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This article features a conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield, discussing her recent work and her growing concern for ecological issues. The author shares their interest in Zen Buddhism and their personal visit to Hirshfield. They delve into the themes of despair and grief in Hirshfield's poetry, particularly in relation to climate change. The article also explores the darkness and life-affirming aspects of her work, highlighting her ability to find profundity in everyday life. Additionally, Hirshfield discusses her politics and views on social justice movements, emphasizing the importance of non-separation and cultivating abundance. She has been involved in activism, including founding Poets for Science and participating in the March for Science. Hirshfield acknowledges the significance of despair but encourages resilience and appreciation for the impermanence and beauty of the world. [Extracted from the article]

Throughout The Third Reconstruction, Joseph compares Black Lives Matter to the civil rights and Black Power movements. Instead, Joseph argues, Trump's election after the Obama era became a reminder that "white backlash contains multitudes." A scholar of the Black Power movement, Joseph turns his attention here to Black America's plight since the beginning of the 1980s. [Extracted from the article]

To illustrate this apparent contradiction, Bell focuses on four world-famous individuals who exemplify these competing tendencies: George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture, and Simon Bolívar. Bell identifies these main features of the charismatic leader in the Age of Revolution, but he also identi-fies a set particular to the four men in his book. The BOOKS & ARTS ON JANUARY 6, 2021, HUNDREDS OF DEMONSTRATORS invaded the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the election of Joseph Biden as president of the United States and install the man they regarded as the legitimate victor and leader of America, Donald Trump. In Bell's reading of Paoli's history, his immense popularity overseas foreshadowed and influenced the rise of George Washington and other charismatic leaders during the Age of Revolution. [Extracted from the article]

Books & the Arts In October of 1964, three months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lorraine Hansberry's play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window opened on Broadway. But as Imani Perry chronicles in her new biography, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, the revolutionary Hansberry has long been hidden in plain sight. Yet, as Perry shows, Hansberry was hard to pin down. Three weeks after Lorraine's funeral, on Nina [Simone]'s birthday, Malcolm was murdered. [Extracted from the article]

The Young Lords' unrelenting calls for Puerto Rican independence, their various interventions in local politics, their unyielding solidarity with colonized and working-class people everywhere, their stunning presence (often augmented by Che-like berets and street-style military formations) all shaped the way my generation and future ones interpreted the tumultuous late 1960s and early '70s. In her new book, The Young Lords: A Radical History, historian Johanna Fernández offers us an exhaustive and enlightening study of their history and makes the case for their influence as profound thinkers as well as highly capable street activists. It was, in fact, the activism of groups like the Young Lords that forced the creation of Puerto Rican, Latino, and ethnic studies departments in places like the City University of New York and Columbia. In late 1971, Guzmán visited China with a delegation of radicals for a dialogue with communist leaders and was questioned about the Lords' deployment in Puerto Rico. [Extracted from the article]

They rejected Walker's scheme 61 to 39 percent in the spring of 2018, and that fall - on the same day Walker was voted out as governor - they voted Godlewski in as treasurer. In November, reformer Chesa Boudin won a high-profile race for San Francisco DA, with backing from Krasner, Foxx, and Rollins. In 2019 the group organized marches, rallies, and strikes on behalf of a climate justice agenda of decarbonization, jobs, and justice. Hosted by author and activist Sonali Kolhatkar, this all-women-run radio and television program promises "progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience.". [Extracted from the article]

The article looks at the state of housing occupations and related movements in Brazil under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro who promised to fight corruption and activism in the country as of September 2019. Topics discussed include the arrest of house activists such as Janice Ferreira da Silva, leader of the Homeless Movement of the Center, the uncontrolled growth of building occupations in São Paulo, and views of housing rights advocate Osmar Borges on house rental issues.

The article discusses the challenges facing the community of St. James Parish in Louisiana with the establishment of petrochemical plants which can cause significant health issues as of September 2019. Topics discussed include plan to build chemical plants from Formosa Petrochemical and Wanhua Chemical Group, the founding of the Rise St. James movement by Sharon Lavigne which aims to block operations of these plants, and lack of support from the parish community and its political wing.

The article discusses the U.S. social movement advocating for rent control legislation and for increased affordable public housing, within the context of price increases in home renting. An overview of the efforts of social movements to have the U.S. government increase funding for public housing is provided.

