Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland

Faced with the biggest strike since 1993, the Polish government suggested teachers get pregnant and collect a child-care benefit

“We want to teach, we want to work. Please, understand us.” —Teachers’ general strike in Poland, 2019 Poland’s striking teachers have three messages for the right-wing government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party: we care about the future of education, we are fighting for our dignity, and we are definitely fighting ...
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Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland

The Inherent Violence of the Mining Industry

What two recent disasters in Brazil tell us about the neoextractivist economy

When three years ago the Fundão dam burst in Mariana, a city located in the state of Minas Gerais, it was deemed the worst mining disaster in Brazilian history. As affected communities and nature still struggle to recover, and victims continue their fight for just reparation, last January another social-environmental episode occurred ...
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The Inherent Violence of the Mining Industry

In Defense of Do What You Love

Rejoining alienated critiques of capitalism

But where did this “most elegant anti-worker ideology,” as Tokumitsu calls it, come from? Tokumitsu suggests that it is a bourgeois culture foisted upon the working masses by the ruling class. One New York Times opinion piece credits “neoliberal masterminds,” while another points the finger at WeWork. What these critics agree on is that the ...
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In Defense of Do What You Love

Release Mueller

Demonstrators gather in Lafayette Park calling for the release of the report

Progressive groups brought thousands of people to hundreds of places around the country to demand the release of the Mueller report. Although the call to demonstrate came with more notice than the one to Protect Mueller last fall, the turnout was lower. About 500 hundred people came to Lafayette Park, across from ...
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Release Mueller

Reparations, Leggings, and Nipsey Hussle

Past Present Episode 174

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki discuss the case for reparations, why leggings are so controversial, and the legacy of rapper Nipsey Hussle. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Reparations for slavery have gained renewed currency among policymakers. Neil referred to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay, “The Case ...
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Reparations, Leggings, and Nipsey Hussle

Writing for Us: Mira Jacob’s Good Talk

The New School author and artist on her new graphic memoir

The title of Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir, Good Talk: A Memoir In Conversations (One World, 2019), succinctly sums up the framework of her book, a collection of messy, hilarious, confusing, and gutting conversations Jacob has with her loved ones about everything from coming into her own as a writer to ...
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Writing for Us: Mira Jacob’s Good Talk

Bye Bye Biden

The weakness of his entire candidacy is that he is looking backward at a time when we need to move forward

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic.” – Søren Kierkegaard There is much suffering in the Age of Trump. The principal source of grief is Trump himself: what he does and doesn’t do, what he says and doesn’t say, and what and who is ...
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Bye Bye Biden

Another Mother

Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism

In recent years, the tradition of Italian biopolitical thought has become immensely popular and increasingly influential. Most interpreters, however, focus on thinkers such as Agamben, Esposito, and Negri, while the contribution of Italian feminist movement is most often neglected. Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism , brings to ...
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Another Mother

Reforming Congress is an Achievable Goal

John Lawrence’s Testimony before the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress

Thank you for your invitation to appear today at this hearing, my first from this side of the dais. I want to offer four observations that, along with the advice from these distinguished congressional scholars, may help guide the work of this Select Committee. Despite the cynicism of many critics inside ...
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Future Cities

Architecture and the Imagination

In January 2013, a photograph of a projected image on a smog-enshrouded high-rise building in Beijing became an internet sensation because it seemed uncannily reminiscent of the urban landscape seen in the 1982 film Blade Runner. Notwithstanding the negative effects of excessive urban pollution on urban residents, Blade Runner tours are now being ...
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Future Cities

Stolen Land, Standing Ground, and the Viral Spectacle of White Entitlement

“Land gets stolen, that’s how it works”

This article is part of a series of texts published on Public Seminar in the lead-up to the Digital/Debt/Empire symposium in Vancouver in late April 2019, convened by Benjamin Anderson, Enda Brophy and Max Haiven. The graphic convergence of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous violence in the name of self-defense emerges with unmistakable clarity in the recent ...
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Stolen Land, Standing Ground, and the Viral Spectacle of White Entitlement

Art, Research and Action Against Debt’s Digital Empire

An introduction

This article is the introduction to a series of texts published on Public Seminar in the lead-up to the Digital/Debt/Empire symposium in Vancouver in late April 2019, convened by Benjamin Anderson, Enda Brophy and Max Haiven. Throughout the history of capitalism, debt has been a key weapon of colonialism and imperialism. Examples include the ruinous ...
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Art, Research and Action Against Debt’s Digital Empire