Joel Wendland-Liu
PeoplesWorld
Grand Rapids, MI, United States
Contact Joel
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Joel:
‘Maelstrom Over the Killing Fields’: Dire underdevelopment and the Filipino national idea
E. San Juan Jr. is a Marxist literary critic who has taught at many major universities in the U.S. and the Philippines. Born in 1938, he is the Harvard-trained author of about four dozen books in English and Tagalog on Marxist theory, criticism of U.S. → Read More
Public school privatization privileges profits over learning
DETROIT, Ever motivated to influence the consciousness of workers, capitalists have made repeated attacks against public education. In their eyes, schools are little more than fertile ground for “critical race theories” and changing gender identity norms. → Read More
Michigan people to mobilize for March on Washington June 18th in D.C.
Michigan workers are mobilizing to fight the right-wing's attack on democracy. June 18th, Michigan will send hundreds of people to join the Poor People's Campaign Moral March on Washington. → Read More
‘The Future We Need’: A new book by Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta
A wave of union organizing drives across the U.S. includes Amazon warehouse workers, coffee baristas, university graduate students and faculty, grocery store workers, nurses, restaurant workers, and food processing workers. → Read More
‘Ballad of an American’: Composer Earl Robinson and working-class culture
Earl Robinson’s music became a critical part of U.S. working-class culture in the 20th century. Best known for composing the music for songs like “The House I Live In,” “Joe Hill,” and “Black and White,” Robinson wrote many other songs for the stage and movies that will likely be famil... → Read More
Cops don’t need more training
Force, violence, and death are possible outcomes of any encounter with police. But racism is decisive in shaping how police treat citizens. A report published this week by the Chicago Office of the Inspector General reveals that police in that city disproportionately target Black people and subject... → Read More
On becoming police and prison abolitionists: But what about the murderers?
Derecka Purnell is a gifted intellectual, organizer, speaker, and writer. She completed her degree at Harvard Law School after growing up in the #BlackLivesMatter struggles in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Ferguson, Missouri. → Read More
New book explores fear of Black consciousness—and who fears it
Fear of Black Consciousness. The title of Lewis R. Gordon’s most recent book raises two questions. What is Black consciousness, and who fears it? The author answers these questions in two major interrelated movements. First, he explores the characteristics and qualities of “white consciousness,” the collective thought patterns that dominate in anti-black societies like the U.S. → Read More
America’s racist prison society produces profits but not safety
The United States is infamous for its prison system. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. houses 25% of the world’s incarcerated people. Nearly seven million people live in prisons, jails, immigrant concentration camps, and related facilities. → Read More
‘They are really killing me in here’—Michigan women’s prison under scrutiny
DETROIT—Michigan’s Huron Valley Women’s Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Township near Ypsilanti, Mich. has approximately 60% of the state’s COVID cases of incarcerated people. → Read More
Michigan, mass incarceration, and the new surveillance society
Prisoners lives matter, chanted hundreds of imprisoned men who had stopped work and occupied the prison yard in the Kinross State Penitentiary, in Kinross, Mich., on Sept. 10, 2016. Nearly the entire 150 or so imprisoned kitchen staff protested inhumane living and working conditions. → Read More
‘All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running’: A novel in review
Imagining a free world without prisons, confining bars, or militarized borders between communities is a process that “can be done only collectively,” author, activist, and teacher Elias Rodriques recently told a workshop hosted by the Michigan Writers Club. → Read More
Why did Nancy Pelosi appeal to white supremacy to reject student loan forgiveness?
It is now seven months into the Biden administration. During the election campaign, Sen. Chuck Schumer, now ostensible leader of the Senate, talked about how it is legal for the president to forgive student debt. He and Sen. → Read More
Will Biden continue the racist Trump-era ‘China Initiative’?
Trump launched the so-called “China Initiative” in 2018 to target scholars who worked with Chinese colleagues on science-related projects. Since then, more than a dozen U.S.-based scholars have been arrested, jailed, put on show trials, and harassed by federal authorities. → Read More
‘Predictive policing’ is a techno-tool of white supremacy
Hollywood presents artificial intelligence as our inevitable future. In the show, Caprica, the prequel to the epic Battlestar Galactica, which centers on a massive struggle between humans and their robot creations, the Cylons, huge amounts of data are combined to produce artificially intelligent mac... → Read More
As Trump era closes, Washington cannot rule in the old way
As Joe Biden assumes office, and a potential new wave of right-wing violence lurks, the U.S. ruling class is in a panic. The House of Representatives quickly (and justifiably) impeached Trump for inciting an insurrection. → Read More
The people, not the military, must protect democracy in America
I am a U.S. military veteran and served in the army in the early 1990s, partly out of a belief in patriotic duty and partly out of need for G.I. Bill resources to attend college. → Read More
Barr echoes Trump’s white supremacy by comparing mask-wearing to slavery
An elderly white man at a Trump campaign rally is asked in a recent news report why he doesn't wear a mask. The question comes out of the controversy over Trump's politicization of mask-wearing and other public health measures. → Read More
Racism and anti-communism: Why the U.S. has no real health system
Healthcare access remains an urgent issue for millions of Americans. Trump’s empty promise last month to “sign a health insurance law in two weeks” confirms this reality. As many as 12 million workers in the U.S. → Read More
Impeachment seems forever ago, but Trump’s Washington still a swamp of corruption
In December 2019, Republican Party leader Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on two corruption counts. The impeachment hearings charged that Trump abused his power as president to manipulate Ukraine’s government into creating evidence against his political opponents, w... → Read More