Connexions Resource Centre
History

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 education, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.

1. Palestinian photographer brings towns lost in Nakba to life on walls of refugee camps (May 17, 2023)
   As soon as you enter Madaris street in Balata refugee camp, to the east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, your gaze is drawn to the right-hand wall of the street - now adorned with 30 depictions of villages and towns that were purged of Palestinian residents during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. In 17 refugee camps across the West Bank, Palestinian photographer Ahmed al-Bazz has brought to life images of historic Palestine to the descendants of those who were expelled during the Nakba.
2. Behind the Wall of East-Germany (May 10, 2023)
   With more than 300,000 objects, German Democratic Republic museum in Berlion probably has the world’s largest collection of GDR artifacts and historical items. The wealth of objects at the museum is due to the enormous willingness of former citizens of the GDR to donate items that they still had in their possession.
3. How Israel erases Palestinian cultural memory (August 17, 2022)
   On Israel's looting of Palestinian cultural and historical archives.
4. The obliteration of memories (July 13, 2021)
   Over 16,000 housing units were damaged during the recent [2021] Israeli attacks on Gaza. What that number doesn't capture however is what else was lost in those places -- the irreplaceable photos, keepsakes, and possessions and that made each a home.
5. A Museum Dedicated to Stalin: An Example of How to Deal With Historical Memory (February 4, 2021)
   I think that the Stalin Museum is an example of how to deal with historical memory.
6. Silencing the past: reflections on remembering and forgetting (May 28, 2020)
   Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Haitian writer Michel-Rolph Trouillot was first published in 1995. Twenty-five years on, its weaving of personal narrative with stories of slave rebellion, black Jacobins in the Haitian Revolution and the 'discovery' of the Americas still resonate.
7. Domestic violence was an issue with no name (October 31, 2019)
   In the 1960s and ’70s, domestic violence was an issue with no name.
   
