After decades of skyrocketing inequality and increasing capture of the government by the ultrarich, in 2016 and 2020, millions of Americans found a political voice for their anger — and hope for a better future — in the presidential campaign of a cranky, democratic socialist senator from Vermont. Bernie Sanders blazed across the country talking about the need for a “political revolution” of ordinary people against the billionaire class that had rigged society for its own benefit.

But today the signature reforms Sanders campaigned on — Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a jobs guarantee, free education for all from pre-K to college, etc. — are off the agenda. While President Joe Biden’s administration has been more progressive than expected, its achievements have come nowhere near the ambitious demands of Sanders’s political revolution.

Something else is happening, however. From high-profile organizing efforts at corporate behemoths like Amazon and Starbucks, to an explosion of labor activity in higher education, to the ouster of corrupt old-guard leaderships at major unions like the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers (UAW) and giant Hollywood strikes this summer, the United States’ long-moribund labor movement is showing signs of life.