Bill Fletcher, Jr.

What passes for identity politics should actually be understood as social justice struggles that aim for consistent democracy and become, as a result, component parts of the larger class struggle. These are not battles around one’s identity. This is not self-indulgent activity by people who, for whatever reason, do not recognize the importance of economics.

For many of us in Black America, Castro represented the audacity that we have desired and sought in the face of imperial and racial arrogance. While it is unfortunate that some of us have withheld concerns and criticisms out of respect for Castro and the Cuban Revolution, it is completely understandable.

we were not dealing with the poorest of the poor. Instead, this was a movement driven by those who are actually doing fairly well but are despairing because the American Dream that they embraced no longer seems to work for white people.

If a country—in this case Haiti—is attempting to get its local manufacturing off the ground in the sphere of clothes, it will be selling to a local market. If donated used clothes are shipped to that country and are then sold, rather than given to people in need, such clothes will certainly cost less than the newly manufactured clothing. Thus, rather than the used clothes actually helping an impoverished country, they serve to further under-develop the country in question.

Over time the apartheid regime cultivated contacts in the USA and Western Europe. As the book points out, none of these propaganda efforts stopped the death of apartheid, but in reading this story it was difficult to believe that such efforts did not contribute, in various fashions, to lengthening the duration of the regime and its progeny.

Gabriel Thompson has produced one of the most thought-provoking books on organizing and affecting social change that I have read in some time. In telling Fred Ross’ life story, Thompson has dared to push the envelope on matters that many progressives would rather ignore.

Suffer the whips of oppression in silence and everyone loves you. Dare to struggle; dare to reject victimhood, and we become the object of fear and, from the political Right, overt hatred.

the waves of assaults by the Republicans have not ceased and, with the crippling of the Voting Rights Act, the blood lust of the Republicans has become enhanced. For these reasons, the approach of progressives towards voter suppression needs to be reconsidered.