I Ain’t Gonna Work on Merritt’s Farm No More

A brief history of central California’s forgotten empire

In early 1949 as the shift away from wartime production slowed economic growth in the South, my great-grandparents (Glen and Lucille) began looking for new opportunities. Glen’s wartime jobs at a military training field and an ammunition factory in Oakridge Tennessee dried up, and he went back to tenant farming ...
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Was Theodor Adorno “The Fifth Beatle”?

How a conspiracy theory about the Frankfurt School made its way around the world

His latest theory asserts the Beatles could not have written their own songs, because they “were semi-literate in music” and “barely knew how to play the guitar.” Instead it was Adorno, a composer trained by Alban Berg and skilled in twelve-tone technique, who masterminded the Lennon-McCartney songbook. Carvalho’s remarks will baffle fans of ...
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The Children’s Rights Movement Is Here

Are You Paying Attention?

It’s occurring around the world. The movement can be found throughout Europe. It’s observable across the United States, from New York to California. It’s occurring throughout Asia, including India and Hong Kong. Youth activism can be found in Australia, Africa, Mexico, Central America, and South America. The children’s rights movement is not a fad. It’s not unidimensional. It is a multifaceted movement that has been ...
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Feminism, Elections, and Beyond

On the effects of the green wave in Argentina

When people from other latitudes ask us how we managed to achieve such mobilized feminisms, we have no other choice but to trace our history. The massive mobilization for Ni Una Menos in 2015 surprised us, but to prevent that energy from dissipating, the feminists that had been struggling for ...
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Why Warren’s Speech Was Terrific

She galvanized the crowd by speaking the language of radical civic republicanism

In the press release announcing the endorsement, Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell stated that: “We’re lucky to have two strong progressive candidates leading in this race. Senator Warren and Senator Sanders have both shaped the ideological terrain on which this campaign is being waged. They have proven an ...
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“The Liberal Idea Has Become Obsolete”

Putin, Geuss and Habermas

I was first alerted to Raymond Geuss’s sour anti-commemoration of Jürgen Habermas’s ninetieth birthday, “A Republic of Discussion,” coincidentally on the same day that Vladimir Putin declared the obsolescence of liberalism in a meeting with Donald Trump. Trump, with the exquisite cluelessness that has made him so easy to mock, ...
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Banner Tales

Material culture and the making of solidarity

The miners’ strike workshops were developed alongside an ongoing project called Banner Tales, which is a collaboration between geographers and Glasgow Museums staff. This work has encouraged us to reflect on the relationship between material cultures and the makings of solidarity. In both projects we have been involved in using banners ...
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The Unemployment Rate Is Not a Fact

Our country’s most trusted economic metric is only a political artifact.

The year was 1875 and Carrol Wright was upset. The mustached state senator from Massachusetts thought that American workers had a problem. Just not the problem that the workers thought they had. Following the financial Panic of 1873 and nosediving wages, Americans were launching wildcat strikes, torching railroad stations, and fighting ...
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Committees Are for Straight People

LGBTQ people want equality now — here are three things you can do

Queer, trans, and gay people have long been refused work, denied advancement opportunities, and fired for reasons relating to their being out -- and sometimes too proud. Employment nondiscrimination protections matter but they do not address subtler forms of bias in hiring and promotion, such as whether LGBTQ people who ...
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“After Stonewall” Exhibitions Remind Us That Queer History Shouldn’t Be Straightforward

Stonewall on show at the NYPL, the New York Historical Society, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum

For visitors to these commemorative exhibitions, the broad similarities largely stop there. While all three institutions have chosen the Stonewall riots as the epicenter of their curatorial narratives, their reasons for doing so differ. At the New York Public Library, the riots serve to anchor a larger narrative arc of ...
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