Several article are presented about #MeToo, a social movement and awareness campaign that was launched in October 2017 to denounce sexual assault and harassment in the U.S., in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against film producer and executive Harvey Weinstein. Issues discussed include addressing the rights of working women in the country, how to improve condition of women in the workplace, and the need to provide basic understanding about the meaning of masculinity and manhood.

The article explores the future of the racial-justice organization Black Lives Matter (BLM) that was founded in response to a string of black deaths at the hands of police. Topics covered include U.S. President Donald Trump characterizing BLMA as totally infiltrated by terrorist groups, the engagement by BLM organizers with electoral politics in new ways given the changed political terrain, and efforts of the Trump organization to crush black organizing.

The article discusses the potential for a large-scale peace movement or antiwar movement in the U.S. Topics include the political unpopularity of direct U.S. military interventions, connections of military intervention to U.S. imperialism and white supremacy, and cooperation between social movements of young people and older peace activists.

The article discusses the popular movements that emerged during the two terms of U.S. President Barack Obama. Topics discussed include the coalition that helped propel Obama to the presidency, the heightened political action of millennials, and the lessons that radicals derive from abolitionism. The Occupy Wall Street movement that called for an end to social and economic inequality and the events that led to the formation of Black Lives Matter are also mentioned.

Barbara wrote about toxic masculinity before Jordan Peterson and incels and about white middle-class economic anxieties before Trump. BARBARA EHRENREICH DIED ON SEPTEMBER 1, FROM the aftereffects of a severe stroke. That side of second-wave feminism has been all but lost, but as Deirdre, Barbara's longtime friend as well as writing partner, told me, "We were fighting for a women's movement that was for all women, and Barbara never forgot that - the class consciousness of early feminism.". [Extracted from the article]

The article, adapted from the book "What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Climate Justice," by Wen Stephenson, discusses climate change prevention activists and their tactics. Topics include the work of the group Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS) in opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, the work of activist Tim DeChristopher, and the relation of such social movements to mainstream environmentalism.

The article presents a speech given by author and activist Naomi Klein as the commencement address at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, on June 6, 2015. Topics included income inequality and the concentration of wealth, the urgency of addressing climate change, and building effective social change movements based on collective action more than on individual consumer decisions.

The article discusses the proposals of the #BlackLivesMatter movement whose mission is to put an end to a racist system. Topics covered include incidents that caused the death of unarmed African-American people in different parts of the U.S., the importance of an economic program for eliminating racism, and books that deal with racism such as "Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. It also discusses things to consider in building a just society.

The article looks at left political activism in the U.S., focusing on the growth, funding, and collaboration among progressive organizations. Topics include the role of the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) group in passing the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; solidarity among civil rights, LGBT rights, and immigrant rights groups; and climate change activism. Groups cited include the Center for American Progress think tank and the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU).

The article presents the author's views in support of the reelection of U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012, with a focus on the political issues at stake for the U.S. progressive movement. The author comments on the failures and achievements of the Obama administration; the political power and radicalism of the conservative movement led by the U.S. Tea Party organization; and the racial demographics of conservative parties. Replies are presented on topics including electoral politics, the expansion of democracy, and strategic efforts to limit the power of right-wing extremists.

The article presents the opinion of the author on the 2012 debate within the Occupy protest movement as to whether or not the group should employ violent tactics in their protests. The author states that Occupy member Yates Mckee calls for a revolutionary movement based on the ideals of men such as Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi. The author examines the Direct Action Working Group (DAWG) and the call by some people for a diversity of tactics approach to Occupy protests which includes violent actions. Opponents of the diversity of tactics approach are worried about how the violent behavior will reflect on the goals of the entire Occupy movement.

The article discusses the two sides of the Food Movement in the U.S. The article notes that while the number of hungry people worldwide has increased and only 10 U.S. corporations hold more than half U.S. food and beverage sales, the grassroots global food movement has become increasingly active. The article discusses improvements in farmworkers' circumstances, land ownership reform in Brazil, and anti-GMO (genetically modified organisms) seeds activism. Narratives from food researchers, authors, and activists Raj Patel, Vandana Shiva, and Michael Pollan are presented.

The article discusses the implications of a grassroots movement in the United States that is concerned about "food democracy" and consumers' right to have access to safe, nutritious food. Five people in the food movement offer their views on how food democracy can be attained. They are Dan Barber, Alice Waters, Grace Lee Boggs, LaDonna Redmond, and Dave Murphy.

