Building workers' power in Roanoke, VA
Virginia had no public local police force until 1932, before then, policing was almost totally a private affair. The protection of private property & reinforcing the white supremacist social order were & are the two major functions of police in America. Roanoke has its contribution to that history in the form of the Baldwin-Felts Detective... Continue Reading →
(photo: James Rucker, Langston Hughes in Madrid | credit: Langston Hughes Estate) Here is James Bernard “Bunny” Rucker (1912-1992), born in Roanoke, Virginia, raised in Columbus, Ohio, veteran of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Spanish Civil War (as a volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), and World War II (three bronze stars and a purple heart), one-time Communist... Continue Reading →
The United States, like most western industrial democratic experiments, underwent an iteration of the intensive land redevelopment process often known as “urban renewal” in the postwar period. Under the auspices of liberal progress, massive amounts of civic space were reconfigured to address “urban blight,” facilitate the growth of highway systems, and to enable faster connective... Continue Reading →
In September of 2019, The Nielson report claimed that African Americans had a spending power of over 1 trillion dollars. With that much money to spend, loud has been the cry to strengthen black communities through ownership, entrepreneurship, and making conscious efforts to shop black. The idea is to liberate Black Americans by generating and... Continue Reading →
A Joint Statement from the Virginia Left on Recent Gun Control Measures “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” - Karl Marx We, the undersigned, representing several groups of the anti-capitalist movement in Virginia, wish to make clear that we... Continue Reading →