title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: A straight woman character, Kelly described Nala as a sensible and nurturing yet authoritative character, while Amber Leab of Bitch Flicks described her as strong, independent and intelligent. Occupying the role of the film's female lead, Nala is "The Lion King"'s most important female character, who contributes to the film's "small romance element". Often identified as the film's second most important character, Taylor Orci of "The Atlantic" felt that "Nala is really the agent of change in "The Lion King"", dismissing Simba as a "rich, lazy boyfriend." Leab observed that "The Lion King"'s male characters tend to "take the center stage" while "female characters take a backseat to the action." Lenka Křivánková of Masaryk University wrote in her thesis "1990s Hollywood Break-Away Hits: A Feminist Perspective" that she was not particularly surprised by the film's lack of strong roles for women because of its Shakespearean source material, dubbing the film "an old traditional fairy tale with all its traditional features", including patriarchy and monarchism. Writing for the University of Waterloo's Kinema, Vicky Wong believes that Nala reinforces the film's "take your place" motif, reminding main character Simba of his responsibilities. In his book "Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children's Literature", author John Stephens credits Nala with teaching Simba about responsibility – "the lesson the hero must learn before he can become an adult".


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Film critic James Berardinelli identified Nala as "The Lion King"'s "sole significant female character." Including Nala, "The Lion King" has only three major female characters in comparison to the film's total of nine male ones. "Mouse Morality: The Rhetoric of Disney Animated Film" author Annalee R. Ward wrote that Nala's role in "The Lion King" reflected "a 1990s feminist reversal". In her book "Biblical Allusions", author Lindsay Bacher acknowledged that Nala is often depicted as a stronger and more responsible character than Simba, despite observations that "The Lion King"'s female characters lack agency. Leab identified Nala as Simba's "equal" who is "a more naturally sound leader throughout the film, while Simba tends to be comparatively a bit more immature and in need of multiple characters propelling him into responsible/rightful action." Nala is also a more skilled fighter than Simba, proven by the character's ability to overwhelm him in battle, which is reminiscent "of the physical power of lionesses in the real nature." However, as strong as she is, Nala has little impact elsewhere; author Brian K. Pennington wrote in his book "Teaching Religion and Violence" that "Nala's assertions of gender equality are clearly groundless, since only a male lion can stop Scar." "New York"'s David Denbey dismissed Nala's athleticism as nothing more than Disney's attempt to "disguise [the film's] essential boss-daddy ethos." Bacher believes that had "The Lion King" featured Nala as the Pride Lands' hero as opposed to Simba, the film could have avoided having a "patriarchal structure." Leab concluded that "the main and most problematic aspects of the film" remain that "The Lion King" "boils down to the fact that an entire group of strong female characters are unable to confront a single male oppressor; to do so, they need to be led by a dominant male." Leab continued, "It almost sucks more that Nala is such a strong ... female character and still ends up constrained by this plot device", accusing the film of depicting women as weak.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Alongside Faline from "Bambi" (1942) and Maid Marian from "Robin Hood" (1973) added, Nala belongs to a trio of Disney heroines who, after having been separated from their love interests for several years, eventually reunite with them. Stephens believes that Nala and Simba's separation allows the characters to fall in love "properly" upon reuniting as young adults. Because "The Lion King" is loosely based on William Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet", Nala is considered to be the film's "representative" of the "Hamlet" character Ophelia, Hamlet's love interest. Both characters' relationships with and opinions of their love interests are similar, however, there are several differences between the two women. "The Daily Californian"'s Miyako Singer argued that "Nala is no poor, tragic Ophelia", instead resembling a "fierce princess warrior" similar to the strong heroines Disney introduced during the 1990s. Unlike Ophelia, Nala does not succumb to insanity, nor does she eventually die. Instead, Nala establishes herself as a powerful ally by encouraging Simba to return to Pride Rock, and helping the character overthrow Scar. Additionally, Nala is a more stubborn character than Ophelia, the latter of whom is quite passive and obedient. While Ophelia is raised by a single father, Nala is raised solely by her mother, which inspired Allen to believe that Nala is a manifestation of how Ophelia would have turned out had she been raised by a woman instead of a man, concluding, "Nala is able to show the potential that Ophelia could have had.".


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: A young Nala debuted in "The Lion King" (1994) as the daughter of Sarafina and the best friend of Simba, who she often accompanies on his adventures throughout the Pride Lands. Simba invites Nala to visit the forbidden Elephant Graveyard with him, despite his father Mufasa's orders. The cubs are soon ambushed by Shenzi, Banzai and Ed, a trio of hyenas chosen by Simba's treacherous uncle Scar to kill Simba in order to improve his own chances of becoming king, but are ultimately rescued by Mufasa. The following day, however, Nala is devastated to learn from Scar that both Simba and Mufasa have perished during a wildebeest stampede. With both Simba and Mufasa dead, Scar usurps the throne and becomes king and allows hyenas into The Pride Lands. Several years into Scar's tyrannical rule, which has left the kingdom barren and starving, a desperate Nala ventures into the jungle in search of help, where she attempts to eat a warthog named Pumbaa; little does she know that the warthog is actually a friend of Simba's, who is, in fact, alive and well. While defending Pumbaa from Nala, Simba recognizes Nala, and the two finally reunite only to argue over why Simba is refusing to face his responsibilities and return to Pride Rock. Upon learning that Simba has eventually decided to return to Pride Rock and face Scar, Nala travels back to the Pride Lands to assist him. Surprised to find Simba alive, Scar forces his guilt-ridden nephew to "admit" to the pride that he is responsible for Mufasa's death, which was in fact caused by Scar himself by throwing Mufasa off a cliff into the stampede. Upon learning the truth, Simba forces his uncle to admit his act to the pride, and a battle ensues between the pride and Scar's army of hyenas. Simba eventually defeats Scar and becomes king, with Nala ultimately becoming his queen.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: In the film's first direct-to-video sequel "" (1998), Nala appears in a less prominent role as Queen of the Pride Lands and mother of Kiara, the spirited daughter of her and Simba. Nala observes that Kiara, of whom Simba is very protective, has inherited her father's rebellious personality and love of adventure. When Kiara befriends Zira's son Kovu, a young lion from an exiled pride of Scar's followers known as the Outsiders, Nala is much more tolerant of their relationship than Simba, and convinces him to offer Kovu a chance to prove himself trustworthy. At the end of the film, Nala gains Kovu as her son-in-law after he marries Kiara. In "The Lion King 1½" (2004), which focuses instead on Timon and Pumbaa's friendship, Nala's role is virtually identical to that of her appearance in "The Lion King" because filmmakers reused most of the character's footage from the first film.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Voiced by actress Gabrielle Union, Nala reprises her role as Queen of the Pride Lands in the television series "The Lion Guard", the 2016 premiere of which was preceded by the made-for-television film "" (2015). Set within the time gap in "The Lion King II: Simba's Pride", the show revolves around Nala and Simba's son Kion who, being their second-born cub after Kiara, has been tasked with forming the next Lion Guard, a group responsible for protecting the Pride Lands. By the end of season 3, Nala also gains Rani as her daughter-in-law after she marries Kion, who is becoming the king of the Tree of Life and retired as the leader of the Lion Guard. Although a fan of the "Lion King" franchise, Union avoided watching previous "Lion King" films in preparation for the role because she wanted to "put [her] own stamp" on the character.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: On November 1, 2017, it was confirmed that Beyoncé Knowles-Carter would voice adult Nala in Jon Favreau's "The Lion King", which was released on July 19, 2019. Favreau felt that "part of [her joining the film] is that she's got young kids, part of it is that it's a story that feels good for this phase of her life and her career, and she really likes the original very much. And then, of course, there are these wonderful musical numbers that she can be involved with, and my God… she really lives up to her reputation as far as the beauty of her voice and talent". The same day Shahadi Wright Joseph was cast as young Nala in the film. Joseph reprises her role from the Broadway production. Joseph choose to work on the film because "[she knows] Nala inspires little girls because that happened to [her] when [she] was younger. [Joseph] literally said that [she] wanted to be her. She's a great role model". Joseph said that, upon learning that Beyoncé would be voicing the grown-up Nala, she "really had to step [her] game up and think about what Beyoncé would want". The film marks the comeback of the singer since her pregnancy and her first musical film since " Dreamgirls" in 2006.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Nala's role in the 2019 remake is slightly expanded. As a cub, Nala is portrayed as more wary and reluctant when venturing the Elephant Graveyard with Simba, sensing the danger lurking in the place. During Scar's reign, adult Nala develops a rivalry with Shenzi due to their first encounter. She also suggests to Sarabi that they should fight back or leave Pride Lands, but Sarabi turns down both suggestions. This leads Nala to sneak out of Pride Rock the following night so she can get help. Zazu uses himself as a diversion to allow Nala to leave without being caught by Scar and the hyenas. She reunites with Simba at the jungle like in the original but leaves immediately after Simba refuses to return, only for Simba to follow her soon after changing his mind. During the climax, Nala fights against Shenzi and emerges victorious. She then ends up becoming the Pride Lands’ new Queen by marries Simba and gave birth to a cub whom she and Simba named Kopa just like when Nala gave birth to a unnamed newborn cub in the original film.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: In the Broadway musical adaptation of "The Lion King", the role of Nala was originated by Trinidadian-American singer Heather Headley. Her Broadway debut, at first auditioning for the role proved a challenge for the singer due to her "Ragtime" contract, which her agent was eventually successful in getting her released from. Director Julie Taymor felt that Nala's journey in the film was underdeveloped and among the story's weaker elements, and thus decided to "strengthen" the character's narrative for Broadway.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Her role in the musical remains the same as the film except for a scene where during the song "The Madness of King Scar", Nala comes to Scar to urge him to do something about the drought in the Pride Lands, only for Scar to try and seduce her into becoming his queen and mother of his children. Nala refuses since she's already been betrothed to Simba, prince of the Pride Lands as an infant by their parents, Sarafina, Mufasa and Sarabi and flees the Pride Lands to find help.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Critical reception towards Nala has been generally mixed; both film and feminist critics have accused the film of lacking empowering roles for female characters, including Nala. James Berardinelli of "ReelViews" appreciated the fact that "after three animated motion pictures centered upon the love of two people from different worlds", the love story between Nala and Simba has been relegated to that of "a subplot." Desson Howe of "The Washington Post" advised parents to remind their daughters that despite the fact that Nala "pads in the supportive shadows, awaiting her inevitable marriage to Simba, it doesn't mean human girls can't grow up to be monarchs too."


