Articles
Articles
How Black Pullman Porters Waged a Struggle for “Civil Rights Unionism”
An interview with Eric Arnesen: - author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality ... Led by A. Philip Randolph, black Pullman porters struggled against the exploitation of the company and the racism of the mainstream labor movement to win a fighting union. They secured dignity on the job — and laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement...
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Jul 28, 2020, 3:26pm
Articles
The Bonus Army Protest
Gary Olson: July 28 will mark almost the 90th anniversary of one of most controversial protests in U.S. history and yet it remains virtually unknown to most Americans. ... On that day, in 1932, 500 U.S. army infantrymen with loaded rifles, fixed bayonets and gas grenades containing a vomit inducing ingredient, 200 calvary, a machine gun squadron, 800 police and 6 M1917 army tanks, prepared to attack 17,000 unarmed men, plus thousands of their wives and children. ... The camp, nicknamed “Hooverville,” occupied by WWI veterans who were living in tents and shanties ... Some 4 million vets had returned from the war and found that others had taken their jobs at a considerably higher wage than the $1 per day soldier’s pay and expected more help from their government...
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Jul 24, 2020, 3:01pm
Articles
The Murder of Malcolm X
Joel Whitney: There was nothing J. Edgar Hoover feared more than a charismatic black radical who could inspire the oppressed to fight back. And that’s why, according to a compelling new series, the FBI had its fingerprints all over Malcolm X’s murder. ... Who Killed Malcolm X? features Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a journalist, father, and Malcolm admirer who, over six episodes, guides the viewer through his decades-long investigation to reveal that two of the three men convicted for Malcolm’s murder were innocent. He goes on to show that the FBI knew this but did not submit evidence to exonerate the men...
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Jul 17, 2020, 4:47pm
Articles
The Catholic Church Siphoned Away $30 Million Paid to Native People for Stolen Land
Mary Annette Pember: Free, government-funded schools were rarely built on reservations—meaning that for many Native families, Catholic mission schools were the only option. ... Indian boarding and day schools attempted, for decades, to forcibly assimilate Native children. The schools have a long, documented history of abuse and cultural debasement. ... The economic violations committed at these schools, however, have not been widely reported. ... for the greater part of the 20th century, the federal government routed funds—designated as direct payments for Native people—to Catholic mission schools, draining families of millions of dollars by today’s measures ... over the nine years records were available (1910, 1933, 1935, 1939–1943, 1954), Native parents gave the schools some $30.4 million, adjusted for inflation...
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Jul 15, 2020, 4:05pm
Articles
The hidden trackers in your phone, explained
Sara Morrison: How covert code enables your phone’s apps to spy on you. ... Your phone is the ideal tool for advertisers and data brokers, both as a means of collecting your information and serving you ads based on it. This is usually done through software development kits, or SDKs, which these companies provide to app developers for free in exchange for the information they can collect from them, or a cut of the ads they can sell through them. ... When you turn on location services for a weather app so it can give you a localized forecast, you may be sending your location data back to someone else. ... A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that location data was not just being sold to marketers or data brokers but also to law enforcement, where it was used to help catch undocumented immigrants...
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Jul 9, 2020, 3:01pm
Articles
For Indigenous Zapotec Families, Spinning Becomes a Lifeline
Tracy L. Barnett: Khadi Oaxaca, a farm-to-garment nonprofit textile enterprise, follows what is known as the Gandhian economic model in three ways: It focuses on producing gainful employment for many instead of big profits for a few; it strives to build local autonomy and resilience at the village level, building in a cash supplement that supports the traditional agrarian life; and it follows the Gandhian strategy of making clothing from scratch, with workers spinning their own thread from organically grown cotton. ... And now, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic causing jobs to dry up everywhere, this handspun thread has become a lifeline for the local economy...
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Jun 22, 2020, 3:05pm
Articles
Unique Recollections of the Night RFK Was Gunned Down (Published 2018)
Audio File: Paul Schrade, a long-time friend and political ally of Kennedy’s, was shot in the head that night, but he recovered from his wounds. Two years ago, when Schrade was 91, WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman spoke to him about Kennedy, the assassination, and about his theory of the case. ... Many people doubt the official story of what happened when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel exactly 52 years ago. ... Conclusions: Sirhan Sirhan could not have killed RFK ... his gun shots missed him ... audio file shows a second gun man ... RFK shot from behind ... LA police covered up evidence as did the FBI...
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Jun 6, 2020, 3:05pm
Articles
Women Have Risen to Heroic Heights During Covid-19
H. Patricia Hynes: ... — comprising the majority of essential health care workers, leading successful countries in containing the coronavirus, homeschooling children while working from home. ... As of mid-April, women led six of seven countries with the best record of containing Covid-19 infections and deaths: Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Denmark. ... Though taking different approaches, some lockdowns, some not, the women-led successful countries acted immediately and decisively with testing, tracking, widespread education, adequate personal protection, and with ongoing personal communication through press conferences, some for children only. ... "women are more likely to lead through inspiration, transforming people’s attitudes and beliefs, and aligning people with meaning and purpose than men are."...
