Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
In the same week large swaths of the US were under extreme heat warnings, Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed its most recent motion to dismiss a landmark climate case by arguing that nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right to a secure climate.
The Biden administration recently announced badly needed investments in carbon capture. But it shouldn’t be handing out money to fossil fuel companies — carbon capture technology needs to be a state-run public service.
Here’s a summer story you never knew you needed: an 1895 article by Eugene Debs waxing poetic about bicycles, which he said would “liberate millions” and bring “the enrapturing panorama of nature” to all.
Conservatives love to bemoan their supposed status as oppressed minorities in universities. But the college campus has long been a key site for the Right’s recruitment and training of future reactionary leaders and foot soldiers.
Argentine filmmaker Fernando “Pino” Solanas was the father of Third Cinema, the left-wing Latin American filmmaking movement of the 1960s and ’70s. In this 2016 interview with Pablo Iglesias, Solanas talks about his life, his work, and his politics.
In April 1947, Paul Robeson, the outspoken leftist artist and singer, was barred from performing in Peoria, Illinois. The repressive move, though fought by a radical labor union of black and white workers, prefigured the Red Scare that would soon envelop the country.
Two landlord lobbying groups are petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn New York City’s rent stabilization law, which would allow further countrywide challenges to rent control. Real estate billionaires friendly with court justices are backing the move.
At UPS, Teamsters just won a historic tentative agreement. Some workers are looking at what the union won without a strike and concluding it should have demanded even more — and creating demands for the next contract fight.
As with any elected official, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad should be criticized when needed. But left-wing vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns.
Unlike many classic works of sci-fi, Star Trek offered an optimistic vision of humanity’s future — one where democracy triumphs, exploitation is ended, and everyone’s material needs are met.
In June, Italy’s government impounded the Sea-Eye 4 rescue ship for 20 days as part of a crackdown on NGOs that save migrants’ lives at sea. Crew members told Jacobin why they won’t be intimidated by authorities who routinely leave migrants to drown.
For as long as the team has existed, the Matildas have stood up against sexist discrimination and exploitation. Now they’re within striking distance of the Women’s World Cup.
Teachers unions across the country are organizing alongside community members, striking, and advancing an agenda that benefits teachers, students, and the entire working class. Not so in my union, New York City’s United Federation of Teachers.
Despite laws meant to root out forced labor from US solar companies’ supply chains in places like China, many companies continue to use it. Anti-China laws do little to stop such abuses — but they do add fuel to a new Cold War with China.
Twenty years ago, Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball became a huge hit, telling the story of how data-driven analytics produced a winning baseball team. But it also prefigured a broader trend in sports fandom, blemished by gambling and financial speculation.
President Biden keeps touting improved economic indicators that don’t necessarily reflect the conditions of working people. Rather, data reveals an ongoing humanitarian crisis — one that Democrats were complicit in making, but so far refuse to acknowledge.
One of the leading lights of national conservatism, Yoram Hazony, devotes a chapter of his new book to the “Marxist challenge.” But like so many other conservatives, he seems to think Marxism means “anything conservatives find frightening.”
A cabinet minister recently spoke of “two Micks” leading the strike wave in Britain, in a seeming dig against their Irish heritage. But the Irish diaspora’s role in the labor movement is very real, in a country that long relied on its neighbor for cheap labor.
Rich countries are gradually cutting carbon emissions — but that won’t be nearly enough to stop climate disasters, like the heat wave now ravaging the planet. We need drastic, state-led action to rapidly decarbonize our economies.
Under capitalism, the formal equality guaranteed under the law is a farce. Democratic socialism can guarantee liberal rights like free speech while shattering the resource imbalances of capitalism.