This article, first published in August 2022, includes some slight edits, updated information, and added citations. Introduction In August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. The...
The revolutionary origins of Memorial Day and its political hijacking
A day celebrating Black liberation utilized for white supremacy Editor's note: This article was previously published on Liberation News in 2012. What we now know as Memorial Day began as "Decoration Day" in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a...
Israel: Base of western imperialism
Liberation School introduction The following text was published in a May 1969 pamphlet issued by the “Ad Hoc Committee on the Middle East,” which held its first conference on June 21, 1967, days after the U.S.-Israeli war against Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The...
Harry Haywood’s contributions to the national question and the fight for class unity
In honor of the 126th anniversary of Harry Haywood's birth, we're reposting this article originally published on Liberation School in 2014. Harry Haywood was a long time member and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and other communist organizations from the...
The long history of Black and Palestinian solidarity
International solidarity in the face of racism The acquittal of racist murderer George Zimmerman sparked outrage and demonstrations not only in the United States, but all around the world—including in Palestine. Many Palestinians circulated pictures of themselves...
The revolutionary origins of Memorial Day and its political hijacking
A day celebrating Black liberation utilized for white supremacy Editor's note: This article was previously published on Liberation News in 2012. What we now know as Memorial Day began as "Decoration Day" in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a...
Islamophobia and imperialism: Nazia Kazi on race and global politics
Editor’s note: The latest installment in our Liberation School interview series focuses on the relationship between Islamophobia and imperialism. Jennifer Ponce de León interviews Nazia Kazi about her work on race and global politics, with a particular focus on how to...
Whose lessons? Which direction?
Introduction As obituaries for neoliberalism pile up on our nightstands and Antonio Gramsci’s adage that the old is dying and the new cannot be born appears newly profound, we turn to the past for direction. What successes should guide us? What can we learn from our...
Toward a third Reconstruction: Lessons from the past for a socialist future
“The price...of slavery and civil war was the necessity of quickly assimilating into American democracy a mass of laborers...in whose hands alone for the moment lay the power of preserving the ideals of popular government...and establishing upon it an industry...