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Nala's role and demeanor during the film's romantic "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" sequence has drawn criticism in regards to her "submissive behaviour". "The New York Times"' Janet Maslin cited the film's lack of a strong heroine among its weaknesses, dismissing Nala and Simba's interaction throughout "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" as "obligatory" and "gratuitous". Joel W. Martin wrote in the "Journal of Religion and Film", "One song later, [Nala and Simba] have fallen in love. Playing one day, they literally tumble down a hillside in the jungle, and he ends up on top of her. This time, she does not bear her teeth, but instead, shows 'bedroom eyes'". Martin ultimately accused the scene's "reversal of positions" of "establish[ing] male dominance." Criticizing the film for "being merely distracting when it could have been both meaningful and instructive", Robert Humanick of "Slant Magazine" wrote, "Small potatoes, then, when Simba's former childhood friend and betrothed queen Nala ... unexpectedly reappears in his duty-free, protein-rich life, demanding he return to his kingly responsibilities and coaxing the lion to sleep tonight with arguably the most blatant 'fuck me now' face to ever appear in a PG-rated film." Kathryn LeBey Davidson of Her Campus believes that Nala's reputation is harmed by her limited screen time and role, ranking her the 19th greatest Disney heroine.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: More recently, the possibility of an incestuous relationship involving Simba, his mate Nala, Scar and Mufasa has surfaced. According to Johnson Cheu, author of "Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability", the fact that Mufasa, Scar, and Simba appear to be the only male lions present in "The Lion King "suggests the possibility that either Mufasa or Scar is Nala's father, which would in turn make Nala either Simba's half-sister or cousin.


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: However, the character has garnered positive reviews as well. Sara Franks-Allen of ScreenCrush wrote that "If being a Disney princess is about being a good role model for little girls, then Nala has a lot in her favor", elaborating, "She's strong enough to take down Simba, ventures out on her own to find help for her pride and calls Simba out for ignoring his responsibilities." Meanwhile, Ella Ceron of "Thought Catalog" ranked Nala 14th on her list of "The 16 Most Awesome Female Characters From Disney Movies". Responsible for introducing the seasoned actress to a younger audience, Kelly's vocal performance as Nala has garnered critical acclaim. Writing for "The Washington Post", Desson Howe hailed Kelly's voice acting as "terrific." Jeremy Gerard of "Variety" commended Kelly for voicing the character "beautifully". PopSugar ranked Kelly among the website's "Favorite Animated Voices", writing, "there are a lot of great voices in Disney's "The Lion King" ... but Moira Kelly has a unique quality to her voice, and I remember reveling in it as a youngster anytime the adult Nala was on the screen." Official Disney Blogs published an article entitled "We All Thought it… But Nala Actually Said It", which cites the character's most revered quotes. The blog also ranked Nala eighth on the website's "Definitive Ranking of Disney Cats" list. In a 2014 interview, actor Eddie Redmayne admitted that Nala was his first "celebrity crush", having been specifically attracted to the character's "sweet" face and singing voice, referring to the experience as his "sexual awakening".


title: Nala (The Lion King)

text: Review of Beyonce's Nala in 2019 remake is generally positive. Brandon Zachary from CBR Exclusive praised Nala's growth in the film is better than the original due to her unexpected rivalry with Shenzi. He enjoys the final fight between Nala and Shenzi at the climax, commenting it "has more weight than any of the other nameless fights that happen in the frenzy" and gives bigger moment for Nala's character. Brian Truitt from USA Today praised Beyoncé's performance as Nala for bringing "all the necessary fire as Nala, a lion willing to do anything to protect her pride." Peter Debrug from Variety commented that Nala is an improvement from her animated version.


title: American Left

text: The American Left consists of individuals and groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists, and socialists with international imperatives are also present within this macro-movement. Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. The left has been involved in both Democratic and Republican parties at different times, having originated in the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to the Federalist Party.


title: American Left

text: Although left-wing politics came to the United States in the 19th century, there are no major left-wing political parties in the United States. Despite existing left-wing factions within the Democratic Party, as well as minor third parties such as the Green Party, Communist Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Workers World Party, Socialist Party, and American Solidarity Party (a Christian democratic party leaning left on economics), none of the parties have ever won a seat in congress. Academic scholars have long studied the reasons why no viable socialist parties have emerged in the United States. Some writers ascribe this to the failures of socialist organization and leadership, some to the incompatibility of socialism and American values and others to the limitations imposed by the United States Constitution. Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were particularly concerned because it challenged orthodox Marxist beliefs that the most advanced industrial country would provide a model for the future of less developed nations. If socialism represented the future, then it should be strongest in the United States. While branches of the Working Men's Party were founded in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, they advocated land reform, universal education and improved working conditions in the form of labor rights, not collective ownership, disappearing after their goals were taken up by Jacksonian democracy. Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor, thought that workers must rely on themselves because any rights provided by government could be revoked.


title: American Left

text: Economic unrest in the 1890s was represented by populism and the People's Party. Although using anti-capitalist rhetoric, it represented the views of small farmers who wanted to protect their own private property, not a call for communism, collectivism, or socialism. Progressives in the early 20th century criticized the way capitalism had developed but were essentially middle class and reformist; however, both populism and progressivism steered some people to left-wing politics and many popular writers of the progressive period were left-wing. Even the New Left relied on radical democratic traditions rather than left-wing ideology. Friedrich Engels thought that the lack of a feudal past was the reason for the American working class holding middle-class values. Writing at a time when American industry was developing quickly towards the mass-production system known as Fordism, Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci saw individualism and "laissez-faire" liberalism as core shared American beliefs. According to the historian David De Leon, American radicalism was rooted in libertarianism and syndicalism rather than communism, Fabianism and social democracy, being opposed to centralized power and collectivism. The character of the American political system is hostile toward third parties and has also been presented as a reason for the absence of a strong socialist party in the United States.


title: American Left

text: Political repression has also contributed to the weakness of the left in the United States. Many cities had Red Squads to monitor and disrupt leftist groups in response to labor unrest such as the Haymarket Riot. During World War II, the Smith Act made membership in revolutionary groups illegal. After the war, Senator Joseph McCarthy used the Smith Act to launch a crusade (McCarthyism) to purge alleged communists from government and the media. In the 1960s, the FBI's COINTELPRO program monitored, infiltrated, disrupted and discredited radical groups in the United States. In 2008, Maryland police were revealed to have added the names and personal information of anti-war protesters and death penalty opponents to a database which was intended to be used for tracking terrorists. Terry Turchie, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI's Counter-terrorism Division, admitted that "one of the missions of the FBI in its counterintelligence efforts was to try to keep these people (progressives and self-described socialists) out of office."


title: American Left

text: Many indigenous tribes in North America practiced what Marxists would later call primitive communism, meaning they practiced economic cooperation among the members of their tribes.


title: American Left

text: The first European socialists to arrive in North America were a Christian sect known as Labadists, who founded the commune of Bohemia Manor in 1683, about west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their communal way of life was based on the communal practices of the apostles and early Christians.


title: American Left

text: The first secular American socialists were German Marxist immigrants who arrived following the Revolutions of 1848, also known as Forty-Eighters. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851 following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the U.S., called "Die Revolution", but It folded after two issues. In 1852 he established the "Proletarierbund", which would become the American Workers' League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S., but it too was short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership.


title: American Left

text: In 1866, William H. Sylvis formed the National Labor Union (NLU). Frederich Albert Sorge, a German who had found refuge in New York following the 1848 revolutions, took Local No. 5 of the NLU into the First International as Section One in the U.S. By 1872, there were 22 sections, which were able to hold a convention in New York. The General Council of the International moved to New York with Sorge as General Secretary, but following internal conflict, it dissolved in 1876.


