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Paul L. Street is the author of six books to date: Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008, described by John Pilger in The Guardian in 2009 as “perhaps the only book that tells the truth about the 44^thpresident of the United States”);  The Empire’s New Clothes:  Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, forthcoming in July 2010); and Crashing the Tea Party Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Boulder, CO Paradigm. 2011, co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio).
 
Street has published a large number of articles, essays, reviews, and editorials in numerous outlets, including ZNet, Z Magazine, CounterPunch, Black Agenda Report, the Chicago Tribune, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of Social History, Mid-America, Critical Sociology, Chicago History,Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Studies in History and Politics, History of Education Quarterly, Monthly Review,  Iowa City Press-Citizen, In These Times, Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai, India),  Tinabantu: Journal of African National Affairs (Cape Town, South Africa),  Synthesis/Regeneration, International Socialist Review, Dissent, Capital City Times (Madison, WI),  Black Commentator, Tom’s Dispatch, History News Network, MRZine, Dissident Voice, and Monthly Review.   

Street has also published a large number of book chapters and project studies, including the widely read reports The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois and the Nation (Chicago Urban League, 2002) and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Class, Poverty and Policy in Chicago (Chicago Urban League, 2005).  
 
Street’s writings, research findings, reviews, and commentaries have been cited and quoted in a large number and wide variety of media venues, including The New York Times, CNN, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, the Chicago Tribune, The Progressive, The Indypendent (NYC), The Times of India, Morning Star (England), Al-Alkhbar (The News in Beirut, Lebanon),  Canal da Imprensa (Brazil), Real Clear Politics,  NBC-New York City, WGN (Chicago/national), WLS (ABC-Chicago), Press TV (Iran), Fox News, the Chicago Sun Times, Illinois Issues, and theCapital City Times (Madison, WI),and theIowa City Press Citizen. Street has been featured in more than 70 radio and television interviews and broadcasts, and on the popular live book salon at “Firedog Lake.”
 
Street has a doctorate in U.S. History at Binghamton University and has taught at numerous colleges and universities in and around Chicago.  Street was the Director of Research and Vice President for Research and Planning at The Chicago Urban League from 2000 to 2005. Street is currently an independent policy researcher, historian, journalist, activist, political commentator, and speaker based in Chicago, Illinois and Iowa City, Iowa.
 
Street has appeared in more than 60 radio and television interviews/broadcasts and on the popular live Web book-chat at Firedog Lake

Street has taught various aspects of U.S. history at a large number of Chicago-area colleges and universities.  He has been strongly attached to Left political and intellectual culture since he read Volume 1 of Das Kapital and Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (the first at a snail's pace) in the basement of a house in DeKalb, Illinois in the spring of 1978.  He was the Director of Research at The Chicago Urban League from 2000 through 2005.  

Street is a (sixth-grade) graduate of (the original John Dewey) Laboratory School at the University of Chicago but it was all public schools after that. Teenage delinquency may have saved him from ruling-class indoctrination/socialization at one of the nation's elite universities or liberal arts colleges and put him on a fateful path to the once-exciting "little red schoolhouse on the prairie" - the formerly Marxist History Department of Northern Illinois University.  The best childhood education he received came from the social movements of the 1960s - a pedagogical engagement that begin with hearing Martin Luther King, Jr, speak at Chicago's Soldier Field during the long hot summer of 1966. Much of Street's writing revolves around criticism and exposure of what King called "the triple evils that are interrelated": racism, economic exploitation (capitalism), and militarism-imperialism. He thinks that other and related evils, including sexism and ecocidalism (and authoritarianism more generally) deserve equal consideration

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Featured ZMag Articles

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• Saturday, Dec 05, 2009
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  Paul Street: Saving Capitalism

  

  

  ZMag Article

  Orin Kramer defines Obama's duty to America

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Sep 01, 2009
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  Paul Street: Corporate Democracy

  

  

  ZMag Article

  Health reform prospects in the age of Obama

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, May 01, 2009
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  Paul Street: Obama's Violin

  

  

  ZMag Article

  Tamped down populist anger versus a new popular movement

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009
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  Paul Street: No Dividend

  

  

  ZMag Article

  The likely continuation of empire and inequality under "Brand Obama."

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Jan 01, 2008
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  Paul Street: Largely About Oil

  

  

  ZMag Article

  The White House got it right when they initially gave their immoral incursion the acronym OIL (for Operation Iraqi Liberation). “Oil” is the main reason that a rapid and thorough U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and true Iraqi freedom and independence ar...

