Connexions Resource Centre
Focus on the United States

Recent & Selected Articles

  1. This is a small sampling of articles related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as United States, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.
  1. US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport (February 23, 2022)
  2. Those who violated the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo are free, while the man who helped expose their crimes languishes in prison (2022)
  3. America's racial fairytales (2021)
    The practice of cancelling ordinary people for minor public rudeness or crudeness has been a common practice for nearly 10 years now.
  4. US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense (2021)
    So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on "US locations" in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were "Iranian-linked", a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force. And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation. This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor.
  5. The World Must End The US' Illegal Economic War (January 14, 2020)
    The United States is relying more heavily on illegal unilateral coercive measures (also known as economic sanctions) in place of war or as part of its build-up to war. In fact, economic sanctions are an act of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through financial strangulation.
  6. US Capitalism Was Born in the Destruction of the Commons (April 3, 2019)
    Interview with Silvia Federici and Peter Linebaugh about Federici's book Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons.
  7. Three Lessons for the Left from the Mueller Inquiry (March 25, 2019)
    Important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump's camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.
  8. It's Time for America to Reckon With the Staggering Death Toll of the Post-9/11 Wars (November 19, 2018)
    Researchers strive to count the casualties of American wars but are faced by a lack of political and military accountability and a seemingly apathetic public.
  9. No Trump, No Clinton, No NATO (July 7, 2018)
    Murray explains why the notion that those who do not want Clinton in power are therefore supporters of Trump is intellectually risible and politically dishonest.
  10. The Killing of History (October 21, 2017)
    Pilger examines Ken Burns' documentary about the Vietnam War and the ongoing revisionist history it presents, as well as the acquiescence of the American 'left' in the era of Trump.
  11. Rural Americans and the Language Too Many People Use to Talk About Them (October 12, 2017)
    With the rural-urban divide more pronounced now than it has been in generations, the author takes a closer look at the derogatory language too many people use, as well their meaning and contradictions.
  12. Donald Trump Has Been a Racist All His Life -- And He Isn't Going to Change After Charlottesville (August 15, 2017)
    Consider the first time the president's name appeared on the front page of the New York Times was an article which pointed out that the Department of Justice had sued the Trump family's real estate company in federal court over alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act because of anti-black bias. Over the next four decades, Trump burnished his reputation as a bigot.
  13. Empire of Destruction (July 20, 2017)
    A single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half: rubble. It's been a painfully apt term since September 11, 2001. In addition, to catch the essence of such war in this century, two new words might be useful: rubblize and rubblization.
  14. Empire Abroad, Empire At Home (April 26, 2017)
    The institutions and ideas U.S. elites used to project "full spectrum dominance" onto the global stage have eventually become part of the political order in the U.S. It is empire -- most of all -- that dooms democracy. As corporations have an insatiable drive for profit, empires have an insatiable drive for power.
  15. Towards a Transformative Electoral Strategy (February 7, 2017)
    An essay on Electoral Strategy for the left in the United States.
  16. Land of the Free? Harvard Study Ranks America Worst in the West for Fair Elections (November 8, 2016)
    According to the EIP, U.S. elections scored lower than Argentina, South Africa, Tunisia, and Rwanda -- and strikingly lower than even Brazil. Specifically compared to Western democracies, U.S. elections scored the lowest, slightly worse than the U.K., while Denmark and Finland topped the list.
  17. America's Deceptive Model for Aggression (October 4, 2016)
    Since NATO's 1999 war on Serbia, U.S. officials have followed a script demonizing targeted foreign leaders, calling ultimatums "diplomacy," lying about "war as a last resort" and selling aggression as humanitarianism.
  18. Containing the United States (September 9, 2016)
    With Hillary Clinton about to be elected and some advanced cadres of the war party preparing to take charge, who is going to contain the United States? The U.S. political system has failed its populace and the world and has imposed no brakes on the war machine. The UN and EU are still too much under the U.S. thumb. Russia and China are too weak and with too flimsy an alliance system to threaten U.S. hegemony and do more than make direct U.S. aggression against themselves very costly.
  19. Burying the White Working Class (May 13, 2016)
    Liberal condescension towards white workers is code for a broader anti-working class agenda. The white working class is a zombie that doesn't know it's dead. Or if it's not fully zombified yet, its members are all too busy cleaning their AR-15s and posting racist comments on YouTube to vote for a progressive. That is, if they're not already on the Trump bandwagon, which they probably are. At least that's what the Democratic Party wants you to believe.
  20. Does the United States Still Exist? (March 28, 2016)