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May 21, 2020, 3:16pm
Articles
Water protectors turn to Minnesota’s Line 3 pipeline as their next target of resistance
Stellan Vinthagen: Community leaders on the White Earth reservation challenge Enbridge Energy as part of a larger struggle for indigenous sovereignty. ... The Line 3 pipeline will bring tar sands oil — the worst kind of dirty fossil fuel — from Canada through the United States. It will pass through over 40 wild rice watersheds and at least eight waterways, which are a traditional source of food for the indigenous Ojibwe people. ... This pipeline entangles us even more in an energy system that is destroying the climate ... The White Earth reservation has some 9,000 inhabitants, about half of whom are indigenous. ... They are governed by a Tribal Council, where the council chairman is a vocal water protector opposed to LN3 pipeline. ...
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May 14, 2020, 1:54pm
Articles
How Birth Doulas Are Helping Parents Navigate Coronavirus
Danielle Hayden: “Labor and birth can already be a nerve-wracking experience for many birthing people, and the global pandemic adds to that anxiety" ... Doulas help ease some of the anxiety and stress in patients, especially those giving birth for the first time, by providing education, coping strategies, and emotional and physical support before, during, and after birth. ... They help parents create a birth plan, which lets the medical team know the patient’s labor and delivery preferences for things such as pain management, postpartum care, and newborn procedures. ... Doulas advocate on parents’ behalf, often against unnecessary procedures such as cesarean sections, and they coach parents during the birth, suggesting techniques related to positioning and breathing....
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May 4, 2020, 2:10pm
Articles
The Shared History of Wild Horses and Indigenous People
Shoshi Parks: Horse sanctuaries along the Native American Horse Trail are working to save America’s last Indigenous horses and rewrite official histories that claim they don’t exist. ... America’s Native horses never went extinct. They survived the Ice Age and lived among Native people before, and after, the arrival of European colonizers ... For many Indigenous people, these Native horses aren’t beasts of burden but relatives and sacred “medicine.” ... Riding and caring for horses can activate the sympathetic nervous system in children and influence the rhythm of the human heart rate. Equine therapy is becoming increasingly popular...
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Apr 27, 2020, 2:53pm
Articles
Cooperation Humboldt and the Solidarity Economy
Margaret Kimberley: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed all of the inconvenient truths about life in the United States. ... It is no longer possible to hide the disconnect between myths of a great and advanced society with scenes of long lines for food pantries, millions of workers suddenly unemployed ... Before this health crisis struck there were people all over the country who understood the need for a solidarity economy. ... Cooperation Humboldt in Humboldt County, northern California, is an example of the solidarity economy in action ... Founded in 2017, Cooperation Humboldt was already incubating worker cooperatives, administering food sovereignty programs, advocating for public banking and participatory budgeting, and exploring housing cooperatives, an arts hub, and eco-villages—all before the pandemic arrived in the U.S...
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Apr 23, 2020, 2:18pm
Articles
A jail built on a landfill is at the center of America’s coronavirus outbreak
Rachel Ramirez: New York City is the epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak — and perhaps nowhere is that outbreak more dangerous than in the city’s most notorious jail complex: Rikers Island. ... built on a landfill and surrounded by polluting infrastructure, has long suffered hazardous environmental conditions like extreme summer heat, flooding, and noxious pollution. ... More than 10,000 people are normally incarcerated on the island at any given time. Roughly 90 percent of them are people of color, and 67 percent have not been convicted of a crime and are simply awaiting trial...
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Apr 9, 2020, 4:25pm
Articles
‘We Who Were Nothing & Have Become Everything’
Nina Agadzhanova leapt before a tramcar on March 8, 1917, grabbed the keys from the driver and declared the city of Petrograd on strike, writes Vijay Prashad in this overview of International Women’s Day celebrated on Sunday. ... On March 8, 1917 (Feb. 23 by the old Julian calendar), a hundred women in the textile factories in Petrograd decided to go on strike; they went amongst the other factories and called their fellow workers onto the streets. Before long, around 200,000 workers – led by the women – marched through the streets. “Down with war,” they cried, and “no bread, no work.” This strike set in motion a cascade of protests which eventually broke the Tsarist state and inaugurated the Russian Revolution....
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Mar 6, 2020, 3:45pm
Articles
The Golden Age Of White Collar Crime
Michael Hobbes: OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, nearly every institution of American life has taken on the unmistakable stench of moral rot. Corporate behemoths like Boeing and Wells Fargo have traded blue-chip credibility for white-collar callousness. Elite universities are selling admission spots to the highest Hollywood bidder. Silicon Valley unicorns have revealed themselves as long cons ... it is impossible to look around the country and not get the feeling that elites are slowly looting it ... And why wouldn’t they? The criminal justice system has given up all pretense that the crimes of the wealthy are worth taking seriously. ... In January 2019, white-collar prosecutions fell to their lowest level since researchers started tracking them in 1998...
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Feb 22, 2020, 12:47pm
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