Mason’s Reviews > American Dissent from Thomas Jefferson to Cesar Chavez the Rhetoric of Reform and Revolution > Status Update

Cesar Chavez, super cool insightful guy. Was deeply unfortunate to finish this book learning about specifically UC Davis's extremely strong anti-farmworker union stance as of the early 80s, including rallying against legislation for farmworker compensation for unemployment from automation, as well as offering a dedicated class to combatting unions in agribusiness. I borrowed this book from the UCD library. Sick.

Dorothy Day is a fantastic writer and the parallels she draws between Socialism and Christianity are really vividly painted and compelling. People like Day are why I hold that religion still has a place in our society! My only issue is with her anti-war sentiment: she was very correct about Hiroshima/Nagasaki, but was wholly against entering the war because... violence=bad? Idk, I fear somebody had to stop the Nazis

Emma Goldman had a lot of great ideas and perspectives on anti-capitalism, and predominant institutions, and she is one of the best reads in this book. That being said, she didn't represent anarchism in a deeply convincing way, and her critiques of socialism were lackluster; a lot of Trump-esque "many such cases."

Debs is by far my favorite read in this book so far, a very very smart, compassionate guy

All the wealth the vast army of labor produces above its subsistence is taken by the machine owning capitalists who also own the land & the mills...Hence wealth & poverty, millionaires and beggars...painted parasites on the boulevard & painted poverty among the red lights. Hence strikes, boycotts, riots, murder, suicide...the capitalist parties can do nothing. They are...iniquitous part of the foul & decaying system.

When Marx said: "Workingmen of all countries unite," he gave concrete expression to the socialist philosophy of the class struggle; unlike the framers of the declaration of independence who announced that "all men are created equal" and the basely repudiated their own doctrine, Marx issued the call to all the workers of the globe...
-Eugene V. Debs

"Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few...The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the Earth."

"There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong FOR HIM"

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?...your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings with all your religious parade and solemnity are, to him bombast, deception, impeity and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Frederick Douglass