Karen Nadder Lago

Picture of Karen Nadder Lago

Karen Nadder Lago

 

I became politically active while in college during the late 60s and early 70s, serving as editor of the campus paper for three of my four undergrad years. I earned a Masters in Journalism in ’73 and have been combining politics and writing ever since, actively involved as a grassroots organizer, journalist, and environmentalist for more than 3 decades.
 
In the late 70s, I worked with Abbie Hoffman to establish an advocacy group to protect the St. Lawrence River and his zeal and creativity in promoting our position and expanding our base of supporters rubbed off, strengthening my already resolute dedication to activism. I worked as executive director of the organization for about five years.
 
I earned a MLS in ‘93 and was a reference librarian for 10 years, heavily involved with the online world from maintaining computer hardware and software to creating web pages, networking, and searching databases. During my years as a librarian, I was a union steward for CSEA and a volunteer teaching reading and GED skills one-on-one to inmates at Cape Vincent Correctional Facility.
 
Recently I have returned to writing poetry, many of my poems still reflecting a strong progressive political perspective.

I have a husband, two daughters, one grandson, a dog, and a home on the escarpment running along the 1000 Islands area of the St. Lawrence River.

While climate change and overpopulation contribute to what the United Nation’s 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment calls the “globalization of nature,” commercial ships…

Read More

Highlighted

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Our EIN# is #22-2959506. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

We do not accept funding from advertising or corporate sponsors.Ā  We rely on donors like you to do our work.

ZNetwork: Left News, Analysis, Vision & Strategy

THE WIND CRIES FREEDOM

The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution.

Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society. These are not the polished memoirs of politicians: they are the unfiltered accounts of people who organized in neighborhoods, hospitals, universities, stadiums, courthouses, and places of worship, and kept a shared vision alive through cynicism and exhaustion.

The result is speculative political fiction that reads like history: messy, human, and quietly hopeful in the way that only real experience and long thought can produce.

Get your copy and peruse more features on the book’s website below.

“Read it, argue with it, but don’t look away. The future it recalls is one we must still fight to deserve.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“The most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto, and movement building manual that I have ever encountered.”

Bill Fletcher Junior

“This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”

Cynthia Peters

This is your article this month.

We’re glad you keep coming back. If Z’s work has informed, challenged, or inspired you, that’s no accident: there are no paywalls, no ads, and no billionaire owners here, and there never will be. Independent media survives because readers choose to support it.

Billionaires fund their own media. We fund ours. Help us reach 1,000 sustaining donors:

Number of donors696
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Already a sustainer? Click here and we won’t ask again. Thank you!

Your reading count is stored only in your browser and is never sent to us.

Sound is muted by default.Ā  Tap šŸ”Š for the full experience

CRITICAL ACTION

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work.

If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

Independent media is not disappearing because the ideas are weak.

It is disappearing because platforms reward speed, outrage, and algorithmic visibility over thoughtful analysis.

More than 100,000 people read Z every month, free of paywalls, ads, and billionaire owners. It takes fewer than 1 in 100 of them to fund all of it: 1,000 donors who keep Z independent, for everyone, and build what comes next.

Number of donors696
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Subscribe

Join the Z Community – receive event invites, announcements, a Weekly Digest, and opportunities to engage.