   Countless women endured violence in their own homes, but it was not acknowledged as an issue in the public realm. It was a shameful secret, quietly accepted as a part of life for women. When a woman was abused, there was nowhere to go. A woman’s place was in the home, even if home could kill her. Against this grim backdrop, different groups of women across the country worked to open Canada’s first women’s shelters.
8. Israel's latest attempt to erase Palestine (July 25, 2019)
   Efforts by teams from the Israeli defense ministry to remove sensitive documents from Israeli archives must be understood in a new political climate and are not simply an attempt to spare Israeli governments embarrassment, as some have suggested.
9. The People Emerge: The Storming of the Bastille (July 18, 2019)
   A history of the storming of the Bastille emphasizing the revolutionary history that is glossed over in patriotic celebrations.
10. A Brief History of US Concentration Camps (June 21, 2019)
    An overview of ethnic cleansing and civilian concentration camps in the US starting with the Trail of Tears.
11. 'Where was the Lord?': On Jefferson Davis' birthday, 9 slave testimonies (June 3, 2019)
    Testimonies of several victims of slavery collected in the 1930s tell of separation from family, overwork, and abuse.
12. What the 'White Irish Slaves' Meme Tells Us About Identity Politics (April 22, 2019)
    In setting out to rebut narratives of 'Irish Slaves' the left has often downplayed the history of Irish oppression.
13. Kashmiris launch calendar to remember disappeared loves ones (January 27, 2019)
    Women whose husbands were disappeared have spent decades wondering what happened to them and fighting for justice. They and a group representing families of disappeared persons have published a calendar commemerating 12 victims.
14. Foreign Interventions in Revolutionary Russia (December 10, 2018)
    All over Europe, the First World War had brought about a potentially revolutionary situation as early as 1917. In countries where the authorities continued to represent the traditional elite, exactly as had been the case in 1914, they aimed to prevent the realization of this potential by means of repression, concessions, or both.
15. Popular Front Counter-Memories (May 1, 2018)
    Ehlers reviews Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War by Benjamin Balthaser.
16. The 1970s: Finally Got the News! (March 1, 2018)
    Interview with Brad Duncan, editor of Finally Got the News: The Printed Legacy of the U.S. Radical Left, 1970-1979.
17. On our way to the moon? A snapshot of feminist marches which shook the world. (February 6, 2018)
    The authors tell the story of the Midsummer's day 1908 'Votes for women' Suffragist rally and the March 1971 Women's Liberation Movement Demonstration in Hyde ParK, London.
18. Bequests (September 28, 2017)
    Many of us have made working for social justice a lifetime commitment. If you are thinking about leaving a legacy for social justice that will live on, you might want to consider leaving a bequest to Connexions in your will.
19. People's History, Memory & Archives (September 7, 2017)
    A gateway to resources on people's history and grassroots archives.
20. Detroit's Rebellion and Rise of the Neoliberal State (September 1, 2017)
    In 1967 hundreds of uprisings circulated across U.S. cities with unprecedented power and intensity. Almost always the provocation was racist police violence - ranging from arrests to beatings to shootings.
21. The Need for a museum on British colonisation of India (March 12, 2017)
    To support the establishment of a museum in India displaying the negative side to British colonialism, Tharoor brings to light various atrocities committed by Britian to India during the colonial period that have been given very little attention by both countries in the present day.
22. The Commons and the Centennial of the Easter Rising (April 28, 2016)
    A hundred years ago today in Dublin the Easter Rebellion commenced. This was an urban insurrection, in the revolutionary tradition. Not more than a thousand participated. It lasted five days, before the British military killed hundreds, and executed sixteen including those who had signed the Proclamation of the Republic.
23. The Lost Partisans (April 25, 2016)
    Italy's April 25 holiday marks the anniversary of the country's liberation from fascism. This day in 1945, antifascist partisan units freed the northern industrial centers of Milan and Turin from the grip of Hitler and Mussolini's remaining loyalists, after Allied forces had swept through the country. Just three days later, in a humiliating epitaph to the twenty-year regime, partisans captured and executed il Duce and his entourage, hanging them upside down in Milan's Piazzale Loreto. Now the resistance is remembered more as representing 'national unity' than working-class resistance to fascism.
24. Remembering Argentina's Mothers of the Disappeared (April 25, 2016)
    Campaign Nonviolence is a movement to build a culture of active nonviolence. We share the stories of nonviolent action, drawing lessons, strength, and strategy from the global grassroots movements for change. This week commemorates the 39th anniversary of the first protest of the Argentina's Mothers of the Disappeared.
25. Left Behind by Good Friday (April 1, 2016)
    In 1969 Bernadette Devlin traveled to the United States on a fundraising tour. At age twenty-two, she was the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster and already a veteran of the Northern Irish Civil Rights Movement and the radical student group People's Democracy.
26. How the Easter Rising changed the world (March 29, 2016)
    Chris Bambery argues that the Easter Rising relaunched the struggle for independence in Ireland and inspired national liberation movements globally.
27. One by One, South Sudan Tries to Name Its War Victims (January 8, 2016)
    In South Sudan, where a vicious civil war has been raging, no government office or nongovernmental organization has kept a tally of the names of those killed by government forces, rebels, and other armed groups. But in a country in which automatic weapons are more plentiful than civil rights, and local journalists are regularly under assault, a tiny civil society group is trying to step into the breach by naming all of the names. It began on the first anniversary of the civil war's outbreak, when a small group of volunteers unveiled a list of 568 names of the people - from toddlers to centenarians - killed in the war to that point. Naming the Ones We Lost was a first step in what the organizers knew would be a long journey to grapple with the immense loss of South Sudanese life over the previous year. Today, the project goes by a slightly different name, Remembering the Ones We Lost, and has a radically expanded mission with a recently launched website [http://rememberingoneswelost.com/main]. The goal of the website is nothing short of remarkable - it aims to name all victims of conflict and armed violence in South Sudan since 1955.
28. The Digital Dark Ages: Movies and Books Get Deleted as Selfies Pile Up (December 22, 2015)
    Historians and archivists call our times the "digital dark ages." The name evokes the medieval period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which led to a radical decline in the recorded history of the West for 1000 years. But don't blame the Visigoths or the Vandals. The culprit is the ephemeral nature of digital recording devices. Remember all the stuff you stored on floppy discs, now lost forever? Over the last 25 years, we've seen big 8" floppies replaced by 5.25" medium replaced by little 3.5" floppies, Zip discs and CD-ROMs, external hard drives and now the Cloud -- and let's not forget memory sticks and also-rans like the DAT and Minidisc.
29. Memory as paying business (September 1, 2015)
    A look at how memorials and sites of great tragedy are now being exploited for financial gain as tourist destinations.
30. Execution of Paris Communards Foreshadowed Mass Murders of 20th Century (February 1, 2015)
    The short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 lasted only a little more than two months before being ruthlessly crushed. A new book by Yale Professor John Merriman, "Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune," provides a remarkably detailed account of an armed uprising that rejected oligarchical government.
31. Rural India - a living journal, a breathing archive (2015)
    Project on rural India consisting of an archive which depicts its diverse and complex countryside.
32. Who Supported the Khmer Rouge? (October 16, 2014)
    With the conviction of former Khmer Rouge officials Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea for crimes against humanity, the subject of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 received a small amount of attention in the Western mass media. What the media failed to mention was how the Khmer Rouge was maintained as a military and political force long after its fall from power.
33. And The May Uprising Continues (May 20, 2014)
    Remembrance of the brave women and men of Gwangju, responsible for sowing the seeds of democracy in the Republic of Korea while opposing the infamous martial law and dictatorship. Ten days, starting from May 18, 1980, they made the streets theirs, challenging the might of the State. As the historic May Democratic Uprising is witnessing its 34 th anniversary, Gwangju is celebrating and reminding herself to keep the memory of resistance alive, resistance against oppression and injustice that their heroes had upheld.
34. The Maypole's Revolutionary Heritage (May 1, 2014)
    
