by Don Franks
Staunch anti capitalist fighter Jim Delahunty died in his sleep last night after over sixty years of uncompromising activism.
Born into a working class Auckland family, Jim grew up to the sound of his dad’s Irish rebel songs. This laid the foundation for a lifetime of left activism often set to music. Jim was an early stalwart of the New Zealand folk music scene, helping his friend Rona Bailey collect songs and also writing his own. A few of those, like the anti Muldoon anthem “Put a pig in a beehive, you don’t get honey” , are on record, but most of Jim’s many topical ditties have unfortunately not been collected. Continue reading “LEFT LOSES STAUNCH ANTI CAPITALIST FIGHTER”
Howard Zinn: In Memory of a Radical Historian
On January 27th, one of America’s most high profile progressive voices passed away. 
Howard Zinn, the anti-war activist and historian, wrote the first edition of A People’s History of the United States in 1980 and unlike many radical critiques of conventional history that have been published over the years, his became a bestseller, selling over 2 million copies with many schools and colleges across the country incorporating the book into their curriculum.
A People’s History injected a solid class analysis totally lacking in conventional narratives about US history, discarding the nationalist myth of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, with the focus instead being on working people, rebelling slaves and farmers, labour radicals and the heavily marginalized indigenous. Continue reading “Howard Zinn: In Memory of a Radical Historian”