The Origins of the Police
For most of human history, daily issues of society were settled by people themselves, in their communities. There weren’t always police on every street corner with the power to stop, search, and harass people in the name of the law. Police forces were introduced by governments controlled by the wealthy, not to protect people but […]
A Nation of Mass Incarceration
The US has the largest prison population in the world. With five percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, half a million more than China, which has five times the population. There are about 2.3 million prisoners in the US and about seven million either locked up or on […]
Imagine If…
Imagine If… Today we know that the world is divided into the one percent and the 99 percent. While most people are struggling to survive, a small portion of the population is living in luxury. It doesn’t have to be this way. The problem today is one of maximizing our possibilities. Imagine if the 99 […]
Climate Change? No! We Need a System Change!
There have been five major extinction events on earth where most of the larger plant and animal species were wiped out. The last extinction killed the dinosaurs. An asteroid crashing into earth and drastically changing the climate caused that extinction. Now we are living in what could be the sixth extinction. But this time, our […]
Racism – A Cancer of This Society
We live in a society based on divisions. The main division, which is hardly ever discussed, is the division between those who control the wealth and productive forces of society, and those who do the work. Those in control of the economy determine what to produce, who will produce it and who it is produced […]
Women Hold Up Half the Sky…
But Don’t Have Half the Power or Half the Wealth The claim that the division between the sexes today is natural, or has always been this way, is not true. For most of human existence humans lived in small groups, worked together, shared the resources and took collective responsibility for the young and the old. […]
School – Education or Adaptation?
Almost everyone who is involved in education knows that it isn’t working the way it should be. School days can be spent racing from class to class with no time to think. Many just wait for the day to end. Both students and teachers can feel trapped in classes that seem boring or irrelevant. It […]
Capitalism – A System of Constant War
We live in a world ravaged by endless war. The estimated death toll from wars in the 20th century is over 187 million, not to mention the millions of people whose lives were left in ruins in the aftermath of these wars. The wars of the past century and of today cannot simply be explained […]
What Kind of World Do We Want to Live In?
The school year is beginning. This year is another opportunity to shape the path that your life will take. But as we get ready for the hard work of the school year, we should ask ourselves: what kind of society are we inheriting? Today, young people are forced to deal with the stresses of an […]
Our World is Full of Contradictions – Enormous Possibilities Wasted by Exploitation and War
We live in a world threatened by mass extinctions. Carbon emissions and other pollution have heated the planet almost past the point of no return. We live in a world at war. Corporations and banks rake in huge profits, while tens of thousands are killed, injured, and millions made homeless and turned into refugees. Factories […]