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Dec 01, 2007
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  Paul Street: Corporate Democrats

  

  

  ZMag Article

  Do you hate and/or fear the authoritarian, regressive, intolerant, messianic, militarist Republican Party? Would you like to see that terrible political organization swept into the dustbin of history?

  Paul Street ZSpace page
• All Featured ZMag Articles

Recent Audio

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• Wednesday, Dec 01, 2010
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  Paul Street: Tea Party & Democrats

  

  

  Audio

  Paul Street on the Tea Party, the dismalness of the Dems, and Obama’s elegant personal fit with that dismalness.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Sep 19, 2009
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  Paul Street: Ringmaster

  

  

  Audio

  An interview with Paul Street, one of Mr. Obama's earliest critics from the left, who had the opportunity back in Chicago to see him in action. Total runtime an hour and one minute.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
• All Recent Audio

Commentaries

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• Wednesday, Jun 12, 2013
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  Paul Street: Surveillance in the Age of Obama

  

  

  Commentary

  Almost as bad as the programs themselves, are the creepy justifications offered for them by Barack Obama and his defenders

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Apr 19, 2013
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  Paul Street: Profits System 101

  

  

  Commentary

  There’s no mysterious paradox – no hint of a “riddle” – in all of this. It’s American State Capitalism 101, working for the rich and powerful as always

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Apr 05, 2013
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  Paul Street: The Golden Rule: Theirs and Ours

  

  

  Commentary

  Our task as “dangerous Samaritans” and revolutionaries is to more properly align our institutional and ideological order with our underlying human and caring nature

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Mar 30, 2013
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  Paul Street: Drone War Meets Resistance

  

  

  Commentary

  If the Age of Obama has taught us anything on progressive change and how it happens, it should be that it’s not about politicians and their calculations

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Mar 21, 2013
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  Paul Street: Imperial Times

  

  

  Commentary

  “Mistakes” and “strategic blunders” don’t really cut when evaluating the criminal and brazenly petro-imperialist (and richly bipartisan) U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Feb 22, 2013
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  Paul Street: Ecocidal Times

  

  

  Commentary

  It appears that Superstorm Sandy did not direct enough of its global warming-fueled fury at the headquarters of The New York Times last October

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Feb 16, 2013
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  Paul Street: A Keystone Moment

  

  

  Commentary

  It is relevant that Obama made no mention of Keystone in the address

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Jan 12, 2013
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  Paul Street: Dead Last: Depressing Health Facts

  

  

  Commentary

  Americans experience higher rates of disease and injury and die sooner – yes, die sooner – than people in other high-income countries

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Dec 13, 2012
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  Paul Street: The Unelected Dictatorship

  

  

  Commentary

  It’s useful to step back from the dominant terms in political play to examine what’s really going on behind misleading language

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Nov 17, 2012
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  Paul Street: On Fiscal, Ecological, and Employment Cliffs

  

  

  Commentary

  The urgency of action on the climate issue has become clearer than ever thanks to this year’s extreme weather

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Nov 02, 2012
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  Paul Street: The Prospects for a Decent Future

  

  

  Commentary

  If we accept periodic U.S. elections as an adequate expression and spectrum of democratic politics and popular voice, we’re done for

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Oct 09, 2012
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  Paul Street: There’s No Economy on a Dead Planet

  

  

  Commentary

  There’s something missing from the presidential campaign, including the first presidential debate last week – the fate of the Earth

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Sunday, Sep 30, 2012
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  Paul Street: On Class Rule and Theater Politics

  

  

  Commentary

  Romney is taking “out of touch” to a new level. He seems straight from central casting when it comes to helping Obama easily beat the Republicans

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Sunday, Sep 23, 2012
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  Paul Street: The 1% and the 47%

  

  

  Commentary

  As the rich never admit, they aren’t really anti-government. They are for big government that serves elite interests and punishes the rest

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Sep 14, 2012
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  Paul Street: Striking Neoliberalism in Chicago

  

  

  Commentary

  Teachers unions and indeed public schools have become perfect foils for misdirecting legitimate popular anger over the failings of the educational system

  Paul Street ZSpace page
• All Commentaries

Recent Video

Elections 2012 and the Prospects for a Decent Future: A Left Perspective

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