The article discusses activist groups in New Orleans, Louisiana in the context of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Topics include the work of the LGBTQ criminal-justice reform group BreakOUT, anti-racism and anti-gentrification protests, and the work of the Hispanic American group El Congreso in building social movement cooperation. The history of African American resistance to racism in New Orleans is addressed.

Offers a look at why liberals in the United States believe that President George W. Bush can bring democracy to Iraq and questions why some liberals refused to march against the U.S.-led Iraq War. Report that leftists have moved towards faith in U.S. power and skepticism of popular movements; Belief of some liberals that mass movements are blind to evil or apologize for it; Suggestion that liberals are inspired by that which minimizes fear; Role of liberalism in inspiring various social movements, including the war against slavery, women's rights and civil rights; Failings and compromises of liberalism; Statement that U.S. liberals in the past have looked at the rest of the world as a rebuke to illiberalism at home or a goad to domestic reform.

Focuses on the history of the West Philadelphia Pirate Radio station, run by Pete Tridish and others, and its encounters with the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Statement that the FCC shut down the radio station in the 1990s; Metamorphosis of West Philadelphia Pirate Radio into the Prometheus Radio Project for media reform; Role of Prometheus in preventing former FCC chairman Michael Powell's efforts to further deregulate the ownership of broadcast stations; Report that Tridish gives advice to community groups that apply for low-power FM licenses; Lack of cooperation between Prometheus and fundamental religious groups; Background of Tridish's involvement in activism; Reference to the book "Rebel Radio: The Story of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos."

This article focuses on the alliance between activists against the Iraq war and Iraq veterans who are against the war. On a Sunday afternoon in February Michael Hoffman made a plea to a room full of 400 United for Peace and Justice antiwar activists who had gathered in St. Louis for three days of strategizing on how to end the war in Iraq. "When there are massive protests, we will be out front. We will say that you are doing everything you can to support the troops," Michael Hoffman said. Until the summer of 2003, Michael Hoffman was a US Marine with the Tenth Regiment. Today, Hoffman is a co-founder of the fledgling organization Iraq Veterans Against the War. Antiwar activists are determined to make the military a major pillar of the movement, both by homing in on one of the war effort's weak spots--the military's faltering campaign to recruit new soldiers--and by embracing antiwar troops. It is an alliance rich with promise. Part of the challenge for this peace movement is persuading Americans that attacking the war is not the same thing as attacking the troops.

Offers thoughts on a new type of labor movement in the U.S. View that labor should govern from the so-called Blue States; Focus on using state law to set up social democracy; Value of bringing individual union members together and electing officers; State law changes that unions could make to boost labor in states such as New York, California and Illinois; Role of lobbying; Suggestion that Democrats play a new role; Ways to appeal to people's economic interests; Significance of the ballot.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents, along with their powerful fellow travelers, Christian Zionists, have forged a bipartisan consensus in United States politics that Middle East policy must privilege the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. In practice, this solid consensus means putting Israeli security before peace; supporting even such extreme Israeli measures as the separation wall and assassinations; and delegitimizing the Palestinian leadership. But surveys have consistently found that 50 to 60 percent of American Jews favor ending the occupation and dismantling settlements in return for peace. 2002 was a banner year: At a pro-Israel rally in Washington that April, busloads of demonstrators from Jewish social-service agencies and Hillels (the network of Jewish campus organizations) booed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for speaking about Palestinian suffering, and the Anti-Defamation League and other groups published manuals on how to discredit "anti-Israel propaganda" on campuses. But tens of thousands of American Jews have had a very different response to the failed talks and the new Palestinian uprising. Most of the new organizations are explicitly Jewish, but American Jewish activists have also been central players in the founding of multiethnic organizations like the International Solidarity Movement, which sends international observers, about a fifth of whom are American Jews, into the occupied territories, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which advocates divestment from Israel bonds. In April 2004, Brit Tzedek organized 10,000 U.S. Jews to sign another open letter, this one calling on Israel and the United States to fund the relocation of Jewish settlers from the occupied territories to Israel.

