Resources for Systemic Analysis
By Niall Twohig
Foundations
Foundational texts that informed the curriculum and method of analysis
History
Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: The Making of Multicultural America.
Ronald Takaki. “Epistemology and Epiphany”
Howard Zinn. A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History.
Theory
Michael Omi and Howard Winant. “Racial Formation”
Judith Lorber. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. “Mapping the Margins”
Siobhan B. Somerville. “Queer”
John D’Emilio. Intimate Matters.
David Harvey. “Freedom’s Just Another Word” from A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
John Schaar. “The Case for Patriotism”
Silvia Federici. Caliban and the Witch.
Raymond Williams. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.
Herbert Marcuse. One-Dimensional Man / Counter-Revolution and Revolt / An Essay on Liberation.
Angela Davis. Women, Race and Class.
E.P Thompson. The Poverty of Theory.
Michel Foucault. The Order of Things / Discipline and Punish
Edward Said. Orientalism.
Jean Paul Sartre. Race and Colonialism.
Simon de Beauvoir. The Second Sex.
Albert Memmi. Racism / The Colonizer and the Colonized.
Henri Lefebvre. The Critique of Everyday Life.
Classics
Frederick Douglass. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Sojourner Truth. “On Her Religious Instruction” and “Ain’t I a Woman”
John Steinbeck. “Maybe the Things Not Man at All” and “The Node of Revolution” from The Grapes of Wrath
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” / “The World House” / “Beyond Vietnam”/ “The Other America” (written) (audio)
James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time / “Letter from a Region in My Mind”
Cesar Chavez and LeRoy Chatfield. “Letter from Delano”
BSC and MAYA. Lumumba Zapata College: Demands for a Third College.
Students for a Democratic Society. “Port Huron Statement” (excerpt)
Redstockings Collective. “Redstockings Manifesto” / “No More Miss America”
Betty Friedan. “The Problem that Has No Name”
Angela Davis. “The Approaching Obsolescence of House-Work”
Anna Nieto Gomez. “La Feminista”
Gay Liberation Front. “Manifesto”
Thich Nhat Hanh. “In Search of the Enemy of Man, Addressed to Martin Luther King”
Historical Resources
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Institute and Education Center
Farmworker Movement Documentation Project
Organizing Tools
Childhood and Young Adult Education
Children
Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade. We Are Water Protectors.
Kathleen Krul and Yuji Morales. Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez.
Patrice Karst and Joanne Lew-Vriethoff. The Invisible Web.
Zoë Tucker and Zoe Persico. Greta and the Giants.
Sarah and Ian Hoffman. Jacob’s New Dress.
Young Adult
Ronald Takaki and Rebecca Stefoff. A Different Mirror for Young People.
Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff. A Young People’s History of the United States.
Bruce Watson and Rebecca Stefoff. Freedom Summer for Young People
Charles Mann and Rebecca Stefoff. 1493 For Young People.
Dara McNulty. Diary of a Young Naturalist.
Media
The sites in the Systemic Analysis section will help you narrow your search for outside sources. For example, if you type in "Homelessness" and "Wealth Inequality" into Google, you will get a million hits organized according to Google’s algorithm. That’s too much to sort through. But if you type in "Homelessness Wealth Inequality the Atlantic" you will get a more refined search from a source that often examines the systemic layers. It can be illuminating to position these views next to the views offered by mainstream media.
Mainstream media to apply critical lenses to:
Left. MSNBC / CNN
Right. Fox News / Breitbart
Public media with a liberal focus:
Systemic analysis:
Social Systems
The following is a sampling of different resources organized according to various social systems that shape our experience of everyday life. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list. Rather it can be used as a starting place for your research. I hope it will lead you down rabbit holes where you will encounter new thinkers, writers, and activists who reveal new and useful angles on your social world.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
Books
Rutger Bregman. Humankind.
Stephen Jay Gould. The Mismeasure of a Man.
David Graeber and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything.
James Suzman. Work: A Deep History from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots.
Podcasts
Deconstructed. “Can We Built a Politics of Hope?”
Graeber and Wengrow. “The Myth of the Stupid Savage.”
ECONOMIC & LABOR
Books
David Harvey. A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
David Graeber. Bullshit Jobs / Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
The Debt Collective. Can’t Pay Won’t Pay.
Strike Debt. The Debt Resistors’ Operation Manual.
Noam Chomsky. Requiem for the American Dream.
Matt Stoller. Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly and Democracy.
Anand Giridharadas. Winners Take All.
Maurizio Lazzarato. The Making of the Indebted Man.
David Shipler. The Working Poor: Invisible in America.
Matthew Desmond. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
Frances Ryan. Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People.
Arlie Russell Hochschild. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling
Barbara Ehrenreich. Nickel and Dimed in America.
Emily Guendelsberger. On the Clock.
Jessica Bruder. Nomadland.
Articles
Owen Jones. “Condemn Communists’ Cruelties, But Capitalism Has Its Own Terrible Record”
Wendell Berry. “Faustian Economics”
Ta-Nehesi Coates. “The Case for Reparations”
David Graeber. “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” / “I Had to Guard an Empty Room” / “Against Economics”
Lydia Kiesling. “The Role of Women in the Bulls-t Work Force”
Beth Ashley. “Do I Have Imposter Syndrome Or Am I Just A Working Class Woman?”
