Reality TV and Rural Minstrelsy (0)

4/05/13 •

MTV’s new reality series Buckwild has become the newest trash TV sensation. What is the hook? The stars live in West Virginia. No Real World-style social experimentation, no critical look at the realities of rural life, no defining aspect beyond the fact that these nine young people portray the popular image of life in rural America as they hunt squirrels with homemade traps and mud wrestle wildlife.

Right-Wing Apocalypticism gains Traction (0)

4/02/13 •

BY DANIEL HANSON The most recent pulse of right- wing paranoia since Obama’s election has churned up some thoroughly nasty sediment in the river of mainstream political discourse. More specifically, the wave of pro-gun reaction in the wake of Sandy Hook and other mass shootings, rhetoric equating gun ownership with the maintenance of personal security [...]

Young Democratic Socialists Winter Conference: Turning The Tide (0)

3/14/13 •

On a chilly Friday night in downtown Brooklyn, Jackie Sewell, the youth organizer for the Democratic Socialists Of America, floats around the lobby of St. Francis College, spinning metaphorical plates and letting a whispered “shit” fly periodically as she prepares to greet the attendees of the Young Democratic Socialists Winter Conference.

A Radical Approach to Immigration Reform (0)

3/07/13 •

MATTHEW SCHREPFER Congress is gearing up for another attempt at comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform. After the disaster of the 2012 election, ongoing demographic shifts may actually pressure Republicans to pass it this time, although a bet on Republicans’ rationality or instinct for self-preservation hasn’t been a winning one recently. A lot could be said about [...]

Quentin Tarantino Commits Black Revolution in Django Unchained: A Film Review (3)

12/31/12 •

*Film Spoilers Inside*

As I went to the cinema to see Django Unchained, I was cool and curious. While Quentin Tarantino has made some marvelous movies in the past, one of my all-time favorites being Pulp Fiction (1994), I was curious about what kind of film Quentin would produce with a subject like slavery. While I figured it would be a simple vengeance film, as the first 20 minutes went by, I realized I was highly mistaken. Instead, what I was watching was a complex, sophisticated film engaging in pure ideological violence, concluding with Django and his wife Broomhilda trotting off into their own taste of Black Utopia. I want to reflect on several revolutionary moments in this film that stuck out to me.

The Longshoremen Strike: On Struggle and Solidarity (0)

12/28/12 •

As of 12:01 am on December 30th, it is very likely that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) will go on strike. The dockworkers’ union is extremely powerful – it controls the East Coast from New York to Texas. The last time the ILA went on strike was in 1977 and it’s lasted for nearly two months. Coming at the same time as the so-called “fiscal cliff,” in Washington, the dockworkers’ strike could have devastating effects on the American economy.