Gun Violence, Resistance, and the Left
Any discussion of gun control must go hand in hand with an argument for de-militarization and an end to the carceral state, or it will only further disempower those most vulnerable to state violence.
Category: Issues
Being Appalachian Isn’t Just About Owning Guns
A few weeks ago I wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post’s “Made by History” series about gun violence and white supremacy. I expected some backlash, and I got it.
Anderson Runs for Mayor to Stop the Painful Violence
Charles’ art and activism have been a fixture in the city for the last decade, so when I learned Charles would be running for mayor, I knew I wanted to interview him.
The Gun Lobby’s Grip: Campus Carry in Kansas
Scholar-activist Megan Jones reveals the ties between NRA lobbyists and the Kansas legislature that resulted in open-carry campuses across the state.
Is It Time to Bury Neoliberalism?: Maybe, Maybe Not
Neoliberalism is an incredibly complex system of political economy and there are many more questions to answer. Still, as the contributors all brought up this month, historians have an important role in deconstructing an abusive market system.
Property, Capitalism, and Guns
The shift away from guns as consumer products for hunting and sport towards guns as consumer products for self-protection ignores the argument initially used to validate private gun ownership: defense of private property, as opposed to self-defense of the people occupying personally-owned land.
Confronting History at the March for Our Lives
The messy realities of the past rarely make for the pithiest of signs. And the reality of private gun ownership in the United States is not that it enjoys the support of an eighteenth-century amendment, but that it enjoys the support of twenty-first-century legislative and judicial interpretations of that amendment.
Whose Children?: Mom Activism and Race in the Gun Control Movement
Moms Demand Action models itself after Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But to claim an inheritance from MADD is to also lay claim to their particular white suburban praxis, where the theoretically race-neutral title of “mother” works to mobilize women around the deaths of white children.
The Neoliberal Democrats
As one of the two viable political parties in a system designed to allow only a duopoly, the Democratic Party’s embrace of neoliberalism has been devastating long term. No longer the party of the working class, Democrats have embraced privatization, and taken steps to severely limit the rights of workers.
The West Virginia Teachers’ Strike and the Power of Grassroots Change
When this goes down in history, we don’t want the story to be that teachers went on a nine-day strike. We want the story to be that this was the beginning of a snowball effect of wonderful things happening for West Virginia. I think that in order for that to happen, we have to “Remember in November.”
The Activist History Review 