The current phase of the black struggle for freedom and equality is approaching its 30th year. No one would deny that a great deal of positive change has taken place during this period, producing many gains for black Americans. Still, …
The Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred a bare two weeks after The China Syndrome opened at first-run theaters—as always, life imitating bad art. Since the dramatic center of the movie was the possibility of a meltdown, it was taken …
In Spain, the democratic transformation continues to have a churning effect on many aspects of life. The vicissitudes of change are having their greatest impact in the political sector, as the various parties now strive to align ideologies with the …
Such as it is in the United States, the welfare state, a term for which exegesis will soon be supplied, came under intense fire even before the OPEC coup slowed economic growth, upset a precarious political detente over the size …
The grass-roots organizing of the 1970s is an ambitious and at least partially successful effort to bring working-class women and men into the political arena as organized, self-conscious actors. The organizations that provide structure and direction to this “movement” are …
What has happened to the young men and women of the New Left? The movement is invisible these days, a specter regularly invoked only in neoconservative writings. Where have all the “kids” gone? Many of them are simply burnt out, …
As we enter the 1980s it seems certain that working people in the auto towns will suffer the full impact of the latest round of recession and regional depression. With all their press puffery, the auto executives cannot hide the …
The question nags, gruesomely: is the fate of the Cambodian people as dreadful as that of the Jews and gypsies in Europe? It isn’t a question one need finally answer; a modest distinction will hold us. The Jews and gypsies …
Both Joan Baez and Jane Fonda are to some extent public figures in their art because they are public figures outside it: Ms. Baez for her marches against the H-bomb and the war, her marriage to a draft resister, and …
The following is taken from a quite remarkable article by Abba Eban that appeared in the American Jewish magazine, Moment. It’s reprinted here with permission. — Eds. Let us look at the mechanism of the agreement. Within a month of …
The fortunes of political movements change rapidly these days. Consider the French Socialist party, which could boast at the beginning of this year that it was France’s “largest party”: it had a membership of 200,000, the highest percentage of the …
The two-way Soviet-American negotiations on SALT II have ended and the three-way negotiations that will determine the outcome of the treaty are under way. The 100 members of the U.S. Senate have become the third side in the bargaining. Whether …
When President Carter called us onto the “battlefield of energy,” he was only the latest leader to suppose that peacetime problems can be solved by applying the alleged wartime virtues of unity, productivity, and sacrifice. As early as the 1820s, …
In the summer 1979, Dissent printed several articles on the energy problem, from various points of view. Below appears another article, in line with our policy of providing a forum for a range opinions, within the spectrum of socialist and …
Mr. Randolph was a successful and uniquely gifted labor and civil rights activist because of his human qualities. His leadership flowed from the depth of his humanity—and from his understanding of the human condition. His modesty, his integrity, and his …