Nathalie Olah. “Imposter Syndrome is a Pseudo-Medical Name for a Class Problem”
Matthew Rozsa. “The Upper Class Has Trouble Reading Other People's Emotional States, Study Says”
Michael Price. “The Lower Your Social Class, the ‘Wiser' You Are, Suggests New Study”
Astra Taylor. “Make America’s Crushing Debt Disappear”
Allison Schrager. “In the Age of Amazon, It’s Time to Forget What We Know About Monopolies”
Richard Wolff. “How Capitalism and Racism Support Each Other”
Paul Krugman. “The Austerity Delusion” / “The Legacy of Destructive Austerity”
Courtland Milloy. “How American Oligarchs Created the Concept of Race to Divide and Conquer the Poor”
Thom Hartmann. “Will America’s Billionaires Start a Second Civil War?”
Bernie Sanders. “It’s Time to Get Billionaires Off of Welfare”
Joel Kotkin. “The New Masters of the Universe”
Thomas Schulz. “How Silicon Valley Shapes Our Future”
Sam Frank. “Come With Us If You Want to Live”
Tom Slee. “The Sharing Economy’s Dirty Laundry”
Sarah Jaffe and C.M. Lewis. “Nurses Are Striking Across the Country Over Patient Safety”
Michael Sainato. “We Went From Heroes to Zeroes: US Nurses Strike Over Work Conditions”
Kari Paul. “She Was a Farm Worker. Her Grandson is a Lyft driver. A fight for Workers' Rights Unites Them”
Emily Guendelsberger. “I Worked at an Amazon Fulfillment Center; They Treat Workers Like Robots”
Abby Vesoulis. “Pandemic Schemes: How Multilevel Marketing Schemes Are Using the Coronavirus to Increase Their Business”
Luke Savage. “Multilevel Marketing Scams Expose Capitalism’s Foundational Lie”
Kat Landsorf. “The Game Is Rigged': How Fury Over The Great Recession Fueled The Reddit Trade” / “How The Financial Crisis Of 2008 Appeared In The GameStop Trading Frenzy”
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. “Money For Nothing”
Data
Inequality.org. “Global Inequality”/ “Billionaire Wealth, U.S. Job Losses, and Pandemic Profiteers”
Oxfam. “Time to Care: Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis”/ “5 Shocking Facts About Extreme Global Inequality and How to Even It Up”/ “World’s Billionaires Own More Wealth Than 4.6 Billion People”
Pew Research Center. “Racial, Gender Wage Gap Persists in U.S. Despite Some Progress”
Economic Policy Institute. “The New Gilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area, and County”
Manifesto
New York General Assembly. “The Declaration of the Occupation of New York”
The Care Collective. The Care Manifesto
Podcasts
Open Source. “Under Surveillance: Capitalism in the Digital Age” / “Monopoly vs. Democracy” / “Five Stones for Goliath” / “Moral Economics”
Intercepted. The Case for Economic Disobedience
Radiolab. Brown Box
The Dig. “On The Clock With Emily Guendelsberger”
NPR. “Hey Hun, Want to Talk About MLMs”
Videos
“Wealth Inequality in America”
“Neoliberalism as a Water Balloon”
Wendy Brown “When Firms Becomes Persons and Persons Become Firms”
On Contact. “The History of Debt Forgiveness” / “David Harvey on Neoliberalism” (Part 1) (Part 2) / “Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition”
David Graeber. “From Managerial Feudalism to the Revolt of the Caring Classes”
The Intercept. “You Are Not a Loan”
Films
Requiem for the American Dream
Roger & Me
EDUCATION
Books
Henry Giroux. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education.
Howard Zinn. On Democratic Education.
Christopher Newfield. Unmaking the Public University.
Wayne Au. Unequal By Design.
Sheila Slaughter. Academic Capitalism.
W. Richard Scott and Michael W. Kirst. Higher Education and Silicon Valley.
Stanley Aronowitz. The Knowledge Factory.
Craig Steven Wilder. Ebony and Ivy.
Megan Holland. Divergent Paths to Education: Race, Class, Inequality in High schools.
Eric Blanc. Red State Revolt.
Articles
Sonali Kohli and Quartz. “Modern-Day Segregation in Public Schools”
Keith Meatto. “Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching About School Segregation and Educational Inequality”
Laura Meckler. “Report Finds $23 Racial Funding Gap for Schools”
Anna North. “How School Funding Can Help Repair the Legacy of Segregation”
Alana Semuels. “Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School”
Claude M. Steele. “Race and Schooling of Black Americans”
Vivian Ho. “U.S. Homeless Student Population Reaches 1.5 Million”
Jorge Mariscal. “Post-Racial Higher Education in the Golden State”
Mike Stivers. “The Socialist Case for School Integration”
Lillian Cicerchia. “Diversity and Inclusion Within What and For Whom?”
Henry Giroux. “Pedagogical Terrorism and Hope in the Age of Fascist Politics”
Simon Torracinta. “Extinction Event: Given What is to Come, Schools of Every Kind are at Risk”
Steven C. Ward. “Welcome to Shark Tank U”
Eric Levitz. “Capitalism vs. Education”
Beth Ashley. “Do I Have Imposter Syndrome Or Am I Just A Working Class Woman?”
