Political Media Review

Among the villains in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) 2012 Fiscal Year budget are coyotes, the “smugglers” migrants often hire to help them enter the United States without authorization.

Class is oftentimes as much about self-identification as it is about actual ceremony and recognition from others. How one sees oneself in the class order is intoxicating for some people.

Renowned as an anti-colonial theorist, intellectual and political activist, C. L. R. James has written books that represent some of the most daring anti-capitalist works of the 20th century. He is best appreciated for pushing readings of Marx beyond what even Marx himself may have originally envisioned.

Marking the centenary of Solidaridad Obrera, this extensive graphic history of the Spanish libertarian tradition is one of the most recent books published by the Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera.

Wobblies and Zapatistas is basically a long conversation between Grubacic and Lynd about building bridges between the best traditions within anarchism and Marxism written for modern militants, revolutionaries, and working people. It is a series of provocations, led by Grubacic as he asks Lynd probing questions about radical practice contemporarily and historically.

After reading No Logo, you may feel that Bill Hicks was understating things a little: by the end of the first chapter you’ll be en route to the nearest McDonalds with a crate of Molotov cocktails. No Logo is a book about brands, which means it’s a book about popular culture – Golden Arches, the Nike “swoosh”, Tommy Hilfiger jackets and Starbucks coffee. It’s about the television you watch and the newspapers you read, the theme parks you visit and the films you go to see. It’s about magazines and rock music, universities and the Internet. In short, it’s a book about everyday reality – or, rather, what lies behind it.

Romantic though it seems, the life of labor organizers and unions is messy. Most everyone is familiar with the firings for union organizing from which many a motion picture has borrowed from as grist. But such high drama can easily be avoided by bosses who understand the law and manipulate missteps to their advantage.