White Republicans are at the forefront of a new wave of minority politics in the United States: white minority politics. Though rooted in California, this new politics of fear is cropping up across the country as its promoters redefine who is racial victim and who is racial oppressor, neatly inverting the arguments and terms of the civil rights movement. Former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante was the most high-profile Latino politician to come under attack for association with the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, known as Mecha, a national Chicano student group in 2003, though City Councilman and former Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa and dozens of other Latino politicos have also been targeted. Casting Mecha's vocabulary of racial solidarity as a pernicious ideology of racial supremacy, Republicans have raised a war chest of more than $28,000 to accomplish what Stanford University's Republicans have already done: cut off Mecha's funding. Instead of participating in serious dialogue about the roots of racial tension, the forces of white fear work relentlessly to portray now vulnerable postindustrial whites as victims of a shadowy Latino, and especially Mexican, empire. The politics of white minority status have been the blind spot in liberal Democratic California, where mostly white political consultants have yet to figure out how to reconcile Latino ascendancy with white (and, increasingly, elderly black) fear to create the grand coalition that will eventually replace the black-white coalitions that elected liberal Governors Pat and Jerry Brown as well as Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles.

Bolivia, the poorest country in South America in 2004, is the center of a three-year-old indigenous insurrection that has twice routed multinational corporations and nearly achieved the rarest of political successes, election of an openly Indian president in the Americas. What began with the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994 has surfaced in Ecuador, Guatemala and especially Bolivia, where, almost one-fifth of the population, or 1.5 million Indians, live in autonomous communities where official government structures have virtually faded away. They are not attempting to turn back the historical clock but are becoming "postmodern" and "postnational" bearers of an alternative narrative of the country. El Alto is the largest, most Indian city in Latin America. In 2003, El Alto residents rose against a government plan that allowed foreign investors to exploit Bolivia's natural gas for Mexican and Southern California energy markets. Bolivia has suffered from resource plunder since colonial times, starting with silver and tin. Frightening for U.S. officials and the Bolivian upper class in 2002 was the presidential campaign of Senator Evo Morales, a socialist leader of the Union de Cocoleros, the major target of the U.S. drug-eradication program. The U.S. policies of economic globalization and militarization are both failing and deepening in Bolivia.

The author tells the stories of immigrant workers taking part in the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (IWFR) of 2003, and explains what the organizers of the IWFR hope to achieve. The IWFR's ambitious five-point agenda reflects the demands of a diverse immigrant constituency: a new legalization process for undocumented workers, an accessible path to citizenship, a commitment to family reunification for immigrants waiting for relatives abroad, extension of labor protections to all workers and strengthening of civil rights and liberties to insure equal treatment of immigrants. For two weeks, buses from ten cities hit the road, bound for Washington, DC, then a rally in Flushing Meadows, Queens, on October 4, where the crowd surged to 100,000, according to organizers. It's easy to become preoccupied with isolated flash points, harder to grapple with the insidious structures of racism that mold so much of the daily experience of immigrants and African-Americans. The vast diversity of today's immigrants further complicates the picture. The IWRF is a complex call for a new civil rights charter that includes the foreign-born. Employers are often the frontline enemy in this racialized reality. In the 1960s, and throughout US history, employers have used racial and ethnic differences to divide workers and weaken their organizing. In recent years, the arsenal available to employers aiming to exploit divisions among workers has been expanding. Under the Patriot Act the riders -- regardless of their place of birth or immigration status -- could have been detained if the government had somehow deemed their mission subversive. At the core of the IWFR is an evolving and sometimes rocky relationship between organized labor and the broader immigrant rights community, which have strong common interests but also some different priorities.

The author provides a first-hand account of the demonstrations marking the fourth anniversary of Iran's pro-democracy student protests, which took place in Tehran on July 9, 2003, and looks at the political, economic and social problems in Iran. The hard-line Islamic vigilantes circled us. The "vigilantes," as they are commonly called by the Western media, are affiliated, paid for and organized by hard-liners in Iran's government, which makes them more accurately "thugs for hire." As I watched the government's display of force playing out before my eyes that evening--including helicopters circling overhead, elite units of antiriot police standing ready, and plainclothes Intelligence Ministry agents buzzing around on motorbikes, I remembered what Morad Saghafi, a leading Iranian prodemocracy intellectual, told me: "Politics is dying. Now, everything comes down to force." Over the past year, Iran's conservatives have used unelected power centers such as the hard-line judiciary, the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (who has virtual veto power over all matters of state) and the Guardian Council (an unelected body with" supervisory" responsibilities over Parliament), coupled with their control over security services, to veto key prodemocracy legislation in Parliament, jail leading dissidents and journalists with impunity, scrap presidential initiatives and intimidate protesters with violent crackdowns. As a result, Iranians increasingly talk of "outside solutions." On many occasions, people expressed to me the hope that America would "do something." Washington and Tel Aviv fear Iranian acquisition of the bomb, which they say is proceeding at a brisk pace. While it may be true that an Iranian version of the China model could forestall unrest, the strengthening of Iran's devastated middle class, weakened by twenty-four years of economic mismanagement, could sow the seeds for future revolt.

