Joe Atkins

OPINION: Sycophantic Dem Establishment Aligning Against Bernie Sanders

University of Mississippi professor Joe Atkins, a Bernie Sanders supporter, argues that the Democratic "establishment" is working against the Vermont senator's chance at the presidency.

OPINION: Mississippi: A Microcosm of the U.S.

Way back in 1964, the year of "Freedom Summer" and the disappearance and death of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, the "singing journalist" Phil Ochs offered this elegy: "Here's to the land you've torn out the heart of, Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of"

OPINION: NAFTA to USMCA, An Even Trade?

"Demagogues have winning ways, especially with the man who has no one else to whom he can turn in his troubles," Mauldin wrote in his book, "Back Home," first published in 1947.

OPINION: Huddled Masses Yearning to Break Free

The world's largest gulag today is in the United States, where a quarter of the world's prison population is behind bars, and Mississippi is at the heart of that gulag with the nation's fifth-highest incarceration rate.

OPINION: The End of the Eastland Machine

Like his mentor, Eastland, whose long stretch of power included a statewide network of lieutenants, cronies, operatives and ward-heelers who could make or break an upcoming politician’s career, Brad Dye came out of a different era—one with some striking contrasts to today’s politics.

OPINION: New Orleans, A Good Idea

A different kind of musician, Bob Dylan, says New Orleans is a city where the ghosts of the dead and the laughter of the living are never far apart.

OPINION: Immigration and the First Amendment

My late friend Marty Fishgold, a longtime labor writer in New York City, liked to say that "good journalism is a subversive activity" because it tells truth to power.

OPINION: Tickled to See Teenagers Restarting the Revolution

Writer and champion of social justice Dorothy Day once said that "fighting for a cause is part of the zest of life. ... What we need is a revolution. Each one of us can help start it."

OPINION: Art and Politics in Mississippi

This is a state justly proud of its contributions to the nation's musical, literary and artistic heritage.

OPINION: Reform for a Broken System

The Salas family is one of many in Mississippi and the U.S. caught in the madness of the immigration debate and politicians' failure to pass real and meaningful reform to a broken system.

OPINION: The Business of Us All

I settled comfortably into my favorite chair one recent night and began watching the best Christmas movie ever: the 1951 version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

OPINION: The Trojan Horse of Education

My high school had one, and maybe yours did, too—the toughest teacher in the school.

OPINION: Reflections After the Union Loss

In These Times writer Joe Allen says the Nissan-Canton election loss "is nothing less than a knockout punch ending for the foreseeable future any efforts by the UAW to organize the large, predominantly foreign-owned auto assembly plants in the South."

Character Acting With Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton, who died this month at the age of 91, was a "character actor," a term he didn't particularly like, one of those working stiffs of the Big Screen whose faces everyone knows, but not their names.

Fighting an Old War

While Russia and Confederate statues deserve media coverage, they are also easy targets that don't challenge the corporate state.

Nissan: At the Union Crossroads

Poor ol' Mississippi, so poor it can't even keep its roads paved and bridges repaired, has thus far spent $1.3 billion on taxpayer subsidies to keep Nissan in Canton. Nissan is a $38.4 billion company. Carlos Ghosn earns $10 million a year and has a net worth of $100 million.

Finding Great U.S. Journalism

Trump is waging a constant battle with what he considers the purveyors of "fake news," while those same news outlets struggle to keep up with the stream of misinformation and falsehoods coming out of the White House.

A Pre-Huey Long Mississippi

When Huey Long first swept onto the political scene in Louisiana in the 1920s, the state was the quintessential southern backwater.

The Democratic Old Guard

In March, when Bernie Sanders stood on the podium at the "March on Mississippi" in Canton and told the crowd that "the eyes of the country and the eyes of the world are on you," thousands cheered.

Bill Minor: Mississippi’s Eyes and Ears

Bill Minor wrote with authority. He had been a frontlines warrior ever since his first big story in Mississippi, the funeral of ranting, racist U.S. Sen. Theodore Bilbo.

