PBS Chicago, “Historical Happy Hour: A Toast to Emma Goldman”
Emma Goldman was an anarchist, feminist and freethinker at a time when just talking about birth control was enough to get you imprisoned (and she did get imprisoned, several times, and not just for talking about contraception). Her credo: “I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to […]
CBS Chicago, “Great Places To Visit On Chicago’s West Side”
Haymarket produce district. Chicagoans gathered in the streets to watch anarchist activists speak, from atop a freight wagon, about the violent death of workers during a labor dispute that occurred during the previous day elsewhere in the city. When about 175 police officers arrived to disperse the spectators, a dynamite bomb was thrown at them, […]
New Republic, “How Trump Is Creating a Propaganda State”
In this, Trump and Loesch aren’t just trying to deceive their followers. They are reinforcing and expanding on what their supporters already believe, which Jacques Ellul, a Christian anarchist who lost a university position for refusing to collaborate with France’s Vichy regime, identified as a staple of propaganda. “All propaganda must respond to a need,” […]
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “When music found an ‘Alternate’ home on Milwaukee’s lakefront — in 1971”
The Journal and Sentinel frequently referred to the new space as the “People’s Park,” and, the Journal reported on July 4, 1971, the Milwaukee Youth International Party, also known as the Yippies, planned to promote a proposal to call the site Czolgosz Park, for Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated President William McKinley. Continue Reading
The New Yorker, “James Cromwell’s Civil Disobedience”
He was arrested again a few months later, at the May Day protests in Washington, D.C., along with thousands of other people. Confronting a cop, he felt a baton against his throat, was tossed into a paddy wagon, and spent the night in jail. From his hotel room the next morning, he saw a chaotic […]
NBC News, “Antifa Violence is Ethical? This Author Explains Why”
BRAY: It’s basically a politics or an activity of social revolutionary self defense. It’s a pan-left radical politics uniting communists, socialists, anarchists and various different radical leftists together for the shared purpose of combating the far right. Continue Reading
The Atlantic, “President Trump Pardons Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio”
Trump’s pardon of Arpaio will likely rank among the most controversial exercises of the power. Other presidents have used it to absolve pirates, participants in tax rebellions, ex-Confederates, polygamous Mormons, socialists, anarchists, rumrunners, Puerto Rican nationalists, Vietnam War draft-dodgers, and Jimmy Hoffa. But only rarely has it been used to absolve a prominent political backer—much […]
CTV News, “How Black Bloc activists have changed protests”
In terms of demographic makeup (class, gender, race), Black Blocs differ over time and from place to place. Black Bloc protesters might be anarchists, Communists, environmentalists, feminists, queer activists, disillusioned social democrats, students, people unemployed or holding down odd jobs. In any case, according to a Black Bloc slogan: “Who we are is less important […]
ABC 7 (DC), “Antifa, far-right clashes raise questions about violence as a political tool”
The Anti-fascist movement, or Antifa, have been part of the European political landscape since World War II. In recent decades, the group has predominantly centered in western Europe, in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. Their ideology is broadly anti-capitalist, anarchist and anti-fascist in the most general sense of opposing centralized state control and anything […]
98.1 (Kansas City), “Explaining antifa protests in the wake of Charlottesville”
“The black bloc is not a group but an anarchist tactic — marching as a confrontational united force, uniformed in black and anonymized for security,” The Nation said of black bloc. “Once deployed, the tactic has an alchemic quality, turning into a temporary object: the black bloc.” Continue Reading