Recent ZMagazine

“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world.” 

Hatuey led the first guerrilla warfare against European invasion of the western hemisphere

The government mostly does what its constituents with money and power make it do

My duty to my students is to protect the learning environment and ending such derelict non-leadership is part of that duty that I share with teachers everywhere

What matters about the present moment is that change seems to be coming from multiple directions, both outside and within the corridors of political and economic power, as our ignorance shatters and we wake up

Photo by Johnny Silvercloud/Shutterstock.com   C.J. Polychroniou: It’s been argued by many, from various quarters, that COVID-19 has been a game changer. Do you concur with this view, or are we talking of a temporary situation, with a return to the “business as usual” approach being the most likely scenario once this health crisis is Read more…

  Photo by bgrocker/Shutterstock.com   Since George Floyd was murdered, we have seen an increasing convergence of the “war at home” against Black and brown people with the “wars abroad” that the U.S. has waged against people in other countries. Army and National Guard troops have been deployed in U.S. cities, as militarized police treat Read more…

Photo by bgrocker/Shutterstock.com     Protesters demonstrating against white supremacy and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s public lynching have been met with illegal repression by law enforcement. Police have utilized toxic chemical and sonic weapons, dangerous projectiles, intrusive surveillance, physical violence and “kettling” to trap demonstrators after dispersal orders are given. In a study conducted by the University Read more…

The grassroots movements of workers and the unemployed formed a crucial part of the process that led instead to the emergence of the New Deal and the development of new and expanded forms of working-class organization

The truth is that statues are a thing of the past only as long as they stand quietly in squares, as indifferent to us as we are to them

Photo by Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock.com   Today America is at a crossroads, a turning point…at an intersection of the old imperial order at home and abroad with the birthing of a new order, “a new normal” if you will. For millions of people in America, the unprecedented street uprisings offer a glimmer of hope that after 350 Read more…

Photo by Amani A/Shutterstock.com   We are in the midst of the largest mass uprising in half a century. It is a response to the killing of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. But it challenges a pattern of Black oppression that goes far beyond one cop killing one Read more…

It’s not a COVID-19 economy. It’s a capitalist economy, the instability of which has been rendered even more unstable by the current COVID-19 health crisis

Photo by bgrocker/Shutterstock.com   Here is one thing I can write with an unusual degree of certainty and confidence: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin would not have been charged with the murder of George Floyd had the United States not been teetering on a knife edge of open revolt. Had demonstrators not turned out in massive numbers Read more…

Like Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump will desecrate sacred ground to shamelessly promote his hollow but dangerous political ambitions

Criminological data has told us for decades that police are irrelevant for public safety

It’s fascinating to see pundits on CNN, MSNBC and other networks now discussing “systemic racism” after they’d spent months during the Democratic presidential primaries in panicked overdrive propping up “the system.”

Photo by Untitled Title/Shutterstock.com   The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands. The confluence of crises Read more…

For a variety of reasons—rewarding giant corporations, getting reelected, and dominating the world―Trump remains fixated on “winning” the arms race

Reinvest in people? Are we really ready for that level of common sense?

White organizers who are serious about anti-racism need to have ongoing connections to people of color, by participating in a multicultural organization of some kind, at a minimum

I may be idealistic in what I feel needs to and can happen, but what other choice do I have? What other choice do we have? I want not only mine, but all the suffering I have witnessed to end

Revolution becomes the only way finally to secure progressive reforms

We need to redefine our militarized national security embodied in weapons and global top cop mentality as urgently as cities and states need to rethink community security embodied in militarized police

There is a meme circulating in this time of pandemic that we are all in this together, that COVID-19 is, as New York Governor Cuomo stated, the “great equalizer.” From one vantage point, this appears to be true: as I write, news broke that a staff person to Vice President Pence and another to President Read more…

Getting past conspiracies is not easy to do, but it is imperative if we want to organize for a better world