35. Forty years after the portuguese Carnation Revolution (April 25, 2014)
    On the eve of April 25, 1974, Portuguese society was smouldering from contradictions accumulated in half a century of dictatorship. At the heart of these contradictions was a war that lasted thirteen years, to hold on to the African colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. This conflict conditioned the whole of national life, because of the social suffering caused by the mobilization of two hundred thousand men, a tenth of the working population (a human cost equivalent to twice that of Vietnam), because of the wave of migration driven by hunger and the war, and because of the impossibility of a military solution, the only one contemplated by the regime.
36. The Lost Revolution (February 11, 2014)
    A discussion of the Haitian revolution, read through the lens of Julia Gaffield's paper on the lost and found Haitian Declaration of Independence.
37. 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.
38. Why History Makes Us Important (January 7, 2014)
    History has been important to me for as long as I can remember. As a child I loved hearing my relatives tell stories about the past. However, it was not until I was older that I realized that the stories meant something; they were key to understanding the present; and why we are what we are. As my awareness increased, I became serious about the past so serious that it often got me into trouble.
39. World War One and the rehabilitation of slaughter (January 7, 2014)
    Damaged by Iraq, ground down in Afghanistan, defeated over Syria, the jingoistic right are determined to rewrite the history of the First World War in an effort to rehabilitate imperialist war in the early 21st century.
40. A Red Metamorphosis (2014)
    The following essay has been written and published in response to increasing requests from researchers for information on the background and development of historian Terry Irving and his approach to history.
41. Burning History in San Salvador (November 29, 2013)
    On Thursday, Nov. 14, three armed men broke into the offices of Pro-Búsqueda. The attack on Pro-Búsqueda was not a random crime. We should be worried about what is happening in El Salvador.
42. Memory and Repression in El Salvador (November 29, 2013)
    The raid on Pro-Busqueda happened three days after the Salvadorean Supreme Court heard testimony from survivors of a 1982 raid carried out by government forces.
43. Activist archiving in Toronto (November 28, 2013)
    People gather in Toronto to discuss what many hope will grow into a movement for archiving grassroots histories.
44. Exile Islands, Then and Now (November 21, 2013)
    The increasing number of asylum seeker arrivals to Australia – more than 15,000 in 2013 alone – has become such an issue that in July former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took a new “hardline” stance, saying that no one arriving by boat would ever be allowed to settle there.
45. The Flint sit-down strike, 1936-1937 (September 4, 2013)
    210,000 auto workers joined the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) to take part in the strike but the A.F.L leadership however wanted no part in a strike, and managed to postpone it again and again. The workers won control over the rate of production, despite a union contract that conceded this authority to management.
46. How the FBI Turned Me On to Rare Books (July 30, 2013)
    I have wanted to be a historian of hope. We can take heart from the fact that no matter how dire the situation, some will find means to resist, some will find means to cope, and some will remember and tell stories about what happened.
47. Librarians and Palestine (May 6, 2013)
    Working to preserve Palestinian records and memory in the face of deliberate destruction by Israel.
48. May 5, 1818: Birth of Karl Marx (May 5, 2013)
    Marx breathes dialectics and revolution. For Marx, radicalism means going to the root, and Marx's radicalism seeks to go to the root of capitalism, to comprehend its essence dialectically, to understand its inherent contradictions - and the seeds of revolution it contains.
49. The Case for Grassroots Archives (May 2, 2013)
    Grassroots archives play a valuable role in what has been called "the battle of memory". People's history projects such as grassroots archives preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden histories, and alternative visions.
50. Two in one? (April 10, 2013)
    The Second World War was and still is the example of the “good war”, a war that put an end to Auschwitz, a war fought not only by regular armies but also by mass movements of anti-fascist resistance.
51. Seeds of Fire (March 7, 2013)
    Recalling events that happened on this day in history. Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.
52. A Marxist History of the World part 103: 1989: the fall of Stalinism (December 2, 2012)
    The revolutions of 1989 represent great victories for mass action, but they were limited in effect.
53. Grassroots archive information sheet (November 24, 2012)
    Connexions is working on a project to help network grassroots archives and collections of materials about activist and radical history. If you have a collection of social justice materials in your basement/locker, etc., and would like to participate in an exploration of co-operative archiving and/or searching for shared space, please fill out this form and email it to Connexions.
54. Memory as Resistance: Grassroots Archives and the Battle of Memory (November 2, 2012)
    CONNEXIONS and Beit Zatoun are spotlighting grassroots archives this November with an open house and networking event November 24, a talk and discussion November 27, and an exhibit (November 16-27).
55. Book Review: John Eric Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect: Interventions in Russian and Soviet History (2012) (October 15, 2012)
    This is a book review concerning a very important book, one of the very few books published since 1991 on the “Russian Question” that will compel people (this reviewer included), long wedded to different characterizations of the post-1917 or post-1929 Soviet regime, to think through their commitments.
56. Memory as Resistance: Grassroots Archives and the Battle of Memory (October 14, 2012)
    CONNEXIONS and Beit Zatoun are spotlighting grassroots archives this November with an open house and networking event November 24, a talk and discussion November 27, and an exhibit (November 16-27). Grassroots archives play a valuable role in what has been called “the battle of memory”. Mainstream media and institutions of power consign inconvenient histories, struggles, and alternative visions to what George Orwell called “the memory hole.” People’s history projects such as grassroots archives preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden histories, and alternative visions. Their role is particularly important as official archives are forced to restrict acquisitions, limit access and discard materials as funding is slashed.
57. Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012 (October 1, 2012)
    The historian Eric Hobsbawm dies at 95.
58. Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding? (August 31, 2012)
    Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
59. A Marxist History of the World part 79: Revolt in the Colonies (June 10, 2012)
    The anti-colonial revolts of the early 20th century were inspired by radical ideas, but, as the examples of Ireland, India and Mexico show, history exacts a heavy price for political timidity.
60. Book Review: A Review of Mary Gabriel's Love and Capital and Some Thoughts Prompted by the Review (June 3, 2012)
    In Love and Capital, published in 2011, Mary Gabriel makes a really good case that love was at the center of the life of the revolutionary named Karl Marx.
61. Book Review: C.L.R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (1939,1969) (June 3, 2012)
    What makes A History of Pan African Revolt enchanting is the thread of speculative philosophy that holds the assorted anecdotal historical commentaries on labor strikes, anti-racist rebellions, heroic personalities, and anti-colonial events together.
62. A Marxist History of the World part 77 World Revolution (May 25, 2012)
    In the five years after the First World War, revolutionary contagion spread around the world. It showed the extraordinary possibilities that arise when the masses become active in making their own history.
63. CLR James, Frantz Fanon And The Meaning of Liberation (April 16, 2012)
    A look at the Haitan Revolution and its place in history.
64. Broadside: A Feminist Review (2012)
    A history of the groundbreaking Canadian feminist newspaper published between 1979 and 1989. Searchable copies of all issues are available at the web address.
65. A Marxist History of the World part 55: The Making of the Working Class (December 26, 2011)
    The development of capitalism entails two complementary processes. The first, explored in MHW 54, is competitive capital accumulation. The second, explored here, is the making – and continual re-making – of the working class.
66. A Marxist History of the World part 54: What is Capitalism? (November 22, 2011)
    In this critical chapter of his world history, Neil Faulkner explores capitalism and what it means from the Industrial Revolution to the present day.
67. A Marxist History of the World part 52: The 1848 Revolutions (November 5, 2011)
    Even when progress is reversed, some hard-won gains are permanent. Neil Faulkner examines how the counter-revolution in 1848 failed to entirely turn the clock back.
68. A Marxist History of the World part 51: The origins of the Labour Movement (October 31, 2011)
    Capitalism's industrial revolution gave birth to its own gravediggers, argues Neil Faulkner as he examines the rise and fall of Chartism.
69. Robert Wedderburn: race, religion and revolution (October 11, 2011)
    As a Scottish-Jamaican “mulatto” radical preacher and leader of working class movements in 19th century London, Wedderburn has been identified as a “linchpin” of the “Atlantic Working Class” — that group of amorphous, multi-ethnic, subaltern peoples linked by the ocean in suffering and resistance around the Atlantic continents of Africa, the Americas and Europe.
70. Connexions Archive Case Statement (September 24, 2011)
    Working together to secure a future for the past
71. Rethinking The Idea Of 'Christian Europe' (August 19, 2011)
    Looking to the traditional, moral and identity platform of Christianity in Europe.
72. Triangle Fire Remembered (March 1, 2011)
    March 25 is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 145 workers, mostly young women immigrants. The factory, located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch building near Washington Square in New York City, employed 500 workers.
73. Home is Where the Hatred Is (February 18, 2011)
    