Nathalie Olah. “Imposter Syndrome is a Pseudo-Medical Name for a Class Problem”
Terry Eagleton. “The Death of Universities”
Adam Harris. “The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century”
Barbara Fister. “Plagiarism Policing and Profit”
Wayne Au. “The Socialist Case Against the SAT”
Richard Reeves. “Race Gaps in SAT Scores Highlight Inequality and Hinder Upward Mobility”
Alec Ash. “Is China’s Gaokao The World’s Toughest School Exam?”
Scott Renton. “Chinese Students Are Throwing Textbooks Off Roofs to Protest Their Insanely Difficult Final Exam”
Daniel Rivero. “The Debt Trap: How the Student Loan Industry Betrays Young Americans”
Lauren Nickell. “Fighting for Special Education” / “Meeting the Needs of Students With Disabilities”
Molly Worthen. “The Anti-College is on the Rise”
Christopher Newfield. “Universities after Neoliberalism”
Rethinking Schools. “The Green New Deal and Our Schools”
Audrey Murrell. “Big Data And The Problem Of Bias In Higher Education”
Stan Karp and Adam Sanchez. “The 2018 Wave of Teacher Strikes”
Diane Mendoza Nevárez. “UC Churns Through a Quarter of Its Lecturers a Year. Why I Was Forced to Move On"
Website
Christopher Newfield. Remaking the University
The Guardian. Student Debt Coverage.
Data
Felicia Mello. “The Soul-Crushing Cost of College in California, Explained”
Podcasts
A Seattle High School Student's Loud Call For Racial Equity
Radiolab. “The Miseducation of Larry P”
Videos
Wendy Brown. “Save the University Townhall” / “On Education” / “The End of the Corporate University”
Henry Giroux. “All Education is a Struggle Over What Kind of Future You Want for Young People”
The Intercept. “You are Not a Loan”
Vox. “All Student Debt in the US Visualized”
Last Week Tonight. “Student Debt”
Films
Ivory Tower
ENVIRONMENTAL
Books
Andreas Malm. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming.
Naomi Klein. This Changes Everything / On Fire: The Burning Case for the New Deal
Ann Pettifor. The Case for the Green New Deal.
Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin. Climate Crisis and The Global Green New Deal.
Bill McKibben. Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
Naomi Oreskes. Merchants of Doubt.
Nick Estes. Our History is the Future.
Jason Moore. Capitalism in the Web of Life.
George Monbiot. How Did We Get Into This Mess?
Eric Dean Wilson. After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort
Romain Felli. The Great Adaptation.
Ashley Dawson. Extreme Cities.
Elizabeth Rush. Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore.
Andres Malm. White Skin, Black Fuel.
Jedidiah Purdy. This Land is Our Land.
Amitav Ghosh. The Great Derangement / The Nutmeg’s Curse.
Davi Kopenawa. The Falling Sky.
Christopher D. Stone. Should Trees Have Standing: Law, Morality, and the Environment.
Suzanne Simard. Finding the Mother Tree.
Manifesto
UK Student Climate Network. “A Manifesto for Tackling the Climate Change Crisis”
“Climate Crisis and a Betrayed Generation”
Articles
Truthout. “How Then Shall We Live?” (series)
Vice. “Tipping Point” (series)
George Monbiot. Various Guardian articles
Bill McKibben. “Recalculating the Climate Math” / “Declare War on Climate Change”
Christ Saltmarsh. “Capitalism is What’s Burning the Planet”
Kate Aronoff. “Capitalism Can’t Fix the Climate Crisis”
Jedidiah Britton-Purdy. “Living Together Shouldn’t Put Us at War With One Another or With the Earth”
Umair Irfan. “Pay Attention to the Growing Wave of Climate Change Lawsuits”
Jacob Pinter. “Young Activists Can Sue Government Over Climate Change, Supreme Court Says”
Al Gore. “Climate of Denial”
Beth Baker. “Politicizing Science: What is the Role of Biologists in a Hyperpartisan World”
Martin Luckacs. “Neoliberalism Has Conned Us Into Fighting Climate Change as Individuals”
Tracy Fernandez Rysavy and André Floyd. “People of Color Are on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis”
Peter Beech. “What is Environmental Racism and How Can We Fight It?”
Labor Network for Sustainability. “Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Climate Change”
Truthout. “Climate Disruption Dispatches”
Gina Ferrazi. “From California to El Salvador, Climate-Driven Displacement is on the Rise”
Mark Sweney. “Streaming’s Dirty Secret: How Viewing Netflix Top 10 Creates Vast Quantity of CO2”
Matt Smith. “Meat is Murder - on the Climate, Anyway”
Jenny Lee. “UC Announces Divestment from Fossil Fuels”
Podcasts
Open Source. “Is the Green New Deal for Real?”
Radiolab. “How Do You Put a Price Tag on Nature?”
No Ordinary Lawsuit (Juliana v. United States)
“Changing Tactics in the Face of Climate Emergency”
On Being. “Forests are Wired for Wisdom”
Videos
On Contact, featuring Vandana Shiva. “The Fight for Life vs. Monsanto/Bayer AG”
Intercepted. “Message from the Future (Part 1) (Part 2)
Greta Thunberg. “Speech at U.N. Climate Summit”
Verso, featuring George Monbiot. “Neoliberalism, Climate Change, Migration”
Wendell Berry in Conversation with Bill Moyers. “Resettling America”
Films
FOOD
Books
Vandana Shiva. Who Really Feeds the World? / Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit / Earth Democracy
Wendell Berry. The Unsettling of America.
