Stephen D. Shenfield | Author and Translator
The strange existence of Las Vegas
- Published on 08 September 2019
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Las Vegas is Spanish for The Meadows. A settlement was established there in 1905. Before that it was just an oasis in the Mojave Desert.
Nothing strange about an oasis in the desert. A well with water for the weary traveler and his camels. Trees to shade them from the hot sun while they rest. I see it in my mind’s eye.
What's going on in Belarus?
- Published on 14 November 2020
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An interview with Dmitry Kosmachev, a member of the Minsk Socialist Circle
Stephen Shenfield: In the 1990s I made visits to five of the new post-Soviet republics – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan. I got the impression that the situation for working people in Belarus was relatively tolerable. Only in Belarus did I find no evidence of people engaged in a desperate struggle to survive. The regime was authoritarian but enjoyed wide support. There were no serious ethnic conflicts.
How accurate was my impression? And how has the situation changed since then?
Prisons do not make us safer
- Published on 27 November 2019
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Like many other ‘law-abiding citizens,’ I used to be reluctant to advocate the full abolition of prisons, despite knowing that prisons are a very inhumane institution. The logic behind my reluctance was that prisons, inhumane as they may be, do nonetheless serve to isolate from the general public many ruthless, violent, and sadistic persons and thereby protect us ‘law-abiding citizens’ – that is, people who do not deliberately violate the law except when cheating on their taxes.[1] Prisons make us safer – or less unsafe – than we would otherwise be.
New website: clemency for Joe R. Hopkins
- Published on 23 August 2019
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My friend Joe R. Hopkins has been in prison in Florida for 28 years. He is in for life. He is a socialist and a member of the World Socialist Party of the US. Several of his articles have appeared in The Libertarian Communist, which is archived on this website.
It is my conviction that Joe's sentence was disproportionate to the gravity of the crime that he committed and failed to take proper account of several mitigating circumstances. He should now be released as an act of clemency.
Memories of a childhood in mental hospital
- Published on 24 January 2019
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Even today children are locked up in mental hospitals where they are deprived of loving care and normal social interaction and subjected to cruel pseudo-treatments like psychiatric drugs and electro-convulsive therapy. The author, currently a prisoner, recalls the two years that he spent in such an institution as a young child.