Danny Glover and the Rights of Workers

I'll never forget Danny Glover as the drifter Moze in the 1984 film "Places in the Heart." It was a Depression-era story of a widowed mother in the South trying to keep her children and save her farm with the help of Moze and a blind war veteran.

Political Homelessness

It's hard not to feel a little politically homeless these days. I'm thinking of that old folk song, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child."

A Cold War Mentality

Back in the summer of 1992, just months after the failed coup that led to the fall of communism and Boris Yeltsin's rise to leadership in a new post-Soviet Russia, I traveled with my late wife, Marilyn, to Moscow and met Roman Fiodorov.

Why Hillary Clinton Lost

Neal Gabler and many of the anti-Trump post-election protesters are wrong when they issue a blanket indictment of all Trump voters, millions of whom voted out of an economic desperation that Clintonite neoliberals ignored for too long. Those voters are not bigots.

Political War Stories

Many American voters are profoundly unhappy with the candidates from both major parties this election. Fifteen years of war are enough, you two! Americans are sick of war.

A Topsy-Turvy World

I didn't make it to the recent Donald Trump rally in Jackson, but I'm sure my ears would have perked up as soon as the Republican presidential candidate began attacking NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

The Rights of Working People

A longstanding French tradition upholds the rights of working people—and it goes back as far as the 1789 revolution with the so-called "sans-culottes" who were too poor to afford the nobility's fashionable silk knee-pants.

Rebelling Against the Rebellion

Newt Knight is described as a "deserter, renegade and assassin" on the website of the local Sons of the Confederate Veterans chapter in Jones County, but Lew Smith in nearby Sumrall has a different view.

Told You So About #MSLeg

In the poorest, most woe-begotten state in the United States, the Mississippi Troika and their loyal minions have managed to cut even deeper into woefully underfunded state education, health care, mental-health care, roads and highways maintenance.

A French Government Official Weighs in on Nissan

A top deputy in the French National Assembly is calling on the French government to weigh in on behalf of workers at the giant Nissan plant in Canton who want to have a union vote without management intimidation and threats.

Mississippi: Amazing for Film

Mississippi and its local communities benefit when the cameras roll here, whether they're big studio Hollywood cameras or those of independent filmmakers.

Bernie Sanders: For the People

Southerners are friendly folk, so Bernie Sanders is going to hear a lot of "Y'all come!" as he takes his populist presidential campaign to Dixie. The question is: Will they mean it?

Seeing Hope in Hard Times

Seeing voters in Louisiana and workers in Mississippi and Tennessee finally stand up to the political and corporate fog machine and assert their rights gives me hope for 2016.

The Music of Immigrants

We're in the century-old Confiteria Ideal listening to the mother of all tangos, "La Cumparsita," and I'm thinking about the somewhat different world into which the tango was born.

Tav Falco’s Evanescent South

Tav Falco, enfant terrible of the 1980s, walked onto the stage at Lafayette's Music Room here, dressed in black, his hair a Nuevo-'50s coif, picked up his guitar and let loose.

Waving the Wrong Flag

Working-class southern whites have a right to feel rebellious. The problem is they're waving the wrong flag to show it.

Howard Industries’ Secret Life

Many of Howard Industries' predominantly black workers say they're underpaid for the hard, grueling work they do, but negotiations with management went nowhere after at least 16 meetings.

Answering a Need Not Being Met

Dorothy Day House is the only refuge for homeless families in Memphis, Tenn., the nation's poorest large metropolitan area.

Roll the Farmers Union On

A closing sentence in a 1937 Southern Tenant declaration of rights speaks to the hope that union still inspires: "To the disinherited belongs the future."

B.B. King’s Universal Language

Blues music may be singing the "No Future Tomorrow" blues once B.B. King hangs up his guitar for good, Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer warned back in 2004.

Trouble in Mississippi

Look at Mississippi under Republican grass-eater rule in both the governor's mansion and state Legislature. A lopsided tax system that favors corporations and the rich has contributed to one of the biggest income gaps between the rich and poor of any state in the country.

Stories by Joe