Robert Albritton. Let Them Eat Junk.
Michael Pollan. In Defense of Food / How to Change Your Mind
Keegan Kuhn. Cowspiracy.
Eric Schlosser. Fast Food Nation.
Articles
Markham Heid. “Experts Say Lobbying Skewed the U.S. Dietary Guidelines”
James Hamblin. “How Agriculture Controls Nutrition Guidelines”
Harriet Brown. “How Obesity Became a Disease (How Weight Loss Became an Industry)”
Nina Lakhani, Aliya Uteuova and Alvin Chang. “Revealed: The True Extent of America’s Food Monopolies”
Michael Pollan. “Unhappy Meals”
Marion Nestle. “How Neoliberalism Ruins Traditional Diets and Health”
Georgina Gustin. “Farm Policy in Age of Climate Change Creating Another Dust Bowl Critics Say”
Joe Pinsker. “Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Food”
Timothy Egan. “Poisons Are Us”
Nicholas Confessore. “How School Lunches Became the Latest Political Battleground”
Alexander Kelly. “Blame Agribusiness Not Michelle Obama”
Eric Schlosser. “Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Meat”
Christy Brissette. “Is Meat Manly? How Society Pressures Us to Make Gendered Food Choices”
Ian MacKenzie with Lierre Kieth. “Why Vegetarianism Will Not Save the World”
“New Report: Nearly 25% of College Students Are Hungry”
Doug Henwood. “The Uber Welfare State”
New Report: Nearly 25% of College Students Are Hungry
MacKenzie, Ian with Lierre Keith. “Why Vegetarianism Will Not Save the World.”
Brenda Ann Kenneally. “America at Hunger’s Edge (photo essay)”
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. “How Hunger Persists in a Rich Country Like America”
Data
World Data Lab. World Hunger Clock
Podcasts
The Intercept. “The Jungle and the Pandemic”
The Uncertain Hour. “You’re an Essential Worker. Do You Get Essential Protections” / “To Catch a Chicken”
Videos
On Contact, featuring Vandana Shiva. “The Fight for Life vs. Monsanto/Bayer AG”
Wendell Berry in Conversation with Bill Moyers. “Resettling America”
Films
Food, Inc.
King Corn
HOUSING & GEOGRAPHIC
Books
Richard Rothstein. The Color of Law.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Race for Profit.
Mike Davis. City of Quartz.
Ira Katznelson. When Affirmative Action Was White.
Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State.
David Harvey. Spaces of Global Capitalism.
Articles
Michelle Chan. “Redlined by Algorithm”
Rick Rojas. “Suburbanites in Louisiana Vote to Create a New City of Their Own”
Robbie Nelson. “Capitalism Can’t Give Us Affordable Housing”
Charisse Jones. “Homeless in College: Students Sleep in Cars, On Couches When They Have Nowhere Else to Go”
Urban Displacement Project. “What are Gentrification and Displacement?”
Julia Carrie Wong. “We All Suffer: Why San Francisco Techies Hate The City They Transformed”
Virgie Hoban. “Open Access Study Reveals Harmful Effects of Redlining on Babies Born Three Generations Later”
Oscar Perry Abello. “How Community Development Lenders Work Around the Legacy of Redlining”
Speeches
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Other America” (written) (audio)
Podcasts
Terry Gross. “A ‘Forgotten History’ of How the U.S. Government Segregated America”
Videos
How Homeless College Students Get by at California's Humboldt State
Code Switch. “Housing Segregation and Redlining in America”
Now This. “How Homeless College Students Get by at California’s Humboldt State”
Tools
Films
Unnatural Causes (Episode 3 “Place Matters”)
IMMIGRATION
Books
Valeria Luiselli. Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions.
David Bacon. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
Justin Chacon. The Border Crossed Us.
Justin Chacon and Mike Davis. No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Daniel Denver. All-American Nativism.
Maya Goodfellow. Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Become Scapegoats.
Wilfried Zoungrana. No Country for Migrants.
Arun Kundnani. The Muslims are Coming!
Todd Miller. Empire of Borders
Reece Jones. Violent Borders.
Eileen Traux. We Built The Wall.
Articles
Jim Corbett. “Sanctuary, Basic Rights, and Humanity's Fault Lines: A Personal Essay”
Andrea Pitzer. “Some Suburb of Hell: America’s New Concentration Camp System”
Eric Schlosser. “Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Meat”
NACLA. “Maquiladoras and the Exploitation of Migrants on the Border”
Hannah Cross. “How Exploitation of Migrants Sustains Capitalism’s Power Over All Workers”
Maya Goodfellow. “Borders are the Problem Not the People Crossing Them”
Alexander Stevens and William Lopez. “Governments and Workers Have Deemed Immigrant Workers Expendable During the Pandemic”
Jonathan Ng. “Haiti’s Humanitarian Crisis Reveals the Human Costs of US Interventionism”
The Intercept. The War on Immigrants (various articles)
Photos
The Guardian. “US family separation crisis – in pictures”
Alan Taylor and John Moore. “On the Border with Photographer John Moore”
Podcasts
Intercepted. “The Post-9/11 Immigration Megabureaucracy”
NPR. “What it's Like to Migrate from Central America as a 15-Year-Old Girl”
The Daily. “What Migrants are Fleeing”
KJZZ. “Tracing the Migrant Journey”
Videos
Torn Apart: Separated at the Border
Maquilapolis: City of Factories
JUSTICE, LEGAL, & PRISON
Books
Angela Davis. Are Prisons Obsolete?