74. A Marxist History of the World part 28: The cycles and arrows of time (January 7, 2011)
    In Part 9 of A Marxist History of the World, we paused to discuss ‘how history works’. It would be useful to pause again to review some general lessons of the history of the ancient and medieval civilisations we have looked at since.
75. Framing the Sixties (December 31, 2010)
    What Really Happened to the 1960s is a look at the role the media played in the presentation and interpretation of the struggles of the 1960s. Simultaneously, it is a consideration of the meaning of democracy in a society where the media is owned by corporations and elites who consider democracy antithetic to their hegemony.
76. The Women Who Gave Us Christmas (December 24, 2010)
    In 1834, African American and white men and women members of William Lloyd Garrison’s newly formed Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society saw Christmas as an opportunity to expose a hypocritical republic that proclaimed liberty yet held millions of African men, women and children captive as slaves. Women assumed the lead, boldly defying a society that denied them a public voice or political opinions. To finance the abolition cause, these women organized Christmas bazaars that sold donated gifts, and trumpeted anti-slavery messages.
77. The Origin of America's Intellectual Vacuum (November 15, 2010)
    A profile of Chandler Davis, a blacklisted mathematician who served six months in jail for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
78. A Marxist History of the World part 9: How History Happens (August 16, 2010)
    The complex societies that emerged from the division of society into classes also created societies that were wasteful, violent, stagnant and crisis prone. Understanding why is the key to how history happens argues Neil Faulkner.
79. SNCC at 50 (April 13, 2010)
    The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is vitally important not just for learning and understanding the past but, more importantly, for imagining and working for a more righteous future.
80. Forging Change, Breaking Chains (March 1, 2010)
    Remembering and forgetting are not only things that people do; they are things that are done to them. In our time, the Black freedom movement of the mid-20th century is now both well remembered and selectively forgotten.
81. History's Mad Hatters (2010)
    Tea Party anger reaches far beyond the ranks of the modest Tea Party movement. It resonates with other Americans who understandably feel that political and economic elites, serving themselves at the expense of everyone else, have failed Americans. The big question is just exactly how (or even if) that private and personal rage gets transformed into moral and political outrage.
82. Spot The Difference (December 13, 2009)
    When I first brought up the similarity between Prussia and Israel (in a chapter dedicated to this theme in the Hebrew and German editions of my 1967 book, "Israel Without Zionists") it might have looked like a baseless comparison. Today, the picture is clearer. Not only does the senior officers corps occupy a central place in all the spheres of our life, and not only is the huge military budget beyond any discussion, but our daily news is full of typically 'Prussian' items.
83. Thirty years on, the holocaust in Cambodia and its aftermath is remembered (October 26, 2009)
    John Pilger recalls the stricken society he found in Cambodia in 1979 which he described in his epic dispatches and documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia. He reminds us that the Pol Pot horror emerged from the bombing ordered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and that Cambodia was again "punished" when its liberators came from the wrong side of the cold war and the Thatcher government send special forces to train the Khmer Rouge in exile.
84. 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.
85. LIVING IN THE U.X.A. (2009)
    At the height of the Great Depression, a group of unemployed Oakland workers decided to take matters into their own hands. The system wasn't working, so they set up their own system. Money was nearly worthless, so they decided to live by barter. They called themselves the Unemployed Exchange Association and they soon went on to write a remarkable chapter in American economic history.
86. Voices of Asian Americans (September 1, 2008)
    Asian Americas: The Movement and the Moment is an anthology of some 30 entries written by Asian Americans who initiated or participated in social and community movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is about how they perceived the world, how they became involved in the movements, what they think they accomplished and learned through their involvement, and how their experiences and lessons shaped their own lives and can be linked to present-day struggles for social justice.
87. Edward Said's shadowy legacy (May 7, 2008)
    So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) to be true. It discourages any kind of critical approach to Islam in Middle Eastern studies.
88. People's struggles in Latin Asia & Philippines, colonial protests during the Spanish era (February 1, 2008)
    At the end of the nineteenth century, the Philippines was the first country in Asia to be liberated from colonial power. The first anti-colonial revolt against Spanish rule occurred from 1896 to 1898.
89. The Korean Working Class: From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat, 1987-2008 (2008)
    