title: American Left

text: A larger wave of German immigrants followed in the 1870s and 1880s, which included social democratic followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lasalle believed that state aid through political action was the road to revolution and was opposed to trade unionism which he saw as futile, believing that according to the iron law of wages employers would only pay subsistence wages. The Lassalleans formed the Social Democratic Party of North America in 1874 and both Marxists and Lassalleans formed the Workingmen's Party of the United States in 1876. When the Lassalleans gained control in 1877, they changed the name to the Socialist Labor Party of North America (SLP). However, many socialists abandoned political action altogether and moved to trade unionism. Two former socialists, Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers, formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886.


title: American Left

text: Anarchists split from the Socialist Labor Party to form the Revolutionary Socialist Party in 1881. By 1885 they had 7,000 members, double the membership of the SLP. They were inspired by the International Anarchist Congress of 1881 in London. There were two federations in the United States that pledged adherence to the International. A convention of immigrant anarchists in Chicago formed the International Working People's Association (Black International), while a group of Native Americans in San Francisco formed the International Workingmen's Association (Red International). Following a violent demonstration at Haymarket in Chicago in 1886, public opinion turned against anarchism. While very little violence could be attributed to anarchists, the attempted murder of a financier by an anarchist in 1892 and the 1901 assassination of the American president, William McKinley, by a professed anarchist led to the ending of political asylum for anarchists in 1903. In 1919, following the Palmer Raids, anarchists were imprisoned and many, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported. Yet anarchism again reached great public notice with the trial of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, who would be executed in 1927.


title: American Left

text: Daniel De Leon, who became leader of the SLP in 1890, took it in a Marxist direction. Eugene V. Debs, who had been an organizer for the American Railway Union formed the rival Social Democratic Party of America in 1898. Members of the SLP, led by Morris Hillquit and opposed to the De Leon's domineering personal rule and his anti-AFL trade union policy joined with the Social Democrats to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA). In 1905, a convention of socialists, anarchists and trade unionists disenchanted with the bureaucracy and craft unionism of the AFL, founded the rival Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), led by such figures as William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, Helen Keller, De Leon and Debs.


title: American Left

text: The organizers of the IWW disagreed on whether electoral politics could be employed to liberate the working class. Debs left the IWW in 1906, and De Leon was expelled in 1908, forming a rival "Chicago IWW" that was closely linked to the SLP. The (Minneapolis) IWW's ideology evolved into anarcho-syndicalism, or "revolutionary industrial unionism", and avoided electoral political activity altogether. It was successful organizing unskilled migratory workers in the lumber, agriculture, and construction trades in the Western states and immigrant textile workers in the Eastern states and occasionally accepted violence as part of industrial action.


title: American Left

text: The SPA was divided between reformers who believed that socialism could be achieved through gradual reform of capitalism and revolutionaries who thought that socialism could only develop after capitalism was overthrown, but the party steered a center path between the two. The SPA achieved the peak of its success by 1912 when its presidential candidate received 5.9% of the popular vote. The first Socialist congressman, Victor L. Berger, had been elected in 1910. By the beginning of 1912, there were 1,039 Socialist officeholders, including 56 mayors, 305 aldermen and councilmen, 22 police officials, and some state legislators. Milwaukee, Berkeley, Butte, Schenectady, and Flint were run by Socialists. A Socialist challenger to Gompers took one-third of the vote in a challenge for leadership of the AFL. The SPA had 5 English and 8 foreign-language daily newspapers, 262 English and 36 foreign-language weeklies, and 10 English and 2 foreign-language monthlies.


title: American Left

text: American entry into the First World War in 1917 led to a patriotic hysteria aimed against Germans, immigrants, African Americans, class-conscious workers, and Socialists, and the ensuing Espionage Act and Sedition Act were used against them. The government harassed Socialist newspapers, the post office denied the SP use of the mails, and antiwar militants were arrested. Soon Debs and more than sixty IWW leaders were charged under the acts.


title: American Left

text: In 1919, John Reed, Benjamin Gitlow and other Socialists formed the Communist Labor Party of America, while Socialist foreign sections led by C. E. Ruthenberg formed the Communist Party. These two groups would be combined as the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The Communists organized the Trade Union Unity League to compete with the AFL and claimed to represent 50,000 workers.


title: American Left

text: In 1928, following divisions inside the Soviet Union, Jay Lovestone, who had replaced Ruthenberg as general secretary of the CPUSA following his death, joined with William Z. Foster to expel Foster's former allies, James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman, who were followers of Leon Trotsky. Following another Soviet factional dispute, Lovestone and Gitlow were expelled, and Earl Browder became party leader.


title: American Left

text: Cannon, Shachtman, and Martin Abern then set up the Trotskyist Communist League of America, and recruited members from the CPUSA. The League then merged with A. J. Muste's American Workers Party in 1934, forming the Workers Party. New members included James Burnham and Sidney Hook.


title: American Left

text: By the 1930s the Socialist Party was deeply divided between an Old Guard, led by Hillquit, and younger Militants, who were more sympathetic to the Soviet Union, led by Norman Thomas. The Old Guard left the party to form the Social Democratic Federation. Following talks between the Workers Party and the Socialists, members of the Workers Party joined the Socialists in 1936. Once inside they operated as a separate faction. The Trotskyists were expelled from the Socialist Party the following year and set up the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the youth wing of the Socialists, the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) joined them. Shachtman and others were expelled from the SWP in 1940 over their position on the Soviet Union and set up the Workers Party. Within months many members of the new party, including Burnham, had left. The Workers Party was renamed the Independent Socialist League (ISL) in 1949 and ceased being a political party.


title: American Left

text: Some members of the Socialist Party's Old Guard formed the American Labor Party (ALP) in New York State, with support from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The right-wing of this party broke away in 1944 to form the Liberal Party of New York. In the 1936, 1940 and 1944 elections the ALP received 274,000, 417,000, and 496,000 votes in New York State, while the Liberals received 329,000 votes in 1944.


title: American Left

text: In 1958, the Socialist Party welcomed former members of the Independent Socialist League, which before its 1956 dissolution had been led by Max Shachtman. Shachtman had developed a neo-Marxist critique of Soviet communism as "bureaucratic collectivism", a new form of class society that was more oppressive than any form of capitalism. Shachtman's theory was similar to that of many dissidents and refugees from Communism, such as the theory of the "new class" proposed by Yugoslavian dissident Milovan Đilas (Djilas). Shachtman's ISL had attracted youth like Irving Howe, Michael Harrington, Tom Kahn, and Rachelle Horowitz. The YPSL was dissolved, but the party formed a new youth group under the same name.


title: American Left

text: Kahn and Horowitz, along with Norman Hill, helped Bayard Rustin with the civil rights movement. Rustin had helped to spread pacificism and nonviolence to leaders of the civil rights movement, like Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin's circle and A. Philip Randolph organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech.


title: American Left

text: Michael Harrington soon became the most visible socialist in the United States when his "The Other America" became a best seller, following a long and laudatory "New Yorker" review by Dwight Macdonald. Harrington and other socialists were called to Washington, D.C., to assist the Kennedy Administration and then the Johnson Administration's war on poverty and Great Society.


title: American Left

text: Shachtman, Harrington, Kahn, and Rustin argued advocated a political strategy called "realignment" that prioritized strengthening labor unions and other progressive organizations that were already active in the Democratic Party. Contributing to the day-to-day struggles of the civil rights movement and labor unions had gained socialists credibility and influence, and had helped to push politicians in the Democratic Party towards "social-liberal" or social-democratic positions, at least on civil rights and the war on poverty.


title: American Left

text: Harrington, Kahn, and Horowitz were officers and staff-persons of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), which helped to start the New Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The three LID officers clashed with the less experienced activists of SDS, like Tom Hayden, when the latter's Port Huron Statement criticized socialist and liberal opposition to communism and criticized the labor movement while promoting students as agents of social change. LID and SDS split in 1965, when SDS voted to remove from its constitution the ""exclusion clause"" that prohibited membership by communists: The SDS exclusion clause had barred "advocates of or apologists for" "totalitarianism". The clause's removal effectively invited "disciplined cadre" to attempt to "take over or paralyze" SDS, as had occurred to mass organizations in the thirties. Afterwards, Marxism–Leninism, particularly the Progressive Labor Party, helped to write "the death sentence" for SDS, which nonetheless had over 100 thousand members at its peak.


title: American Left

text: In 1972, the Socialist Party voted to rename itself as Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73 to 34 at its December Convention; its National Chairmen were Bayard Rustin, a peace and civil-rights leader, and Charles S. Zimmerman, an officer of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). In 1973, Michael Harrington resigned from SDUSA and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which attracted many of his followers from the former Socialist Party. The same year, David McReynolds and others from the pacifist and immediate-withdrawal wing of the former Socialist Party formed the Socialist Party USA.


title: American Left

text: When the SPA became SDUSA, the majority had 22 of 33 votes on the (January 1973) national committee of SDUSA. Two minority caucuses of SDUSA became associated with two other socialist organizations, each of which was founded later in 1973. Many members of Michael Harrington's ("Coalition") caucus, with 8 of 33 seats on the 1973 SDUSA national committee, joined Harrington's DSOC. Many members of the Debs caucus, with 2 of 33 seats on SDUSA's 1973 national committee, joined the Socialist Party of the United States (SPUSA).


