Image: Mike David, illustration by Carolyn Ramos for Voice of San Diego; Betita Martinez, art by Favianna Rodríguez. In loving memory of two dear friends of the journal—Mike Davis, who joined our Advisory Board back in 1989, and Elizabeth Betita Martinez, who… Read More »

by Judah Schept*  Three years ago this month, in June 2019, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) withdrew its Record of Decision to build United States Penitentiary Letcher, a maximum security federal prison sited for a former mountaintop removal site in… Read More »

by Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land and Kevin Walby* Image by DANIEL ARAUZ via FLICKR. CC BY 2.0.   Criminology and criminal justice studies have too often failed to incorporate lessons from the front lines of struggles for radical changes to the criminal… Read More »

by Oscar Fabian Soto This blog piece is extracted from a longer article, “On the Outs: Global Capitalism and Transcarceration”, published in Vol. 48-1 of Social Justice. On a cold April night back in 2008, I was arrested and charged with two… Read More »

by Camilla Rossi*   In November 2020 the Guarani and Kaiowá Women’s Council, Kuñangue Aty Guasu, shared the first comprehensive report documenting the initial outcomes of their Violence Mapping project, ‘Corpos Silenciados, Vozes Presentes’. Located in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil,… Read More »

by Micol Seigel* Speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention last month railed against democrats’ supposed plans to defund the police.  The major spotlight on these denunciations reflects how visible this once-fringe proposal has become.  It also highlights the… Read More »

by Maartje van der Woude*  The stakes in the May 2019 elections for the European parliament are unusually high. The results will indicate whether or not nationalist, anti-immigrant, and Euro-skeptic parties continue to grow and expand their influence. Here in… Read More »

by Rémy HERRERA* For some months now, France has been the scene of a turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed,… Read More »

by William I. Robinson & Oscar Fabian Soto* At a recent conference that brought together academics and activists from the movement against mass incarceration, one of the authors of this commentary, Oscar Soto, sat through several days of presentations on… Read More »

How the Camp Fire Was a Social Disaster by Michael J. Coyle* The Camp Fire, which crushed the lives and livelihoods of the 30,000 residents of the town of Paradise, California, was not just a natural disaster. It was a… Read More »

by Clifford Welch* The front-runner in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election refuses to debate his opponent. He prefers to generate and reproduce disinformation about his opponent without ever issuing an apology or correction. Sounds familiar? In fact, front-runner Jair Bolsonaro looks… Read More »

by John M. Ackerman* The historic victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the July 1st Mexican presidential election stands out as a beacon of hope amidst the turbulent sea of contemporary global politics. The collapse of the post–Cold War… Read More »

by Clifford Welch* Thirty-eight years ago, in April, 1980 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went to jail for the first time. On April 7, 2018, the former president of Brazil, one of the most beloved politicians in the world, went… Read More »

by Tony Platt* Anniversaries provide many opportunities for revisionist and wishful thinking about the past. The 50th anniversary of the Kerner Report is no exception. The new mythology remakes the Kerner Commission as a bastion of liberal democracy and enlightened… Read More »

by Antonio Martínez Velázquez* In 1906 Ricardo Flores Magón, an intellectual who fought for freedom and equality during the Mexican Revolution, criticized the “venality and aggressive cynicism” of a press that was “praising the clumsiness and wrongdoings of the government… Read More »

by Susan Bibler Coutin* On January 8, 2018, the Trump Administration announced that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Salvadorans would expire on September 9, 2019, giving rise to deep uncertainty about the future of the 195,000 Salvadorans who currently hold… Read More »

by Smadar Ben-Natan* The Israeli public was outraged in December when a video of Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl from Nebi Salah in the occupied West Bank, went viral. The video documents her and her cousin, Nour Tamimi, slapping… Read More »

by Hilda Lloréns, Ruth Santiago, Carlos G. Garcia-Quijano, and Catalina M. de Onís* Hurricanes are thought of as “natural” disasters, but the social and environmental devastation wrought upon Puerto Rico by Hurricane María last September is really an unnatural disaster resulting from a long history of… Read More »

by Edward J. McCaughan & Ani Rivera*  If going home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una cultura mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist… Read More »

by Tony Platt & Chase Burton* While a great deal of attention is being paid to Trump’s possible impeachment or removal and to his unvarnished bigotry and bombastic rhetoric, his government is transforming carceral policies at the state as well as… Read More »

