Every so often the national spotlight turns to Oakland, CA, a city of about half the population of its better-known neighbor, San Francisco. For the past three years that spotlight has come […]
Luke Pickrell
Also writes at lukepickrell.blogspot.com
A Brief History of May Day
By: Luke Pickrell May Day has its origins in the United States around the struggle for an 8-hour workday. At the time of the first May Day rally in 1886, work days […]
The Police: Past, Present, & Future
by Luke Pickrell This article draws heavily from a much longer piece – “Origins of the Police” – by David Whitehouse. I’ve summarized some important points and added original thoughts, including […]
The New Orleans General Strike of 1892
The New Orleans General Strike lasted five days and completely shut down what was then American’s 12th largest city. The strike involved 25,000 workers and is considered the first general strike to […]
Notes on the work of Theodore Allen & Lerone Bennett Jr.
The work of Theodore Allen (The Invention of the White Race, 1994 & 1997) presents a powerful argument for class as the underlying unifier in capitalist society and against ‘race’ as […]
Police, Prisons, and the State: Social Control over the Poor and Working Class
Today prisoners across the United States are striking to protest the brutality of the American incarceration system that shuffles threw millions of poor people each year and subjects them to slave labor […]
Wealth, Poverty, and Social Control in the Golden State
In capitalist society, the wealth of the working class is appropriated and hoarded by a tiny elite – the ruling class. This ruling class creates a state in its image in order […]
Anti-Fascists Rally in Sacramento
On Sunday, members of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), the Golden Skinheads, and other neo-Nazi and white supremacist gangs attempted to spread hate by holding an ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ rally on the steps of […]
Oakland’s Frat House and Policing in America
Last week, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the media she is determined to “run a police department, not a frat house.” The mayor of 18 months continued, saying she wants to “root […]