The Anderson Files
Rage, despair, hopelessness… and the election
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. — Mississippi civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hammer
In the 1960s, black people demanded to...
Labor upsurge promotes democracy and prosperity
We had “Hot Labor Summer” across the country, and working-class discontent continues to smolder. Health care employees, flight attendants, pilots, television and film writers...
The Battle in Seattle 20 years on
Twenty years ago, activists gave us an adrenaline rush. Tens of thousands of people flooded downtown Seattle, challenging the global economic order and yelling...
May Day is still relevant
With total control of the federal government, Trump and the Republicans have encountered remarkably massive resistance as they begin to roll back decades of...
Is Bernie a socialist, a commie or just a New Deal...
Back in 2016, it seemed unlikely that Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. So there wasn’t as much of...
Is this an extinction-level event for American labor?
The labor movement has been reviving in recent years but now it faces stormy weather with the presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court...
Lesson after Amazon union defeat: Keep fighting
The union defeat at a giant Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, was a big blow to the labor movement. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a surprise...
Choosing terrain for activism
What if America had a parliamentary system? What if we got rid of the presidency and the Senate and turned the House of Representatives...
Despairing Johnstown workers and the election
Anxiety, dread, fear. Almost 70% of Americans said the presidential election is a substantial source of stress, according to the American Psychological Association’s Stress...
Scapegoating immigrants
Recently the Houston Chief of Police Art Acevedo shared a newspaper article on Twitter about an 11-year-old migrant girl from El Salvador who was...
Populism: bigoted scapegoating or multiracial progressivism?
Populism isn’t a coherent ideology, argues John Judis, but “a way of thinking” about politics that can be employed by the left, right or...
The Anderson file: Poetry on a mission
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the celebrated poet and publisher of Beat Generation writers, argued in an essay in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999 that poetry...
