Toward Freedom - Reading The Grapes of Wrath in 2010: Capitalism and Immigration
(Blog Post) John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, following the Joad family as they migrate to California during the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, sheds light on these questions in a way that perhaps every American can relate to. One of the most popular and well-written American books of all time, The Grapes of Wrath gives a very human perspective on the harsh lives of migrants, personified by the Joads – a family of poor sharecroppers from Oklahoma. ... Full Story »
Posted by Andre Heinemann



Being an immigrant myself, frankly most people living in the US today are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants, one can't help but wonder how it came to this? I travel a lot and cross many boarders during the course of a year, but the borders I most dread crossing are the Canadian and, above all, the American border, and that is me just coming home. I wish all foreigners would just stop traveling to the US for a month or two and demand courteous and respectful treatment (including respect for privacy) when entering the US. While I whole-heartedly support people crossing borders legally and in no way want to keep foreigners out of the US, I wonder what would happen when this revenue would suddenly be lost. It is this lost revenue that now causes Arizona backpedaling on the laws they just recently were so proud of having pushed through. 'If you want to know the truth, just follow the money' holds true time and time again. This planet belongs to every human being, no matter where they live. Borders are artificial barriers to entry, arbitrarily created by humans, nothing more. Nobody is better than anyone else and everybody has the right to live and to the pursuit of happiness.