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The kind of history I study and write, which is variously called peoples'
history, social history, or "history from below," shows that working people and
their movements have, over time, been active, creative forces in the making of
history. I believe that we can learn from this kind of history, that we can find
inspiration in
 it, that we can use it as we work toward a more just and humane
future. History from below helps us to see that peoples' struggles - over land,
labor, rights, and power - are centuries old and largely continuous, down to the
present. I have therefore tried to combine scholarship and activism, the study
of movements from below with the making of movements from below. I have taken
part in movements against the war in Vietnam, against the interventions of the
U.S. government in Central America in the 1980s, against apartheid in South
Africa, against environmental destruction, and against all forms of exploitation
and oppression, based on race, class, and gender. In recent years I have worked
to win a new trial for Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and to
abolish capital punishment in the U.S. and throughout the world. To anyone
interested in the struggle against the death penalty, I would recommend three
websites: the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the Death Penalty Information Center, and the Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty. I would also recommend two groups that are
especially important to struggles for justice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where
I live: The Thomas Merton Center
and Just Harvest. Two other
useful websites are Midnight Notes
and Pessimism of the Mind (an anti-war site). I have always believed that the struggle for a better future
must be a struggle to find new, more inclusive, more egalitarian ideas, in the
past and in the present.
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