radical history 
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SOURCE: Inquest
3/23/2023
Martin Sostre's Vision of Collective Liberation
by Garrett Felber
Martin Sostre's refusal to allow the New York prison system to subject him to invasive and violating searches showed how he placed bodily autonomy at the center of a radical critique of racial oppression. At what would be his 100th birthday, his legacy is considered.
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3/19/2023
When World War II Pacifists "Conquered the Future"
by Eric Laursen
Daniel Akst profiles the pacifists who opposed American involvement in the Second World War and their influence on the civil rights and peace movements that followed.
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SOURCE: TIME
2/23/2023
Black Power is a Love Story
by Dan Berger
While the movement is popularly associated with anger, love was the emotional force that enabled activists to struggle for justice against powerful opposition.
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2/6/2023
How We Brought the Radical History of Pirates to Life
by David Lester
Visual artist David Lester discusses the creative process of developing a graphic version of the radical history of piracy, a collaboration with historians Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle.
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SOURCE: Yes!
1/26/2023
Why We Need Pirates
by Paul Buhle, Marcus Rediker and David Lester
Though vilified in popular culture, the history of piracy shows that many crews were egalitarian bands of maritime workers escaping their exploitation at the hands of merchant companies and navies. A new graphic adaptation of a recent history of piracy tells the story.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
1/10/2023
William Longbeard, the Unjustly Forgotten Radical of 12th Century London
by Dominic Alexander
The rebellion sparked by William Fitz Osbert, the bearded holy man of London, presaged the growing assertiveness of the rural and urban poor in English politics.
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1/15/2023
Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth
by Sam Ben-Meir
The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power.
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SOURCE: LitHub
1/5/2023
No Socialism in America?
by Michael Kazin
Utopian socialist Robert Owen's heralded visit to Congress in 1825 shows that doubts about the relationship of liberty and economic inequality, and the proposal of socialism as an alternative, have been part of the American political scene from the beginning.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/20/2022
Americans Have Always Imagined and Demanded Better Alternatives; Those Alternatives Have Been Hidden
by Jamelle Bouie
Thomas Skidmore's critique of inequality held that the inequality of private property consigned the majority of humanity to toil for the enjoyment of a minority, a situation irreconcilable with democracy.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
12/16/2022
Stephen Shames's Photos Document the Lives and Activism of Black Panther Party Women
As a college student, Shames built trust with the members of the BPP and documented their activism. Now, working with former member Ericka Huggins, a book of those photos preserves the history.
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SOURCE: Minnesota Public Radio
12/13/2022
Why a Young Minnesota Woman Joined the SLA
What led Camilla Hall to join the radical Symbionese Liberation Army after a Lutheran upbringing in Minnesota?
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SOURCE: Yahoo
12/10/2022
Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández Teams Up with New LA City Councilors to Review City's History
A historian and two recently-elected progressive city council members teamed up to tour the sites of the city's community of Mexican revolutionaries in exile, asking how the past can inform social movements today.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
12/8/2022
Review: Gerald Horne on the Long and Continuous American Counter-Revolution
by David Waldstreicher
Gerald Horne's radical revision of North American history puts the Texas "counterrevolution" of 1836 at the center of a long history of battles against greater equality and more widespread freedom.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
11/19/2022
Staughton Lynd, 1929-2022
by Rosemary Feurer
Lynd was an academic and activist when those combinations were reviled as unbecoming of a professional, and he was blacklisted from the profession for his bold anti-war stance. He then made an impact as an activist for labor and against war.
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12/4/2022
Farewell, Brother Staughton
by Carl Mirra
Staughton Lynd was always in the trenches fighting for a better world, and for that he remains a “admirable radical” and, for that matter, a beautiful person.
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SOURCE: Facing South
11/15/2022
From the Archives: Bob Maurer on Charles Sherrod and New Communities Farm
Nearly 50 years ago, activist Robert Maurer reported on the successes and challenges of a Georgia agricultural cooperative conceived as a step toward securing Black economic empowerment in the post-civil rights South.
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SOURCE: N + 1
11/11/2022
Mike Davis Forced Readers to Embrace Specificity
by Gabriel Winant
The recently deceased radical scholar never allowed the particularity of historical moments to disappear under theoretical abstraction, which made his work powerful and compelling.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
10/26/2022
Mike Davis Could See the Future
by Hua Hsu
Often wrongly called a "prophet of doom," Mike Davis worked to show how digging up the past could point the way to a humane future.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
10/26/2022
California Historians and Writers Remember Mike Davis
Matt Garcia, William Deverell and others share personal reflections on their personal and professional intersections with the mold-breaking historian and activist.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
10/26/2022
"Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity": A Posthumous Collection of Noel Ignatiev's Radical History
by Mike King
A posthumous collection of writings by the historian and labor activist reveals his practice-based thoughts on work, power, and politics, and the necessity of abolishing the idea of whiteness to create working class solidarity and power.