Page 18 - Red Squad News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Great Depression–era migrants heading to California’s “garden of Eden” ran into trouble on the state’s borders with Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon. Woody Guthrie sang about their troubles in the song, “Do Re Mi.” “Now the police at the port of entry say/ ‘You’re number fourteen thousand for today,'” is how Guthrie put it. The “police” in the song were from Los Angeles. Deputized by local sheriffs starting in February 1936, LA police officers halted incoming trains, automobiles, and pedestrians. They were looking for “vagrants” “indigents” “tramps,” and “ho...

David B. Feldman is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on capitalist globalization and migrant labor. Mark Jay and Philip Conklin, A People’s History of Detroit (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 320 pages, $26.95, paperback. Four decades have passed since Howard Zinn published A People’s History of the United States, retelling the history of the most powerful capitalist nation-state through the eyes of the downtrodden and oppressed. In its own peculiar way, Zinn’s text was something of an unintended rejoinder to Ronal...