TRANSGENDER ACTIVIST LESLIE FEINBERG PROCLAIMED in a 1992 political pamphlet that the time for transgender liberation had come. Over twenty years later, popular media described the increasing visibility of transgender lifestyles as a “trans tipping point” or “trans moment.” However, upon further inspection, one discovers luminaries of the Enlightenment already expressed whatever “new” ideas have come to the fore, and better the first time around.
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The Mexican general election of July 1, 2018 may be described, without exaggeration, as the broadest, most authentic expression of electoral democracy in the country’s history. Fifty-seven million voters—more than 60% of the electorate—cast their ballot in a contest for more than 3,400 offices at all levels of government: by far the largest number of votes ever cast for the largest number of candidates in the country’s history.
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AFTER RISING UP THE RANKS of the labor movement in the 1870s and 80s, Debs was courted by the Democratic Party of Indiana to run for state legislature in 1884, and handily won the election. Yet his career as a Democratic Party politician was short-lived.
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HISTORIANS HAVE LONG GRAPPLED with the contradiction of a revolution under the banner of "all men are created equal" being largely led by slave owners. Once free of England, the U.S. grew over the next 89 years to be the largest slave-owning republic in history. But the July 4th, 1776 Declaration of Independence (DI) was in-itself a revolutionary document.
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I RECENTLY ATTENDED THE 2018 LABOR NOTES CONFERENCE, which is probably the largest rank-and-file union conference of organized labor in the United States. I went to find out what labor has been doing across the country and for my own interest in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to see what struggle had broken out amongst its members. Labor Notes has a special place in my heart, not just because it has stood as a bastion for radical organizers since the 80s, but also because it represents, as I see it, the last pillar of labor in the age of Trump.
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