90. Theories of History (July 29, 2006)
    Conventional history tends to make ordinary people invisible. The motive forces of history are treated as some combination of "great men" (very occasionally women, almost always hetero and white regardless of gender) and impersonal forces like "economics" (treated in ways that reify them and give them agency outside of the local, everyday human activities that actually produce them).
91. Eyewitness Chile: After 30 Years (January 1, 2004)
    When I returned to Chile for the first time in 32 years to attend a week-long seminar called “Thirty Years -- Allende Lives! Popular Alternatives and the Socialist Perspective in Latin America,” I found myself entering the chilling atmosphere of the world's first laboratory for militarily imposed economic neoliberalsm.
92. Falsifying History and Ourselves: Anti-Democratic Propaganda in the Classroom (2001)
    Contrary to the views promoted by FHAO, the true facts about Germany during the Holocaust show that 1) working class Germans fought the Nazis; 2) anti-Semitism did not come from ordinary people; and 3) anti-Semitism was a weapon used by Germany's industrial and aristocratic elite to attack not only the Jewish minority but the entire working class.
93. 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.
94. The Ghetto Fights (1989)
    On May 10th, 1943, the first period of our bloody history, the history of the Warsaw Jews, came to an end. The site where the buildings of the ghetto had once stood became a ragged heap of rubble reaching three storeys high. Those who were killed in action had done their duty to the end, to the last drop of blood that soaked into the pavements of the Warsaw ghetto. We, who did not perish, leave it up to you to keep the memory of them alive--forever.
95. Short History of the World Working-Class Movement from Lassalle to Neo-Liberalism (1988)
    This essay is a kind of "thought experiment", attempting to trace the career and impact of the "man of negation", ultimately theorized by Hegel as the "Prussian monarch" who "universally labors" in the realm of the state (and hence art, philosophy and religion) but whose "labor" does not transform nature, does not engage in what the Theses on Feuerbach call "sensuous transformative activity".
96. The Life of Death: An Exchange (1985)
    The really great form of courage and honesty that could be witnessed under the conditions of the Holocaust was when a Pole opposed the opinion or the silence of other Poles, when a Jew opposed other Jews, and when Germans opposed other Germans or Nazism in general. This is the type of courage which we should learn about and emulate.
97. Marxist Women versus Bourgeois Feminism (1976)
    The texts presented here are intended to revive acquaintance with a revolutionary women's movement, which was undoubtedly the most important one of its kind that has yet been seen. Yet it has been so thoroughly dropped down the memory hole that even mention of its existence is hard to find.
    
98. The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Imperialism in South East Asia (1972)
    Chomsky considers the imperial interests of the USA in South East Asia, claiming that these are revealed in the Pentagon Papers. Then, after a detailed account of the content, he suggests that mere anti-communist goals were not the sole motivation for moving into the region but it was rather the "perceived significance of Southeast Asia for the integrated global system that was to be organised by American power."
99. Materialism And Historical Materialism (1942)
    Marxism is not an inflexible doctrine or a sterile dogma. Society changes, the proletariat grows, science develops. New forms and phenomena arise in capitalism, in politics, in science, which Marx and Engels could not have foreseen or surmised. But the method of research which they formed remains to this day an excellent guide and tool towards the understanding and interpretation of new events.
100. Imperialism, the World War and Social Democracy (1914)
     The true cause, the trigger, the author of this war, is therefore not any particular State, but all the States that pursue an imperialist policy and seek to expand their territories: Germany, England, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Belgium and Japan; each one separately and all of them together are its cause. All the chatter of the bourgeois and socialist parties and their newspapers, according to which we are witnessing a war of national defense in which we are obliged to participate because we were attacked, all this chatter is nothing but a trick to dissimulate each country's culpability under a beautiful façade. To say that Germany, Prussia or England is the cause of the war is as stupid and as false as to assert that the cracks which open up on a volcano are the cause of its eruption.
     For many years, all the European States have been arming for this conflict. All of them want to satisfy their own rapacity and greed. All of them are equally guilty.
101. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (1896)
     