Michelle Alexander. The New Jim Crow.
Ruth Gilmore. Golden Gulag.
Elizabeth Hinton. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration.
Chris Hedges. Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Naomi Murakawa. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.
Gary Webb. Dark Alliance.
David Farber. Crack.
Roberto Mangabiera Unger. The Critical Legal Studies Movement: Another Time, a Greater Task
Duncan Kennedy. Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System.
Christopher D. Stone. Should Trees Have Standing: Law, Morality, and the Environment.
Articles
Angela Davis. “Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex”
John Clegg and Adaner Usmani. “The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration”
Adaner Usmani. “Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration is Wrong”
Radley Balko. “There’s Overwhelming Evidence That the Criminal-Justice System is Racist. Here’s the Proof”
Rachel Kushner. “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind”
Derecka Purnell. “How I Became a Prison Abolitionist”
Roger Lancaster. “How to End Mass Incarceration” / “The Carceral Problem is Getting Worse”
Natasha Lennard. “How New York’s Criminal Justice System Killed a Transgender Woman at Rikers Island”
Tina Butoiu. “UC System Divests from Prison Industry”
James Forman Jr. “A Prison Sentence Ends. But the Stigma Doesn’t”
Etienne Benson. “Rehabilitate or Punish?”
William R. Kelly. “Why Punishment Doesn’t Reduce Crime”
The Marshall Project. Various articles and resources
Jim Corbett. “Sanctuary, Basic Rights, and Humanity's Fault Lines: A Personal Essay”
Podcasts
Radio Open Source. “Prison Playwrights”
The Intercept. “Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition”
Videos
Brave New Films. “Private Prisons Sell People Like Products”
Films
The House I Live In: America's War on Drugs
Rikers: An American Jail
MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
Books
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
Shoshana Zuboff. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Jenny Odell. How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.
Bret Frischmann and Evan Selinger. Re-Engineering Humanity.
Savas Çoban. Media, Ideology, and Hegemony.
James Bridle. New Dark Age.
Adam Greenfield. Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.
Rob Larson. Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley.
Nicole Aschoff. The Smartphone Society: Technology, Power, and Resistance in the New Gilded Age.
Nicholas Carr. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
Articles
General
David Graeber. “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit”
Jill Lepore. “The Disruption Machine: What the Gospel of Innovation Gets Wrong”
George Packer. “Change the World”
Old media
Peter Bradshaw. “‘A monopolistic Blob': What the Disney/Fox Merger Means for Cinema”
H Trosle and Christopher Mitchell. “Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom”
Bernie Sanders. “How Corporate Media Threatens Our Democracy”
Alexandra Chan. “Paywalls Contribute to the Gatekeeping of Information”
Jessica Defino. “How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Standards”
New media
Oliver Burkeman. “The Attention Economy is in Hyperdrive’: How Tech Shaped the 2010s”
Luke Savage. “The 21st-Century Road to Serfdom Runs Through Silicon Valley”
James Muldoon. “App-Based Corporations Can’t Just Ignore Labor Law”
Thomas M. Hanna and Michael Brennan. “There’s No Solution to Big Tech Without Public Ownership of Tech Companies”
Ezra Klein. “Facebook is a Capitalism Problem, not a Mark Zuckerberg Problem”
Jacob Silverman. “The Facebook Scandal Isn’t About Social Media. It’s About Capitalism”
Natasha Singer. “How Google and Facebook Spawned Surveillance Capitalism”
Ryan Zickgraf. “Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Metaverse’ is a Dystopian Nightmare”
Ceclia D’Anastasio. “The Metaverse is Simply Big Tech, But Bigger”
John Naughton. “The Goal is to Automate Us: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
Tracy Hawkins. “Facebook, Neoliberalism, and the Foreclosing of Imagination”
William Davies. “Social Media as a Facet of Neoliberalism”
Trevor Haynes. “Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A Battle for Your Time”
Nicole Westman. “Facebook’s Whistleblower Report Confirms What Researchers Have Known for Years”
Sofia Ongele, Sam Schmir, and Zach Praiss. “Instagram Is Bad for Teen Mental Health — We Want to Know All the Data”
Barnaby Lewer. “To Fall in Love, Click Here”
Audrey Murrell. “Big Data And The Problem Of Bias In Higher Education”
Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner. “Machine Bias”
Mark Sweney. “Streaming’s Dirty Secret: How Viewing Netflix Top 10 Creates Vast Quantity of CO2”
Brian Van Slyke. “The Argument For Worker-Owned Tech Collectives”
Podcasts and Talks
Open Source. “Under Surveillance: Capitalism in the Digital Age”
Getting Curious. "What is Techno-Chauvinism and Are We Relying Too Much on Unconscious Biased Systems? with Meredith Broussard"
Haymarket Books. “The Fight for the Future: Organizing the Tech Industry” / “Tech Won't Save Us: Silicon Valley and the Coronavirus Crisis”
Videos
David Graeber. “On Bureaucratic Technologies and the Future as Dream Time”
Films
WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn
MEDICAL & PUBLIC HEALTH
Books
Elisabeth Rosenthal. An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business
T.R. Reid. The Healing of America.