title: American Left

text: From 1979 to 1989, SDUSA members like Tom Kahn organized the AFL–CIO's fundraising of $300,000, which bought printing presses and other supplies requested by "Solidarnosc" (Solidarity), the independent labor-union of Poland. SDUSA members helped form a bipartisan coalition (of the Democratic and Republican parties) to support the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose first President was Carl Gershman. The NED publicly allocated $4 million of public aid to Solidarity through 1989.


title: American Left

text: In the 1990s, anarchists attempted to organize across North America around Love and Rage, which drew several hundred activists. By 1997 anarchist organizations began to proliferate. One successful anarchist movement was Food not Bombs, that distributed free vegetarian meals. Anarchists received significant media coverage for their disruption of the 1999 World Trade Organization conference, called the Battle in Seattle, where the Direct Action Network was organized. Most organizations were short-lived and anarchism went into decline following a reaction by the authorities that was increased after the September 11 attacks in 2001.


title: American Left

text: In the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke received 2,882,000 votes or 2.74% of the popular vote on the Green Party ticket.


title: American Left

text: Filmmaker Michael Moore directed a series of popular movies examining the United States and its government policy from a left perspective, including "Bowling for Columbine", "Sicko", "" and "Fahrenheit 9/11", which was the top grossing documentary film of all time.


title: American Left

text: In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protests demanding accountability for the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and against inequality started in Manhattan, New York and soon spread to other cities around the country, becoming known more broadly as the Occupy movement.


title: American Left

text: Kshama Sawant was elected to the Seattle City Council as an openly socialist candidate in 2013. She was re-elected in 2015.


title: American Left

text: Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who runs as an independent, won his first election as mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981 and was re-elected for three additional terms. He then represented Vermont in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 until 2007, and was subsequently elected U.S. Senator for Vermont in 2007, a position which he still holds. Although he did not win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, Sanders won the fifth highest number of primary votes of any candidate in a nomination race, Democratic or Republican, and had caused an upset in Michigan and many other states.


title: American Left

text: Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the NY-14 U.S House primary and went on to win her general election. She is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress and ran on a progressive platform. Broadly, the modern American Left is characterized by organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the US with over 90,000 members. The DSA has seen a huge resurgence in growth with Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and continues to grow despite having had a membership of around 5,000 members only a decade ago. Unlike other parts of the modern left like the Socialist Equality Party, the DSA is not a political party and its affiliated candidates usually run on a Democratic or independent ticket. The most widely circulated socialist publication in the US, the "Jacobin", along with other leftist publications like "Dissent" and "Monthly Review", have all become increasingly popular with the resurgence of democratic socialism post-Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.


title: American Left

text: Anarchism in the United States first emerged from individualistic, free-thinking, and utopian socialism as typified by the work of thinkers such as Josiah Warren and Henry David Thoreau. This was overshadowed by a mass, cosmopolitan, and working-class movement between the 1880s and 1940s, whose members were mostly recent immigrants, including those of German, Italian, Jewish, Mexican, and Russian descent.


title: American Left

text: Prominent figures of this period include Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Carlo Tresca, and Ricardo Flores Magón. The anarchist movement achieved notoriety due to violent clashes with police, assassinations, and sensational Red Scare propaganda, but most anarchist activity took place in the realm of agitation and labor organizing among largely immigrant workers. Anarchist organizations include:


title: American Left

text: De Leonism, occasionally known as Marxism–De Leonism, is a libertarian Marxist ideological variant developed by the American activist Daniel De Leon.


title: American Left

text: Founded in 1876, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) was a reformist party but adopted the theories of Karl Marx and Daniel De Leon in 1900, leading to the defection of reformers to the new Socialist Party of America (SPA). It contested elections, including every election for President of the United States from 1892 to 1976. Some of its prominent members included Jack London and James Connolly. By 2009 it had lost its premises and ceased publishing its newspaper, "The People".


title: American Left

text: In 1970, a group of dissidents left the SLP to form Socialist Reconstruction. Socialist Reconstruction then expelled some of its dissidents, who formed the Socialist Forum Group.


title: American Left

text: The Socialist Party of America was founded in 1901. Eugene Debs ran as the party's presidential candidate five times and received 6% of the popular vote in 1912. The party suffered political repression during World War I due to its pacifist stance and broke into factions over whether or not to support the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and whether or not to join the Comintern. The Socialist Party was re-formed in the mid-1920s but stopped running candidates after 1956, having been undercut by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the resulting leftward movement of the Democratic Party to its right, and by the Communist Party on its left. In the early 1970s, the party split into tiny factions.


title: American Left

text: After 1960 the Socialist Party also functioned "as an educational organization". Members of the Debs–Thomas Socialist Party helped to develop leaders of social-movement organizations, including the civil-rights movement and the New Left. Similarly, contemporary social-democratic and democratic-socialist organizations are known because of their members' activities in other organizations.


title: American Left

text: Michael Harrington resigned from Social Democrats, USA early in 1973. He rejected the SDUSA (majority Socialist Party) position on the Vietnam War, which demanded an end to bombings and a negotiated peace settlement. Harrington called rather for an immediate cease fire and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. Even before the December 1972 convention, Michael Harrington had resigned as an Honorary Chairperson of the Socialist Party. In the early spring of 1973, he resigned his membership in SDUSA. That same year, Harrington and his supporters formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC). At its start, DSOC had 840 members, of which 2 percent served on its national board; approximately 200 had been members of Social Democrats, USA or its predecessors whose membership was then 1,800, according to a 1973 profile of Harrington.


title: American Left

text: The DSOC became a member of the Socialist International. It supported progressive Democrats including DSOC member Congressman Ron Dellums and worked to help network activists in the Democratic Party and in labor unions.


title: American Left

text: In 1982, the DSOC established the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) upon merging with the New American Movement, an organization of democratic socialists mostly from the New Left. Its high-profile members included Congressman Major Owens, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congressman Ron Dellums, multiple state legislators (Sara Innamorato, Lee J. Carter, Summer Lee, Julia Salazar), and William Winpisinger, President of the International Association of Machinists. In 2019 at the Democratic Socialists of America convention in Atlanta, Georgia, DSA confirmed its support for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2020 United States presidential election.


title: American Left

text: Since the 2016 United States presidential election, the DSA has grown to more than 50,000 members, making it the largest socialist organization in the United States. In 2017, DSA left the Socialist International, citing its support of neoliberal economic policies.


title: American Left

text: The Socialist Party of America changed its name to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) in 1972. In electoral politics, SDUSA's National Co-chairman Bayard Rustin stated that its goal was to transform the Democratic Party into a social-democratic party. SDUSA sponsored a conferences that featured discussions and debates over proposed resolutions, some of which were adopted as organizational statements. For these conferences, SDUSA invited a range of academic, political, and labor-union leaders. These meetings also functioned as reunions for political activists and intellectuals, some of whom worked together for decades.


title: American Left

text: Many SDUSA members served as organizational leaders, especially in labor unions. Rustin served as President of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and was succeeded by Norman Hill. Tom Kahn served as Director of International Affairs for the AFL–CIO. Sandra Feldman served as President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Rachelle Horowitz served as Political Director for the AFT and serves on the board for the National Democratic Institute. Other members of SDUSA specialized in international politics. Penn Kemble served as the acting director of the U.S. Information Agency in the Presidency of Bill Clinton. After having served as the U.S. Representative to the U.N.'s Committee on human rights during the first Reagan Administration, Carl Gershman has served as the President of the National Endowment for Democracy.


title: American Left

text: In the Socialist Party before 1973, members of the Debs Caucus opposed endorsing or otherwise supporting Democratic Party candidates. They began working outside the Socialist Party with antiwar groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society. Some locals voted to disaffiliate with SDUSA and more members resigned; they re-organized as the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) while continuing to operate the old Debs Caucus paper, the "Socialist Tribune", later renamed "The Socialist". The SPUSA continues to run local and national candidates, including Dan La Botz' 2010 campaign for US Senate in Ohio that won over 25,000 votes and Pat Noble's successful election onto the Red Bank Regional High School Board of Education in 2012 and subsequent re-election in 2015. The SPUSA has run or endorsed a presidential ticket in every election since its founding, most recently nominating Greens party co-founder and activist Howie Hawkins in the 2020 presidential election.


title: American Left

text: The American Solidarity Party (ASP) is a fiscally progressive and socially conservative Christian-democratic political party with a social-democratic faction in the United States. It favors a social market economy with a distributist flavor, and seeks "widespread economic participation and ownership" through supporting small business, as well as providing a social safety net programs. It also has a minor anti-capitalism faction. The party's name was inspired by Solidarity ("Solidarnosc"), the independent labor union of Poland.


title: American Left

text: The Green Party of the United States is a eco-socialist party whose platform emphasizes environmentalism, non-hierarchical participatory democracy, social justice, respect for diversity, peace, and nonviolence. At their 2016 party convention in Houston, the party changed its platform to support a decentralized form of eco-socialism based on workplace democracy.


