Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
We need bold measures like public housing and well-designed rent control programs. But Kamala Harris’s housing proposal doubles down on the existing paradigm: more public subsidies, more tax incentives, and more empty hopes that developers will solve the housing crisis.
Obama’s speech last night at the DNC showcased his rhetorical talent. But it was also a reminder of his incrementalist brand of liberalism, which failed to meaningfully address the profound issues facing the working-class majority.
At the DNC, housing organizers are telling Democrats that rent control and other substantive affordable housing measures can win them the election.
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh was part of a long pattern of Israel killing Hamas leaders when they offer cease-fires.
At his speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, Bernie Sanders played the usual hits — and also called for a cease-fire in Gaza. But his righteous populist anger felt out of place before a party still dominated by corporate interests.
Any political party that claims to be concerned with the rule of law should be using the recent International Court of Justice ruling to demand an end to the occupation and Israeli’s bloody, unlawful conduct in Gaza and across Palestine.
How many of the fundamental 2010s problems — the ones that launched Occupy Wall Street and fueled Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns in the first place — have been addressed by today’s Democrats? None.
Behavioral economics dangerously denigrates the rationality of ordinary people.
On day one of the Democratic National Convention, the party gave some small concessions to activists demanding an end to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. The question is whether those concessions are a ploy to keep antiwar organizers inside the tent.
From an early age, socialist labor leader Eugene Debs was committed to women’s rights.
A common view of the two major US labor federations of the 20th century is that the AFL was top-down while the CIO was bottom-up. In truth, the CIO’s success was owed to a potent mix of rank-and-file militancy and strategic leadership.
A new book opposing nuclear energy unintentionally highlights how 1970s opposition was a dead end for the Left. By examining contemporary arguments, it becomes clear that this historic stance has hindered climate progress and energy reliability.
Turn on any ESPN or Fox Sports show and you’ll hear anchors discussing spreads, Vegas odds, and laying points. The rise in sports gambling is a boost for states’ tax revenues — but it’s a disaster for the often low-income young men losing their money.
If you guessed that our film critic Eileen Jones would hate Alien: Romulus, buddy, you guessed wrong. The corporate manipulation and betrayal in the Alien films don’t lose their fascination over the course of their many variations.
J. D. Vance portrays his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, as a dying backwater with a culture of irresponsibility and laziness. It’s actually seeing a revival — thanks not to a mindset change but to massive public investment of the type the GOP opposes.
The Belgian Communist leader Julien Lahaut was murdered on this day in 1950. The circumstances of his assassination were hushed up for decades — but it was quickly clear that he was killed because he was a powerful leader for his class.
Center-left Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, disparaged by Parisians as a “bourgeois bohemian,” is betting on the success of the Olympics to revive her political career. Scandals and dismal polls stand in her way as she eyes the 2026 elections.
Union negotiations covering East and Gulf Coast longshore workers have been stalled since June, making a strike more likely as the September 30 contract expiration looms. A strike would have a massive economic impact, costing billions of dollars per day.
For the past two weeks, a sickening scandal around Israeli torture of Palestinians has roiled the country’s politics. Many Americans likely have no idea about it, because mainstream media is all but ignoring it.
Three years ago, Kamala Harris bypassed a chance to raise the federal minimum wage out of respect for Senate procedure. Now she’s campaigning on a relatively progressive economic agenda — but is she willing to break Capitol Hill’s rules to fight for it?