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    Common Dreams. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
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    LATEST NEWS
    OPINION
    Common DreamsTo inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.

    progressive change

    Shoes hanging from a wire

    How the Personal Became Political for Me Growing Up Poor

    Learning to fight City Hall took a lifetime.

    Beverly Gologorsky
    Jul 03, 2023

    Looking into the long reflecting pool of the past, I find myself wondering what it was that made me an activist against injustice. I was born in New York City’s poor, rundown, and at times dangerous South Bronx, where blacks, whites, and Latinos (as well as recent immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe) lived side by side or, perhaps more accurately, crowded together.

    I was the middle child of four siblings, not counting the foster children my mother often cared for. My father worked six days a week in a leather factory where the rat-tat-tatting of sewing machines never stopped and layoffs were a constant reality. I grew up after World War II in the basement of a six-story building at a time when jobs were still hard to find and scary to lose. Many young men (really boys) joined the military then for the same reason so many young men and women volunteer today, one that, however clichéd, remains a reality of our moment: the promise of some kind of concrete future instead of a wavy unknown or the otherwise expectable dead-end jobs. Unfortunately, many of them, my brother included, returned home with little or nothing “concrete” to show for the turmoil they endured.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    poverty
    ​The People's Summit

    Political Revolutionists: Does an Inside-Outside Strategy Have a Chance?

    Donna Smith
    May 01, 2016

    As the 2016 presidential candidates go kicking and sliding toward the final primaries—and most especially into California—an increasing number of pundits with a knack for writing and rewriting history will offer their best guesses about Bernie's next steps. Many groups with thousands of Bernie volunteers will feel the pressure from those Bernie loyalists never to give up or give in. And many thousands more are also clamoring now about how they might be able to influence those next steps.

    Though many Bernie supporters know it in their minds, few like to acknowledge that the people's movement Bernie has ignited will not be led by Bernie in the post-primary season, the general election campaign season, or even when the next president is inaugurated in January 2017. Even if Bernie is elected as our president, his role has changed too. The movement to bring about the kind of transformational change Bernie has adopted as his campaign platform is a "marathon not a sprint" to November. This people's movement requires a longer-term commitment to the slogging, uncomfortable, underfunded, and rarely appreciated work of getting and keeping people organized to fight the good fight.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    bernie sanders

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