This article focuses on a movement by accountability activists and their labor allies to contest corporate welfare for public economic development in the U.S. An annual gathering of the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to discuss their campaign for accountable economic development. They call for a subsidies cutoff. Their concern centers on local disclosure measures that require firms to reveal figures received and jobs it created. There have been efforts made by activists calling for a subsidies cutoff.

The article focuses on a decline in abortion rates in the United States. The Alan Guttmacher Institute has announced that one in three women was having an abortion, totaling to 1.3 million abortions per year—the lowest rate in 29 years. There has been an increase in pro-life policy proposals as well, with bills such as the Child Custody Protection Act and those calling for a ban on partial-birth abortions and human embryonic cloning on their way to being passed in the U.S. Senate. In response to these actions, Republicans are taking steps to regain reproductive freedom.

The article states that a movement is emerging in the U.S. to oppose war on Iraq. The war plans of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush in Iraq have unleashed a flood of antiwar sentiment and activity across the country. Various organizations, such as the National Council of Churches and the California Labor Federation, have issued strong antiwar resolutions while people are coming out to participate in peace marches and vigils. Several peace groups have also emerged, they include International ANSWER, United for Peace and Racial Justice 9-11.

This article presents information regarding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). That vitality, rare indeed in American political culture at the start of the twenty-first century, is the strength of the NAACP. Its Philadelphia branch, with 14,000 members, is one piece of a mosaic that makes up the U.S.' largest grassroots organization, its 500,000 members, who pay dues of $30 a year, are organized into more than 2,200 branches. It is a potentially vast social and political force, but one that has been allowed to atrophy over the past generation, since the peak years of the civil rights movement in the 1960's, and it is only just beginning to recover.

The article provides information on the book "Inventing Herself: Claming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage," by Elaine Showalter. The book promises to be a pleasantly engrossing tour of the landmarks of three centuries of Anglo-American intellectual feminism, guided by a seriously impressive scholar, Elaine Showalter. She illustrates what she means with the book's very first paragraph, in a way that seems perplexing, by equating Mary Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century author of "A Vindication of the Rights' of Woman," with Princess Diana, of all people, as examples of the sort of feminists, or "icons," she calls them, she is looking for. Her central theme, as it emerges in the telling, is as delicious and guiltily indulgent as a box of Godiva chocolates, the educated woman's timeless quest for identity, especially the reconciliation of love and ambition.

The article provides information on the book "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution," by Diane McWhorter. Thirty-eight years after the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, two of the four principals are dead, but the issues are still full of life. Thomas Blanton Jr. is one of two surviving Klan bombers, and after a jury convicted him in early May of murdering the four black girls that Sunday morning, former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley accused the U.S. federal Bureau of Investigation of concealing evidence and aiding the Ku Klux Klan for decades after the event. The book includes the most detailed account ever of the Birmingham Movement's strategy and tactics, but what makes it unique is its account of the local opposition to civil rights, and particularly the links between the "Big Mules," who ran Birmingham's industrial economy, and the Klan bombers.

Comments on problems with the new politics of religion; Discussion on social movements in the U.S.; Comments on Catholic hospitals.

The article focuses on the book "Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future," by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. The two writers seem to be trying to repress, rather than sharpen, their differences, and this results in a book that is, narratively, both bland and contradictory by turns. The book does supply several potentially powerful correctives to contemporary feminism. Manifesta's restricted focus on liberal feminism is, unfortunately, systemic. In the rest of the book, where Second Wavers provide most of the historical counterpoint, Baumgardner and Richards repeatedly offer up liberal feminists as representative of all feminism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) infiltration of movements in the sixties is by now well-known. But those who have excavated the history of such surveillance have barely looked into the government's infiltration of the women's movement. The FBI, it turns out, viewed the women's movement as a serious threat to national security. The FBI's surveillance of the women's movement began as part of COINTELPRO, an FBI domestic surveillance program begun in 1956. This mission was to "neutralize" the effectiveness of civil rights, New Left, anti-war and African-American liberation groups.