    To answer the question that is the title, we have to know of what the US consists. Is it an ethnic group, a collection of buildings and resources, a land mass with boundaries, or is it the Constitution? Clearly what differentiates the US from other countries is the US Constitution. The Constitution defines us as a people. Without the Constitution we would be a different country. Therefore, to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.
  21. American Nuremberg: Putting Washington's War Criminals on Trial - Book Review (2016)
    Any honest review of the aggregating crimes of America’s political leaders gives rise to a nagging question: Isn’t it time someone threw the book at them? Well, the wait is over. We now have the book.
  22. Neoliberalism and the New Lynching (September 1, 2015)
    I don't think it's a coincidence that they would raise mass Black and Brown incarceration as being a counterinsurgency tactic. I think we've seen that out there on the streets, out there in Baltimore and Ferguson lately.
  23. Paradoxes of Politics (July 1, 2015)
    Is there a viable presence for genuine independent politics, whether it’s a political party formation or broader coalition? What's needed is a force embracing the rising social insurgencies around race and national oppression, mass incarceration, immigrant rights, Fight for Fifteen, confronting the environmental disaster and endless imperialist wars - along with labor's traditional economic issues - capable of attracting thousands or tens of thousands of activists out of the corporate two-party trap.
  24. The Drone Papers (2015)
    The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military's assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama's drone wars.
  25. Global Warming's Unacknowledged Threat - The Pentagon (2015)
    The Pentagon has admitted to burning 350,000 barrels of oil a day (only 35 countries in the world consume more) but that doesn't include oil burned by contractors and weapons suppliers. It does, however, include providing fuel for more than 28,000 armored vehicles, thousands of helicopters, hundreds of jet fighters and bombers and vast fleets of Navy vessels.
  26. Democracy rezoned (November 1, 2014)
    By employing techniques that take advantage of the extreme polarisation of the US electorate, the Republican Party is able to fix polls.
  27. Mass Incarceration and Capitalism (April 4, 2014)
    On the intersections of race, class, capitalism, and social repression via mass incarceration in the United States.
  28. Defeat of Reconstruction and the Betrayal of Black Freedom Part One (February 7, 2014)
    Reconstruction was a tumultuous, brief and extraordinary period of American history defined by an unprecedented experiment in interracial democracy. It was an era of exceptional developments, all taking place simultaneously and impacting one another.
  29. Obama's Sinister Crackdown on the Press (August 20, 2013)
    David Miranda was placed on such a watch list by the US because of his relationship with Greenwald and was detained and held, without access to a lawyer, for nine hours.
  30. America's Descent Into Madness (August 12, 2013)
    The mainstream media spins stories that are largely racist, violent, and irresponsible. Anti-public intellectuals promotes a culture of consumerism.
  31. The US v. Trayvon Martin (July 15, 2013)
    Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, teenage pedestrian died and George Zimmerman walked because our entire political and legal foundations were built on an ideology of settler colonialism.
  32. The American Way of Torture (July 12, 2013)
    Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians.
  33. Edward J. Snowden and the Exposure of Voyeuristic Fascism (June 25, 2013)
    Snowden make a difference in the affairs of state in an environment where individuals do not appear to matter.
  34. Spying by the Numbers (June 20, 2013)
    Thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden many more people in the US and world-wide are learning about extensive US government surveillance and spying. There are publicly available numbers which show the reality of these problems are bigger than most think and most of this spying is happening with little or no judicial oversight.
  35. Capitalist Surveillance State: Everyone's a Target (June 10, 2013)
    There is an inherent tendency for the state, which governs on behalf of a minuscule, ruthless class of obscenely wealthy exploiters, to attempt to amass ever greater power to control the population because it hates and fears the working people.
  36. Surveillance USA (June 7, 2013)
    The government is merrily going about its business of keeping tabs on you in virtually every conceivable way.
  37. Gun Control: Carnage in Context (March 1, 2013)
    What "the right to bear arms" means today is murkier in a society which is profoundly unorganized, exceptionally violent, highly racist, and with desperately inadequate care for the mentally ill.
  38. Voter Suppression Hits Mississippi (March 1, 2013)
    Concerns regarding the polarization of voting in Mississippi between classses and actions taken with the apparent goal of suppressing the non-white opposition.
  39. Deranging America (February 21, 2013)
    A question worth asking: Who benefit from a more compulsive, hence more violent, population? Well, if you’re pushing eternal warfare, which we are, you’ll need a pool of nutcases who are willing to shoot anyone for any reason, or none at all, and more deranged oafs at home to go “Rah! Rah!” over any bombing run or drone hit. Are we going into Mali next? Why not? Where is it, by the way? There has never been a country fighting so many wars without a serious debate about any of them. And if you want people to buy first, think later, to rack up life-wrecking debts to satiate all ephemeral cravings, then you ply them with poison, flickering television and thumping music. You don’t want a population capable of deliberating, reflecting, thinking clearly or even listening attentively, much less reading, but one that can be jerked around by any sexy come-on or dumbed down slogan.
  40. Overthrowing other people's governments: The Master List (February 1, 2013)
    Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War.
  41. Overwrought Empire (October 9, 2012)
    Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that they experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism -- think of it as the real “American Century” -- from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a destructive stalemate in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam too shocking to absorb or shake off.
  42. The NYT's Love Letter to Death Squads (May 29, 2012)
    It is, I confess, beyond all my imagining that a national leader so deeply immersed in murdering people would trumpet his atrocity so openly, so gleefully - and so deliberately, sending his top aides out to collude in a major story in the nation's leading newspaper, to ensure maximum exposure of his killing spree.
  43. Air Force Invades the Rocky Mountains (January 16, 2012)
    Communities throughout rural America are fighting to stop more Air Force flights overhead. In addition to New Mexico and Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona, Kentucky and Maine are some of the other states fighting intrusive low-level flights.
  44. The Foreclosure-to-Rental Screwjob (January 13, 2012)
    The US government is preparing to bail out the banks once again.
  45. Violence Goes to College (November 22, 2011)
    The priorities of the campus are clear. An Assistant Professor earns an annual salary in the low $60,000 range; a Lieutenant in the campus safety department (the man who fired the pepper gas, for instance) brings home $110,000.
  46. Traite du Savoir-Vivre for the Occupy Wall Street Generations (October 8, 2011)
    Once upon a time, twenty thousand people descended on Wall Street, the capitol of capital, occupied it nonviolently, and won exactly what they demanded. This is not a fairy tale. It really happened. This is the story of how it happened.
  47. Perpetual War (September 7, 2011)
    A decade after the attentats of 9/11, the United States and its European allies are trapped in a quagmire. The events of that year were simply used as a pretext to remake the world and to punish those states that did not comply. And today the majority of Euro-American citizens flounder in a moral desert, now unhappy with the wars, now resigned, now propagandized into differentiating what is, in effect, an overarching imperial strategy into good/bad wars.
  48. Lessons from COINTELPRO (March 12, 2011)
    We can best honor those who have been murdered by our government and their agents, not by mourning but by organizing, by building movements that put into practice solidarity across borders that are inclusive in all the important ways - class, gender, race, sexual orientation, language, immigrant status and age - that resist boldly and courageously all forms of inequality and environmental degradation.
  49. The Domestic War on Protesters (February 11, 2011)
    While the US claims to uphold right to demonstrate around the world, there have been countless examples throughout the history of this country of protests being shut down by an overwhelming police presence. In recent years, it has become routine for police departments to use a host of tactics to limit and prevent mass demonstrations. These tactics have included mass arrests of demonstrators, preemptive arrests and trumped up charges against protest organizers.
  50. A Primer on Immigrant Rights (January 1, 2011)
    The struggle for immigrant rights is one of the most important struggles of our time, and it occurs under a working-class banner.
  51. Obama's Liberty Problem (December 23, 2010)
    The proposal to create a special new legal system by Executive Order will threaten the liberty of every single US citizen who is not in Guantanamo because it will damage the due process guarantees which have built up over the years to protect each one of us.
  52. Predicting Torture (December 22, 2010)
    Bradley Manning is charged with leaking classified documents to Wikileaks and faces a court martial. The conditions of his confinement are extreme, and amount to torture.
  53. US Government Systematically Spying on Citizens (December 7, 2010)
    The US government has been systematically violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
  54. The Borrower and the Billionaire (December 2, 2010)
    In this excerpt adapted from The Monster, Michael W. Hudson writes about the nation’s largest subprime lending empire through the fortunes of its owner and one of its customers.
  55. Race and Class: What About the Working Poor? (November 1, 2010)
    One striking feature of political debate in the country today is that — while every commentator, pundit and political observer talks about and focuses on the concerns of the super-rich and the middle class — few ever talk about the plight of the disadvantaged, those on food stamps and welfare and particularly the working poor.
  56. You Are What You Think (September 17, 2010)
    America's main international enemy "Islamic radicalism" favors theocracy, curtails civil liberties, embraces torture, represses women, reviles homosexuality, subverts science and education, and reveres force over diplomacy. Markos Moulitsas shows how the American right shares those very same traits. He argues that our domestic jihadists are a greater threat to American democracy than any Islamic terrorist.
  57. Rampant Racism in the Criminal Justice System (July 26, 2010)
    The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.
  58. The 1960 Sit-ins in Context (July 1, 2010)
    The Civil Rights Movement that we associate with the 1960s was the culmination of a vast set of social and economic changes. The tradition of Black struggle itself, going back to the very beginnings of slavery in the New World, was also part of the context for the new movement.
  59. Bogus, Misdirected and Effective (June 14, 2010)
    The Tea Party movement is steeped in misinformation and denial. But it has a lot to teach the left.
  60. Death in the Desert (April 19, 2010)
    This is a NAFTA border. Money moves freely, people with money do too, but the poor are pushed into a dangerous cycle of crossing the desert.
  61. Blasted in a West Virginia Mine (April 8, 2010)
    Conditions in the mines are caused by capitalism. The 25 dead miners in the latest mine disaster in West Virginia are dead because union-busting and the disregard of safety precautions for the sake of speed-up and higher profits.