102. England's 17th Century Revolution (1850)
     For Guizot, English history ends with the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy. For him, everything that follows is limited to a pleasant alternating game between Tories and Whigs. In reality, however, the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy is only the beginning of the magnificent development and transformation of bourgeois society in England. Where M. Guizot sees only gentle calm and idyllic peace, in reality the most violent conflicts and the most penetrating revolutions are taking place.
103. Feminism and Rescue Work
     
104. The Quebec general strike 1972
     The story of one of the largest working class rebellions in American history. 300,000 workers participated in North America's largest general strike to that date, radio stations were seized, factories were occupied, and entire towns were brought under workers' control, and it won important gains.

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 education, 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 education, children, youth, post-secondary education, film, and schools.

1. Aboriginal Ontario
   Historical Perspectives on the First Nations
   Author: Rogers, Edward S.; Smith, Donald B. (eds.)
   Essays on the history of Ontario's native people.
2. The Accumulation of Capital
   Author: Luxemburg, Rosa
   Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
3. Against His-story, Against Leviathan!
   Author: Perlman, Fredy
   How Civilization encroached on free peoples. On every continent scribes, traders and kings promoted division of labour, professional armies, social discipline, nationalist, ethnic and class fervour.
4. The Age of Empire 1875 - 1914
   Author: Hobsbawm, E.J.
   Covers the rise of bourgeois society, the growth of free market capitalism and the expansion of European colonialism abroad.
5. Age of Extremes
   The Short Twentieth Century 1914 - 1991
   Author: Hobsbawm, Eric
   A overview of the history of the years 1914 - 1991.
6. Bitterly Divided
   The South's Inner Civil War
   Author: Williams, David
   Historian David Williams lays bare the myth of a united confederacy, revealing that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars — an external one that we know so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness.
7. The Black Jacobins
   Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
   Author: James, C.L.R.
   An account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803.
8. The Canadian War on Queers
   National Security as Sexual Regulation
   Author: Kinsman, Gary; Gentile, Patrizia
   From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the Canadian state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in a series of so-called national security campaigns. This book traces this history, revealing acts of state repression and forms of social resistance.
9. Das Capital, Volume 1
   A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
   Author: Marx, Karl
   Marx's great work sets out to grasp and portray the totality of the capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that emerges from it. He describes and connects all its economic features, together with its legal, political, religious, artistic, philosophical and ideological manifestations.
10. The Cold War and the New Imperialism
    A Global History, 1945-2005
    Author: Heller, Henry
    The Cold War is an account of global history since 1945, which ties together the narrative of the Cold War to that of neoliberalism and the new imperialism.Written for the general reader, it draws together scholarly research on a huge range of events, countries, and topics into an intelligible whole.
11. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
    Author: Pappe, Ilan
    Israeli historian Ilan Pappe recounts the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel during the war of 1948.
12. Fascism and Big Busness
    Author: Guerin, Daniel
    A history of the rise of fascism in Europe and the role of big business in supporting fascism.
13. Film: The Living Record of Our Memory
    A documentary which explores film through the voices of significant professionals who have contributed to make sure moving images survive and remain accessible.
14. 1491
    New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
    Author: Mann, Charles. C.
    A portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus.
15. A Green History of the World
    The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
    Author: Ponting, Clive
    Ponting tracks the "green" history of the world showing how throughout history civilizations have collapsed when they exhausted the earth's natural resources.
16. A History of Modern Palestine
    One Land, Two Peoples
    Author: Pappe, Ilan
    A history of the people of Palestine.
17. A History of the Jews - Ancient and Modern
    Author: Halevi, Ilan
    Starting from a political interpretation of the period when judges, kings and prophets held sway over Israel and Judah, Ilan Halevi traces the evolution of the Jewish identity through its numerous stages, from the Roman occupation and the decline of Temple authority, through to the Zionist settlement of Palestine in the twentieth century.
    
