David Bacon is a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights.
For decades, Ansel Adams ran in circles of left-wing photographers with a radical eye. But come the 1960s, he was denouncing the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement protests and calling for expulsions.
Donald Trump’s executive orders draw from a previous, dark period of American history pairing ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.
The US working class has a long tradition of standing up against immigrant repression. This history is a reservoir of inspiration and strategic thinking — and it can help immigrant workers and communities confront Donald Trump’s promised wave of repression.
In the 20th century, American Communist Party members were portrayed as the Red Menace, an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with extraordinarily complex intellectual, political, social, and romantic lives that deserve to be chronicled.
While Republicans cry “invasion” and Democrats placate them with hard-line border policy, immigrants languish in prisons or die in dangerous passage. A rational approach to immigration must both address the causes of displacement and protect those who migrate.
The current guest worker system prioritizes agricultural growers’ profits over immigrants’ and workers’ rights. Joe Biden should seek a different way: building an immigration system based on family reunification, community stability, and immigrant workers’ rights to decent wages, health, and housing.
A history of photographers who prefer the streets to the museum.