This website is devoted to Dan Berger's writings and work. On the site you'll find articles I've written, information about my books, and ways to plug into a range of political work I've been involved with or support. If you're feeling especially adventurous, check out my blog.

 

Both as a writer and an activist, I am interested in social movements constituted by a politics of solidarity. I'm particularly focused on organizing in support of U.S. political prisoners and against what is commonly called the prison industrial-complex. Rather than riddle you with slogans, I'd especially like to call your attention to the San Francisco 8 case and other efforts to free U.S. political prisoners, the reconstruction of New Orleans, and the work to build a world without walls as especially urgent endeavors.

 

Check out my latest articles: a book review in Toward Freedom and one in the January 2008 Monthly Review.

  

Toward Freedom | "From Art Spiegelman’s Maus to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the graphic form has proved a powerful narrative tool. Combining memoir and social commentary in a visually appealing package, such illustrated stories blur the boundaries of art and history, reality and fantasy. It should be no surprise, then, that social movements—those rare hybrids of reality and fantasy—are finding themselves increasingly illustrated. Walter Benjamin’s argument that radicalism politicizes art seems more relevant now than ever." Read the full review

Reviewed:Harvey Pekar, art by Gary Dumm, edited by Paul Buhle, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History . (New York: Hill & Wang, 2008) 224 pages, hardcover, $22.

Monthly Review | "Particularly since the fall of apartheid, the U.S. left has not looked to African social movements for political mentorship. Many who rightly look to Bolivia, Mexico, and Venezuela for inspiration do not similarly focus on the emerging movements of Kenya, Nigeria, or Tanzania. The difficult challenges of building socialism under post- and neocolonial conditions have, too often, superseded the varied lessons that many movements on the African continent have to offer a global left bent on securing a viable alternative to empire."
Reviewed: Matt Meyer, Time Is Tight: Urgent Tasks for Educational Transformation: Eritrea, South Africa, and the U.S. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007), 202 pages, paperback, $24.95.