18. The Holocaust Chronicle
    A History in Words and Pictures
    A chronological account of the genocide of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
19. Homage to Catalonia
    Author: Orwell, George
    George Orwell's account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.
20. The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
    Author: Lyons, Jonathan
    Arab scholars were exploring and extending the great works of the Persian, Hindu, and Greek civilizations. There were striking advances in the sciences and mathematics, but more fundamentally, the Arabs taught the importance of experimentation and rational thought. Eventually, through the efforts of men like Adelard, the accomplishments of the Arabs got through to the West, and shaped it.
21. I Have Lived Here Since the World Began
    An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People
    Author: Ray, Arthur J.
    Ray shows that Native culture played an important -- and largely unrecognized -- part in Canada's economic development. Rather than being "civilized" by European explorers, the indigenous people were already accomplished traders, artisans, farmers and hunters.
22. I.F. Stone's Weekly
    Author: Stone, I.F.
    Weekly newsletter published by I.F. Stone from 1953 to 1971. All issues between January 17, 1953 and December 1, 1971 are online.
23. The I.F. Stone's Weekly Reader
    Author: Stone, I.F.
    An anthology of 20 years of journalism by independent journalists I.F. Stone.
24. Imagination in Power
    The Occupation of Factories in France in 1968
    Author: Hoyles, Andree
    A brief study of the factory occupations which were a crucial component in the May 1968 events in France.
25. The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day
    Author: Linebaugh, Peter
    This book's reflections on the Red and the Green -- out of which arguably the only hope for the future lies -- are populated by the likes of Native American anarchocommunist Lucy Parsons, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, Karl Marx, José Martí, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rosa Luxemburg, SNCC, and countless others, both sentient and verdant.
26. Industry and Empire
    The Pelican Economic History of Britian: Volume 3: From 1750 to the Present Day
    Author: Hobsbawm, E. J.
    Hobsbawm documents the rise of the industrial revolution in Britain from its origins around the mid 1700s, its expansion throughout the Victorian decades and finally its effects on British society up to the 1960s.
27. The Invention of the Jewish People
    Author: Sand, Shlomo
    In this new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times - when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.
28. Ireland and the Irish Question
    Author: Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich
    Brings together all of Marx's and Engels' writing on Ireland in one volume.
29. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
    Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms
    Author: Draper, Hal
    Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. Draper looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not.
30. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
    Volume 5: War & Revolution
    Author: Draper, Hal; Haberkern, E.
    The subject of this volume is Marx and Engels' views on the relation between war and revolution. Its thesis is that, over the course of decades, their views on this question changed -- evolved is a better word -- although, in this case as in others, they wrote no definitive statement of their views. Instead, we have a considerable corpus of ad hoc responses to the events of the hour, many of them politically explosive, from which we have to reconstruct, not a line, but an approach. To complicate things further, many of these crises, while they were the news of the day at the time, have since faded from memory.
31. The Kronstadt Commune
    Author: Mett, Ida
    A history of the Kronstadt Uprising 1921 which highlights one of the most important yet neglected events of the Russian Revolution. The suppression of the most revolutionary section of the Navy by the Bolsheviks was the final blow to any hope of a genuine revolution based on democratic workers' control. Mett dispels many of the contemporary mistruths put forward by Bolshevik propagandists and includes a number of original sources from the commune.
32. Lessons of the Spanish Revolution 1936 - 1939
    Author: Richards, Vernon
    
33. Looted and Hidden - Palestinian Archives in Israel
    Author: Sela, Rona
    
34. The Making of New World Slavery
    From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800
    Author: Blackburn, Robin
    Traces the development of slavery in the new world, with its origins in trade and business enterprise.
35. The Making of the English Working Class
    Author: Thompson, E.P.
    Discusses the development of a working class consciousness from the 1790s to the Great Reform Bill
36. The Man Who Recorded the World
    A Biography of Alan Lomax
    Author: Szweed, John
    Documentarian of the folk culture of American life,, Lomax was diligent and tireless in preserving the irreplaceable vernacular cultures that have fallen into the past.
37. The Many-Headed Hydra
    The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
    Author: Linebaugh, Peter; Rediker, Marcus
    With the expansion of trade and colonization around the Atlantic in the seventeenth century, sailors, indentured servants, market women, prostitutes, and slaves came to inhabit European cities, American colonies and trade ships. Linebaugh and Rediker show how this motley crew had their own versions of democracy.
38. Memory of Fire: Faces & Masks
    Part Two of a Trilogy
    Author: Galeano, Eduardo
    A view of the 'New World' in the making, from the 1700s to the end of the nineteenth century.
39. Mirrors
    Stories of Almost Everyone
    Author: Galeano, Eduardo
    Open any history book and you'll learn about revolutionary leaders, decorated generals, genius scientists and passionate artists. What about the leaders’ assistants? The loyal soldiers? The helpful lab assistants and the inspirations for great art? History books are so filled with greatness that the stories of the people are often neglected. Mirrors resolves this issue. Mirrors is a mosaic of humanity.
40. The Nazi Seizure of Power
    The Experience of a Single German Town
    Author: Allen, William Sheridan
    A study of how the Nazi takeover took place in one German town.
41. Obsolete Communism
    The Left-Wing Alternative
    Author: Cohn-Bendit, Daniel; Cohn-Bendit, Gabriel
    An account of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, positing a left radical alternative to the encrusted beliefs of the old left and the right. A comment on power, on bureaucracy, and on the paths to liberation.
42. Open Veins of Latin America
    Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
    Author: Galeano, Eduardo
    A political economy, a social and cultural narrative, and a powerful description of primitive capital accumulation.
43. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 17, 2017
    Collective Memory and Cultural Amnesia
    Author: Diemer, Ulli
    Our society is obsessed with the short-term present. It devalues memory and the past. But there are those who do remember, and who work to preserve and share our collective memory. But they have to contend with those of us who see historical memory as a way of contributing to the struggle for a different world. For us, knowledge of history is subversive, and remembering can be a form of resistance.
44. The Peasant War in Germany
    Author: Engels, Friedrich
    The Peasant War in Germany was the first history book to assert that the real motivating force behind the Reformation and 16th-century peasant war was socio-economic (class conflict) rather than "merely" religious.
45. A People's History of Prince Edward Island
    Author: Sharpe, Errol
    The history of Prince Edward from a people's perspective, looking at how tenant farmers, independent merchants, fishermen, workers, and farmers fought ti improve their conditions and improve their society.
46. A People's History of Science
    Author: Connor, Clifford
    Connor focuses on the contributions of ordinary people living in ordinary times and the social and political history in which they lived. Spanning the time from the hunter-gatherers to the information highway and pharmaceuticals it can be divided into 3 broad sections: the years before the "scientific revolution", the years of that actual revolution and its modern consequence. For Connor scientific progress is the synthesis between the empirical hands on knowledge of the craftmen, labourers and tradesman and the intellectual thinker-knowledge that is both wide and deep.
47. A People's History of the German Revolution
    1918-19
    Author: Pelz, William A.
    The story of the revolutionary moment which overthrew the German monarchy in 1918, but was then defeated by the forces of reaction.
48. 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.
49. 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.
    
