Defiant: Protest Movements in Post-Liberal America, a book that looks at the period from 1980 to the present through the lens of dissent—through the picket lines, protest marches, and sit-ins that are often overlooked.
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Much has been made in the recent campaign about the alienation of working-class whites from the Democratic Party. Michael Pierce shows this is a path long traveled; Bill Clinton undermined the budding multi-racial labor coalition in 1970s Arkansas.
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The Guardian‘s West Coast bureau chief paid a quick visit to McDowell County, West Virginia in October to film a video for the news organization’s website titled “Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Trump.”
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The rise of Virginia to national political prominence has been a long time coming. Well before the centrist Tim Kaine was given the nod to become Hillary Clinton’s vice president, Virginia Democrats had been busy spearheading the abandonment of anything resembling a New Deal, Great society commitment to social democracy.
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Prof. James N. Gregory has performed a real service with his “Radicals in the Democratic Party, from Upton Sinclair to Bernie Sanders” (re-posted to Labor Online August 4) It provides an opportunity to explore what he raised—and chose not to raise—with reference to the current election.
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On May 11, more than two thirds of senators in Brazil voted to advance impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) for state accounting irregularities. The ex-Vice-President, Michel Temer, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), has now assumed the Presidency temporarily for up to 180 days while the Senate investigates the charges.
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Ten years ago, one of the most radical unions in the hemisphere, the Sección XXII of Mexico’s National Education Workers’ Union (SNTE), led a vibrant movement against the state governor’s heavy-handed rule in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The demonstrations, known to many as the “Oaxaca Commune,” featured six months of mass marches, public encampments, and neighborhood barricades.
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