Gauging Organized Labor
An Interview with Staughton Lynd
By Andy Piascik
For more than 50 years, Staughton Lynd has been a leading radical in the United States. He was an engaged supporter of the Black Liberation Movement in
the Deep South in the early 1960s, most notably as coordinator of the Freedom Schools during Mississippi Summer in 1964. He was an active opponent of
US aggression in Indochina, including as chairperson of the first national demonstration against the war in Vietnam in April 1965.
In recent decades, Lynd has been an attorney representing prisoners, particularly at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, and has written a book,
a play and numerous articles about the 1993 uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Since the late 1960s, Lynd has also been deeply involved in the labor movement as an activist, attorney and prolific writer.
Inspired by Marty Glaberman, Stan Weir and Ed Mann, Lynd has been a passionate and prolific proponent of decentralized, rank-and-file driven unionism
Whiteness, Space, and the Meaning of Community
A Conversation
By Jonathan Mathias Lassiter
One of the reasons I think that happens is because of the same reason that happens when heterosexual people of color try to advocate for their own
spaces. I think it's because…a classic example is around Black History Month. When people ask, "why don't we have a white history month?" I think
it's this sort of narcissistic worldview-a very white-centric worldview-where everything revolves around whiteness and white culture, which is in and of
itself is invisible. White culture is especially good at erasing itself. Through its erasure of itself it can normalize its power effectively. Something
that is invisible is hard to deconstruct and fight against. So with this invisible white-centric world view, one can say, "this isn't white BDSM
or anything like that, this is just BDSM. So now why do you want to separate from BDSM?" When the actual separation is already in place; however, it is not
highlighted, it is erased.
The Transformer
One Man's Confrontation with Capitalism and War
By William T. Hathaway
A friend of mine works as a janitor. After graduating from college he worked as a market researcher and an advertising salesperson, but both jobs soured
him on the corporate world. He hated being a junior suit, and the thought of becoming a senior suit was even worse. He finds being a janitor a much better job. He's left alone, it's low pressure, and what he does improves the world rather than worsens it. The pay's lousy
but that's standard these days. He loves music, so he loads up his MP3 and grooves to the sounds. Although the work is routine, it's brightened by
occasional bits of human interest: used condoms in executive wastebaskets, marijuana butts in the emergency stairwell, a twenty-dollar bill under a desk.
His shift is from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., and afterwards he hits the late-night clubs, where he can enjoy the scene with the advantage of being sober.
Cosmopolitan Conscience
Instinctive Morals and Ethics
By Michael B. Adewumi
Can the human race transcend itself beyond the prejudice, superiority and ethno-political conflicts that seem to becloud our mutuality due to differences
in understanding of values, power and ideology? During my high school years, I decided to take liberal arts classes because I believed science wasn't for me and one of my career fields of interest was
law. However, my conservative mother never supported the idea of her son becoming a lawyer because she believed lawyers were not forthright people and were
mostly interested in winning their cases even if it meant proving that a criminal didn't commit a crime. I never understood the concept of law and justice
during that time. Years later, having become an adult, experiencing the bitter taste of many social injustices inflicted upon the less privileged, and
seeing many extra-judicial killings of people of "minority race" in society, I come to the conclusion that the law is not just, it has no conscience, and
instead mostly favors those with power and privilege.
