radicalism

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• SOURCE: Money on the Left Podcast
  5/1/2021
  

  Remaking Radicalism with Dan Berger and Emily M. Hobson

  Historians Dan Berger and Emily Hobson discuss their new primary source anthology on grassroots social movements in the last quarter of the 20th century. 

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• SOURCE: Spectre Journal
  4/21/2021
  

  Revolution is Illegal: Revisiting the Panther 21 at 50

  by Orisanmi Burton

  "To revisit the history of the BPP is to experience the rhyme of history. Yet, the refrain is not a pleasant one."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  4/15/2021
  

  The Real Black Panthers

  Historian Donna Murch joins NPR's The Throughline to discuss the Black Panther Party's agenda and its targeting by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. 

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• 4/18/2021
  

  Don't Erase Women's Leadership in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

  by Robert Cohen

  Historians have yet to fully examine the role of women in leadership and at the grass roots of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Even some of the best and most insightful accounts of the FSM treat it as a movement of men and ignore the key roles of Jackie Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker and others. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  3/2/2021
  

  Newly Obtained FBI Files Shed New Light on the Murder of Fred Hampton

  by Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher

  New documents shed further light on the involvement of the FBI in the 1969 assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who is the subject of the new film "Judas and the Black Messiah." 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/26/2021
  

  The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning

  Columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historians Michael W. Fitzgerald, Paul Horton, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Robert Widell, Jr. which shows that Alabamians, and Black Alabamians in particular, have organized to fight both racial oppression and labor exploitation.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/1/2021
  

  ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ is the Film to Help Us Understand 2021. Here’s Why

  by John Beckman and Theo Zenou

  Abbie Hoffman used his conspiracy trial as a guerrila theater stage, the peak of his career as an activist who used absurdity and wit to expose the hypocrisies of American society. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/22/2021
  

  The Campaign to Free the Wilmington 10 Holds the Key to Successful Activism Today

  by Kenneth Janken

  A campaign to free 10 racial justice protesters in 1972 worked because it connected the cause to the problems with police, poverty, and racism experienced by a broad cross section of the community, and "recognize[d] racism not as separate from history but as part of historical processes and political economy."

• 
• 2/21/2021
  

  From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”

  by Jerry Lembcke

  If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/17/2021
  

  The Retrograde Quest for Symbolic Prophets of Black Liberation

  by Adolph Reed, Jr.

  The prevailing pattern of invoking activist or intellectual figures from Black history as prophetic exemplars of moral and political authority takes those figures out of their historical contexts and discourages consideration of how racism connects to multiple systems of economic and political power in contemporary crises like COVID-19. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/1/2021
  

  Law Enforcement’s Double Standards for Black Radical Activists

  by Denise Lynn

  Those puzzled at the FBI's inability to monitor white supremacist and right-wing extremist groups like those involved in the Capitol rioting should consider how the bureau has historically worked to surveil and harass radical Black organizations like the Sojourners for Truth and Justice. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/1/2021
  

  Why Black Marxism, Why Now?

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  Robin D.G. Kelley places the work of Cedric Robinson in the context of Black radical traditions that have challenged the use of Marxism as a critique of power and politics. 

• 
• 12/13/2020
  

  Anarchism and the Avant-Garde: Félix Fénéon at the Museum of Modern Art

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  A new MOMA exhibition centers not on artists, but on the avant-garde critic and editor Félix Fénéon, whose championing of innovative artists meshed with his radical politics as a critique of the injustices of modern society.

• 
• SOURCE: In These Times
  12/1/2020
  

  The Great Black Radical You've Never Heard Of

  by Peter Cole

  The author of a new book on an understudied Black labor radical presents context for an exerpt of an interview Ben Fletcher gave to the New York Amsterdam News, a rare surviving case of the organizer telling his own story.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  10/21/2020
  

  Aaron Sorkin Sanitizes the Chicago 7

  by Jeet Heer

  According to Jeet Heer, "Sorkin takes many liberties with the facts, most of which are designed to make both the New Left and its conservative opponents more palatable to contemporary liberal viewers."

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• SOURCE: National History Center
  10/14/2020
  

  Julia Rose Kraut: Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States

  Julia Rose Kraut's "Threat of Dissent" examines major court decisions and legislation affecting the deportation of political radicals in the face of the First Amendment and America's stated ideals, while showing the lives of the people involved. She addressed the National History Center's Washington History Seminar this October.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/7//2020
  

  Getting to Freedom City (Review)

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  Historian Robin Kelley reviews Mike Davis and Jon Weiner's "Set the Night on Fire," which chronicles the growth of resistance to inequality and miltarized policing in 1960s Los Angeles.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/18/2020
  

  Scapegoating Antifa for Starting Wildfires Distracts from the Real Causes

  by Steven C. Beda

  The idea of left-wing radicals starting wildfires in the Pacific Northwest dates back to timber companies blaming the Industrial Workers of the World for blazes as a way to discredit demands for workers' power through unions. 

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• SOURCE: Toward Freedom
  9/19/2020
  

  Against State Capture

  by Austin McCoy

  Austin McCoy warns that the energy of today's protest movements, which demand deep changes to the organization of society, is at risk of being captured and contained by small-scale reforms. The challenge for "abolition democracy" is to involve people in deciding how to dismantle and replace repressive institutions.

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• 9/20/2020
  

  Woody Guthrie's Communism and "This Land Is Your Land"

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  The author of a new book on the FBI's surveillance of folk musicians argues that Woody Guthrie did join the Communist Party, though he was at odds with leadership over discipline. The affiliation is reflected in the lyrics of his most famous song.