  62. How to Light a Prairie Fire (April 2, 2010)
    If there's one thing I think many people need to understand, it is this: sustained mass movements rarely happen unless many of the participants believe they might win.
  63. Black Liberation and the Fight for a Socialist America (March 26, 2010)
    From slavery to convict labour, from the chain gang to the assembly line, American capitalism has been built upon the lash-scarred backs of black labour. Any organization that claims a revolutionary perspective for the United States must confront the special oppression of black people and their forced segregation at the bottom of capitalist society and the poisonous racism that divides the working class and cripples its struggles.
  64. Grinding Down the U.S. Army (December 15, 2009)
    Prolonging a stalemated war will only mean more hurt for both Afghans and Americans. The hurt to Afghans will undoubtedly be worse, for their homes are the battlefield, but our own hurt shouldn't be underestimated. More broken bodies and shattered minds. More echoes of the horrifying violence that accompanies war.
  65. US Workers Starved Into Military Service (October 27, 2009)
    Humanity has passed the tipping point - economically, culturally and environmentally. The "consuming and killing" model embraced by Americans as cultural norm is, in reality, a cultural aberration. It is destroying everything and everyone in its wake - including those who are fighting and dying to preserve it.
  66. A Brief History of Loyal Opposition to War (October 21, 2009)
    As Afghanistan erupts with redoubled violence, the author recounts the clutch of soldiers who have refused to serve or repented their service in every American war since the War of 1812.
  67. Your Money, Or Your Life (October 5, 2009)
    Single Payer will save lives, but it also will save money. The exorbitant salaries of Insurance Company CEOs will be eliminated. The profit motive for investors will be eliminated. Administrative costs will be reduced because one single payer will replace a large number of insurance companies - all with different forms, different standards, and different requirements for an endless stream of mind-numbing paper work.
  68. Iran in Christian Zionist crosshairs (October 1, 2009)
    Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United Nations has stirred up two leading Christian Zionists, Mike Evans and Joel Rosenberg, to once again open fire on Iran.
  69. Republicans Have Decided to Call Anything a Democrat Ever Does or Says "Nazi" (October 1, 2009)
    The cause du jour for the Republican Party is to make as many rapid-fire comparisons between the Democrats and the Nazis as humanly possible.
  70. Why Right-Wing Demagogues Are Trying to Peddle Ludicrous Conspiracy Theories (October 1, 2009)
    Even before Obama was sworn in as the 44th President, the internet was seething with lurid theories exposing his alleged subversion and treachery.
  71. Right-Wing Media Send Their Mobs of Crazy Fans to Go After Private Citizens -- Including Kids (September 30, 2009)
    The right-wing is igniting the crazies by pushing them to snoop on everyday people.
  72. United States: The Ultra-Right Pot Boils Over (September 27, 2009)
    The appearance of right-wing mobs at town meetings organized by Democratic Party representatives to discuss the proposed health-care reform has set off alarm bells, in particular because of the blind fanaticism of the right-wing protesters and their threats of violence, including armed violence. These outbursts show many features of historic fascist developments and on a scale as yet unseen in the United States.
  73. What's the Border Fence Good for? Subsidizing Mexican Scrap Metal Entrepreneurs (August 28, 2009)
    It was obvious from the very beginning that Bush's push for a border fence was nothing more than a political show to boost Republicans' creds with their base.
  74. Race and Class in Civil War Mississippi (August 6, 2009)
    The poor whites of Mississippi who fought the Confederacy alongside slaves did so because of working class values that they shared with slaves. The fact that poor whites may have believed some racist lies about blacks that constituted the dominant ideas of the day is not nearly as important or significant as the fact that their working class values led them to ally with slaves to fight the racist ruling class. Racism came from the upper class, and anti-racism came from the working class -- black and white.
  75. Food Among the Ruins (August 1, 2009)
    Detroit, the country's most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm.
  76. The White Cop and the Black Professor (July 26, 2009)
    Police are trained to act as authoritarian thugs when they are dealing with people who are not obviously of, or loyal to, the very wealthy elite who rule the nation. The police are trained to enforce law and order in an unjust and unequal society, and a big part of doing this requires that they make ordinary people obey them out of fear.
  77. Power, illusion and America's last taboo (July 4, 2009)
    Since 1945, the United States has overthrown fifty governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements, and supported tyrannies and set up torture chambers from Egypt to Guatemala. Countless men, women and children have been bombed to death. Bombing is apple pie. And yet, here is the 44th President of the United States, having stacked his government with warmongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, teasing us while promising more of the same.
  78. A Century Later (1998)
    The year 1898 was a turning point for the American Republic in terms of boundary and economic establishment. Chomsky moves through the next 100 years during which America increasingly became involved in affairs outside of its borders.
  79. Convict Labor in America (1998)
    Convict labour, like antebellum slavery, was an American way of life, a cultural practice that tied northern capitalists, plantation owners, university-trained social reformers, federal officials and advocates of "good roads" together in a powerful alliance.