title: American Left

text: In the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke received 2,882,955 votes or 2.74% of the popular vote.


title: American Left

text: In the 2016 election, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka qualified to be on the ballot in 44 states and the District of Columbia, with 3 additional states allowing write-in votes.


title: American Left

text: The Greens/Green Party USA is a much smaller group focusing on education and local, grassroots organizing.


title: American Left

text: Marxism–Leninism has been advocated and practiced by American communists of many kinds, including pro-Soviet, Trotskyist, Maoist, or independent.


title: American Left

text: The American Party of Labor was founded in 2008 and adheres to Hoxhaism. It has its origins in the activities of the American communist Jack Shulman, former secretary of Communist Party USA leader William Z. Foster; and the British Marxist-Leninist Bill Bland. Members of the American Party of Labor had previously been active in Alliance Marxist-Leninist and International Struggle Marxist-Leninist, two organizations founded by Shulman and Bland. The present-day APL sees itself as upholding and continuing the work of Shulman and Bland. Although not a formal member of the International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle), the APL is generally supportive of its line and maintains friendly relations with a number of foreign communist parties including the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), the Turkish Labour Party (EMEP), the Labour Party of Iran, and the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist).


title: American Left

text: It has been involved in a number of events, such as a 2013 protest against the Golden Dawn in Chicago, a 2014 meeting on the Ukraine and a protest against Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. A significant program of the American Party of Labor is "Red Aid: Service to the People", which involves providing food, clothing and other assistance to the poor and homeless in impoverished communities, and has been established in multiple US cities.


title: American Left

text: Its current organ, "The Red Phoenix", carries articles concerning contemporary political issues and theoretical and historical questions.


title: American Left

text: Established in 1919, the Communist Party USA (CP) claimed a membership of 100,000 in 1939 and maintained a membership over 50,000 until the 1950s. However, the 1956 invasion of Hungary, McCarthyism and investigations by the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) contributed to its steady decline despite a brief increase in membership from the mid-1960s. Its estimated membership in 1996 was between 4,000 and 5,000. From the 1940s, the FBI attempted to disrupt the CP, including through its Counter‐Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).


title: American Left

text: Several Communist front organizations founded in the 1950s continued to operate at least into the 1990s, notably the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born, the Labor Research Association, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and the U.S. Peace Council. Other groups with less direct links to the CP include the National Lawyers Guild, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Many leading members of the New Left, including some members of the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization were members of the National Lawyers Guild. However, CP attempts to influence the New Left were mostly unsuccessful. The CP attracted media attention in the 1970s with the membership of the high-profile activist, Angela Davis.


title: American Left

text: The CP publishes the "People's World" and "Political Affairs". Beginning in 1988, the CP stopped running candidates for President of the United States. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was found that the Soviet Union had provided funding to the CP throughout its history. The CP had always supported the positions of the Soviet Union.


title: American Left

text: Because of the continued slip into an ideology of social democracy that began after the death of CPUSA National Chair Gus Hall, dissident groups began to form around the country that were opposed to the increased pro-capitalist policies of the CPUSA National Committee. There was a fear among members that the CP was on the road to liquidation as a political party. There were several telltale signs that this was happening. The new National Chairman of the CP, Sam Webb began exploring ways to fund the party which suffered a great loss of financial assistance when Mikail Gorbachev assumed leadership of the CP of the Soviet Union. The party began to invest in real estate around the country and used party funds to refurbish its headquarters in New York. The CP leased out several floors of their headquarters to local businesses such as Wix, a website design company. They also leased out the first floor to an art supply company, closing the bookshop of International Publishers, the CP publishing company. Currently, there are no CP bookstores around the country. The CP then made the decision not to print its weekly newspaper, the "People's Weekly World". The paper is only available online. The party's online theoretical journal, "Political Affairs", was also discontinued. Currently, the CP does not have an organizing department. Dues books have been continued. No attempt has been made to establish ties with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) which is the largest socialist-communist trade union federation in the world.


title: American Left

text: The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) was founded in 1985 through the mergers of Maoist and Marxist–Leninist organizations active near the end of the New Communist Movement. The FRSO grew out of an initial merger of the Proletarian Unity League and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. Some years later, the Organization for Revolutionary Unity and the Amilcar Cabral/Paul Robeson Collective merged into the FRSO.


title: American Left

text: In 1999, the FRSO split into two organizations, both of which retain the FRSO name to this day. The split primarily concerned the organization's continued adherence to Marxism–Leninism, with one side of the FRSO upholding Marxism–Leninism and the other side preferring to pursue a strategy of regrouping and rebuilding the Left in the United States. These organizations are commonly identified through their publications, which are "Fight Back! News" and "Freedom Road", and their websites, (frso.org) and (freedomroad.org), respectively.


title: American Left

text: In 2010, members of the FRSO (frso.org) and other anti-war and international solidarity activists were raided by the FBI. Secret documents left by the FBI revealed that agents planned to question activists about their involvement in the FRSO (frso.org) and their international solidarity work related to Colombia and Palestine. The FRSO (frso.org) works in the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.


title: American Left

text: Both FRSO groups continue to uphold the right of national self-determination for African-Americans and Chicanos. The FRSO (frso.org) works in the labor movement, the student movement, and the oppressed nationalities movement.


title: American Left

text: The Party for Socialism and Liberation was formed in 2004 as a result of a split in the Workers World Party. The San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. branches left almost in their entirety and the party has grown significantly since then. The new party took control of the Worker's World Party front organization Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) at the time of the split.


title: American Left

text: Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the "Seize BP" campaign, which organized demonstrations calling for the U.S. federal government to seize BP's assets and place them in trust to pay for damages.


title: American Left

text: The PSL has also been active in the antiracist movement, participating in protests across the country throughout 2020. Several organizers in their Denver branch were arrested for their involvement in protests against the death of Elijah McClain.


title: American Left

text: The Progressive Labor Party (PL) was formed as the Progressive Labor Movement in 1962 by a group of former members of the Communist Party USA, most of whom had quit or been expelled for supporting China in the Sino-Soviet split. To them, the Soviet Union was imperialist. They competed with the CP and SWP for influence in the anti-war movement and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), forming the "May 2 Movement" as its anti-war front organization. Its major publications are "Progressive Labor" and the "Marxist–Leninist Quarterly". They later abandoned Maoism, refusing to follow the line of any foreign country and formed the front group, the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), in 1973. Much of their activity included violent confrontations against far-right groups, such as Nazis and Klansmen. While membership in 1978 was about 1,500, by 1996 it had fallen below 500.


title: American Left

text: Formed in 1969 as the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU), the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) had almost one thousand members in twenty-five states by 1975. Its main founder and long-time leader, Bob Avakian, a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizer had fought off attempts for control of the SDS by the Progressive Labor Party. The party has been unwaveringly Maoist. Working through the U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association, the party arranged for visits by Americans to China. Their newspaper, "Revolutionary Worker" has featured articles supportive of Albania and North Korea, while the party, unusually for the Left, has been hostile to school busing, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and gay rights. The party fell out of favour with the Chinese government after the death of Mao Zedong, partly because of the personality cult of the RCP leader. By the mid-1990s the party numbered fewer than 500 members.


title: American Left

text: The Workers World Party (WWP) was formed in 1958 by fewer than one hundred people who left the Socialist Workers Party after the SWP supported socialists in New York State elections. Their publication is "Workers World". The party's position has developed from Trotskyism to independent Marxism–Leninism, supporting all Marxist states. They have been active in organizing protests against far-right groups. They were also notable for being the main US supporter of the former Ethiopian communist government. In the 1990s their membership was estimated at 200.


title: American Left

text: Their front group, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) organized the early protests against the war in Iraq, which brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C. before the war had even begun. However, following a split in the party in 2004, some members left to form the Party for Socialism and Liberation, taking leadership of A.N.S.W.E.R. with them. The Workers World Party then formed the Troops Out Now Coalition.


title: American Left

text: Many Trotskyist parties and organizations exist that advocate communism. These groups are distinct from Marxist–Leninist groups in that they generally adhere to the theory and writings of Leon Trotsky. Many owe their organizational heritage to the Socialist Workers Party, which emerged as a split-off from the CP.


title: American Left

text: The Freedom Socialist Party began in 1966 as the Seattle branch of the Socialist Workers Party that had split from the party and joined with others who had not belonged to the SWP. They differed with the SWP on the role of African Americans, whom they saw as being the future vanguard of the revolution, and of women, emphasizing their rights, which they called "socialist feminism". Clara Fraser came to lead the party and was to form the group Radical Women.


title: American Left

text: The US Section of the International Marxist Tendency is an American Trotskyist organization formed in 2002. The IMT is inspired by the theories of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, as well as British Trotskyist Ted Grant, and publishes a regular newspaper called "Socialist Revolution" (formerly "Socialist Appeal"). It also supports a publishing house called Marxist Books. The organization argues for a break with the Democrats and Republicans, and the formation of a mass working-class party with a socialist program.


title: American Left

text: The International Socialist Organization (ISO) was a group founded in 1977 as a section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST). The organization held Leninist positions on imperialism and considered itself a vanguard party, preparing the ground for a revolutionary party to hypothetically succeed it. The organization held a Trotskyist critique of nominally socialist states, which it considered class societies. In contrast to this, the ISO advocated the tradition of "socialism from below". It was strongly influenced by the perspectives of Hal Draper and Tony Cliff. It broke from the IST in 2001 but continued to exist as an independent organization for the next eighteen years.


title: American Left

text: The ISO emphasized educational work on the socialist tradition. Branches also took part in activism against the Iraq War, against police brutality, against the death penalty, and in labor strikes, among other social movements. At its peak in 2013, the group had as many as 1500 members. The organization argued that it was the largest revolutionary socialist group in the United States at that time. The ISO found itself in crisis early 2019, largely stemming from a scandal over the leadership's response to a 2013 sexual misconduct case. The ISO voted to dissolve itself in March 2019.


title: American Left

text: Socialist Action was formed in 1983 by members, almost all of whom had been expelled from the Socialist Workers Party. Its members remained loyal to Trotskyist principles, including "permanent revolution", that they claimed the SWP had abandoned. Strongly critical of authoritarian regimes, including the Soviet Union and Iran, it championed socialist revolution in third world countries. It was an active participant in the Cleveland Emergency National Conference in September 1984, set up to challenge American policy in Central America, and played a major role in organizing demonstrations against American action against the Sandanista rebels in Nicaragua.


title: American Left

text: Although Socialist Alternative has sometimes pursued a democratic socialist strategy, most notably in Seattle where Kshama Sawant was elected to the Seattle City Council as an openly socialist candidate in 2013., it identifies as a Trotskyist political organization. Socialist Alternative is the U.S. affiliate of the International Socialist Alternative, which is a Brussels-based international of Trotskyist political parties.


title: American Left

text: The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a political party that formed after a 1964 ideological rupture with Socialist Workers Party over the issue of their support of the Fidel Castro government in Cuba, The SEP are composed of Trotskyists and are affiliated with the World Socialist Web Site.


title: American Left

text: With fewer than one thousand members in 1996, the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) was the second-largest Marxist–Leninist party in the United States. Formed by supporters of Leon Trotsky, they believed that the Soviet Union and other Communist states remained "worker's states" and should be defended against reactionary forces, although their leadership had sold out the workers. They became members of the Trotskyist Fourth International. Their publications include The Militant and a theoretical journal, the International Socialist Review. Two groups that broke with the SWP in the 1960s were the Spartacist League and the Workers League (which would later evolve into the Socialist Equality Party). The SWP has been involved in numerous violent scuffles. In 1970 the party successfully sued the FBI for COINTELPRO, where the FBI opened and copied mail, planted informants, wiretapped members' homes, bugged conventions, and broke into party offices. The party fields candidates for President of the United States.


title: American Left

text: Solidarity is a socialist organization associated with the journal "Against the Current". Solidarity is an organizational descendant of International Socialists, a Trotskyist organization based on the proposition that the Soviet Union was not a "degenerate workers' state" (as in orthodox Trotskyism) but rather "bureaucratic collectivism", a new and especially repressive class society.


title: American Left

text: The Spartacist League was formed in 1966 by members of the Socialist Workers Party who had been expelled two years earlier after accusing the SWP of adopting "petty bourgeois ideology". Beginning with a membership of around 75, their numbers dropped to 40 by 1969 although they grew to several hundred in the early 1970s, with Maoists disillusioned with China's new foreign policy joining the group.


title: American Left

text: The League saw the Soviet Union as a "deformed workers' state", and supported it over some policies. It is committed to Trotskyist "permanent revolution", rejecting Mao's peasant guerilla warfare model. The group's publication is "Workers Vanguard". Much of the group's activity has involved stopping Ku Klux Klan and Nazi rallies.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: The Mil Mi-6 (NATO reporting name Hook), given the article number "izdeliye 50" and company designation V-6, is a Soviet/Russian heavy transport helicopter that was designed by the Mil design bureau. It was built in large numbers for both military and civil roles and used to be the largest helicopter in production until Mil Mi-26 was put in production in 1980.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: The Mi-6 resulted from a joint civil-military requirement for a very large vertical-lift aircraft, which could be used to add mobility in military operations as well as assist in the exploration and development of the expansive central and eastern regions of the USSR. Flown for the first time on 5 June 1957, the Mi-6 was the first Soviet turboshaft-powered production helicopter.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: The R-7 gearbox and rotor head developed for the project have a combined weight of 3200 kg, which is greater than the two turboshaft engines.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: Variable-incidence winglets were first mounted on the craft's sides in 1960 to the 30 pre-series units. These wings provide approximately 20% of the lift required during cruise flight.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: The Mi-6 was by far the world's largest helicopter when it was designed in 1954–56; with a maximum load capacity of 12,000 kg. It was also the world's fastest helicopter; with a top speed of . In its early days, the Mi-6 set many world records, including one for sheer circuit speed at 340 km/h (211 mph). , the Mi-6 still holds the FAI record of fastest 5-tonne lift over 1,000 km, in which it flew 284 km/h in 1962.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: From 1959 to 1972 at least 500 units were built for various general-transport, utility, firefighting and flying-crane duties, the last two sub-types not being fitted with the large fixed wings, which in other versions bear part of the lift in cruising flight and thus enable higher speeds to be attained. The twin nose wheels and large low-pressure main wheels do not retract.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: Normally flown by a crew of five or more, the Mi-6 seats 65 armed troops and can alternatively carry 41 stretcher (litter) patients and two attendants, or a wide range of bulky loads, including vehicles, loaded through rear clamshell doors. In exercises, fleets of these aircraft have airlifted many kinds of weapons, including FROG-7 rockets on their PT-76 tracked chassis, as well as large radars and heavy artillery. All Soviet armoured personnel carriers, armoured cars and light mechanised infantry combat vehicles can be carried.


title: Mil Mi-6

text: The CIS Interstate Aviation Committee cancelled the Mi-6's Type Certificate in October 2002 after the crash of RA-21074 in the Taimyr Peninsula. There have also been reports that the wooden tail rotor blades have reached the end of their service life.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: In the human brain, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is the frontal part of the cingulate cortex that resembles a "collar" surrounding the frontal part of the corpus callosum. It consists of Brodmann areas 24, 32, and 33.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: It is involved in certain higher-level functions, such as attention allocation, reward anticipation, decision-making, ethics and morality, impulse control (e.g. performance monitoring and error detection), and emotion.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The anterior cingulate cortex can be divided anatomically based on cognitive (dorsal), and emotional (ventral) components. The dorsal part of the ACC is connected with the prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex, as well as the motor system and the frontal eye fields, making it a central station for processing top-down and bottom-up stimuli and assigning appropriate control to other areas in the brain. By contrast, the ventral part of the ACC is connected with the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and anterior insula, and is involved in assessing the salience of emotion and motivational information. The ACC seems to be especially involved when effort is needed to carry out a task, such as in early learning and problem-solving.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: On a cellular level, the ACC is unique in its abundance of specialized neurons called spindle cells, or von Economo neurons. These cells are a relatively recent occurrence in evolutionary terms (found only in humans and other primates, cetaceans, and elephants) and contribute to this brain region's emphasis on addressing difficult problems, as well as the pathologies related to the ACC.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: A typical task that activates the ACC involves eliciting some form of conflict within the participant that can potentially result in an error. One such task is called the Eriksen flanker task and consists of an arrow pointing to the left or right, which is flanked by two distractor arrows creating either compatible (««<) or incompatible (»<») trials. Another very common conflict-inducing stimulus that activates the ACC is the Stroop task, which involves naming the color ink of words that are either congruent ( written in red) or incongruent ( written in blue). Conflict occurs because people's reading abilities interfere with their attempt to correctly name the word's ink color. A variation of this task is the "Counting-Stroop", during which people count either neutral stimuli ('dog' presented four times) or interfering stimuli ('three' presented four times) by pressing a button. Another version of the "Stroop task" named the "Emotional Counting Stroop" is identical to the "Counting Stroop" test, except that it also uses segmented or repeated emotional words such as "murder" during the interference part of the task. Thus ACC affects decision making of a task


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Many studies attribute specific functions such as error detection, anticipation of tasks, attention, motivation, and modulation of emotional responses to the ACC. Its roles also appear to extend to the autonomic nervous system, regulating blood pressure and heart rate in response to behavioural stressors.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The most basic form of ACC theory states that the ACC is involved with error detection. Evidence has been derived from studies involving a Stroop task. However, ACC is also active during correct response, and this has been shown using a letter task, whereby participants had to respond to the letter X after an A was presented and ignore all other letter combinations with some letters more competitive than others. They found that for more competitive stimuli ACC activation was greater.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: A similar theory poses that the ACC's primary function is the monitoring of conflict. In Eriksen flanker task, incompatible trials produce the most conflict and the most activation by the ACC. Upon detection of a conflict, the ACC then provides cues to other areas in the brain to cope with the conflicting control systems.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Evidence for ACC as having an error detection function comes from observations of error-related negativity (ERN) uniquely generated within the ACC upon error occurrences. A distinction has been made between an ERP following incorrect responses (response ERN) and a signal after subjects receive feedback after erroneous responses (feedback ERN).


