Frederick Douglass was, born in slavery as, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy, he was, sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838, he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored...

Howard Zinn's views on social movements, freedom, history, democracy and our own human potential are educational and transformative. In few places is his voice more clear and accessible than in the dozens of articles he penned for The Progressive magazine from 1980 to 2009, offered together here in book form for the first time.

Whether encouraging people to organize, critiquing the government or speaking on behalf of working people who struggle

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Harrowing personal narratives describing how Mexican authorities disappeared, killed, and injured scores of students and others in a still-unsolved crime. On September 26, 2014, police in Iguala, Mexico attacked five busloads of students and a soccer team, killing six people and abducting forty-three students-now known as the Iguala 43-who have not been seen since. In a coordinated cover-up of the government's role in the massacre and forced disappearance,...

The real-life story of a Mexican guerilla fighter who was disappeared by the Mexican Army and miraculously escaped to tell the tale. Andres Tzompaxtle Tecpile was torn from the world. Abducted off the street, blindfolded and beaten, he was brought to a Mexican military facility and "disappeared." Tzompaxtle, a young member of an insurgent guerrilla movement, was subjected to months of interrogation and torture as the military tried to extract information...

Profound meditations on life, death, freedom, family, and faith, written by radical Black journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, while he was awaiting his execution. During the spring of 1996, black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was living on death row and expecting to be executed for a crime he steadfastly maintained he did not commit-the murder of a white Philadelphia police officer. It was in that period, with the likelihood of execution looming over him,...

A clear and urgent call for the national, social, and individual changes required to prevent catastrophic climate change. The prospect of a Green New Deal-sustainable energy, and justice for all Americans-has instilled millions of people with a sense of hope. To make it happen, the plan will require a national mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II. But will it be enough to prevent disaster? Scientists now warn that we have little time...

A timely primer on the conflict between the United States and Iran by scholars of Middle Eastern politics who advocate diplomacy and de-escalation. The United States and Iran seem to be permanently locked in a dangerous cycle of brinkmanship and violence. Both countries have staged cyber attacks and recently shot down one another's aircrafts. Why do both countries seem intent on escalation? Why did the U.S. abandon the nuclear deal (which, according...

In personal stories from twenty years of activism and reporting, an award-winning journalist calls on readers to imagine a world without borders. "Todd Miller cuts through the facile media myths and escapes the paralyzing constraints of a political 'debate' that functions mainly to obscure the unconscionable inequalities that borders everywhere secure. In its soulfulness, its profound moral imagination, and its vision of radical solidarity, Todd...