Rose Schneiderman was a legendary organizer of women workers, once saying, What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has …
Linda Thao
Where books are burned, so too shall people burn
On 10 May, 1933, Students in Nazi Germany burned upwards of 25,000 books in public bonfires. The books by Jewish authors and others deemed subversive by the Nazis were consigned to the flames. This included …
A Voice in the Wilderness
John Brown was the embodiment of the most radical wing of the abolitionist movement during the pre-civil war period in American history. in 1837, after a mob of pro-slavery vigilantes murdered abolitionist publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy in …
Jonas Salk – This Week’s “Profile in Jewish American Heritage
In 1955, Polio was affecting more children than any other communicable disease. In 1956, a vaccine was declared to be safe and effective. It’s developer was a 40 year old medical researcher and virologist named …
An Activist Shaped by War and Study
It sounds like something out of a war comics adventure story, but it is all true. UW-Madison grad John Gilman earned some the highest military honors for bravery in WWII through several heroic exploits. These …
A Senator who would become an ‘ism’…
It has been 58 years since US Senator Joe McCarthy died on 2 May, 1957. He was 48 years old and serving his second term in the US Senate at the time. Senator McCarthy began …
The Month of May Begins
The 1st of May, or “May Day” and sometimes called “International Workers Day,” has the unusual distinction of being a holiday that was born in the United States, but rarely receiving any official recognition here …
Bonus Track
Today is the last day of April, and thus the day of “Poetry Month,” so we bring you this final entry. Take a moment to listen to Gil Scott Heron’s, “The Revolution will not be …
Found Poetry
Found Poems are those that are culled from others works, not intended as poetry, but slightly edited and restrung so they take on a poetic form. Found poems are all around us. One of the …
Poets and Cinema
Poets do not often figure as central characters in motion picture dramas, but the 1994 film, Il Postino, proved to be the exception to that rule: