Interview

On May 14, 2013 I spoke with John McDonagh on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan following a demonstration by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance at the T.L.C. (Taxi and Limosine Commission) headquarters at 33 Beaver Street, the goal of which was to stop T.L.C.'s new sweeping 12-point rules package that would allow taxi companies to pass down the costs of repairs and owners summonses onto drivers and raise the lease by $7,000 for the year.

In advance of PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, I sat down with the scholar and translator Susan Bernofsky to discuss the art and technique of translating literature. PEN's Translation Committee, which Bernofsky chairs, has arranged for three translation related events at this year's festival.

An insightful animated short put together by PBS Studios built around an interview given by the late DavidFoster Wallace. Here Wallace, who passed away in 2008, speaks on his early days a budding tennis player and the limitations of having too much ambition for perfection.

Follow Anthony on Twitter: @antbrent

[Installation view, "Soft Power"]

On the 13th of January, 2013 at the Cloister Cafe in New York City, I had the opportunity to speak with Simona Maicanescu, star of the one-woman adaptation of Wallace Shawn's The Fever opening on January 24th at LaMama's first-floor theatre.

Maryann and Raymond Eger started dating when they were teenagers in New Dorp Beach, Staten Island. They have been together for over forty years, raising their family in the same house that Maryann was born in. Now, Hurricane Sandy may force them to leave the place they have always called home.

Follow Jika on Twitter @JikaGlez

Maria arrived to the United States when she was only 2 years old. She has lived in White Plains, New York for most of her life, and while she considers herself to be an American, she is still an undocumented immigrant under U.S. law.

Maria works as a tattoo artist at La Tinta de la Santa Muerte, a tattoo and piercing shop that she runs with her family.

On the Series

Economics from the Left is a series dedicated to bringing to the fore the voices of economists from the left, voices much needed in these times of mainstream mediocrity and irrelevance. The worldviews within the series are increasingly more in tune with what the majority of the disenfrachised across the world are coming to understand as their own systemic state of affairs. Underground, rhizomatic, networked and most importantly, viable, these timely responses to the continuous systemic failures of the Capitalist system erupt with the possibilities of better things to come and solidarity against the inanity of mainstream discourse.