Latest News: Author Archive

“Concise and easy to read for all who care about justice… Candidly offers a glimpse of the thoughtful soul behind the legal legend.” — MOVING THE BAR reviewed in the Indypendent

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“Michael Ratner was one of the most accomplished radical lawyers of his generation, representing clients from Attica to Guantanamo. He served as president of the National Lawyers Guild and was legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights for many years. Radicalzed in the late 1960s, he had no illusions about the ruling-class bias of the law under capitalism. He believed political action outside the courtroom was as important as anything that happened inside it.

Ratner died all too soon of cancer in 2016, at the age of 72. His friends completed the memoir he began before his death[:] Moving the Bar, published on May Day.”

Read the full review here.

“New York is failing to democratize its energy system” — PEOPLE’S POWER author Ashley Dawson writes for the Daily News

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“New York has a dirty secret. Although our city has boasted about its environmental credentials since the days of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC in 2007, our power mix is far from green: indeed, only 6% of our energy comes from clean sources like solar and wind. And the city is actually slated to burn more fossil fuels in coming years because the last reactor at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which supplies 80% of its non-fossil energy, was shut down at the end of April. With Indian Point closed, the resulting deficit in power is slated to come from so-called peaker plants, which fire up their fossil-fuel-burning generators during times of peak electricity demand. Most of these peaker plants are located in communities of color, which already shoulder a disproportionate burden of deadly pollution. The city and state desperately need a clean, job-creating alternative.”

Read the full article here.

UPCOMING EVENT: “Live from Kings County” — THE PRINCE official book launch with author Ross Barkan, Assemblymember Zohran K. Mamdani, and special guest Andrew M. Cuomo on 06/24/21

Friday, June 11th, 2021

Thu, June 24, 2021
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT

Tradesman
222 Bushwick Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11206

Celebrate—live, in person—the launch of The Prince with author Ross Barkan, New York State Assemblymember Zohran K. Mamdani, and a special guest appearance from Emmy Award-Winner Andrew M. Cuomo himself.

This event will be held outdoors, per the Governor’s guidelines and “best practices.” The evening’s programming will begin promptly at 7PM, per the Governor’s temperament.

Capacity is limited. RSVP now.

Rain date: Wednesday, June 30, 7-9PM

RSVP here.

“Qualified immunity serves as a giant rubber stamp on even the most egregious transgressions” — ABOVE THE LAW featured in the Progressive

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“For decades, the legal construct of qualified immunity has allowed law enforcement officers and others to escape consequences for serious misconduct. It holds that officials cannot be held accountable unless their precise conduct has been found to be wrongful in the past, which keeps it from being found wrongful in the current instance. In practice, qualified immunity serves as a giant rubber stamp on even the most egregious transgressions. Above the Law: How “Qualified Immunity” Protects Violent Police by Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s fame), a new book slated for June 15 publication, highlights some examples”

Read the full article here.

“Ending qualified immunity” — ABOVE THE LAW author Ben Cohen interviewed on CNN

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“Cops get off scot-free” — ABOVE THE LAW author Ben Cohen interviewed by Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“The truth about Andrew Cuomo” — THE PRINCE author Ross Barkan interviewed on Behind the News

Friday, June 11th, 2021

Listen here.

THE PRINCE author Ross Barkan interviewed on the Katie Halper Show

Friday, June 11th, 2021

HATE INC author Matt Taibbi interviewed on Reality Asserts Itself

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“The Plight and Polarisation of Mainstream Media” — HATE INC author Matt Taibbi interviewed on Conversations with John Anderson

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“Fact Checkers on the Lab Leak Theory” — HATE INC author Matt Taibbi interviewed on the Jimmy Dore Show

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“Matt Taibbi on the Media’s Coverage of Biden” — HATE INC author interviewed on the Megyn Kelly Show

Friday, June 11th, 2021

“Only Letitia James running against Gov. Cuomo in 2022 could unseat him” — THE PRINCE author Ross Barkan writes for the New York Post

Monday, June 7th, 2021
The Prince.

So far, Cuomo has survived because the cautious labor unions are still in his corner, as well as the state’s wealthiest donors. If the titans of finance and Wall Street decide they are sick of Cuomo, he is in deep trouble. James must merely improve on Nixon’s New York City vote share, since there are many anti-Cuomo Democrats to be found north of the five boroughs, particularly in the Albany area.

The path to beating Cuomo is joining black and Latino voters, many of them more moderate and church-going, with white progressives who also vote reliably. Teachout and Nixon could not create this coalition. James, with her pedigree, can. No longer perceived as Cuomo’s lackey, she has won headlines for suing Donald Trump and investigating Cuomo himself.

This won’t be easy, of course. Cuomo is a prodigious fundraiser and there are enough blinkered MSNBC-watching liberals who will stick by him. But James has a chance to do what was once unthinkable — end the reign of another Cuomo.

Ross Barkan is the author of “The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York” (OR Books).

Read the full article here.

“As Soon as COVID-19 Hit, Cuomo Downplayed the Danger” — THE PRINCE excerpt published in the Daily Beast

Monday, June 7th, 2021

“The New York governor’s initial ‘nothing to see here’ response to the coronavirus was a step behind reality from the very start and sounded a lot like Trump.”

Read the excerpt here.

“Coronavirus, Checkpoints, and the Beach of Death” — CHECKPOINT ZIPOLITE excerpt published in Current Affairs

Monday, June 7th, 2021

“Enjoy this exclusive excerpt from Belén Fernández’s new book Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place, a story about getting stuck during the pandemic and a no-holds-barred critique of the politicians who are largely responsible for the scale of the disaster.”

Read the excerpt here.

“Matt Taibbi to the left of Krystal Ball… and Bhaskar Sunkara” — HATE INC featured on Breaking Points with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti

Monday, June 7th, 2021

“Outrageously funny, acerbic, insightful” — DIASPORA BOY reviewed in OpEd News

Monday, June 7th, 2021

“Refreshing in [its] honesty about the hypocrisy embedded in the motivations behind Israeli policies toward Palestinians and the often-cowed American media

Read the review here.

“A beautiful and compelling account from one of the leaders of the legal left” — MOVING THE BAR reviewed by David Cole in the Nation

Friday, June 4th, 2021

“Ratner showed that one can indeed be both a radical and a lawyer—by acting “one hundred percent on principle,” and by using the law on behalf of the vulnerable to hold the powerful to account.”

Read the full review here.

“The Campaign to End Qualified Immunity” — ABOVE THE LAW author Ben Cohen interviewed on Amped Up with Ryan Knight

Friday, June 4th, 2021

“Sex and social justice in the pandemic” — PANDEMIC! 2 author Slavoj Žižek interviewed on Low Society

Friday, June 4th, 2021

“Using art as a means for social change, artivists can change the world” — THE ART OF ACTIVISM featured in Art & Object

Tuesday, June 1st, 2021

“Since co-founding The Center for Artistic Activism in 2009, Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe have trained and mentored over 1,500 artists and activists around the world. Duncombe is an activist, author, and professor of Media and Culture at New York University. Lambert is an artist and professor of New Media at Purchase College, New York…

The Center for Artistic Activism’s new book and accompanying workbook to empower activist artists, The Art of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible (O/R Books), will be available in June. Lambert encourages stretching beyond the goals of raising awareness, inspiring dialogue, and communicating a message: ‘Artistic activism can change behaviors, our dreams, and our sense of what’s possible, and it can impact power and policy.'”

Read the full article here.

 

“[CNN anchor] Chris Cuomo has enabled Andrew Cuomo’s lies and catastrophic missteps for more than a year, helping to mythologize a governor who presided over more than 50,000 COVID-19 deaths.'” — THE PRINCE author Ross Barkan writes for the Daily Beast

Friday, May 28th, 2021

The news that Chris Cuomo has been advising his brother, the governor of New York, on how to counter a barrage of sexual harassment allegations against him is the sort of brazenness that would get the CNN anchor fired if CNN was serious about being a news network and not just another entertainment channel.

Read the article here.

“Andrew Cuomo and the Incredible Shrinking Congressional Delegation” — THE PRINCE author Ross Barkan writes for the Village Voice

Friday, May 28th, 2021

“The news, when it arrived, was too stunning to quite believe: New York State had fallen 89 people short, in the U.S. Census count, of keeping all of its congressional seats.

Recriminations, both online and in person, immediately spread across the state: laments about how one apartment building, a schoolyard, or a trendy bar on a good night would pack in at least that many people. Rage built against those who fled the city throughout the pandemic, beginning in March 2020 — the Hamptons and Hudson Valley dwellers who inevitably, while sipping white wine on their patios, didn’t bother to fill out their census forms.

