Homelessness may seem a fact of life in a highly unequal society. But there's much more to it than that. Radical scholars Christina Heatherton and Jordan T. Camp argue that homelessness is fundamentally tied to an intensely racialized form of political control and economic restructuring of our society over the past 40 years, unleashed partially in response to the black freedom struggle and urban rebellions of the 1960s. They discuss why places like Los Angeles' Skid Row have become a laboratory for policies that ultimately will be applied to our society at large.

A week ago, one of America's greatest poets and public intellectuals died. Adrienne Rich was in her twenties she was selected by WH Auden for the Yale Younger Poets award and subsquently won all the most prestigious awards in poetry.  In the ferment of the 1960s and 70s she moved away from formalism, as her politics became more radical. In an extensive interview conducted with Rich at the height of her powers, she reflected on her early life and poetry, as well as the personal politics of race and sexuality.

Black bodies have been stereotyped, criminalized, and rendered invisible by what George Yancy calls the white gaze. In a recent book Yancy explores, among other things, the lived experiences of African Americans in relation to whites, the nature of whiteness, and the contours of effective white antiracist work. (Encore presentation.)

Greasers, red necks, crackers, hillbillies--the view of poor whites in the US, by the left as well as the mainstream, has not been a flattering one. Their racism in opposing civil rights and busing has been taken as a fixed phenomenon.  James Tracy and Amy Sonnie argue that there's more to the story.  They discuss the organizations formed by poor and working class whites in the 1960s and 70s, some allied with the Black Panthers, against racism and for social justice.

African Americans and Latinos acting in tandem could exert tremendous political force. Mark Sawyer examines factors that inhibit Latino-Black collaboration, including anti-Black racism among many Latinos, African American parochialism, and narrow visions of racial/ethnic identity. He also identifies points of commonality and convergence. And Juan Flores talks about the broader project of the book in which Sawyer's essay appears.

Born to slaves, Ida B. Wells was a muckraking journalist, a champion of women's rights, a newspaper editor and publisher, and the most prominent foe of the lynching of African Americans in the vicious backlash that followed post-Civil War Reconstruction. Historian Paula Giddings talks about the enduring relevance of Wells' life and work.