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Reinforcement learning ERN theory poses that there is a mismatch between actual response execution and appropriate response execution, which results in an ERN discharge. Furthermore, this theory predicts that, when the ACC receives conflicting input from control areas in the brain, it determines and allocates which area should be given control over the motor system. Varying levels of dopamine are believed to influence the optimization of this filter system by providing expectations about the outcomes of an event. The ERN, then, serves as a beacon to highlight the violation of an expectation. Research on the occurrence of the feedback ERN shows evidence that this potential has larger amplitudes when violations of expectancy are large. In other words, if an event is not likely to happen, the feedback ERN will be larger if no error is detected. Other studies have examined whether the ERN is elicited by varying the cost of an error and the evaluation of a response.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: In these trials, feedback is given about whether the participant has gained or lost money after a response. Amplitudes of ERN responses with small gains and small losses were similar. No ERN was elicited for any losses as opposed to an ERN for no wins, even though both outcomes are the same. The finding in this paradigm suggests that monitoring for wins and losses is based on the relative expected gains and losses. If you get a different outcome than expected, the ERN will be larger than for expected outcomes. ERN studies have also localized specific functions of the ACC.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The rostral ACC seems to be active after an error commission, indicating an error response function, whereas the dorsal ACC is active after both an error and feedback, suggesting a more evaluative function (for fMRI evidence, see also ). This evaluation is emotional in nature and highlights the amount of distress associated with a certain error. Summarizing the evidence found by ERN studies, it appears to be the case that ACC receives information about a stimulus, selects an appropriate response, monitors the action, and adapts behavior if there is a violation of expectancy.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Studies examining task performance related to error and conflict processes in patients with ACC damage cast doubt on the necessity of this region for these functions. The error detection and conflict monitoring theories cannot explain some evidence obtained by electrical studies that demonstrate the effects of giving feedback after responses because the theory describes the ACC as strictly monitoring conflict, not as having evaluative properties.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: It has been stated that "The cognitive consequences of anterior cingulate lesions remain rather equivocal, with a number of case reports of intact general neuropsychological and executive function in the presence of large anterior dorsal cingulate lesions. For an alternative view of anterior cingulate, see Rushworth's review (2007).


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in processing both the detection and appraisal of social processes, including social exclusion. When exposed to repeated personal social evaluative tasks, non-depressed women showed reduced fMRI BOLD activation in the dACC on the second exposure, while women with a history of depression exhibited enhanced BOLD activation. This differential activity may reflect enhanced rumination about social evaluation or enhanced arousal associated with repeated social evaluation.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: A more comprehensive and recent theory describes the ACC as a more active component and poses that it detects and monitors errors, evaluates the degree of the error, and then suggests an appropriate form of action to be implemented by the motor system. Earlier evidence from electrical studies indicate the ACC has an evaluative component, which is indeed confirmed by fMRI studies.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The dorsal and rostral areas of the ACC both seem to be affected by rewards and losses associated with errors. During one study, participants received monetary rewards and losses for correct and incorrect responses, respectively.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Largest activation in the dACC was shown during loss trials. This stimulus did not elicit any errors, and, thus, error detection and monitoring theories cannot fully explain why this ACC activation would occur. The dorsal part of the ACC seems to play a key role in reward-based decision-making and learning. The rostral part of the ACC, on the other hand, is believed to be involved more with affective responses to errors. In an interesting expansion of the previously described experiment, the effects of rewards and costs on ACC's activation during error commission was examined. Participants performed a version of the Eriksen flanker task using a set of letters assigned to each response button instead of arrows.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Targets were flanked by either a congruent or an incongruent set of letters. Using an image of a thumb (up, down, or neutral), participants received feedback on how much money they gained or lost. The researchers found greater rostral ACC activation when participants lost money during the trials. The participants reported being frustrated when making mistakes. Because the ACC is intricately involved with error detection and affective responses, it may very well be that this area forms the bases of self-confidence. Taken together, these findings indicate that both the dorsal and rostral areas are involved in evaluating the extent of the error and optimizing subsequent responses. A study confirming this notion explored the functions of both the dorsal and rostral areas of the ACC involved using a saccade task.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Participants were shown a cue that indicated whether they had to make either a pro-saccade or an anti-saccade. An anti-saccade requires suppression of a distracting cue because the target appears in the opposite location causing the conflict. Results showed differing activation for the rostral and dorsal ACC areas. Early correct anti-saccade performance was associated with rostral activation. The dorsal area, on the other hand, was activated when errors were committed, but also for correct responses.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Whenever the dorsal area was active, fewer errors were committed providing more evidence that the ACC is involved with effortful performance. The second finding showed that, during error trials, the ACC activated later than for correct responses, clearly indicating a kind of evaluative function.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The ACC area in the brain is associated with many functions that are correlated with conscious experience. Greater ACC activation levels were present in more emotionally aware female participants when shown short 'emotional' video clips. Better emotional awareness is associated with improved recognition of emotional cues or targets, which is reflected by ACC activation.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The idea of awareness being associated with the ACC is supported by some evidence, in that it seems to be the case that, when subjects' responses are not congruent with actual responses, a larger error-related negativity is produced.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: One study found an ERN even when subjects were not aware of their error. Awareness may not be necessary to elicit an ERN, but it could influence the effect of the amplitude of the feedback ERN. Relating to the reward-based learning theory, awareness could modulate expectancy violations. Increased awareness could result in decreased violations of expectancies and decreased awareness could achieve the opposite effect. Further research is needed to completely understand the effects of awareness on ACC activation.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: In "The Astonishing Hypothesis", Francis Crick identifies the anterior cingulate, to be specific the anterior cingulate sulcus, as a likely candidate for the center of free will in humans. Crick bases this suggestion on scans of patients with specific lesions that seem to interfere with their sense of independent will, such as alien hand syndrome.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The ACC registers physical pain as shown in functional MRI studies that showed an increase in signal intensity, typically in the posterior part of area 24 of the ACC, that was correlated with pain intensity. When this pain-related activation was accompanied by attention-demanding cognitive tasks (verbal fluency), the attention-demanding tasks increased signal intensity in a region of the ACC anterior and/or superior to the pain-related activation region. The ACC is the cortical area that has been most frequently linked to the experience of pain. It appears to be involved in the emotional reaction to pain rather than to the perception of pain itself.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Evidence from social neuroscience studies have suggested that, in addition to its role in physical pain, the ACC may also be involved in monitoring painful social situations as well, such as exclusion or rejection. When participants felt socially excluded in an fMRI virtual ball throwing game in which the ball was never thrown to the participant, the ACC showed activation. Further, this activation was correlated with a self-reported measure of social distress, indicating that the ACC may be involved in the detection and monitoring of social situations which may cause social/emotional pain, rather than just physical pain.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Studying the effects of damage to the ACC provides insights into the type of functions it serves in the intact brain. Behavior that is associated with lesions in the ACC includes: inability to detect errors, severe difficulty with resolving stimulus conflict in a Stroop task, emotional instability, inattention, and akinetic mutism. There is evidence that damage to ACC is present in patients with schizophrenia, where studies have shown patients have difficulty in dealing with conflicting spatial locations in a Stroop-like task and having abnormal ERNs. Participants with ADHD were found to have reduced activation in the dorsal area of the ACC when performing the Stroop task. Together, these findings corroborate results from imaging and electrical studies about the variety of functions attributed to the ACC.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: There is evidence that this area may have a role in obsessive–compulsive disorder due to the fact that what appears to be an unnaturally low level of glutamate activity in this region has been observed in patients with the disorder, in contrast to many other brain regions that are thought to have excessive glutamate activity in OCD. Recent SDM meta-analyses of voxel-based morphometry studies comparing people with OCD and healthy controls has found people with OCD to have increased grey matter volumes in bilateral lenticular nuclei, extending to the caudate nuclei, while decreased grey matter volumes in bilateral dorsal medial frontal/anterior cingulate cortex. These findings contrast with those in people with other anxiety disorders, who evince decreased (rather than increased) grey matter volumes in bilateral lenticular / caudate nuclei, while also decreased grey matter volumes in bilateral dorsal medial frontal / anterior cingulate gyri.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The ACC has been suggested to have possible links with social anxiety, along with the amygdala part of the brain, but this research is still in its early stages. A more recent study, by the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre, confirms the relationship between the ACC and anxiety regulation, by revealing mindfulness practice as a meditator for anxiety precisely through the ACC.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: The adjacent subcallosal cingulate gyrus has been implicated in major depression and research indicates that deep-brain stimulation of the region could act to alleviate depressive symptoms. Although people with depression had smaller subgenual ACCs, their ACCs were more active when adjusted for size. This correlates well with increased subgenual ACC activity during sadness in healthy people, and normalization of activity after successful treatment. Of note, the activity of the subgenual cingulate cortex correlates with individual differences in negative affect during the baseline resting state; in other words, the greater the subgenual activity, the greater the negative affectivity in temperament.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: A study of brain MRIs taken on adults that had previously participated in the Cincinnati Lead Study found that people that had higher levels of lead exposure as children had decreased brain size as adults. This effect was most pronounced in the ACC (Cecil et al., 2008) and is thought to relate to the cognitive and behavioral deficits of affected individuals.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: Impairments in the development of the anterior cingulate, together with impairments in the dorsal medial-frontal cortex, may constitute a neural substrate for socio-cognitive deficits in autism, such as social orienting and joint attention.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: An increasing number of studies are investigating the role of the ACC in post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD diagnosis and related symptoms such as skin conductance response (SCR) to "potentially startling sounds" were found to be correlated with reduced ACC volume. Further, childhood trauma and executive dysfunction seem to correlate with reduced ACC connectivity to surrounding neural regions. In a longitudinal study, this reduced connectivity was able to predict high-risk drinking (binge drinking at least once per week for the past 12 months) up to four years later.


title: Anterior cingulate cortex

text: A study on differences in brain structure of adults with high and low levels of cognitive-attentional syndrome demonstrated diminished volume of the dorsal part of the ACC in the former group, indicating relationship between cortical thickness of ACC and general risk of psychopathology.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: While We're Young is a 2014 American comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Noah Baumbach. The film stars Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, and Amanda Seyfried; its plot centers on a New York-based documentary filmmaker and his wife, a couple in their 40s, who develop a friendship with a couple in their 20s. The film was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, and A24 released it in the United States on March 27, 2015. The film went on to gross more than any of Baumbach's previous films at the US box office.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Middle-aged couple Josh and Cornelia Srebnick are filmmakers living in a shaky marriage in New York City. Josh has spent the last 10 years struggling on the post-production of his documentary film about leftist intellectual Ira Mandelstam while not letting his producer wife help him with the project.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: After finishing a lecture at the college where he teaches, Josh is approached by Jamie and Darby Massey, a young couple who invite him and Cornelia out to dinner. Jamie claims to be a fan of Josh's work and the works of his accomplished documentary filmmaker father-in-law, Leslie Breitbart. Josh is immediately awestruck by Jamie and Darby's non-conservative outlook on life as he and Cornelia begin spending more and more time with them, joining in on their bohemian lifestyle.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: An aspiring filmmaker himself, Jamie talks with Josh about their projects, including Josh's own documentary. This inspires Jamie to make a film about connecting with an old high school friend that he found on Facebook. Jamie and Darby invite Josh and Cornelia to an ayahuasca ceremony where a hallucinating Cornelia kisses Jamie while Jamie receives Josh's approval in helping with the production of his film. Cornelia agrees to produce the film. Jamie and Josh find the old friend, Kent Arlington, who is in the hospital after a suicide attempt. Josh and Jamie discover that Kent was involved in a civilian massacre during an Army tour in Afghanistan, creating an even bigger story for Jamie's film.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: While pitching his own film, Josh is dismayed when he cannot engage a potential hedge fund investor with the concept of his intellectual documentary. He goes to Leslie for a second opinion. When Leslie's criticisms and suggestions are brought down by Josh, they get into an argument over Josh and Cornelia's inability to have children, as well as Josh calling himself a disappointment to him.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Josh attends a party for a screening of Jamie's film, which is met far more positively by Leslie and the hedge fund investor. A jealous Josh argues with Cornelia over Jamie's success, and they separate. Josh meets up with Darby, who is sick of Jamie's increasingly self-centered attitude and tells him about Cornelia kissing Jamie. Josh confronts Cornelia the next morning and denounces Jamie.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: While teaming up with his editor on cutting his film, Josh comes across footage for Jamie's film, finding evidence that suggests the meeting with Kent was actually staged. Finding him, Kent reveals that he was really friends with Darby, not Jamie, and that he was contacted by Jamie weeks before their shoot. Capturing his confession on camera, Josh goes to Jamie and Darby to confront him only to discover that a fed-up Darby is moving out and that Jamie is at the tribute celebrating Leslie at Lincoln Center.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Josh confronts Jamie in private at the event, admonishing him for compromising the truth and genuineness of his story for dramatic purposes. Josh forces Jamie to admit the truth to Leslie, who excuses it, saying that it's a good story regardless of the fabrication. Defeated, Josh admits to Leslie he was right about the edits needed on his film. Outside, Josh and Cornelia reconcile.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: One year later, Josh and Cornelia drive to the airport for a flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti where they will adopt a newborn baby. Josh finds an article in a magazine lauding Jamie as a filmmaking genius, which Cornelia and Josh pass off by admitting, "He's not evil, he's just young." They then watch a young child at the gate playing with an iPhone, studying him as if to imply that yet another generation with disparate ethics and morals is approaching.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Peter Bogdanovich appears as an MC at an event celebrating Leslie Breitbart, and Greta Lee voices a Sundance interviewer.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2014. Shortly after, A24 acquired distribution rights to the film for $4 million.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: The film opened in limited release on March 27, 2015 and earned $227,688, ranking number 24 in the box office that weekend. On April 17, the film was given a wide release and grossed $1,438,384, ranking number 12. The film eventually grossed $7,587,485 domestically, more than all of Baumbach's previous films in the United States box office.


title: While We're Young (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 84%, based on 205 reviews, with an average rating of 7.32/10. The site's consensus is "Poignant and piercingly honest, "While We're Young" finds writer-director Noah Baumbach delivering some of his funniest lines through some of his most relatable characters." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on reviews from 44 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" wrote: "Though While We’re Young is primarily a comedy — and a very funny one at that, managing to be both blisteringly of-the-moment and classically zany in the same breath — Baumbach has bitten off several serious topics, for which laughter serves as the most agreeable way to engage."


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "If While We’re Young hadn’t gone quite so broad at the finish line, it would be a contender for my favorite movie of the still-young year."


title: While We're Young (film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" called it a "mostly engaging but only fitfully inspired serio-comedy."


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: The 2019 Southeast Asian Games, officially known as the 30th Southeast Asian Games, or the 30th SEA Games, and commonly known as Philippines 2019, was the 30th edition of the Southeast Asian Games, a biennial regional multi-sport event which was held in the Philippines from 30 November to 11 December 2019. However, due to a narrow calendar, some sports started before the opening ceremony as early as November 24.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: This edition was marked by the first major decentralization in the history of the Games, with competition venues spread in 23 cities across the country and divided into four clusters; all were located on the island of Luzon (Metro Manila, Clark, Subic/Olongapo, and a fourth cluster consisting of standalone venues in Cavite, Laguna, and La Union). This was the country's fourth time to host the games, and its first since 2005. Previously, it had also hosted the 1981 and 1991 editions of the games. This edition was most notable for being the first edition to include esports, obstacle course race, kurash, sambo, underwater hockey, breaking, surfing, modern pentathlon, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, and skateboarding; as well as having the highest number of sports in the history of the games, at a total of 56.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: The hosting rights were originally awarded to Brunei in 2012, but the country pulled out days before the 2015 Southeast Asian Games due to "financial and logistical reasons."


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: The Philippines was previously slated to host 2023 Southeast Asian Games but, in July 2015, it agreed to host the Games after Brunei's withdrawal (with Cambodia taking its place for 2023). However, the Philippines' hosting was left uncertain following the withdrawal of government support two years later as it planned to use the funds intended for the games for the rehabilitation of Marawi after being occupied by ISIS supporters. Thailand and Indonesia offered to host the games with the latter planning to reuse the venues used for the 2018 Asian Games. However, by August 16, 2017, the Philippine government announced the reversal of the withdrawal.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: The host country, Philippines, emerged in the medal tally as the overall champion for the first time in 14 years, breaking its own medal count record in 2005, followed by Vietnam and Thailand. Several games and national records were broken during the games. Amidst numerous controversies and problems, the games were deemed generally successful with the rising standard of competition amongst the Southeast Asian nations; with its hosting being lauded by the Olympic Council of Asia for its facilities and hospitality. The Philippines is bidding to host the 2030 Asian Games, but was unable to submit the bid by the dateline.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: Quah Zheng Wen of Singapore was awarded the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for male athletes, having won six golds and two silvers, while Nguyễn Thị Ánh Viên of Vietnam, with the same medal tally, was accorded MVP honors for female athletes. The fairplay award was awarded to Roger Casugay for saving a fellow competitor's life.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: As per SEA Games traditions, hosting duties are rotated among the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) member countries. Each country is assigned to host the event in a predetermined year, but the country could choose to withdraw or not host that edition.


title: 2019 Southeast Asian Games

text: In July 2012, the SEAGF meeting in Myanmar confirmed that Malaysia would host the regional biennial event in 2017, should there be no other country willing to bid for the games. Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) secretary general Sieh Kok Chi, who attended the meeting, said that Myanmar would host the Games in 2013, followed by Singapore in 2015 and Brunei in 2017. However, the sultanate gave up hosting the Games in 2017, in exchange for having more time to organize the 2019 edition. Brunei hosted the Games only once in 1999 and planned to upgrade its sports facilities and build a new national stadium in Salambigar to accommodate the Games. However, on June 4, 2015, Brunei withdrew its hosting rights at the meeting in Singapore after the said country's Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports had failed to give support for the Games due to the lack of sporting facilities, accommodation, and preparation of their athletes.