Our Time Is Now

Selma James

Description

For over sixty years, Selma James has been organising from the perspective of unwaged women who, with their biological and caring work, reproduce the whole human race - along with whatever other labour they are performing. When this work is not economically prioritised, politically protected, or socially supported there are dire consequences for the whole of humanity, beginning with women and children. This much-anticipated follow-up to her first anthology, Sex, Race, and Class, compiles several decades of James's work with a focus on her more recent writings.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 22 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629638546
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

What people have said about Selma James
One of the most important figures in the new way of thinking in the 1970s and 1980s was Selma James. James s Marx and Feminism deserves to be considered one of the great feminist contributions to Marxist thought not so much a rupture with Marxism as its necessary extension.
- Monthly Review
An intellectually ambitious attempt to synthesize Marxism, feminism, and post-colonialism, not with the usual sellotaped hyphenations.
-Jenny Turner, London Review of Books
Selma James is a treasure one of the key political thinkers and activists of our times.
-Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship (Penguin Books, 2008)
In an era where women are encouraged to lean in to capitalism and power, Sex, Race, and Class provides a much-needed reminder that housework and care work are work-and deserve to be recognized and compensated as such. James not only details women s campaigns that might otherwise be forgotten but provides a valuable blueprint for organizing towards a truly liberated society.
-Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2012)
When Selma James speaks, I listen. When she writes, I read. She has been a crucial part of my re-education for decades. She is one of the few public intellectuals who engages with issues and people all over the world yet still remains connected to the grassroots. The writings and ideas of Selma James are as relevant now as they have ever been. Her solidarity knows no borders, her compassion excludes no sufferer.
-Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, writer, lyricist, musician, and naughty boy
Building from the brilliance of Sex, Race, and Class , this work powerfully addresses the recent and present struggles of those whose labour of caring protects the future. This is about how grassroots movements can challenge power, and change the world.
-Bonita Lawrence, Indigenous Studies, York University, Canada
Since A Woman s Place (1952), Selma James has been giving us unique insights into the meaning of autonomy and the political potential of care work. This new anthology illuminates the significance of James s work for a revolutionary climate politics. A true gift from one of the most brilliant minds of our time.
-Stefania Barca, author of Forces of Reproduction (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Selma James is a force of nature in the flesh and on the page. She fearlessly grapples with complex ideas, but her writing remains crystal clear and compelling. Stop what you are doing and read her now!
-Maya Oppenheim, women s correspondent, the Independent , UK
Selma James s prose, at once theoretical and inspirational, has provided a renewed praxis to consider and work with [P]utting motherhood on the political agenda rather than women in boardrooms made her politics at once meaningful and important.
-Amrita Shodhan, feministsindia.com
Selma James is a living icon. Her groundbreaking Wages for Housework Campaign informs decades of feminist thought and activism. James s writings are needed now more than ever.
-Kristin Lawless, author of Formerly Known as Food (St. Martin s Press, 2018)
An insightful and exceedingly intelligent political analyst.
-Dr. Gerald Horne, author of The Dawning of the Apocalypse (Monthly Review Press, 2020)
Selma James has been living and writing about the intersections of race, class, and gender since long before the concept of intersectionality was introduced . [Her] book is inspiring because of her ability to write plainly, incisively, and accessibly about complex ideas and complicated political moments.
-Paul Kivel, author of You Call This a Democracy? (Rowman Littlefield, 2006)
Sex, Race, and Class is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand and change the world from an exploitative culture based on women s work to one where we all are valued, and that includes men.
-Margaretta D Arcy, Irish Republican, author and playwright, and anti-war campaigner
Clarity and commitment to Haiti s revolutionary legacy. A sister after my own heart.
-Danny Glover, actor and activist
Coming as I did from the working class into academia, Selma James has helped me to see how an academic can take direction from the grassroots movement and be useful to it. Her work should be in every library, on every reading list, a must-read for all of us trying to change the world!
-Maggie Ronayne, National University of Ireland, Galway, and trade unionist
Selma James is the champion and philosopher of the revolutionary subject that is the housewife. Her theory and practice are one.
-Qalandar Bux Memon, editor, Naked Punch Review
It s time to acknowledge James s pathbreaking analysis: since 1972 she has reinterpreted the capitalist economy to show that it rests on the usually invisible unwaged caring work of women.
-Dr. Peggy Antrobus, feminist, author
Reminds us that liberation cannot be handed down from above. A feminism that truly matters.
-Dr. Alissa Trotz, Women Gender and Caribbean Studies, Toronto
[R]eflects in concentrated form the history of the new society struggling to be born. In this respect, Selma James embodies in these essays the spirit of the revolutionary tradition at its most relevant.
-Dr. Robert A. Hill, literary executor of the estate of CLR James, University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Marcus Garvey Papers Project
In varied contexts and at many venues, including the UN, James s output over six decades shines with radical clarity on the economy, humanity, and society . Hers is a gift of clarifying often knotty issues in words that people can grasp.
-Seth Sandronsky, Z Magazine
This book is not only an intellectual tour de force, it is the best how to manual for organizing I have ever read . The staggering breadth of James s writing takes your breath away practical how-to feminism from one of the outstanding thinkers of our time.
-Cary Gee, Tribune

Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race, Class, and Caring for People and Planet
the respective authors
This edition 2021 PM Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-838-6 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-62963-854-6 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934741
Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Cover photograph Peter Marshall
Interior design by briandesign
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Printed in the USA.
Contents
INTRODUCTION Margaret Prescod- From Wages for Housework to a Care Income (1977-2020)
Houston: Equality Begins with Money (1977)
Time Off for Women (1985-1990)
Articles in the Media (2012-2020)
How Women s Work Has Been Pushed Up the US Political Agenda (2012)
What if Women Want to Look After Their Children Themselves, Liz Truss? (2013)
From Welfare to Wages, Women Fight Back against the Uncaring Market (2013)
When Women Disappoint (2014)
Child Benefit Has Been Changing Lives for 70 Years. Let s Not Forget the Woman Behind It (2016)
What Women Want 2.0: Equal Pay (2018)
Decades After Iceland s Day Off, Our Women s Strike Is Stronger Than Ever (2018)
The Crucial Work That Women Do Is Often Overlooked (2020)
Norway: Equal-At What Price? Working Life and Family Life from an Ethnic Minority Perspective (2013)
France: Housework Must Be Waged-excerpts (2014)
What s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Job Like This? A Comparison between Sex Work and Other Jobs Commonly Done by Women (2019)
An Income to Care for People and Planet (2020) with Nina L pez
How Some of Our Network See the Care Income We Are All Campaigning For (2020)
A Care Income Now! (2020)
Ch vez, Nyerere, Aristide versus Thatcher (2013-2018)
Hugo Ch vez Knew That His Revolution Depended on Women (2013) with Nina L pez
Thatcherism Hasn t Failed: It Has Infected All Our Politics (2013) with Nina L pez
Haiti: NGO Crimes Go Far beyond Oxfam (2018) with Sara Callaway, Nina L pez, and 17 others
Ujamaa: The Hidden Story of Tanzania s Socialist Villages (2014)
Introduction
The Struggle of Prisoners (2014-2020)
Prisoners Celebrate the Power of Their United Struggle (2014)
Women Prisoners: Housework Inside (2020)
Revisiting the Work of CLR James (2017-2019)
The Black Jacobins, Past and Present (2017)
Confronting Imperial Boundaries (2018)
Beyond Boundaries-A Talk with Selma James on Her Political Activities and Years with CLR James (2019) with Ron Augustin
The Grassroots Labour Movement That Shook Britain (2015-2020)
Introduction
Yvette Cooper Supported Sexist Austerity; Jeremy Corbyn Has Always Opposed It (2015) with Nina L pez
On Winning with Corbyn (2016)
Standing with Palestinians (2018) with Michael Kalmanovitz, Sam Weinstein, and 102 others
We Are in the Midst of an Anti-Left Witch-Hunt (2019)
Why the Movement Lost the Election and What Followed (2020) with Nina L pez
Sex, Race, Class and Autonomy (2020)
The Organizational Strategy of Autonomy
Andaiye: The Uses of Autonomy
Unlocking the Power of the Movement
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Introduction
Margaret Prescod
This second volume of writings by Selma James, Our Time Is Now , deepens and develops the themes of the first selection published in 2012. 1 I am thankful for this opportunity to review the long road she and I have travelled together.
In 1974, I thought the author of Sex, Race, and Class was Black. 2 When friends told me she was not, I argued that a white woman could not have written a pamphlet that had such clarity about race and autonomy. Nearly fifty years ago, Selma James wrote about what today in academic circles is called intersectionality.
In a women s study group in New Yor