Tagged: 2021

Selected Media

Change universities to change capitalism

By Capital-Star Guest Contributor

Read the full article from Pennsylvania Capital Star, here.

Recently, leading foundations, including Ford, Hewlett, and the Omidyar Network, have developed initiatives designed to promote a reexamination of capitalism and find a successor to neoliberalism with its emphasis on privatization, deregulation, and a reduction in government spending.

The American Rescue Plan and President Joe Biden’s big and impressive infrastructure bill will turn the tide and begin to redirect capitalism for the better.

Producing a truly more humane and effective system will also require changing American higher education. Research universities in particular are sources of new ideas and discoveries, incubators for business and technology, cultural and artistic centers, and local, national and global economic engines.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor / Racial Justice / Selected Media

The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New Yorker here.

“Our current criminal-justice system is rooted in the assumption that millions of people require policing, surveillance, containment, prison. It is a dark view of humanity. By contrast, Kaba and others in this emergent movement fervently believe in the capacity of people to change in changed conditions. That is the optimism at the heart of the abolitionist project.”

Selected Media

A Nightmare of Terror Across the Landscape of Palestine

By Yousef Munayyer

Read the full article from The Nation <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-palestine-reign-of-terror/".

“[W]hat is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is not just about Jerusalem but is also reflective of the entire Palestinian experience. Since the start of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine, the aim has been to slowly and steadily expand control over the territory, pushing the indigenous population out in a continual process of replacement…All of this would be tinder enough for this moment, but it also happens to be taking place in a broader immediate context, one in which the vise grip of accelerating right-wing, theocratic nationalism is tightening across Israel.”

Selected Media

A Nightmare of Terror Across the Landscape of Palestine

By Yousef Munayyer

Read the full article from The Nation <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-palestine-reign-of-terror/".

“[W]hat is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is not just about Jerusalem but is also reflective of the entire Palestinian experience. Since the start of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine, the aim has been to slowly and steadily expand control over the territory, pushing the indigenous population out in a continual process of replacement…All of this would be tinder enough for this moment, but it also happens to be taking place in a broader immediate context, one in which the vise grip of accelerating right-wing, theocratic nationalism is tightening across Israel.”

Selected Media

How a Socialist City Councilor Won 100% Affordable Housing in a Gentrifying Chicago Neighborhood

By Carlos Ramirez-Rosa

Read the full article from Jacobin here.

“From the top of Logan Square’s newest seven-story apartment building at 2602 North Emmett Street, just steps from the train stop bearing the neighborhood’s name, the view is incredible…In Chicago’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, this is usually the kind of coveted view and central location only the wealthy can enjoy. But they won’t be able to buy all this building has to offer. Instead, all of the building’s hundred apartments are publicly funded and reserved for poor and working-class people.”

Selected Media

Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy?

By Caleb Crain

Read the full article from The New Yorker here.

“In Vienna, Polanyi had heard socialism dismissed as utopian, on the ground that no central authority could efficiently manage millions of different wishes, resources, and capabilities. In “The Great Transformation,” he swivelled this popgun around. What was utopian, he declared, was “the concept of a self-regulating market.” Human life wasn’t as orderly as mathematics, and only a goggle-eyed idealist would think it wise to lash people to a mechanism like the gold standard and then turn the crank. For most of human history, he observed, money and the exchange of goods had been embedded within culture, religion, and politics.”

Selected Media

Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy?

By Caleb Crain

Read the full article from The New Yorker here.

“In Vienna, Polanyi had heard socialism dismissed as utopian, on the ground that no central authority could efficiently manage millions of different wishes, resources, and capabilities. In “The Great Transformation,” he swivelled this popgun around. What was utopian, he declared, was “the concept of a self-regulating market.” Human life wasn’t as orderly as mathematics, and only a goggle-eyed idealist would think it wise to lash people to a mechanism like the gold standard and then turn the crank. For most of human history, he observed, money and the exchange of goods had been embedded within culture, religion, and politics.”

Selected Media

Please Don’t Wear A Sombrero: What Cinco De Mayo Really Means, From A Mexican

By Maria Garcia

Read the full article from WBUR here.

“My biggest gripe with Cinco de Mayo is not the cultural appropriation, as off-putting as I find it. The real tragedy for me is that a day that once represented Black and brown solidarity — and resistance against colonialism — has been mired by a commercial whitewashing. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when a rag-tag army of mostly indigenous Mexicans defeated French forces who attempted to conquer the independent country…At the time, Mexican-Americans in California opposed to slavery felt that the success of the Union could hinge on the Battle of Puebla and upon hearing that Mexican forces had prevailed, they celebrated with fireworks and drinks. Cinco de Mayo was born…In the ’60s, Chicano activists in the U.S. revived the holiday, using it as a call to solidarity for Civil Rights.”

Selected Media

The Fight for Diverse, Inclusive, Antiracist and Just Democracies

By KerryAnn O’Meara, Ahmed Bawa, Hugo Garcia, Ira Harkavy, Rita Hodges and Hilligje Van’t Land

Read the full article from Inside Higher Ed here.

“At the 2020 Association for the Study of Higher Education conference, we shared research and practice from universities in South Africa, the United States and the International Association of Universities. We concluded that postsecondary institutions — notable contributions during the pandemic notwithstanding — have too often been complicit in systems that create or reproduce savage health and economic inequities, public disregard of science, and individuals who feel alienated and forgotten. Examples include the scarcity of locally situated university clinics and the lack of educational opportunities that perpetuates the exclusion of marginalized groups and working-class students.”

Translate »