An eloquent historical, present and future perspectives as to the public educational system in the US how he believes it has been used not for the common good, but rather for the special interests of those who have power and money and want to perpetuate a docile non-critical thinking population.
Society, or the common good, as Chomsky called it, encourages people to focus on themselves and their own success. Programs such as public education and Social Security, which are now under attack, are based on a different perception.
"They are based on the perception that we should care about other people….That's a dangerous perception. It means you should be a human being and not a pathological creature."
Noam Chomsky (born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historical essayist, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, and particularly international affairs and U.S. foreign policy.
Chomsky has been a writer for Z projects since their earliest inception, and is a tireless supporter of our operations.
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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
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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.
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For decades, Z has brought together political analysis, movement reporting, debate, and visions of a different future from writers and activists around the world. That work is more than journalism. It is movement infrastructure: movements need places to develop ideas, test arguments, learn from experience, and imagine what comes next.
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