inequality

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Re-stabilizing the Middle Class and the Poor: Lessons from the 1930s

  by David Stebenne

  For a long time it seemed as though the 1930s era of high unemployment was a kind of “great exception” in American history, but now it has appeared again, suddenly and unexpectedly, just as it did in the early 1930s. 

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• 7/3/2020
  

  Will Capitalist Consumer Culture Absorb Another Generation of Protest?

  by Walter G. Moss

  Do recent protests against the symbols of racism--monuments and statues--reflect a political movement that can easily be absorbed by today's multicultural corporations, or will that energy sustain a push to fundamentally reform American capitalism too? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/26/2020
  

  Beyond ‘White Fragility’: If you Want to Let Freedom Ring, Hammer on Economic Injustice.

  by Jamelle Bouie

  The histories of Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois and Eric Foner, as well as the later speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrate that the cause of racial justice has never been separable from closing the vast economic gulf between owners and workers in America. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  6/23/2020
  

  Martin Luther King’s Giant Triplets of Injustice

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Without addressing the fundamental evils of economic inequality and militarism American society will continue to fail to realize the promise of racial equality, as Martin Luther King warned in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2020
  

  The Pandemic and Protests Have Exposed the Truth About California

  by Miriam Pawel

  The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the notion of American exceptionalism. The same is true for the golden myth of California, where American inequalities are perhaps most starkly displayed.

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• 6/21/2020
  

  The Great Upheaval of 1877 Sheds Light on Today’s Protests

  by Richard Schneirov

  1877 saw a wave of mass protests and strikes by the urban poor of multiple ethnicities, violent repression by the forces of law and order, and a news media that focused on sensational instances of looting and property damage while ignoring the protesters' complaints about inequality during a brutal economic downturn.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/16/2020
  

  It Didn’t Have to Be Like This

  The New Deal, per historian Eric Rauchway, illustrates the relationship between the American economy and American democracy.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/8/2020
  

  How Do We Change America?

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police if the roots of oppression and inequality that constitute what many activists refer to as “racial capitalism” are left in place.

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• SOURCE: CityLab
  6/5/2020
  

  Why This Started in Minneapolis

  There’s a dissonance, locals say, between Minneapolis' progressive rhetoric and the reality of how people of different races experience completely different cities. Read how history professor William D. Green and others have experienced these divides, and how they propose to bridge them.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  6/9/2020
  

  What A 1968 Report Tells Us About The Persistence Of Racial Inequality

  The dire economic inequalities between black and white Americans documented by the Kerner Commission's report have not vanished. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  6/4/2020
  

  Organizing the Rich or the Poor?

  by Liz Theoharis

  Instead of looking to national leaders or the rich, a 1968 incident should remind us to recognize the need to organize the political power of the poor for self-determination.

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• SOURCE: CityLab
  5/26/2020
  

  Poor Neighborhoods Are Only Getting Poorer

  What new research shows is that number of poor neighborhoods in metropolitan areas has actually doubled from 1980 — and most existing low-income areas only fell deeper into poverty.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  5/29/2020
  

  The Minneapolis Uprising in Context

  by Elizabeth Hinton

  It's necessary to understand anti-police rebellion as a form of political protest among people without the resources to express discontent in more socially accepted ways. 

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• 5/31/2020
  

  COVID and the Deadly Logic of Efficiency in Meatpacking and Elder Care

  by Jeff Kolnick

  The economic logic of efficiency is responsible for the severity and deadliness of the Coronavirus outbreak in both meatpacking plants and nursing homes. 

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• SOURCE: KJZZ
  5/20/2020
  

  How History Has Favored The Economy Over Public Health

  Historian Peter Mancall tells interviews that applying lessons from past public health emergencies has been impeded by the imperative to exploit the labor of vulnerable workers for profit. 

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• SOURCE: Science
  5/14/2020
  

  From Black Death to Fatal Flu, Past Pandemics Show Why People on the Margins Suffer Most

  Evidence from bioanthropology and history suggests that late medieval plagues (and other pandemics) are not levelling forces; they often reinforce the divisions in society.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/17/2020
  

  The Lessons of the Great Depression

  by Lizabeth Cohen

  The larger lesson the New Deal offers is that recovery is a complex and painful process that requires the participation of many, not directives from a few. And that, ultimately, we’re all in this together.

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• 5/17/2020
  

  Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America’s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Americans may wonder whether the nation can afford to maintain a small, parasitic stratum of society in splendor during economic collapse and pandemic.

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• 5/17/2020
  

  Coronavirus Exposed the Contradictions Behind the Curtain. Will Americans Pay No Attention?

  by Walter L. Hixson

  Liberal centrism has come up short in the COVID-19 crisis. Decades of cold war demonization of social democracy have made it disturbingly likely that an American fascism will fill the void.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/14/2020
  

  The ‘American Way of Life’ Is Shaping Up to Be a Battleground

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  The median wealth of a U.S. senator was $3.2 million as of 2018, and $900,000 for a member of the House of Representatives. These elected officials voted for one-time stimulus checks of $1,200 as if that was enough.