Two of my favorite historians, Steve Fraser and Josh Freeman, are teaching a course, starting in mid-September, at the New York City DSA Academy—yes, an actual socialist school for the left!—that I think will be of interest to a wide range of readers of this blog. It’s called “Red New York: A History of the Left in America’s Most Radical City.” Seems pretty timely and relevant, no? There are just five classes, and having listened to both Josh and Steve for years, I can tell you that there are not two people who know more about the NYC and the left and are better pedagogues than these two! Seems like a real treat. You can sign up here.
The historian Josh Freeman has an excellent review of Michael Walzer’s Political Action, which came out in 1971 but has been reissued by NYRB Books. Freeman compares Walzer’s short pamphlet to the Manual of Practical Political Action, another how-to political guide, prepared in 1946 by the labor movement’s National Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC), one of the first modern PACs. Both texts were written at moments of political deceleration, when the velocities of change were about to alter dramatically or already had. But here’s what Josh says about that earlier moment that’s relevant for today: For NCPAC…organizing requires strategies that are not inherently progressive. Somewhat apologetically, the Manual suggests borrowing techniques from commercial advertising, presenting detailed guidance, much of it derived from standard business practices, […]
The lead story in today’s New York Times is a devastating attack on CUNY, where I’ve been teaching for nearly two decades, and the state’s criminal under-funding of a once-great institution. An above-the-fold photograph of a library at one of CUNY’s senior colleges features students studying at tables, surrounded by buckets strategically placed to catch the gallons of water dripping down from the ceiling. It’s a near perfect tableau of what it’s like to teach at CUNY today: excellent, hard-working students, encircled by shabbiness, disrepair, and neglect. Though you should read the entire piece, here are some of the highlights. The infrastructure is collapsing The piece begins thus— On the City College of New York’s handsome Gothic campus, leaking ceilings have turned hallways into obstacle courses of buckets. […]