Paul Street

Paul Street is an independent progressive policy researcher, award-winning journalist, historian, author and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois.

Reviewing Street’s 2014 book They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy, the prolific educational theorist and political commentator Henry Giroux wrote this: “They Rule is a brilliant analysis of how power works under neoliberal capitalism. It uncovers the multiple layers of repression and its machineries of economic and social death in the US and at the same time provides a discourse of resistance, hope, and possibility. If you are interested in what it means to understand not only the workings of totalitarianism, but the possibility of a radical democracy, this is the one book you should read immediately.”

Dr.Cornell West on Street’s 2008 and 2010 books on the Obama phenomenon and presidency: “Paul Street is the most acute observer and insightful analyst of the ‘Obama Phenomena.’ This book gets beneath the political smoke and mirrors to reveal the pervasive rule of big money that drives the American Empire and global capitalist economy. Street’s courageous truth-telling is the pre-condition for a massive radical democratic movement.”

John Pilger on Street’s 2008 book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics: “All those interested in truth rather than seduction should read urgently this wise book by Paul Street, who peels away the mask of the ‘Obama phenomenon’ and reveals power as it is, not as many of us wish it to be. Perhaps the only book that tells the truth about the 44th president of the United States.

Noam Chomsky on the same book: “Street’s lucid and penetrating book situates it firmly within the ‘corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. elections system and political culture,’ explores in depth its substantive content and its limits and draws valuable lessons about how these might be transcended in the unending struggle to achieve a more just and free society and a peaceful world. It is a very welcome contribution in complex and troubled times.”

Political scientist Anthony DiMaggio on Street’s 2021 book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America: “As the left’s foremost political historian today,” political scientist Anthony DiMaggio writes, “Paul Street has been ringing the alarm bell against the rising threat of American fascism for years. His work is sorely needed in a time of mass denialism, when tens of millions of Americans have convinced themselves that fascism can never ‘happen here.’”

Paul Street is the author of ten books to date: Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, Policy and the State of Black Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Urban League, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (New York: Routledge, 2008); The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Routledge, 2010); (with A. DiMaggio) Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Routledge, 2011); They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Routledge, 2014); Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and the Politics of Appeasement (CounterPunch Books, September 2020); This Happened Here: Neoliberals, Amerikaners, and the Trumping of America (New York: Routledge, 2021).  Paul writes regularly for Counterpunch.

Street’s essays, articles, reviews, interviews, and commentaries have appeared in numerous outlets, including CounterPunch, Common Dreams, Moyers & Company, Truthdig, Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Dissent, RT.com,  ZNet, Z Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Capital City Times, Refuse Fascism, Revolution, In These Times, Chicago History, New York Journal of Books, Critical Sociology, Journal of American Ethnic History, Social History, Review of Educational, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Dissent, American Herald Tribune, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Oximity,  Economic & Political Weekly (India), Tinanbantu (South Africa), New Left Project (United Kingdom), Press TV (Iran), The Times of India (India),  Morning Star (England), Al-Alkhbar (The News in Beirut, Lebanon), Dissident Voice, Black Commentator, Monthly Review, Op Ed News, Third World Traveler, History News Network, Tom’sDispatch, AlterNet., the Iowa City Press Citizen. Street’s essays have been translated and reproduced in numerous languages (including Spanish, Russian, German, French, Portuguese, Persian, Chinese, and Tamil) and picked up across the planet/World Wide Web in venues too numerous to track and mention.

Street was awarded First Prize in the category of “Political Commentary-National” at the 60th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards in 2018 and received the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s 2001 PASS Award for work in the media and community.

Street’s writings, research findings, and commentary have been featured in a large number and wide variety of media venues, including The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, RT, the Chicago Tribune,  WGN (Chicago/national), WLS (ABC-Chicago), Fox News, and the Chicago Sun Times.

Street has been seen and/or appeared in more than 100 radio and television interviews/broadcasts.  He has been interviewed at length on Al Jazeera, The Real News Network, RT, Black Agenda Radio, The Revolution Nothing Less Show, and Counterpunch Radio, among numerous other outlets.

Street has taught U.S. history at numerous of Chicago-area colleges and universities. He was the Director of Research and Vice President for Research and Planning at the Chicago Urban League (from 2000 through 2005), where he published a highly influential grant-funded study: The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (October 2002).

Paul is a member of the Editorial Board of the organization Refuse Fascism and a volunteer with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights.