Anti-police sentiment is on the rise in America and around the world. In the wake of the death’s of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless others (Rest In Power), even the DoJ admits that at least some police departments are highly racist in practice and the Black Lives Matter movement has sprung up in response….

A young biker sits with his back against a graffitied stone wall off a hiking trail near the Nevada border, his face buried in a notebook. His name is Jax Teller and he’s the vice president of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club – Redwood Original, or SAMCRO for short, and the book he’s reading…

Recensione di: David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Per gran parte del diciannovesimo e ventesimo secolo milioni di americani furono membri di organizzazioni di mutuo soccorso note come società benefiche, o di solidarietà. Queste società, organizzate democraticamente, fornivano ai loro…

A Review of David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, (University of North Carolina Press-2000) Through much of the 19th and 20th centuries millions of Americans were members of mutual aid organizations known as fraternal societies. These democratically organized groups provided their members with an assortment of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Grant A. Mincy‘s “Altruism in Nepal” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has devastated Nepal. Buildings, old and new, have crumbled. Older brick and wood homes are almost exclusively reduced to rubble. In an interview with The Guardian, Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist, describes the situation: “Outside Kathmandu…

If anarchism makes any empirical claim, it is that humans have the capacity, indeed the natural inclination, to organize themselves into networks of mutual aid: we do not need a government holding a gun to our head to compel socially beneficial behaviour. Rarely do we get an opportunity submit this hypothesis to a conclusive test,…

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has devastated Nepal. Buildings, old and new, have crumbled. Older brick and wood homes are almost exclusively reduced to rubble. In an interview with The Guardian, Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist, describes the situation: “Outside Kathmandu it’s the rural poor. But in the city it’s the people in the older precarious housing. It’s…

The worker-run independent publisher and radical book distributor AK Press recently had a major setback because of a nearby warehouse fire. Happily, no one in the warehouse that AK resides in was harmed and everyone got out safely. But unfortunately several units (including AK’s) took water and smoke damage. In addition the City of Oakland…

Sharon Presley discusses modern mutual aid. David S. D’Amato discusses free love, Angela Heywood, and Ezra Heywood. Jesse Walker discusses the politics of American Sniper. Thomas L. Knapp discusses Rudy Giuliani and loving America. Patrick Barron discusses political and economic freedom. George H. Smith discusses how treason and heresy are related. Jonathan Woodrow Martin discusses…

The environmental movement may be larger than ever. On Sunday, September 21, the “People’s Climate March” flooded the streets of New York City. Estimates project an upwards of 400,000 people participated in the climate rally, with ten’s of thousands more showing solidarity in smaller demonstrations (significant in their own right – London was host to 40,000 people) across…

The following article was written by Stephen Jay Gould and originally appeared in Natural History 106, June 1997. In late 1909, two great men corresponded across oceans, religions, generations, and races. Leo Tolstoy, sage of Christian nonviolence in his later years, wrote to the young Mohandas Gandhi, struggling for the rights of Indian settlers in South…

“Anti-government types” are often accused of not caring about poor people because we suggest that communities and charities can help them better than government can. This claim seems vindicated when considering the numerous ways governments both create poverty and harm the poor. The homeless are especially victimized by government laws. According to the most recent findings, on a…

As a society, it is in our best interest to create a just peace. This is something, however, that goes unfulfilled throughout the world. Many would think that inheriting this tranquil state might be a simple endeavor, if only certain barriers did not keep it from happening. Just imagining how to create peace is the…

Gli abitanti del villaggio di Kala/Balge, nello stato nord-nigeriano di Borno, si sono ribellati. Tra le incertezze dei politici e i tweet degli attivisti, gli abitanti di Kala/Balge hanno preso le armi e hanno messo in fuga il nemico con un’imboscata contro un convoglio di Boko Haram, che stava arrivando per assaltare il loro villaggio….

In the village of Kalabalge, in the northern Nigerian state of Borno, the people struck back. While politicians dithered and activists twittered, the people of Kalabalge armed themselves and took the fight to their enemies, ambushing a Boko Haram convoy en route to attack their village. At least forty-one Boko Haram militants were killed and ten…

In Nigeria, il gruppo islamico radicale Boko Haram ha compiuto una serie di orribili attacchi, culminati nel recente rapimento di 234 ragazze da un collegio della città di Chibok. L’intenzione, secondo le dichiarazioni, sarebbe di venderle come schiave. Il governo nigeriano chiede la loro liberazione, ma secondo notizie avrebbe fatto ben poco se non aspettare…

In Nigeria, radical Islamic group Boko Haram has carried out a series of horrific attacks, culminating in the recent abduction of 234 girls from a boarding school in the city of Chibok. The group allegedly intends to sell the girls into slavery. The Nigerian government pledges to free them, but thus far reports on the…

C4SS Media presents Trevor Hultner‘s “Missing Comma: Concerning ‘Horizontal Loyalty’” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. I think, for a long time, we’ve been trying to look for new ways to talk about concepts like mutual aid and solidarity; horizontal loyalty, at least as Krulwich describes it (and as Friedman uses it), serves exactly this…

Last week’s blog excerpted a piece from Ann Friedman over at the Columbia Journalism Review that mentioned the term, “horizontal loyalty.” Coined by Radiolab host and longtime public radio producer Robert Krulwich during a commencement speech he gave to UC Berkeley grads in 2011, Friedman used the term as a way to challenge perceptions on…

Sono quasi dieci anni che in Messico si combatte una guerra. La miscela composta da leggi antidroga e diffusione della droga in America ha promosso la nascita di cartelli fuorilegge che, come le bande dell’era proibizionista, usano la violenza per imporre il loro controllo sul traffico di droga. Nel 2006 la situazione fu esacerbata dalla…