Relaunch and Recommended Readings

Machete 408 is back serving you up with a new series of postings after a summer hiatus. A continuing state of joblessness and downgrading to a slower internet connection both put a bit of a damper on the political juices that went into the blog. But despite these, there’s a nice backlog of recently published [...]

Latin American Anarchism

 
 A street mural by a Chilean anarchist cultural/muralist group (Read an interview with them in Spanish here).
  There’s a rich history and tradition of anarchism in Latin America that is still largely waiting to be translated and brought to the attention of the left and others who focus on the region. Below is a review [...]

Remaking Labor–From the Top-Down? Bottom-Up? or Both?

  This is an amazing review which captures what many folks that I know have been saying since the early 2000’s. The writer, long time labor activist Steve Early, contrasts the perspectives between two recent authors and their analysis of the labor movement in LA Stories: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement by UCLA professor [...]

Looking at the 2009 May Day Rallies

    The piece below from Chicago left blog Pilsenprole anlyzes the political terrian that led to the smaller turnout of the 2009 May Day rallies around immigration rights- though still more than the conservative media and well funded founcation sponsored Tea Party Protests this past April 15th. I couldn’t help but see many of the similarities with San Jose and I’m [...]

Where there’s smoke… Anarchism after the RNC

  An anonymous and well written reflection piece that begins with a critical look at the Republican National Convention protests in Minneapolis/St. Paul in late 2008, draws lessons from the autonomia and the Italian radical left on the 1970’s, and then looking at the current political juncture of massive economic crisis asks how we can [...]

More on Tea Party Protests and Populism

  Specializing in election results and polling, political analysis blog FiveThirtyEight estimates that the Tea Party protests only brought out around 300,000 participants to their rallies nation-wide, which is a far cry from organizers claims of over 1.2 million. Read their take on the numbers here. The blog also published a brief commentary speculating that the protests were strongest in [...]

May 1: International Worker’s Day – Día Internacional de los Trabajadores

  Yet again May Day quickly approaches.  Since 2006 the immigrant rights marches- made up of millions of undocumented migrant workers along with their supporters, families and children- has brought back May 1st to its original roots in the US. But many are still unaware of its origins in US labor history and the impact [...]

Civil War in the United States?

  Could the ever deepening financial crisis lead the US or other powerful nations into civil war or some other type of major internal conflict? Clearly large sections of the population feel a strong disillusionment if not outright disgust with capitalism as a system. Even my mother says “Now maybe we need some socialism” because what we have [...]

The Spark We Need – The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

 An inspiring piece celebrating the victory and signifigance of the Chicago Republic Window and Door factory occupation in late 2008. -AW
The Spark We Need – The Chicago Sit-Down Strike
By Daniel Gross- Counterpunch, December 8, 2008
The corporations got sloppy. From the hedge-fund parasites to the housing market fraudsters, the corporate criminals have shown their hand. [...]

Discussing the Oakland Police Killings

  Interesting article to consider discussing the implications around race and class with the shooting of four Oakland police officers on Sunday, March 22 and its comparisons with the perpetrators of the Columbine shootings in 1999. The source of the article is the blog of social commentator, host of Hard Knock Radio and Bay Area hip-hop personality Davey D, [...]