Progressive Periodicals

We`ve already touched on this a little bit, but I think it deserves a topic of it`s own. What do we think are the best progressive periodicals ?

As I`ve already mentioned a couple under other headings, I`ll try not to repeat myself too much, but here are a couple of sites I`ve found quite useful - www.commondreams.org and www.greenleft.org.au.

What can anyone else suggest ?

Orion is wonderful -- excellent writing, compelling stories and artwork, lots to think about. Love it.

In the States, I'd say The Nation and the aptly-named The Progressive. I also like The Texas Observer.

Sojournors is good one that combines Christianity and religion with progressive values.

I am so happy here. :) I am a progressive magazine junky. The Progressive is my favorite. I also read MotherJones and a few others that people mentioned. I really like The Sun that comes out of North Carolina because it is progressive politically and also literary. It also has beautiful black and white photography. Online I usually go to alternet.org.

Has anyone heard of the National Conference for Media Reform? I think the media is so important in this political climate. http://freepress.net/conference/

Some friends have hyped MotherJones to me for awhile, but it is one of those magazines that just is *never* in at the local places, so I'll just have to subscribe.

I like Adbusters because of its even mix of content and presentation. They get a lot of shit for looking like a glossy-rag mag, but part of their endurance is to not be so boring and staid that people grow weary of it (my 2 cents).

I saw an article yesterday in NYTimes about the rollout of 'Good' - an environmentally-friendly mag w/some serious financing behind it. I'm interested to see what it looks like. I'm looking for some recommendations as well(?)

abductee

You asked for some recommendations - one that I had assumed was obsolete is Monthly Review. By chance, I find that they still exist as a periodical and a book publisher. Handily, they post some back articles on the internet for the benefit of those who can`t afford to subscribe. The`re pretty good articles from what I can see.

A few more for the list.

Z Magazine - independent left politics and activism on a low budget by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. Features articles by the like of Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Michael Parenti, Michael Bronski, etc.

Dollars&Sense - Economics for Lefties, very useful for making sense of the state of things. These are the folks behind the "Real World" series: Real World Micro, Real World Banking, Real World Globalization, Real World Macro.

In These Times - Edited by Joel Bleifuss, this one is a bit more mainstream than the others (too hopeful about the Democrats), but still good stuff. Contributers include: David Moberg, David Sirota, Susan J. Douglas.

And for those of you who still see Labor as an important part of the Left I offer:

Labor Notes(website) - The best little magazine for democratic (the small D kind) union activists. Related books include Democracy is Power, A troublemaker's handbook and Kim Moody's histories, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism and Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy

Labor: Studies in the Working Class History of the Americas(website) - An academic journal, it split from the venerable Labor History when the latter had its publishing rights sold. The best of the U.S. labor historians (Leon Fink, Dorothy Sue Cobble and Nelson Lichtenstein to name just a few) went to this new journal.

While not a journal, per se, I recommend 'Adbusters', published bi-monthly (that's 6 a year, nact).

It gets some criticism for it's sleek look and slick (i.e. oily) pages, but it has the best graphic design layout of any of the lefty mags out there. Also, I think the "no logo" ideal is a good one to fight for, unless that ideal is of sound mind and body. :-)

Apologies if I seem to be dominating proceedings a bit more than I should - a couple pf things to fiollow up on.

I was just looking up something else, when I came accross Ashville Global Report - don`t know anything about it, but it seems excellent. would urge the rest of you to check it out.

Linked to that, I also found Alternative Gateway Media. Seems pretty good, might be worth a look.

abductee

I found something about adbusters on AGM - it sounds great ! I particularly liked their campaign for a Buy Nothing Day (we have a few of those at our house, but not for political reasons !) and Turn-Off TV Week.

Didn`t quite follow your comments about `No Logo` - I know there`s a book of that name.

I'll second the mention of Dollars & Sense; as an economist myself I've found it a good source many times over the years.

Both Bitch Magazine (http://www.bitchmagazine.com/ ) and Stay Free! (http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/ ) are progressive in tone. The latter's site says it concerns "media criticism, consumer culture, and Brooklyn curiosities." It's produced in Brooklyn, and I think it's available free there, but I've found it well worth the modest subscription price, and I'm nowhere near Brooklyn. And its blog is a hoot.

I vote for The Nation.

It`s quite a while since I posted this thread, but still an interesting topic - anyone got any new suggestions ?