Arthur Kleinman. The Soul of Care.
Sam Quinones. Dream Land: The Tale of America’s Opiate Crisis.
Michael Lewis. The Premonition.
Mike Davis. The Monster at Our Door / The Monster Enters.
Abdul El-Sayed and Micah Johnson. Medicare For All: A Citizens Guide.
Articles
Humphrey McQueen. “Healthcare is Not a Product, No Matter What Neoliberalism Has Taught Us”
Adam Gaffney. “The Neoliberal Turn in American Health Care” / “The Hospital Under Medicare For All’
Dikaios Sakellariou and Elena S. Rotarou. “The Effects of Neoliberal Policies on Access to Healthcare for People with Disabilities”
Matt Bruenig. “The US Health System is a Nightmare Where 50 Million Go Uninsured Every Single Year”
Wendi C. Thomas. “The US Hospitals Suing the Poor Over Bills They Can't Afford”
Astra Taylor. “It’s Time to Abolish Medical Debt”
Linda Phillips. “Institutional Racism in Healthcare”
Natalie Shure. “A Health System that Punishes the Sick”
Jonathan Michels. “Winning Medicare for All Would Have Massive Implications Beyond Health Care”
Megan Ranney. “We Must Treat Gun Violence as a Public Health Crisis”
Thomas McGath. “You Won’t Say It, So I Will: Capitalism is the Underlying Cause of Mass Shootings in the US”
Danny Katch. “What a Socialist Approach to Gun Violence Would Look Like”
Sarah DeWeerdt. “Tracing the US Opioid Crisis to Its Roots”
Lola Seaton. “The Dark Side of Our Age of Fitness”
Jason Tebbe. “Twenty-First Century Victorians”
Harriet Brown. “How Obesity Became a Disease (How Weight Loss Became an Industry)”
Mike Davis. “The Coronavirus Crisis is a Monster Fueled by Capitalism” / “In a Plague Year”
Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves. “Alone Against the Virus”
Arundhati Roy. “The Pandemic is a Portal”
Ed Pilkington. “The Virus Lays Bare America's Brutal Fault Lines – Race, Gender, Poverty and Broken Politics
Medea Benjamin. “We Should Applaud the Cuban Health System — and Learn From It”
Nicholson Baker. “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis”
Sarah Jaffe and C.M. Lewis. “Nurses Are Striking Across the Country Over Patient Safety”
Michael Sainato. “‘We Went From Heroes to Zeroes’: US Nurses Strike Over Work Conditions”
Kelsey Piper. “Why Some Labs Work on Making Viruses Deadlier — And Why They Should Stop”
Interactive
NY Times. “We Did Not Suffer Equally”
Videos
PBS. “Is There a Racial ‘Care Gap’ in Medical Treatment?”
Democracy Now! “We Need a Public Health New Deal: Neoliberal Austerity & Private Healthcare Worsened U.S. Pandemic”
Podcasts
Radio Open Source. “Viral Inequality” / “Plague Year Two” / “Lab Leak”
The Intercept. “Has the Coronavirus Made the Ultimate Case for Medicare for All”
Current Affairs. “Medical Debt Special with Astra Taylor and Elizabeth Bruenig”
Films
Bowling for Columbine
MENTAL HEALTH
Books
Eric Fromm. The Sane Society.
Byung-Chul Han. The Burnout Society / Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.
Paul Verhaeghe. What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market Based Society.
Johann Hari. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression
James Davies. Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis
Elif Shafak. How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division.
William Davies. The Happiness Industry.
Barbara Ehrenreich. Bright-Sided.
Gabriel Mendes. Under the Strain of Color.
Articles
Chris Hedges. “American Anomie”
Glen Greenwald. “The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling”
David Matthews. “Capitalism and Mental Health”
Mikkel Krause Frantzen. “A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health”
Sana Sheikh. “The War Inside Your Head”
Zola Carr. “Medicalizing Society”
Seth J. Prins. “New Research Confirms It: Exploitation Makes People Miserable Mentally”
Colette Shade. “Capitalism is Making You Lonely”
George Monbiot. “Neoliberalism is Creating Loneliness. That’s What’s Wrenching Society Apart”
Ruth Cain. “How Neoliberalism is Damaging Your Mental Health”
Meagan Day. “Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss”
Johann Hari. “Is Neoliberalism Making Our Depression and Anxiety Crisis Worse?”
Stuart Jeffries. “Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han”
Drexel University Center for Hunger-Free Communities. “Systemic Oppression and Trauma”
American Psychological Association. “Physiological & Psychological Impact of Racism and Discrimination for African-Americans” / “The Legacy of Trauma”
Jenna Wortham. “Racism’s Psychological Toll”
Rae Ellen Bichell. “Scientists Start to Tease Out the Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health”
Olga Khazan. “The Millenial Mental-Health Crisis”
William Davies. “All the Happy Workers”
Videos
Chris Hedges. “American Anomie”
Democracy Now. “Coronavirus Pandemic Prompts Global Mental Health Crisis as Millions Feel Alone, Anxious & Depressed”
System Update. “Is the US Social Fabric Unraveling?”