by Bianca Fileborn & Rachel Loney-Howes* The allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein led to a powerful and widespread social media campaign, with Twitter and Facebook feeds flooded with the hashtag #MeToo. Within 24 hours,… Read More »

by R. Aída Hernández Castillo* An extraordinary phenomenon is taking place in Mexico: an Indigenous woman representing an Indigenous Governing Council has launched a campaign to run as an independent candidate for the nation’s presidency in the 2018 elections. In… Read More »

by José A. Brandariz, Manuel Maroto, and Cristina Fernández-Bessa* Spanish conservatives have not ever been interested in winning over their political contenders, they are just interested in defeating them. Guillem Martínez, journalist and writer The resurgence of the Catalan independentist… Read More »

by Gwyn Kirk* Military tensions between the United States and North Korea have intensified to alarming levels in recent months. Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” this isolated nation of 25 million people, and to “unleash fire and fury like… Read More »

by Julia Morris* Nauru, the world’s smallest island state, located in the Equatorial Pacific, has again catapulted onto the international trading scene. US officials have almost completed their vetting of up to 1,250 refugees, a deal brokered between President Obama’s… Read More »

by Bernard Dreano* In France, the unexpected and seemingly decisive victory of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche! (The Republic on the Move!) and its allies, first in the presidential race, and then in the June parliamentary elections (winning 350… Read More »

by David Edgar* Whisper it softly, but Britain may have turned the global political tide. To understand the extraordinary political events of the last few days, it’s necessary to grasp a little history. Seven years ago, in the immediate wake… Read More »

by Smadar Ben-Natan* Amidst President Trump’s visit to Israel this Monday, a Palestinian general strike of three hours and clashes with Israeli military forces were meant to express Palestinian Solidarity with hunger striking prisoners and help achieve their demands. Few… Read More »

by Alessandro De Giorgi* In a much-quoted segment from the Prison Notebooks, Italian communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci outlined his famous definition of a crisis of hegemony: If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e., is no longer “leading” but… Read More »

by Tom Bodenheimer* March 24, 2017 marked seven years and one day since the signing of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) into law on March 23, 2010. On that seventh anniversary, House Speaker Paul Ryan abandoned the Republican plan to repeal… Read More »

by Sylvia Mac* Since announcing his campaign, Trump has used a rhetoric that has proven to be divisive and harmful in very real ways to black and brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ students across the country. The days after his election… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by William I. Robinson* Donald Trump is a member of the transnational capitalist class (TCC).… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Rachel Herzing & Isaac Ontiveros* The election of Donald Trump to the office of President… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Thomas Bodenheimer* The nomination of Tom Price to be Secretary of Health and Human… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay* The 2016 election truly set a precedent for gender politics. The… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Clifford Welch* The new year had barely begun when the sting of a yet-to-be-installed… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Gregory Shank* In 2016, Donald Trump’s right-wing populism splintered the coalition constituting the Republican… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Tina Sacks* You’re living in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Gwendolyn Mink* The war on welfare was won long before Donald Trump’s election. The… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Marla A. Ramírez* Despite the widespread rhetoric that depicts the United States as a… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Ray Michalowski* As the great Yankee’s baseball catcher and American philosopher Yogi Berra once… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Clare Sears* Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was characterized by raging rambling speeches and late-night… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Jordan E. Mazurek* Let’s start by ripping that big orange band-aid off. This piece… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • •  by Michael J. Lynch, Paul B. Stretesky, Michael A. Long, and Kimberly L. Barrett* We… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Jason Williams* The ascendency of Donald Trump to the highest office in the United… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Colin Jenkins* Rich people don’t have to have a life-and-death relationship with… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Alessandro De Giorgi* I have a message for all of you:… Read More »

This post is part of a series on the possible impacts of Trump’s election on a variety of social justice issues. Click here to read more. • • • by Michelle Brown* In the days to come under the Trump presidency,… Read More »

Dear Readers and Friends:We all started 2017 with a heavy heart. The election of Donald Trump has cast a shadow on the days ahead of us, and his first appointments to the highest offices in the country have fueled our indignation and confirmed our… Read More »

by Neil Harvey* On October 14, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) issued a communiqué entitled “May the Earth Tremble at Its Core.” The communiqué has the merit of centering attention on struggles… Read More »