Field Notes
Visions of Resilience: New York City’s Infrastructural Response to Climate Change
By Max MoorheadWhen Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, the storm surge rose over thirteen feet in Battery Park, breaking a record set in 1960, and the New York Stock Exchange was forced to close for two days, the longest closure due to weather since 1888.
Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future
By Zhandarka KurtiSTAND WITH MEEK MILL greets me on a billboard as I drive along Philadelphia’s I-95 and the Vine Street Expressway. Downtown, a local city SEPTA bus passes by, advertising similar messages of support.
Editor’s Note
“Despite it All!”
By Paul MattickOne of the most moving documents from the history of the left is Karl Liebknecht’s article, Trotz alledem!, “Despite It All!”, published in Berlin in the newspaper of the Spartacist League on January 15, 1919—the very day on which Liebknecht was murdered by rightwing soldiers acting in support of the Social-Democratic government of Germany.
Thinking About Communism
Don't Mourn, Organize!
Is Communism a Pipe Dream—or a Viable Future?
By Gabriel Kuhn
Communism’s reputation plummeted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
A New Man Is No Good on Earth: The Great Cowboy Strike
By Adam Theron-Lee RenschFew narratives remain as endearing to the American mythos as the frontier. The images it has given us—from the small-town saloon of drunken gunslingers to the rugged cowboy wandering a lonely, expansive landscape—symbolize the organizing principles of American capitalism: individualism and self-sufficiency, property rights, a domination of nature, and a masculine celebration of violence as a vehicle for creation (“disruption,” as it is now called in startup speak). In our increasingly borderless world of global capital, the frontier’s legacy continues to validate a conquest of land and people that falsely imagines itself without limits.
