Richard Eskow
Richard (RJ) Eskow is Senior Advisor for Health and Economic Justice at Social Security Works and the host of The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow on Free Speech TV. Follow him on Twitter: @rjeskow
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, November 03, 2020 In a Fearful Moment, We Are Honored by History Like many other Americans, this weekend I encountered a cavalcade of slow-rolling, flag-waving pickup trucks and other vehicles on my local highway – which, in my case, was the Beltway surrounding the nation’s capital. They weren’t American flags. They were blue-and-white Trump banners, an... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Freedom Dreamers: The Faces of Student Debt In a recent Instagram discussion about student debt for the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Ilhan Omar quoted Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza as saying, “We’re not freedom fighters, we’re freedom dreamers.” Rep. Omar, who has student debt of her own, went on to say: “We can all dream, and... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 23, 2020 The Sunset Gun: One Nation, Under the Influence of Hate I recently found myself re-reading Walker Percy’s 1970 novel, Love in the Ruins, a deeply problematic work by a writer with extraordinary gifts. Lately, I’ve found myself repeating these lines as I follow the news: "Either I am right and a catastrophe will occur, or it won’t and I’m crazy. In... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 07, 2020 Trump Is the Grotesque Id of the Ruling Elites. His Disease Is Theirs – and Ours Wall Street donors, corporate CEOs, “Never Trump” Republicans, “Lincoln Project” consultants, “National Security Professionals for Biden”: many have expressed revulsion for Donald Trump, the man and the president. It’s certainly understandable. Just this week, Trump minimized his own illness, an... Read more |
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Views Friday, September 04, 2020 David Graeber, 1961-2020: History is a Living Weapon When I was a teenager, I overheard my bass teacher commiserating with some other jazz musicians over the premature death of a colleague. “Yeah,” one said, “he was a soulful cat.” Of all the memories that might have resurfaced all these decades later, that was the one that came to mind when I... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, August 12, 2020 A Message to the Left About Kamala Harris—And Us Millions of people have worked for change in this country in recent years. An incomplete list includes the Occupy movement, Standing Rock, the Sunrise movement, the Bernie Sanders campaigns, Black Lives Matter, the Red State teachers' strikes, and the Women's Marches. For the activist left (I... Read more |
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Views Saturday, August 08, 2020 Rehearsals for Apocalypse: From the A-Bomb to Covid-19 Who knew we'd be this bad at facing the end of the world? Most baby boomers remember the national emergency warning system known as Conelrad. The name stands for "Control of Electromagnetic Radiation"—an aspirational goal if there ever was one. Although it was used for other kinds of emergencies,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 07, 2020 The War on Logic: Contradictions and Absurdities in the House’s Military Spending Bill The House Armed Services Committee just passed a defense appropriations bill filled with moral contradictions and illogical absurdities. Consider: It removes some racist symbols in the military, but preserves Trump’s ability to use the military against anti-racist demonstrators. It abdicates... Read more |
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Views Sunday, June 21, 2020 John Bolton and Liberals’ Irrational Hatred of Trump In June 2019, two men sat in the Oval Office and talked of war. One was the bloated embodiment of American evil, a smug and fatuous egomaniac whose power and arrogance posed an existential threat to millions of the planet's inhabitants. The other was Donald Trump. This conversation was reported by... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 09, 2020 Big Bank CEOs Want to ‘Listen’ to Black Communities. They Should Return Their Stolen Wealth Instead. Fox News triggered legitimate outrage last week with a graphic showing that the stock market rose after the uprisings that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, the acquittal of Rodney King’s attackers, and the murders of Michael Brown and George Floyd. But Fox performed a public... Read more |