50. A People's History of the World
    From the Stone Age to the New Millennium
    Author: Harman, Chris
    Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals.
51. Poland 1980-82
    Class Struggle and the Crisis of Capital
    Author: Simon, Henri
    Henri Simon captures the drama, the hopes and disappointments of workers' rebellions in Polish industrial cities in the early 1980s. This is a document of politicians practicing their skill at manipulation.
52. The Politics of History
    Author: Zinn, Howard
    A series of case studies and essays arguing for a radical approach to history and providing a revisionist interpretation of the historian's role.
53. Reading Orientalism
    Said and the unsaid
    Author: Varisco, Daniel Martin
    An extensive discussion of Edward Said's influential 1978 polemic 'Orientalism'. Varisco mounts a sustained critique on Said's flawed methodology, his skewed and selective handling of literary evidence, his inadequate historical knowledge, and his distorted and tendentious conclusions.
54. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
    Author: Engels, Friedrich
    
55. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
    Author: Restall, Matthew
    Restall explodes myths that were long taken for historical truth and points to a larger and more complex interaction between the indigenous people and the Europeans. He shows how Indian culture adapted and displayed post conquest vitality.
56. The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, Vol. 1
    Author: Foner, Philip
    Argues that the Cuban nation was a central protagonist in the conflict - rather than a passive victim of a conflict between great powers.
    
57. Studies in the Development of Capitalism
    Author: Dobb, Maurice M.A.
    A Marxist interpretation of economic development in the period of modern capitalism. Starting with the decline of serfdom, the book deals with the beginnings of the bourgeoisie in the rising urban communities of Europe, with the growth of industrial investment, and with monopoloy in its various forms as a crucial instrument in the growth of capitalism.
58. A Threat from Within
    A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism
    Author: Rabkin, Yakov M.
    Rabkin brings to light continuing Jewish opposition to Zionism, a religious tradition which presents a fundamental challenge to the idea of Israel as a Jewish state.
59. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution
    Volume One
    Author: Trotsky, Leon
    A combination of dramatic narrative and searching analysis by one of the key figures in the Russian Revolution. Volume 1 cover the period up to the “July Days” – a semi-insurrection followed by attempted stamping out of Bolshevism in Petrograd.
60. Uncommon People
    Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz
    Author: Hobsbawm, Eric
    Essays on the history of working men and women from the late 18th to the late twentieth century discussing British working class traditions, political radicalism of 19th century shoemakers, peasants and politics, revolution, sex and jazz.
61. Unequal Union
    Confederation and the Roots of Conflict in the Canadas, 1815 - 1873
    Author: Ryerson, Stanley B.
    Ryerson examines the connection between the social and the national in Canadian history.
62. 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.
63. Vanguard of Retrogression
    "Postmodern" Fictions as Ideology in the Era of Fictitious Capital
    Author: Goldner, Loren
    When one probes the terms of the debate, what is truly amazing is that the ostensibly anti-Eurocentric multiculturalists are, without knowing it, purveying a remarkably Eurocentric version of what the Western tradition really is. The ultimate theoretical sources of today's multiculturalism are two very white and very dead European males, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.
64. Wartime Strikes
    The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II
    Author: Glaberman, Martin
    The history of the struggle against the no-strike pledge in the United Auto Workers of America (UAW) and the organization of the Rand and File Caucus, accompanied by an analysis of the question of working class consciousness in the light of this experience. Glaberman asks: What is the nature of working class consciousness and how does it relate to the question of whether the working class has the capacity to transform modern society?
65. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
    The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1
    Author: Chomsky, Noam; Herman, Edward S.
    Chomsky and Herman demonstrate, with devasting logic and overwhelming documentation, that the purpose of U.S. global policy is to make the world safe for exploitation by U.S. corporate interests and that this has required and continues to require the installation and support of brutal military/police dictatorships throught the Third World. It also requires an apologetic ideology which portrays all this as being in the highest interests of democracy and human rights.
66. Year 501
    The Conquest Continues
    Author: Chomsky, Noam
    An examination of the U.S. role in the world placed in the long historical perspective of the 500 years that followed the voyages of Columbus.
67. Year One of the Russian Revolution
    Author: Serge, Victor
    The purpose of Year One of the Russian Revolution is essentially one of reconstructing the chain of events, in the Russia of revolution and counter-revolution, which has led from the 'Commune-State' of 1917 to the party dictatorship of late 1918. The terms of the narrative are fixed by Serge's basic convictions, firstly, that the October Revolution of 1917 was a genuine expression of mass feeling by workers and peasants in their overwhelming majority, and secondly that the revolutionary wave had very quickly exhausted itself, or rather bled itself dry, through the military depredation and economic ruin which wrought havoc in an already enfeebled Russia during the early months following the Bolshevik seizure of power.

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.

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