Book — Non-fiction. By Marc Mauer and Sabrina Jones. 2013. 128 pages.
Based on the popular book Race to Incarcerate, this graphic adaptation is a key resource to introduce a study of U.S. prison system to middle school readers and above.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Ellen Miller-Mack, Craig Gilmore, Lois Ahrens, Susan Willmarth, and Kevin Pyle. 2008. 104 pages.
This comic book presents the human stories behind the statistics.
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Teaching ideas and discussion questions for How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.
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Teaching Activity. By Suzanna Kassouf, Matt Reed, Tim Swinehart, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, and Bill Bigelow.
The stories of twenty people whose lives were touched by the New Deal of the 1930s come to life in this classroom activity, intended to open students' minds to the possibilities of a Green New Deal.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Naomi Klein. 2008. 720 pages.
Klein demonstrates how shock has been used by global elites to push through a radical agenda of privatization and "free trade."
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Film. Directed by Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood. 2010. 81 minutes.
This film takes viewers on a gripping emotional journey into a community surrounded by a looming toxic threat.
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IWW labor organizer Frank Little was lynched from a railroad trestle.
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Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his speech in opposition to the Vietnam War, calling for a “revolution of values.”
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The Wisconsin Workers strike involved as many as 100,000 protesters opposing the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10.
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The Poor People’s Campaign was a multiracial effort to gain economic justice for poor people.
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Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop were close-knit Mexican American communities that were destroyed in the 1950s to make way for Dodger Stadium.
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A white mob seized three African American business men in Memphis, Tennessee and lynched them without trial.
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Film. Narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple. The Intercept. 2019. 7 minutes.
The film flips the script on our future by illustrating one where we survive climate change and thrive because we took action today.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools.
The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.
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Film. Directed by Rick Goldsmith. 2025. 87 minutes.
The story of a secretive hedge fund that is plundering what is left of newspapers in the United States, and the journalists who are fighting back.
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Minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob.
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Students and faculty joined in an ultimately successful anti-Apartheid campaign at Calvin College.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools.
The Thingamabob Game helps students grasp the essential relationship between climate and capitalism.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005, with a new introduction by Anthony Arnove in 2015. 784 pages.
Howard Zinn's groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details lives and facts rarely included in textbooks—an indispensable teacher and student resource.
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Film. Directed by Icíar Bollaín and written by Paul Laverty. 2010. 103 minutes.
As a crew shoots a film about Columbus' genocide, local people in Cochabamba, Bolivia rise up against plans to privatize the water supply.
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The Flint sit-down strike represented a shift in union organizing strategies from craft unionism (organizing white male skilled workers) to industrial unionism (organizing all the workers in an industry). The sit-down strike changed the balance of power between employers and workers.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Justene Hill Edwards. 2024. 336 pages.
Following the Civil War, tens of thousands of the formerly enslaved deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman’s Bank, but their trust was betrayed when the Freedman’s Bank collapsed within the decade.
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A coalition of environmental activists, anti-capitalists, and union leaders took to the streets of Seattle to bring the World Trade Organization conference to a halt.
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Film. Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler. 2023. 85 minutes.
Tells the story of how Las Vegas activist Ruby Duncan's grassroots movement of moms fought for guaranteed income.
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Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.
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