Anyone changed their mind about their choices ?

While I lived in the US I enjoyed The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times and Mother Jones, subscribing to them all at one time or another. I'd say The Nation was my favourite.

I have really struggled to find very many similar progressive news sources in the UK. New Left Review and Race & Class are excellent journals but less news-based - more composed of long, scholarly articles. Closest I've found is New Internationalist, which has a really good format - most of each issue is devoted to an in-depth look at a particular issue, e.g. the situation in Burma, or the financial crisis, or permaculture. Then the rest is more up-to-the-minute newsy, with, as the title suggests, a very international outlook.

So I'd definitely recommend these three, but would be interested in any other recommendations from the UK.

I used to subscribe to New Internationalist and still have some much-treasured copies of Race and Class.

The only thing that might meet your requirements is the daily Morning Star, which is closely linked to the Comnmunist Party of Britain but reflects a range of views. John Pilger and the Green Party`s Derek Wall are regular contributors, as are some Labour Party people.

I know some people have reservations about the CPB involvement, but a long as it reflects a range of views, I quite like it in small doses.

Where I live, it`s a paper you can find in most newsagents, though it may be less readily available elsewhere.

P.S. (Added 10/1/09)

Since posting this, I`ve found there are a few different periodicals about that people might be interested in. Most are UK-based I think, though not all -

The Democrat - via www.caef.org.uk

www.theclarion.org.uk

www.redpepper.org.uk

www.spectrezine.org

www.Labourstart.org (international trade unions - doesn`t seem to be Labour Party connected)

http://inthesetimes.com

www.labourleftbriefing.org.uk

(soon to become www.labourbriefing.org.uk)

Hope my links work OK - if not I`ll come back at some later date and fix them.

#17, #18 I gather more of the MS is being made availabnle on their website free of charge so you can always check that out if you`re interested.

At our house we always buy Saturday`s copy as my wife likes the recipes and I like the music pages !

For a more American slant, here are a couple of websites I came across recently -

www.democracynow.org

( I didn`t have much time to look at this, but it seems very good)

www.cc.ds.org

(I liked this a lot, plus it has links to The Nation, AlterNet and others).

Hope they`re interesting for people.

Happy New Year,

Nick

Great additions, Nick! Democracy Now is very good indeed - I used to listen to it every morning on WBAI when I lived in New York. If we're talking radio, WBAI itself is a great source of progressive news too - available to listen online at www.wbai.org. It always seems to be embroiled in some factional struggle or other, and the quality of the shows is variable, but sometimes it is fantastic. Free Speech Radio News, Wake-up Call, Off the Hook, Armand DiMele... Ah, I miss New York sometimes. Listening online is not the same somehow.

By the way, www.cc.ds.org doesn't work - did you mean www.cc-ds.org?

Australia dosen't seem to have many, although we do get New Internationalist, which is good, and our home-grown The Monthly magazine and crikey.com.au, which are both excellent - I would be interested to hear suggestions from other Aussies, if you have any!

#21

You`re in luck as, although I`m not Australian and have never so much as visited Australia, I am very wise and know a great deal about a great many things !

Some useful Australian periodicals -

www.greenleft.org.au

www.links.org.au

I also have details of a bookshop -

www.resistancebooks.com

I think there`s a paper called The Guardian as well.

Cheers,

Nick

I subscribed to Against the Current last year, and have been impressed by it so far. I don't have the current issue with me to check, but it looks like everything in it is available free on the Web site as well.

>23 daschaich: Against the Current is stuck in a permanent Marxist time warp, which doesn't connect to real events. The stuff they say is the same year in and year out: capitalism is in crisis, we need to build socialism, the unions have to be rebuilt, the Democratic party is no help. There's some truth in each of these, but no ideas one can use.

Lots of book reviews, though! Perhaps after reading ATC for years I will see it as repetitive, too. For now, I'm impressed -- maybe it has something to do the current climate as well: capitalism is in crisis, we need to build socialism, the unions have to be rebuilt, and the Democratic party... well, we'll see. Cheers.

#23 - 5

I`ve just had a quick look at Against The Current. Mixed feelings about it myself, though obviously one or two of the references are a bit mystifying to a non-American.

