A Freedom Budget for All Americans - Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today

Paul LeBlanc, Michael D. Yates

Summary

While the Civil Rights Movement is remembered for efforts to end segregation and secure the rights of African Americans, the larger economic vision that animated much of the movement is often overlooked today. That vision sought economic justice for every person in the United States, regardless of race. It favored production for social use instead of profit; social ownership; and democratic control over major economic decisions. The document that best captured this vision was the Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve Freedom from Want published by the A. Philip Randolph Institute and endorsed by a virtual ‘who’s who’ of U.S. left liberalism and radicalism.Now, two of today’s leading socialist thinkers return to the Freedom Budget and its program for economic justice. Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates explain the origins of the Freedom Budget, how it sought to achieve “freedom from want” for all people, and how it might be reimagined for our current moment. Combining historical perspective with clear-sighted economic proposals, the authors make a concrete case for reviving the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and building the society of economic security and democratic control envisioned by the movement’s leaders—a struggle that continues to this day.

Available since: 08/01/2013.

Other books that might interest you

The Secret Agent's Bedside...

Michael Smith

Espionage fact and fiction collide in this thrilling compendium of spy writing, where some of the greatest spy stories ever told meet the genuine agent records and instructions that altered history.
Ian Fleming's genre-defining genius and John le Carré's iconic George Smiley are interspersed with real-life stories of derring-do inside Bolshevik Russia. Literary classics by Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham appear next to never-before-published reports from two of the Cambridge spies.
Fully updated with tales of agent-running from the first female Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, and Andy McNab's chilling account of a top-secret mission deep inside IRA territory, this compelling anthology is proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction.
With expert commentary, former intelligence officer Michael Smith takes us on a fascinating journey inside the mysterious world of British intelligence. The Secret Agent's Bedside Reader is a must-read for every espionage enthusiast and aspiring agent.

Show book

Secrets of the Sprakkar -...

Eliza Reid

For the past twelve years, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Iceland number one on its list of countries closing the gap in equality between men and women. What is it about Iceland that makes many women's experience there so positive? Why has their society made such meaningful progress in this ongoing battle, from electing the world's first female president to passing legislation specifically designed to help even the playing field at work and at home? And how can we learn from what Icelanders have already discovered about women's powerful place in society and how increased fairness benefits everyone?Eliza Reid, the First Lady of Iceland, examines her adopted homeland's attitude toward women—the deep-seated cultural sense of fairness, the influence of current and historical role models, and, crucially, the areas where Iceland still has room for improvement. Reid's own experience as an immigrant from small-town Canada who never expected to become a first lady is expertly interwoven with interviews with dozens of sprakkar ("extraordinary women") to form the backbone of an illuminating discussion of what it means to move through the world as a woman, and how the rules of society play more of a role in who we view as "equal" than we may understand.

Show book

Pinheads and Patriots - Where...

Bill O'Reilly

Television host, razor sharp political pundit, and #1 bestselling author Bill O’Reilly focuses in on where we all stand in the Age of Obama in Pinheads and Patriots. In this brave, hard-hitting, provocative volume, the author of Culture Warrior and A Bold, Fresh Piece of Humanity guides Americans through the extensive transformations sweeping their country and explains exactly what these profound changes mean for every one of us.

Show book

King's Dream

Eric J. Sundquist

“Sundquist’s careful, thoughtful study unearths new and fascinating evidence of the rhetorical traditions in King’s speech.”—Drew D. Hansen, author of The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation “I have a dream”—no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King’s speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the “I Have a Dream” speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice—debates as old as the nation itself—and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom. This book is the first to set King’s speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King’s “Second Emancipation Proclamation” and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality. “The [‘I Have a Dream’] speech and all that surrounds it—background and consequences—are brought magnificently to life . . . In this book he gives us drama and emotion, a powerful sense of history combined with illuminating scholarship.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)

Show book

FEDERALIST No 65 The Powers of...

Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist Papers is a series of 85 articles arguing in favor of ratification of the United States Constitution by the thirteen original colonies. The Federalist papers were written in response to criticism of the Constitution. The articles were first published between October 1787 and August 1788 in newspapers and then published in book form in 1788. Federalist No. 65 discusses the reasoning behind the choice of the Senate to conduct Impeachment trials.  He is sanguine about the danger of political factions polarizing the proceedings. He rejects the Supreme Court as too small a body to represent the general public and posits that assigning the House, the representative elected by the body politic, the responsibility of bringing charges and prosecuting an impeachment, and assigning the Senate, a body of wise elders elected by state legislatures, the task trying the matter, is the best that can be done to bring about a necessary separation of powers to achieve a fair and just outcome.

Show book

The Secret Genesis of Area 51

TD Barnes

The man “who has done more than anyone to lift the veil of secrecy . . . about what’s unfolded out there in the desert” reveals the origins of Area 51 (KLAS 8 News Now).   In 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency established a clandestine base of operations in the Nevada desert with a mission to protect the United States from a growing communist threat. Special projects at Area 51 were shrouded in mystery, and the first was one of the world’s most famous spy planes, the U-2. It fueled half-truths, rumors and legends for more than half a century. Now with many details of that endeavor declassified, the real story can finally be told. Author and Area 51 veteran TD Barnes sifts fact from fiction in one of America’s most protected origin stories.

Show book