The Progressive

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics and culture with a pronounced Leftist perspective. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage to civil rights, civil liberties, and environmentalism. It has opposed nuclear weapons from August 1945 to the present.

October 2002 cover drawn by Mike Flugennock
Enlarge
October 2002 cover drawn by Mike Flugennock

Contents

[edit] History

The Progressive was founded in January 9, 1909, by Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr.. It was first called La Follette's Weekly; in 1929, its name was changed to The Progressive.

The campaigns The Progressive has led include the fight to stay out of World War I, opposition to the Palmer Raids in the early 1920s, calling for action against unemployment during the Depression, exposing McCarthyism in the 50s, and denouncing US involvement in Indochina.

In the 1960s, it was a leading voice in the civil rights movement, publishing the writing of Martin Luther King Jr. five times. In the 1970s, the magazine devoted attention to the emerging environmental movement, kicking it off with a special Earth Day issue in 1970 entitled The Crisis of Survival.

In 1979, The Progressive won national attention for its article by Howard Morland, The H-Bomb Secret: How we got it and why we're telling it, which the US government suppressed for six months. But the magazine prevailed in a landmark First Amendment case, United States v. The Progressive, Inc.. This was a historic case overturning a prior restraint.

In the 1980s, it published groundbreaking stories about U.S. support for death squads in Central America.

During the 1990s, The Progressive campaigned on behalf of immigrants, women on welfare, gays and lesbians, and prisoners. In recent years, it worked to end the economic sanctions on Iraq, to prevent US involvement in the Colombian civil war, to adopt a more liberal policy toward drugs, and to institute public funding of political campaigns.

[edit] Contributors

Throughout the years, The Progressive has published leading social critics such as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Carl Sandburg, George Orwell, Mike Males, A.J. Muste, James Baldwin, I.F. Stone, June Jordan, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Nat Hentoff. It has also published liberal politicians such as Adlai Stevenson, J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders.

Currently the magazine's regular contributors include David Barsamian, Kate Clinton, Susan Douglas, Will Durst, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, Molly Ivins, Fred McKissack, John Nichols, Adolph L. Reed, Jr., and Howard Zinn.

The editor of The Progressive is Matthew Rothschild. Its editorial offices are in Madison, Wisconsin.

[edit] External link

[edit] Criticisms