If there was any remaining debate about the sincerity of global fashion’s commitment to the people and communities on which it depends, however, it was settled in the wake of the current COVID-19 crisis

Even though 1,000 workers at Tyson’s slaughterhouse in Waterloo, Iowa, have tested positive for the coronavirus, it has reopened. Tyson has said last week it would begin slaughtering pigs. The company promised that workers would receive daily screenings and access to nurse practitioners, but many who can transmit the coronavirus are asymptomatic. At 2 other Read more…

While my immediate feelings about what should happen to the right-wing anti-science protesters who paraded around cannot be put in writing, I will suggest that society should not be put at risk by those trapped in delusions

At present local health departments and the CDC have only about 2,200 professional “disease detectives,” although other health staff often assist during a contagious outbreak Photo by theskaman306/Shutterstock.com     Conservative governors are now openly at odds with epidemiologists as plans move ahead for more than half the states to loosen social distancing and permit Read more…

Over the course of U.S. history, farmworkers, although essential, have been terribly mistreated

For the next six months, getting rid of Trump and as many of his overt supporters as possible is job number one, far and away

With almost 2.3 million people behind bars, the U.S. continues to have the highest number of prisoners in the world, a legacy of several decades of racially propelled policies of harsh sentencing and rapid prison building

The first institutional change would have to be in our criminal justice system and our underlying theory about the maintenance of social order. Disarm policing. Rethink justice

Photo by Never Settle Media/Shutterstock.com   During the weeks since Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign, many fervent supporters have entered a “WTF?” space. The realities of disappointment and distress aren’t just about dashed hopes of winning the presidential nomination. Much of the current disquiet is also due to a disconnect between choices made by the Read more…

Just keeping to the current COVID-19 crisis, it is remarkable to see how little attention has been given to his sadistic assault against poor and suffering people around the world in pursuit of his goal of enhancing his electoral prospects

Like his predecessors from Truman to Obama, Trump has been caught in the trap of America’s blind, deluded militarism

Social order requires complex understanding of the human condition, far, far more than it requires a tough-guy swagger, handcuffs and a gun

With a media in place that truly holds politicians to account and celebrates scientists for their contributions to collective knowledge, not their usefulness to corporate enrichment—we would not need to worry about the safety of our communications systems or medicines

Making a distinction between the biotechnology of Bayer/Monsanto and Cuba requires understanding the difference between bioimperialism and biosolidarity. Imperialism subdues. Biosolidarity empowers

U.S. national security leaders and stakeholders in war, as they shelter in place, have an extraordinary opportunity to set a new norm and link with the vigil for Peace in Yemen

Thanks to this tax cut—the rich get richer: 72 percent of the tax cuts were directed to the wealthiest 20 percent of households

The wasting disease of normalcy is the far greater existential threat and our survival requires that we meet it with at least the same courage, generosity and ingenuity

The coronavirus is not just a threat to our personal and collective health; it is a threat to our democratic institutions as well. We need to protect lives and democracies

If only we could redirect our gaze, if we could seize back control of our attention for a moment, we might understand that we are being plagued not just by a virus but by our fear, our hate, our hunger, our selfishness

Photo by StoopDown/Shutterstock.com   Politics is ultimately about life and death, as the current pandemic horrors make clear. Policies that can seem abstract not only routinely harm quality of life; they also kill. Both Bernie Sanders campaigns for president have brought a principled seriousness to the national discourse that no other candidate has come near Read more…

The Fed has opened a free money spigot to investors, bankers, and to big business of all types, and has simply declared “come on in and take it.” And if the $6 trillion to date isn’t enough, we’ll provide more

If we can expand our consciousness and compassion, we can begin to comprehend our government’s behavior in the world and come out of this pandemic demanding to be better members of the human family

Immigrant farm workers have long been essential to the U.S. But they have never been recognized, respected or properly rewarded for their labor

Republicans are responsible for condoning his corruption, persistent abuses of power, and ongoing grift