How Hollywood’s Black Friday Strike Changed Labor Across America

A 1945 Union vs. Studios Battle Set Off Broad Right-Wing Hysteria—Its Lessons Should Resonate Today

It was October 5, 1945. The Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), a union representing craft laborers in Los Angeles, including painters, carpenters, set designers, cartoonists, and others, was seven months into a major strike that was causing Hollywood studio moguls to panic. Although major studios, including Columbia, RKO, and Universal, had over 100 unreleased films in the can, ready to be released, the CSU’s strike actions, as well as movie theater boycotts, were an effective blow against the post-war studio system.

Now, the strikers gathered at the Warner Bros. employee entrance …

by Gerald Horne and Anthony Ballas | November 9, 2023

On a Rocky Hill in Athens, a ‘Democratic Odyssey’ Begins

Could a European People’s Assembly—Politician-Free and Chosen by Lottery—Become a Permanent Branch of Government?

by Joe Mathews | October 31, 2023

Democracy was first built on a lot of loose rock.

Can democracy now be rebuilt on that very same ground?

Recently, I spent a long afternoon on a dusty and rocky Athens …

Jimmy Carter’s Pragmatic Path to Power

An Idealist in and After Office, He Became a Governor and a President By Appealing to Racial and Class Prejudice

by James C. Cobb | September 28, 2023

Former president Jimmy Carter, who will be 99 this Sunday, October 1, was only 46 when he first popped up on the national political radar. After declaring in his 1971 …

What the GOP Gets Wrong About the Puritans

Reagan and Pence Invoked Them as Inspiration, But a True Reckoning With Their History Provides a Different Vision of the Nation’s Future

by Peter C. Mancall | September 27, 2023

During the first Republican presidential primary debate, on August 23, former Vice President Mike Pence spoke of founders of the nation conquering the American “wilderness.” It was one …

I Hereby Censure the Censure

When California Politicians Pass Resolutions Denouncing One Another, They Make a Mockery of Democracy

by Joe Mathews | September 26, 2023

It’s time that we Californians censure the whole idea of censure.

Because it’s consuming the precious time and money of our local governments.

Censure is the name often given to resolutions or …

What Asteroids Can Teach Us About Climate Change

Scientists Are Aware of the Perils of Near-Earth Objects and Rising Temperatures. Humanity Can’t Come Together to Deal With Them

by Andy Bruno | September 25, 2023

On June 30, 1908, a sudden blast knocked down over 2,000 square kilometers of forest in a sparsely inhabited part of Siberia. Witnesses saw a fireball from hundreds of miles …

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