The young activists who went to Seattle, Washington, to shut down the World Trade Organization and to Washington D.C., to protest the World Bank and the IMF had been getting hammered in the press. these commandments. The anticorporate protest movement that came to world attention on the streets of Seattle last November is not united by a political party or a national network with a head office, annual elections and subordinate cells and locals. It seems like a perfect description of the protests in Seattle and Washington DC. These mass convergences were activist hubs, made up of hundreds, possibly thousands, of autonomous spokes.

The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) failure at settle commercial disputes in Seattle, Washington, has inspired a new organizing slogan: "Fix it or nix it?" WTO is the visible symbol of globalization and the network of forty country-based campaigns that produced Seattle is working now on when to stage another international day of action. The U.S. coalition is, meanwhile, gearing up for another crucial fight, blocking the U.S. Congressional action that would give China a permanent "good housekeeping seal," instead of annual approval of most-favored-nation status, as it joins WTO.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush has been the champion and main facilitator of the so-called tort reform movement in Texas--or tort deform movement, in Ralph Madder's 146s formulation. Here's what Nader and his coauthor. The tort deform movement is a brazen effort by corporations and politicians beholden to corporate interests to pull off a nationwide perpetual bailout for polluters, swindlers, reckless health care providers, and makers of tobacco, defective vehicles, dangerous drugs, and many other hazardous consumer products. For his 1994 and 1998 campaigns, Bush collected $41 million, the biggest haul ever made by any gubernatorial candidate in history. Chief among these outfits is Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), which has perhaps the biggest political action committee in the state. TLR claims more than 4,600 members statewide, but you can forget that democratic pose. INSET: Bringing up the rear.

The article focuses on the rebirth of socialism in municipalities in the U.S. in 2015. Topics include class inequality in the U.S., neoliberalism in U.S. politics, and social movements in the U.S. Information is provided on minimum wage increases, workers' rights, and campaigns to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

The article focuses on sociopolitical issues related to the U.S., as of December 1999. Organizing overnight, the King County Central Labor Council brought 5,000 high-spirited marchers out at noon on December 3 with two objectives: to violate the city's downtown no protest zone and to show solidarity with the hundreds of peaceful demonstrators still in jail. As the farm crisis confronts 40,000 Midwestern family farmers with the prospect of being forced off the land, no state faces a situation more dire than Minnesota. Although the problem is nothing new, this time it has spawned novel responses. Broad community- based coalitions are forming, and many young activists are be- coming involved.

The article focuses on world politics. The 13-million-member AFL-CIO had much to celebrate at its biennial convention in Los Angeles in mid-October. The two-decade hemorrhaging of union membership has been stanched. Labor has placed trade policy on the national agenda. And the cold war-era break between Big Labor and leftish social movements has mended, as unions once again reach out to religious, community and political-activist groups. Palestinian and Israeli negotiators at last began final-status negotiations on Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and water rights. Of all the issues at stake, the fate of the refugees seems the least amenable to compromise. Israel's consensus is that there can be no Palestinian right of return to any territory within its pre-1967 borders.

For many kids at that time, punk music was one of the few vehicles for expressing anger toward what they perceived as the political and cultural bankruptcy around them. But Beefeater's songs and the antiapartheid activism they helped to inspire were destined for obscurity. The music was far too loud and abrasive for most people over the age of 30 and, more significant, inaccessible to the majority of young Americans, whose tastes in music have long been dictated by trends set in the offices of music conglomerates.

The article presents information about the Human Rights Campaign and the movement by the gay activists in the U.S. Activists criticize the narrow focus of some gay groups solely on gay-related issues, when their own experiences tell them that winning means building coalitions with potential progressive allies by embracing their issues as well as our own. One of the most successful models for building gay political power at the state level is Basic Rights Oregon, which took the lead in helping to create the progressive Voter File Project, a coalition with labor, environmental and pro-choice organizations that in the past three years has pooled lists and resources to identify over half a million voters for Election Day get-out-the-vote drives.

The article discusses the state of exploitation of workers in textile industry in the U.S. There were shocking reports on the extremely long work hours, physical or sexual abuse on the job, a pittance for pay, of child or forced labor. But 1995 proved to be a turning point for a steadily growing campaign against global sweatshops that has exploded in the United States and is increasingly linked to campaigns in Europe and parts of Asia. Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee, reveals the beginning of a national movement.