I was wondering, how are you interpreting ATC`s commitment to `revolutionary socialism`. Is it, as has sometimes been the case in the UK, little more than a form of words (it`s often suggested that the Comnmunist Party of Britain are rather more `reformist` than they care to admit), or are we talking literally `revolutionary`? If so does `revolutionary` necessarily imply violence ? Just wondering - I have an inquiring mind.

I am quite interested in the American left, but as I`ve indicated, it can be difficult for an outsider to grasp where people are coming from.

I notice there`s now an American Labor Party - the US spelling always looks wrong to me, we spell it Labour. For a moment I thought the American Labor Party of Vito Marcantonio had survived all these years without me knowing, but now I see it`s a relatively new grouping. How do people view them ?

Also I came across something called Labor Notes - is that their journal, or something quite different ? It seemed OK to me.

¬Scuse any typos, it`s been a long day and I don`t have the concentration to go back and put them right.

Best to all,

Nick

While Solidarity comes out of the Trotskyist tradition, my impression (as an outsider) is that they have left behind "democratic centralism" and most other hallmarks of "Marxism-Leninism", and are a solidly democratic socialist organization. Their particular focus seems to be on "regroupment and refoundation", bringing together and reuniting various sects and splinters that formed over the course of the twentieth century. They've had only limited success, but their efforts seem to have taken them to fullblown democratic socialism. They typically endorse Green Party and Socialist Party candidates, and I know there is a group of dual Solidarity-Socialist Party members who are trying to get those two organizations to merge (which I think would be beneficial, but don't expect to occur in the near term).

Solidarity's past in the Trotskyist mileau is probably what leads them to describe themselves as "revolutionary" -- both as a nod to that history as well as a way to distinguish themselves from others in that sub-tradition who famously became founders of "neoconservatism" in the 1960s and '70s. To try (perhaps futilely) to put things in British terms, I would say the distinction they're trying to make is akin to that between the two Tony Bs -- Benn vs. Blair. (In other words, no violence necessary.) Against the Current, at least the copy I have in front of me, addresses itself to "progressives", "left-liberals", and "the social activist left", not "socialists" or "revolutionaries".

The current Labor Party, so far as I can tell, is largely fictional. Founded in either 1990 or 1996, they have yet to run any candidate for office. Once, in 1998, in Wyoming, there were one or more Green Party candidates who received the support of the local Labor Party, but in November of that year, a Labor Party "Constitutional Convention" passed an "Electoral Strategy" forbidding such endorsements and dual candidacies. They announced plans to run their first candidates in South Carolina in 2006. Then that was delayed to 2008, then 2010... Their Web site doesn't seem to have been updated since 2006.

Labor Notes is actually somewhat associated with Solidarity and Against the Current, though it has a narrower focus on labor and trade union issues. The two publications share editors and contributors (Mark Brenner, Steve Early, Diane Feeley, Jane Slaughter off the top of my head), and have their offices less than a quarter-mile apart.

PS. I noticed upon linking the Green Party site that they have a banner at the top reading "Join the Revolution"...

Thanks for that daschaich, that`s very helpful.

I liked Labor Notes - probably better than LabourStart to be truthful, though they`re both good - but for me , one of the most interesting things about Against the Current/Solidarity was the very comprehensive `Links` section. Some very interesting stuff there, I thought.

One thing I wondered about, I know there are at least two progressive groups within the Democratic Party (Progressive Democrats of America and Democratic Socialists of America). Is there room in American life for co-operation between those elements and non-Domocrat progressives, along the lines of the arrangements between the Parliamentary left and extra-Parliamentary Left in the UK ?

>28 nickhoonaloon: Yes, but the overall effect of cooperation is, at best, questionable. First off, neither group is very strong. The Progressive Democrats of America is really just a left-of-center PAC, and their activities are almost solely focused on: a) supporting local and national-level progressive (read: social liberal) democratic candidates; and b) promoting the adoption of genuine universal health care. They are growing, but, in all honesty, their influence remains limited. The DSA, meanwhile, remains the largest socialist organization in America, but its activities (e.g., labor-related activism) are, for the most part, very localized (and, as a result, they remain completely off the radar of most self-described "progressives" and greens).

Dissent.

The Nation is first rate and isn't narrowly confined to just the hotbutton political issues of the day although that is certainly it's main focus. It has many excellent articles on history, philosophy, art etc. and a great book review section.

I regard Mother Jones as a close second but it's focus is more narrowly political.