Podcasts
Economic Update. “Capitalism and Mental Health”
MILITARY
Books
Noam Chomsky. Acts of Aggression: Policing Rogue States.
Tom Hayden. Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement.
Daniel Immerwahr. How to Hide an Empire.
David Vine. The United States of War.
Jeremy Scahill. Dirty Wars / Blackwater.
William Hartung. Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex
Glen Greenwald. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
Tariq Ali. The Forty Year War in Afghanistan.
Various. The Cold War & The University.
David Price. Weaponizing Anthropology.
Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira. The Imperial University.
Articles
TruthOut. War and Peace Archives
Michael Zweig. “The War and the Working Class”
William Astore. “The American Cult of Bombing and Endless War” / "Military Might is Our National Religion”
Jorge Mariscal. “No Where Else to Go: Latino Youth and the Poverty Draft”
Luke Savage. “The US Has Spent $21 Trillion on Militarization Since 9/11”
David Broder. “From Swords to Ploughshares”
Anand Gopal. “The US is Waging Neoliberal Forever Wars”
Sarah Lazare. “War Is an Enormous Threat to the Rising Movement Against Climate Change”
Joe Allan. “How to Revive the Antiwar Movement”
Data
National Priorities Project. “Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go”
Videos
Mike Davis. “Why UCSD Loves Big Brother”
Democracy Now! “War Helps Fuel the Climate Crisis as U.S. Military Carbon Emissions Exceed 140+ Nations”
Podcasts
Open Source. “The End of the War” / “The Costs of War”
The Takeaway. “From Class to Classified: The Most Militarized Universities in America”
Films
NUCLEAR FAMILY
Books
Friedrich Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh. The Anti-Social Family.
Stephanie Coontz. The Social Origins of Private Life.
Silvia Federici. Revolution at Point Zero.
Sophie Lewis. Feminism Against Family / Full Surrogacy Now.
Valerie Lehr. Queer Family Values.
Articles
Angela Davis. “The Approaching Obsolescence of House-Work”
Louise Toupin. “The History of Wages for Housework”
Selma James. “I Founded the Wages for Housework Campaign in 1972 – And Women are Still Working for Free”
Sarah Jaffe. “The Factory in the Family”
David Brooks. “The Nuclear Family is a Mistake”
Ian Marcus Corbin. “The Coronavirus Might Break the Nuclear Family. That Wouldn’t Be a. Bad Thing”
Sophie Lewis. “Covid-19 Is Straining the Concept of the Family. Let’s Break It”
Joe Pinsker. “If the Nuclear Family Has Failed, What Comes Next?”
Gabrielle Smith. “Queer Couples Create TikTok Families to Help LGBTQ Youth Feel Accepted”
Rosemarie Ho. “Want to Dismantle Capitalism, Abolish the Family”
Nivedita Majumdar. “Labor and Love Under Capital”
Andray Domise. “How the Nuclear Family Structure Was Forced Upon Present-day Black Families”
Sherronda J. Brown. “Black Folks Don’t Need a Nuclear Family to be Legitimate”
Podcasts
Intercepted. “Escape from the Nuclear Family: Covid-19 Should Provide a Rethink of How We Live”
Verso with Sophie Lewis. “Feminism Against Family”
Fresh Air. “Why Childcare is the Most Broken Business in the U.S.”
POLICING
Books
Alex Vitale. The End of Policing.
Geo Maher. A World Without Police.
Derecka Purnell. Becoming Abolitionists.
Articles
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “Defund the Police and Refund the Communities”
Jill Lepore. “The Invention of the Police”
Alex Vitale. “Policing Is Fundamentally a Tool of Social Control to Facilitate Our Exploitation”
Sam Mitrani. “The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People, Not ‘Serve and Protect’”
Kirsten Weir. “Policing in Black and White”
National Center for Transgender Equality. “Failing to Serve and Protect: Police Department Policies Towards Transgender People”
Niall Twohig. “Justice, Then Peace”
Films
Data
Washington Post Police Shooting Database
POLITICAL
Books
David Harvey. A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
Astra Taylor. Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.
Robert Reich. The Common Good.
Articles
Matt Karp. “The Politics of a Second Gilded Age”
Thomas Hartmann. “Will America’s Billionaires Start a Second Civil War?”
BBC News. “US is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy”
Bruce Levine. “The Myth of U.S. Democracy and the Reality of U.S. Corporatocracy”
Sean Illing. “How Fascism Works”
Reijer Hendrikse. “Neoliberalism is Over—Welcome to the Era of Neo-illiberalism”
Lucia Graves and National Journal. “Why the Personal Became Political”
Ari Berman. Various articles on Voting Rights and Voter Suppression / “There’s Less Than Two Years to Save Democracy”
Ramon Blecua. “The Rise of Digital Feudalism”
Jodi Dean. “Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?”
Podcasts
Philosophize This. “Are You Left or Right?”
On The Media. “Voter Suppression By Another Name”
Open Source. “Welcome to Our Neoliberal World”
Deconstructed. “The Noam Chomsky Interview”
Astra Taylor and David Graeber. “Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss it When It’s Gone”
People’s Action. To See Each Other
Videos
“Neoliberalism as a Water Balloon”
Wendy Brown. “How Neoliberalism Threatens Democracy”
The Real News. “Dr. Cornel West on the Global Shift Right”
On Contact. “The Importance of Civic Life” / “Rights and Regulation with Citizen Activist Ralph Nader”
Thom Hartmann. “The Hidden History of the Oligarchy”
Films
RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUAL
Books
Dorothy Day. The Long Loneliness.