Selected Websites and Organizations

  1. This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with education and children in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as United States, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.



Books, Films and Periodicals

  1. This is a small sampling of books related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more books and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as United States, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.


  1. American Taliban
    How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
    Author: Moulitsas, Markos
    America's main international enemy- Islamic radicalism - favors theocracy, curtails civil liberties, embraces torture, represses women, reviles homosexuality, subverts science and education, and reveres force over diplomacy. Markos Moulitsas shows how the American right shares those very same traits. He argues that our domestic jihadists are a greater threat to American democracy than any Islamic terrorist.
  2. America's Deadliest Export: Democracy
    The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else
    Author: Blum, William
    Since World War II, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well, and that America’s motives in spreading democracy are honorable, even noble. William Blum, a leading non-mainstream chronicler of American foreign policy, argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, unless this fallacy is unlearned, and until people understand fully the worldwide suffering American policy has caused, we will never be able to stop the monster.
  3. Chicago '68
    Author: Farber, David
    A vivid history of the political and social movements of that turbulent time, when the power structure felt itself threatened by social movements that rejected much of what it stood for.
  4. Facing West: the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building
    Author: Drinnon, Richard
    From John Endicott's war on the Niantics and Pequots, to the horrors of the My Lai massacre, Drinnon illustrates how Indian-hating in the Americas became a national pastime, and how that same hate was turned against the native populations of the Phillipines and Southeast Asia.
  5. False Promises
    The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness
    Author: Aronowitz, Stanley
  6. The I.F. Stone's Weekly Reader
    Author: Stone, I.F.
    An anthology of 20 years of journalism by independent journalists I.F. Stone.
  7. I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
    Author: Payne, Charles M.
    A study and history of the legacy of community organizing in Mississippi.
  8. Killing Hope
    U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
    Author: Blum, William
    Is the United States a force for democracy? William Blum serves up a forensic overview of U.S. foreign policy spanning sixty years. For those who want the details on the U.S.'s most famous actions (Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, to name a few), and for those who want to learn about lesser-known efforts (France, China, Bolivia, Brazil, for example), this book provides a window on what U.S. foreign policy goals really are. "If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century, this is what crawls out… invasions … bombings … overthrowing governments … occupations … suppressing movements for social change … assassinating political leaders … perverting elections … manipulating labor unions … manufacturing “news” … death squads … torture … biological warfare … depleted uranium … drug trafficking … mercenaries … It’s not a pretty picture. It’s enough to give imperialism a bad name."
  9. The Labor Wars
    Author: Lens, Sidney
    A survey of landmark events in the U.S. labour movement.
  10. Lockdown America
    Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
    Author: Parenti, Christian
    Why is criminal justice so central to American politics? Lockdown America not only documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the federalization of the war on crime, it also explains the political and economic history behind the massive crackdown.
  11. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 15, 2016
    Lurching to War
    Author: Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
    The risk of nuclear war is as great now as it was at the height of the Cold War. From the time the Warsaw Pact dissolved itself and the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States has single-mindedly pursued a hyper-aggressive strategy of surrounding Russia with hostile military forces and missiles aimed at the Russian heartland.
  12. A People's History of the United States
    Author: Zinn, Howard
    Howard Zinn attempts to present the history of the United States through the perspectives of common people rather than political and economic elites.
  13. A People's History of the United States
