By ERNIE TATE Now and then, and despite its capitalist and racial biases, our culture throws up something that can speak quite eloquently and uniquely about the times we’re living through. In this case, I’m referring to an amazing documentary film that has been released recently, “I Am Not Your Negro,” directed by Raoul Peck,…
By JEFF MACKLER On Mumia Abu-Jamal’s birthday, April 24, about 125 demonstrators mobilized outside Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas in solidarity with Mumia’s effort to reverse his 1982 frame-up murder conviction and win a new trial that could lead to his freedom. Mumia Abu-Jamal is perhaps the world’s best known political prisoner. He has been…
By CHRIS HUTCHINSON The police shooting of 18-year-old Ra’Shamel Rogers on March 9 in Waterbury, Conn., has mobilized community members in support of his family to demand answers and a transparent investigation. Ra’Shamel was unarmed and shot three times, twice in the abdomen and once in the lungs. Police are trying to justify the shooting…
By JEFF MACKLER “It’s a Knock Out Punch,” says Mumia. “We did something that’s never been done before,” says Pam Africa, chair of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Jan. 3, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Mariani granted the motion filed by innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for a preliminary injunction ordering the…
By KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL MINNEAPOLIS—The show trial dubbed by our local capitalist media, “Minnesota’s Terror Trial,” ended in November with the sentencing of the nine young men (eight Somali and one Oromo) who pled to or were convicted of charges relating to alleged attempts to join the “designated foreign terrorist organization” ISIS (the Islamic State). The…
By MARK UGOLINI — UPDATED, Oct. 6 — The deeply racist character of police operations in Black communities is again on display with four more horrific murders by cops occurring within just 15 days of each other. The latest victims are Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla.; Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, N.C.; Alfred Olango in…
By JEFF MACKLER San Francisco 49er superstar quarterback Colin Kaepernick roiled the racist establishment when he “took a knee” rather than stand and salute the American flag during the playing of the National Anthem on Aug. 26 before the 49ers final pre-season game against the San Diego Chargers. This was the fourth time, but the…
By MARK UGOLINI On July 27, Baltimore prosecutors dropped remaining charges against three cops awaiting trial for involvement in the death of Freddy Gray. Gray, a 25-year-old Black youth, died of injuries sustained while in police custody a week following his arrest on April 12, 2015. Officers Garret Miller, William Porter, and Sgt. Alicia White…
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH “Free State of Jones,” directed by Gary Carr. “The Free State of Jones” is based on a true Civil War story, a little known story, because its subject matter is in a controversial gray area. Here we have Newton Knight (a spot-on Matthew McConaughey at his scraggly, unkempt, bearded best), a Confederate…
By JEFF MACKLER — Jeff Mackler is the 2016 presidential candidate of Socialist Action. — Five hundred and seventy one and counting have been killed by U.S. cops this past year, an all-time high in recent decades, according to figures posted in the U.S. edition of the British-based Guardian newspaper.* The majority murdered were Black,…
On the fortieth anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Rebellion in South Africa, we reprint two articles from International Viewpoint, the English-language on-line journal of the Fourth International. The author of the first article, Noor Nieftagodien, is the head of the History Workshop at Wits University. The second author, Leigh-Ann Naidoo, is currently a PHD student…
In tribute to Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3, we are reprinting this biographical film review, “‘Ali’ is good … but not the greatest,” from our January 2002 issue. By JOE AUCIELLO “Ali,” directed by Michael Mann, starring Will Smith, Mario Van Peebles, Jon Voight. A Columbia Pictures release, 2001 (rated R, 158…
By MARK UGOLINI Chicago State University (CSU) announced the layoff of more than 300 employees, effective on April 29. Widely considered only the first round of layoffs, it impacts about one-third of the university’s workforce. CSU and other Illinois state universities have been denied funds for nearly the entire academic year, resulting in layoffs, furloughs,…
By KAREN and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL — MINNEAPOLIS — On the morning of Wednesday, March 30, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced there would be no charges brought against the Minneapolis police who murdered Jamar Clark on Nov. 15 of last year.
By BRUCE LESNICK I wholeheartedly support the populist programs that Bernie Sanders advocates—from single-payer health care, to free college tuition, to taxing the rich and more. But borrowing from Malcolm X [see excerpt below], Bernie is a house socialist and I’m a field socialist. Bernie doesn’t want to replace or overthrow capitalism. Like all house socialists, he thinks capitalism can be fixed or tamed…
By MARTY GOODMAN Weeks of massive protests against election fraud in Haiti and calling for the ouster of the pro-U.S. Haitian President Michel Martelly forced the dictator to finally step down on Feb. 7. The Haitian constitution prohibits a succeeding five-year term, and Feb. 7 was the date for his term to end. Feb. 7,…
By BRUCE LESNICK It [is] too much the way of [mainstream politicians] to talk of this terrible [crisis] as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the…
By JOE AUCIELLO Harper Lee, “Go Set A Watchman,” (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 288 pp., $27.99. Why throw away the Christmas turkey after it’s been eaten? It can still be used. Take the carcass, simmer with water, and the bones make a good stock for soup. Take the carcass of a popular novel—its discarded rough…
By RACHEL WOLKENSTEIN Below are excerpts from a report by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein on the fight of Mumia Abu-Jamal to obtain necessary medical treatment. Mumia, a noted political commentator and innocent political prisoner, was convicted in 1982 of killing a Philadelphia police officer. He received the death penalty, a sentence that was later reduced to…
By JOE AUCIELLO Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me” (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 152 pp., $24. When Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to an overflow audience at Boston College last October as a distinguished guest of the Lowell Humanities Lecture Series, he was introduced by the Law School dean as a new voice in…
By ADAM SHILS — CHICAGO — On Oct. 20, 2014, Laquan McDonald, 17, was fatally shot by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. McDonald, who had been suspected of stealing car radios, was only armed with a knife. The police car dash-cam video shows McDonald some yards from the police officers and not moving toward them…
By KAREN and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL “To us, he was a loving young man. America has a criminal record. Minnesota has a criminal record against Black people. So if we are judging people against their past, let us start at the head.” —Kenya McKnight, spokesperson for Jamar Clark’s family, Nov. 17, 2015. — MINNEAPOLIS — UPDATED REPORT,…
By PATRICK BOND — DURBAN — An historic victory over South African neoliberalism was won on Oct. 23, after the most intense three-week burst of activist mobilization here since liberation from apartheid in 1994. University students have been furious, as their cry “Fees must fall!” rang out on campuses and sites of political power across…
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH British filmmaker Marc Silver’s documentary, “3 ½ Minutes 10 Bullets,” mainly consists of the trial of Michael Dunn, the killer of Jordan Davis, a Black teen. It plays out like television’s “20/20” or “Dateline” production, with no commercials. Despite the current inflamed debate on racial injustice, director Silver offers us a cool-headed…
By BILL ONASCH Netroots Nation bills its live body gatherings as the biggest conference of Progressives—by which they mean liberal Democrats. At their annual conclave, held in Phoenix in July, they featured a presidential candidate Town Hall Meeting that included the two top long-shot challengers to Hillary Clinton for the Donkey Party nod—Senator Bernie Sanders,…