Martin Luther King. Stride Toward Freedom / Strength to Love / Where do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? / The Radical King
Thich Nhat Hanh. Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change / Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet /
Thomas Merton. Passion for Peace.
Cornel West. Black Prophetic Fire.
LeRoy Chatfield. To Serve the People.
Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams. Radical Dharma.
Larry Ward. America’s Racial Karma.
Philip Goldberg. American Veda.
Dan McKanan. Prophetic Encounters.
Jeff Sharlet. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Articles
Harvey Cox. “The Market as God”
Meagan Day. “A Grift from God”
William Astore. "Military Might is Our National Religion”
Derek Thompson. “How America Lost Its Religion” / “The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable”
Ronald Purser. “The Mindfulness Conspiracy”
Peter Doran. “McMindfulness: Buddhism as Sold to You by Neoliberals”
Eva Wisemen. “The Dark Side of Wellness: the Overlap Between Spiritual Thinking and Far-Right Conspiracies”
Kristin Kobes Du Mez. “Today’s Evangelicalism Was Forged in the Fight Against Communism and Feminism”
Shireen Shakouri. “The 'Pro-Life’ Movement is Built on Christian Supremacy, and its Rhetoric is Increasingly Dangerous”
Bill Berkowitz. “The Religious Right’s Hijacking of Religious Freedom”
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti. “The Unholy Alliance of the Religious Right and Trumpism is Deeply Anti-Christian” / “Can Christian Democracy Save Us?”
Peter Wehner. “The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity”
Emma Green. “Why Some Christians Love the Meanest Parts of Trump”
Ross Barkan. “Christian Socialism Is as Relevant as Ever”
Chris Hedges. “Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition”
Rev. William Barber. “These Times Require a New Language and a New Fusion Coalition”
Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams. “Your Liberation is on the Line”
Orgs/Newsletters
Websites
Podcasts
On Being (Various thinkers from different spiritual fields or secular fields infused with spirituality)
NPR “Provoked by Trump, The Religious Left is Finding Its Voice”
The Intercept. “Coronavirus and the Radical Religious Right’s Bumbling Messiah”
STEM
Books
Rose, Hillary. Genes, Cells, and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology
Noble, Safiya. Algorithms of Oppression.
Meredith Broussard. Artificial Unintelligence.
Virginia Eubanks. Automating Inequality.
Angela Saini. Superior: The Return of Race Science.
O’Neil, Kathy. Weapons of Math Destruction.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. The Disordered Cosmos.
Hakeem Oluseyi. A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars.
Podcasts
Open Source. “Tech Master Disaster” (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) / “The CRISPR Challenge”
NY Times. “Humanity’s Awesome, Terrifying Takeover of Evolution”
Radiolab. “G: Unnatural Selection”
Articles
Scientific American Editors. “STEM Education Is Vital--but Not at the Expense of the Humanities”
Valerie Strauss. “Why We Still Need to Study the Humanities in a STEM World”
Daniel Morales-Doyle, Shirin Vossoughi, Sepehr Vakil, and Megan Bang. “In an Era of Pandemic and Protest, STEM Education Can’t Pretend to Be Apolitical”
Alan Sears and Penney Clark. “Stop Telling Students to Study STEM Instead of Humanities for the Post-Coronavirus World”
JS Tan. “The Tech Education Con”
Caitlyn Zaloom. “STEM is Overrated”
Marilyn la Jeunesse. “National STEM Day Is a Reminder of the Systemic Barriers in STEM Fields”
Nathalia Gjersoe. “Bridging the Gender Gap: Why Do so Few Girls Study STEM Subjects?”
Lincoln Hill. “Women Say Discrimination Is a Part of Why So Few Stay in STEM Careers”
Daniel Morales and Eric "Rico” Guthstein. “Racial Capitalism and STEM education in Chicago Public Schools”
Stephanie Buga. “The Lack of Black Representation in STEM Fields”
Michael Brooks. “Let's Get to the Bottom of Science's Class Divide”
Freeman A. Hrabowski III and Peter H. Henderson. “How to Actually Promote Diversity in STEM”
Steve Haruch. “A Graduate Program Works To Diversify The Science World”
Wade Henderson and National Journal. “STEM Education is a Civil-Rights Issue”
Ramin Skibba. “The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism”
Ed Burmila. “Scientific Racism Isn’t Back — It Never Went Away”
Pankaj Mehta. “Corporate Science and Designer Babies”
Jim Kozubek. “CRISPR and the Capitalists”
Brian Van Slyke. “The Argument For Worker-Owned Tech Collectives”
Keza MacDonald. “Is the Video Games Industry Finally Reckoning with Sexism?”
Emily Sullivan and Laurel Wamsley. “Google Employees Walk Out To Protest Company's Treatment Of Women”
Mitra Kashani. “Why Young People in STEM Should Mobilize for a Green New Deal”
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan. “The Green New Deal Could Change the Way America”
Jathan Sadowski. “Pushing People to Code Will Widen the Gap Between Rich and Poor”