    1492 - Present
    Author: Zinn, Howard
    Zinn's history includes those most ignored by typical American textbook history, including Indians, blacks, women and workers.
  14. Pretensions to Empire
    Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Adminstration
    Author: Lapham, Lewis
    Latham's hypothesis's is that the Bush administration perverted the democratic legacy of America. He argues that Bush attempted to transform America into a Global empire -- the one superpower that would strike anywhere on the planet and catalogues the mistruths, evasions and deceptions of the administration.
  15. Rogue State
    A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
    Author: Blum, William
    A mini-encyclopedia of the numerous un-humanitarian acts perpetrated by the United States since the end of the Second World War.
  16. SDS
    Author: Sale, Kirkpatrick
    The rise and development of the Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that became the major expression of the American left in the 1960s -- its passage from student protest to institutional resistance to revolutionary activism, and its ultimate impact on American politics and life.
  17. The Sixties
    Years of Hope, Days of Rage
    Author: Gitlin, Todd
    One of the best books on the Sixties in the U.S., bringing to life the political and cultural currents, including especially the music, which raged during that decade, and setting them in historical context.
  18. Slavery by Another Name
    The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
    Author: Blackmon, Douglas A.
    An account of how African Americans were forcibly enslaved by a corrupt legal system in the southern States, from the end of the Civil War through WWII.
  19. The Soft Cage
    Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror
    Author: Parenti, Christian; Rossetti, Chip (eds.)
    Parenti explores the history of American surveillance from colonial times to the present. What this historical evidence clearly reveals is a continuum of the culture of surveillance. The weakest, most disenfranchised and most alienated groups are subjected first, and then the surveillance regime slowly spreads toward the mainstream.
  20. Strike!
    The True History of Mass Insurgence from 1877 to the Present
    Author: Brecher, Jeremy
    A history-from-below that brings to light strikes as authentic revolutionary movements against the establishments of state, capital, and trade unionism.
  21. An Unfinished Revolution
    Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln
    Author: Blackburn, Robin
    A study of Marx's analysis of the American Civil War as a conflict about slavery, not tarrfifs. Marx saw the north as a bourgeois republic, and the south as expansionist.
  22. What's the Matter with Kansas?
    How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
    Author: Frank, Thomas
    Explores the rise of conservative populism in the United States through the lens of Frank's native state of Kansas. According to his analysis, the political discourse of recent decades has dramatically shifted from the class animus of traditional leftism to one in which "explosive" cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, are used to redirect anger towards "liberal elites."
  23. 'Worse than Slavery': Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
    Author: Oshinsky, David M.
    After the abolition of slavery the white rulers of Mississippi developed a new system for keeping the ex-slaves in line: laws were passed to maintain white supremacy, including the system of convict leasing, a system whereby people could "hire" prisoners for physical labour outside the walls of prison.


Learning from our History

Coming soon





Resources for Activists

The Connexions Calendar - An event calendar for activists. Submit your events for free here.

Media Names & Numbers - A comprehensive directory of Canada’s print and broadcast media. .

Sources - A membership-based service that enables journalists to find spokespersons and story ideas, and which simultaneously enables organizations to raise their profile by reaching the media and the public with their message.

Organizing Resources Page - Change requires organizing. Power gives way only when it is challenged by a movement for change, and movements grow out of organizing. Organizing is qualitatively different from simple “activism”. Organizing means sustained long-term conscious effort to bring people together to work for common goals. This page features a selection of articles, books, and other resources related to organizing.

Publicity and Media Relations - A short introduction to media relations strategies.

Grassroots Media Relations - A media relations guide for activist groups.

Socialism gateway - A gateway to resources about socialism, socialist history, and socialist ideas.

Marxism gateway - A gateway to resources about Marxism.