Upstream

Much of what we learn about U.S. history — from middle school to high school to, well, most of adulthood, is a myth. Oftentimes these tales leave out important information, sometimes they draw misleading conclusions, and a lot of the time they’re simply just made-up stories without any basis in actual history.  This recognition is also true for much of what we’re taught about the American Revolution of 1776. The standard tale is that a handful of so-called “founding fathers” discovered a so-called New World and set forth to establish a nation founded on the ideals of liberty and justice for all. But this is a tale that begins to fall apart pretty quickly once you start to examine it from a materialist perspective — one that starts with actual material conditions and contradictions instead of simply focusing on the ideas of certain thinkers that happen to have made their way onto paper.  Understanding the true history behind the stories we’ve been told not only helps to give context to and explain why we are w