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We Shall Prevail: Final Justice for Victor Jara
By Abby Zimet, Common Dreams More than 50 years after the murder of iconic Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, the last man convicted of killing him has been tracked down and brought to justice. In 1973, a day after Pinochet’s coup, Jara was seized, tortured, his hands broken to silence what was deemed music “more powerful than a thousand machine guns.” Today, in a world tilting right, he remains an enduring symbol of resistance. Manifiesto: “A song has meaning/ When it beats in

The Left Chapter
Aug 26 min read


There but for fortune: Sketches from the life of Phil Ochs
By Randolph Oechslein, People's World The final sequences of Kenneth Bowser’s moving 2011 documentary Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune are painful. Family members, artists who were friends of Ochs’, such as Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and others, speak about the last phase of his life. He was only 35-years-old. It was a suicide with some warning. Beforehand, he revealed to the writer Bruce Pollock why it had become increasingly difficult for him to write songs. The reasons were h

The Left Chapter
Dec 19, 20254 min read


Are There Any Paranoids in the Stadium Tonight? Two Nights in Santiago With Roger Waters
Image via Vijay Prashad on X By Vijay Prashad No one does a stadium show like Roger Waters. The music, of course, is resplendent, but so...
Michael Laxer
Nov 28, 20236 min read
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