Within the world of politics, where blame flies easily but courage can be in short supply, many began to say out loud what they had uttered, in quiet, for months — that scandal-scarred Andrew Cuomo should be blamed.”

Read the article here.

“The Radical Book Collective is an initiative founded by [Decolonize That! series editor] Bhakti Shringarpure… which ‘responds to the need for an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading.'” —DECOLONIZE HIPSTERS featured in Brittle Paper

Friday, May 28th, 2021

“The Radical Book Collective (RBC) is an initiative founded by Bhakti Shringarpure, Editor-in-Chief of Warscapes magazine, and Suchitra Vijayan author of Midnight’s Borders. As stated on the website, the project ‘responds to the need for an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading.’

The profit-driven model of mainstream literary culture and big publishing, which favors award-winning books and bestsellers, has excluded books that, despite having considerable merit, are different. Some of these books are ‘unapologetically political.’ Others explore unfamiliar worlds and experiences. The Radical Books Collective creates the space for readers to experience the irreverence of engaging with these kinds of books that break the mold. Every month, ‘publishers, bookstores, authors, booklovers and bookworms everywhere’ meet to talk about a recently published ‘radical book.’ These meetings often includes a chat with the author.

Anyone can join the book club for a nominal fee. Follow this link for more information.

“[A] searing analysis of the deep roots of white supremacy and black exploitation in modern culture” — DECOLONIZE HIPSTERS review reprinted in the Mail & Guardian

Friday, May 28th, 2021

The beauty and the force of Decolonize Hipsters is the way Pierrot folds and unfolds the pleats of historical moments to tell a story of race in the Atlantic world…. The genius of this book is not just in Pierrot’s analysis but in his delivery of it… Pierrot’s humor is the kind that refuses to soft pedal for anyone’s comfort. He reveals this kind of accommodation to be part of the problem in the first place: the hipster’s recourse to snark and irony is an insidious dodge… Pierrot’s accounting of the consequences of hipsterdom on present day politics is damning. The cult of individuality and commitment to burnishing one’s quirkiness is exposed for what it is: depoliticization, consumerism, complicity… In the end, though, Pierrot offers a path forward—the possibility of breaking the cycle of colonization, appropriation, and theft. He brings a genuine spirit of hopefulness imbued with a generosity that cannot but feel a bit heartbreaking.”

Read the review here.

“[A] richly detailed critical biography of one of Ireland’s most celebrated and enigmatic political and cultural figures” — THE FASCINATION OF WHAT’S DIFFICULT reviewed in the Arts Fuse

Friday, May 28th, 2021

The Fascination of What’s Difficult deepens our understanding of Gonne by examining the social, political, and personal circumstances of her life as she traverses the various tendencies and personalities of Irish rebellion.

Read the review here.

“Ben & Jerry’s co-founders ask Congress to end qualified immunity for police officers” — ABOVE THE LAW featured on FOX Business

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

“The co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream called on Congress to end qualified immunity for law enforcement officers and overhaul of police standards nationwide, during an event on Capitol Hill on Thursday.”

Read the article here.

“How Reporters Came to Love the Spy State” — HATE INC author Matt Taibbi interviewed on Rising

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

“Invisible Conspiracies” — CHAMELEO author Robert Guffey interviewed on CROPfm

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

Interview begins at 7-minute mark.

“It’s Time for ‘Whiteness as Usual’ to End” — THE SINKING MIDDLE CLASS author David Roediger interviewed for Truthout

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

“When I think about the insistence of white power and privilege — from racial inequity, the murder of George Floyd, the storming of the Capitol, and the emergence of Donald Trump, to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s rejection of critical educational programs designed to bear witness to the inhuman and cruel suffering of Black people in this country — there is a sense of both disbelief and a painful recognition that this is all too familiar. Whiteness functions as one of those multi-headed creatures; it finds a way to survive. Because of its recursive existence, I thought it crucial to engage the ideological, political, economic and psychological dimensions of whiteness with prominent historian of whiteness, David R. Roediger, who is the Foundation Professor of American Studies at University of Kansas, where he teaches and writes on race and class in the United States. Educated through college at public schools in Illinois, he completed doctoral work at Northwestern University. He is the author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for AllHow Race Survived U.S. HistoryClass, Race, and Marxism; and The Production of Difference (with Elizabeth D. Esch). His older writings on race, immigration and working-class history include The Wages of Whiteness and Working Toward Whiteness. His most recent book is entitled, The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History (2020).”

Read the interview here.

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