As a socialist, I favor university intellectuals finding a way to relate to working people, especially rank-and-file labor organizations. At the least, intellectuals might be involved in community organizations – but as learners as much as teachers.

Union members are preparing to journey to San Diego for the 2006 Pride at Work (PAW) convention. Scheduled to begin September 7th, the national convention of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trasngendered (LGBT) constituency affiliate of the AFL-CIO is titled "No Turning Back in 2006."

Editor’s Note: Eric Foner teaches US history at Columbia University in New York. He is the co-author with Joshua Brown of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction and author of numerous books including Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.

I’ve worked at the Chrysler plant here in St. Louis for almost 42 years. It has about 3,500 UAW members. I currently hold the position of shop chair of UAW Local 110, and have been involved in the community for most of those 42 years.

Displacement, dispossession is the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes is part of this plan of displacement.

...It will take some enormous negative revelations of information, facts regarding Giuliani’s actual leadership for the conventional wisdom to be altered about his “heroic” role that day.

Leonardo Padura Fuentes is the internationally acclaimed author of several novels including the “Havana Quartet”, a series of detective novels featuring Havana police Inspector Mario Conde. The latest installment in that series is Havana Red.

José Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922. He is the author of 10 books, including The Double, The Cave, Blindness, and All the Names. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998.

I think the big advantage we have now in scholarship on race in the last several decades is that we get to start from the fact that it’s a biological fiction.

Back in the day, I would have been listening to Public Enemy. I would also include Dead Prez. I don’t know if I listen to stuff that’s considered political to get that feeling.

At this time, Communists in Venezuela were persecuted, and many were murdered. So the Party went to underground again. In the 1980s, Party work involved building Party clubs in the various communities. The clubs recruited individuals to the Party and worked in opposition to the oppressive capitalist government of the time.

Tran Doc Loi remains confident in the future prospects of socialism. I sat down with Tran, who chairs the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the youth wing of Vietnam’s Communist Party, after his presentation at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students.

Leon Lefson is 90 years old and has the energy of men half his age. A Sacramento resident, he has been a political activist for decades. His working life includes a stint as a research assistant for the famed labor historian Philip Foner.

"I mentioned before there is always a patriotic element in the resistance movement, but it is small. We estimate this to be maybe 5 to 10 percent no more of the overall operations that take place. The problem there is that such groups haven’t manifested themselves politically yet..."

Phyllis Bennis is an internationally recognized expert on the Middle East, a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, a founder of United for Peace and Justice, and the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis.

I have a problem with the idea that people are simply being duped or that they have "false consciousness." This is the wrong approach, because so-called cultural issues are real.

A representative of the Sudanese Communist Party discusses the situation in Darfur, its history, and ways to bring about a political resolution.

Editor’s Note: Michael Parenti is a widely acclaimed author and activist. His work includes Against Empire, Blackshirts and Reds, History as Mystery, To Kill a Nation, and most recently, Superpatriotism. Here Parenti begins by discussing his history of Rome and the life of Julius Caesar, The Assassination of Julius Caesar.

"We are a group of mothers in poverty. We came together 18 years ago to produce a newspaper, Mother Warriors Voice, to give a voice to moms, especially single moms in poverty because the war on the poor seemed to be targeting our families. All of the stereotypes and war propaganda against us made it difficult to raise our children. "