The Don Gives 2021 a Barely Passing Grade
Jacobin troll Donald Hughes sent in 18,000 words grading major events in 2021. What follows are brief selections from his treatise. The verdict: 2021 sent in some poor work, but he’s letting it through.
19112 Articles by: Alex Press
What You Should Have Read in 2021
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Of course not. Here’s a roundup of our best writing from 2021.
Canadian Meatpacking Workers Just Won a Historic Union Contract
The meatpacking company Cargill didn’t lift a finger when a massive COVID outbreak left half its workers in High River, Alberta, ill. The business’s unwillingness to take employees’ health seriously motivated workers to fight for — and win — a new contract.
Baristas of the World, Unite
Following on the heels of the union drive at Starbucks, a growing number of campaigns have appeared to organize coffee shops. In Pittsburgh, baristas at Coffee Tree Roasters, a local company with five stores, are unionizing with the UFCW.
Julius S. Scott Captured the Haitian Revolution’s Emancipatory Reach
Radical historian Julius S. Scott, who passed away this month, transformed our understanding of the Haitian Revolution and its emancipatory impact on freedom struggles throughout the Americas.
Even Neo Can’t Log Off
The Matrix Resurrections makes a convincing case that the Matrix franchise is keeping us plugged into the Matrix. Unfortunately, it exhausts the viewer in doing so.
Vaccine Apartheid Includes Dumping Expiring Vaccines on Africa
The Global North is responding to vaccine inequality by dumping near-expired doses on African countries without infrastructure to disseminate them in time. Those doses end up in the trash — and it’s the fault of rich countries.
Joe Biden Has Been Very Good for the Military-Industrial Complex
Joe Biden signed a record-breaking defense budget even as his domestic agenda is languishing. We’re getting all of the Pentagon spending and anti-China saber-rattling — and none of the supposedly transformative social programs.
Sudan’s Military Rulers Are Hated by Their People but Coddled by the West
Two months since the October 25 coup, protesters are in the streets of Sudan demanding restored civilian rule. But military leaders’ success in “normalizing” ties with the US and Israel is helping to entrench them in power.
Biden’s Agenda Is Dying Because the Interests of the Rich and Poor Are Irreconcilable
Joe Biden’s rationale for his own presidency was that he could bring oligarchs and working people together and hammer out a compromise that worked for both. The apparent death of his legislative agenda proves what a laughable fantasy that was.
Desmond Tutu Never Sold Out the Liberation Struggle
The late anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu was no neoliberal sellout. His legacy was always to advocate structural reforms in South Africa.
There’s Absolutely No Reason We Shouldn’t Be Cutting Child Poverty
We often hear that if you increase benefits for low-income parents, they’ll just squander it on drugs and alcohol. But the best research shows that’s elitist nonsense — giving money to poor people is exactly what we need to be doing.
To Beat the Right, We Have to Understand Their Arguments
Since the French Revolution, the Right has deployed a common set of arguments to resist the drive to democratize economic and political power. The Left will only win if we analyze their rhetoric — and counter it.
The Jewish Socialist Who Tried to Kill Hitler
From spreading anti-fascist writings to acting as an undercover agent in Nazi Germany, Jewish socialist Hilda Monte became one of the most formidable operatives of the resistance. She even participated in an abortive plot to kill Hitler himself.
The Autobiography of a Salvadoran Socialist Revolutionary
Roger Blandino Nerio was a guerrilla leader with the leftist FMLN during El Salvador’s bloody civil war. As these selections from his memoir reveal, he was, like many guerrillas, an ordinary person spurred by conscience and history to extraordinary action.
The Right Wants to Make Disabled Veterans Into the New “Welfare Queens”
Conservatives have long worked to dismantle the American welfare state. They’ve been so successful that some are even turning their sights on a formerly sacrosanct group: combat veterans returned from war.
France’s Presidential Election Is a One-Sided Culture War
Emmanuel Macron has often warned that France shouldn’t imitate US-style culture wars. But ahead of April’s election, the liberal president and his far-right challengers are all obsessing about what they call an “Islamo-leftist” threat to French national identity.
Meet the Communist Running Austria’s Second Largest City
This fall, the Communist Party won the local elections in Austria’s second largest city, Graz, for the first time in history. New mayor Elke Kahr told Jacobin what a proudly Marxist party can hope to achieve from city hall.
Public Broadband Internet Isn’t a Luxury — It’s a Necessity
Everybody needs high-speed internet. But private corporations will never provide it. The solution: treat internet infrastructure as a public utility, funded by the public and built by union workers.
Did Steven Spielberg Just Ruin West Side Story?
Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s 1961 adaptation of the Broadway musical West Side Story embraced fantasy and ended up making a Hollywood classic. But Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s remake brings the larger-than-life story of doomed lovers down to earth — and sinks.