Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
After forcing a contract on exhausted railworkers last week, President Joe Biden vowed to keep fighting for them to have paid sick leave. If he’s serious, here is how he and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg could fulfill that promise.
Congress was able to break the rail strike last week because of a century-old law designed to weaken the disruptive power of unions. It’s time to cast aside this law and every other government-mandated strike prohibition that ties the hands of workers.
Donald Trump’s call to “terminate” the Constitution is every bit as outlandish as we’ve come to expect. But it’s also a political dud, reflecting the low-energy mood that pervades his newly announced presidential campaign.
It’s easy to think of French public life as more highbrow than its US counterpart. But France’s top-rated talk show is fusing politics and entertainment — and it’s a key part of a billionaire-funded effort to normalize far-right talking points.
Midterm ballot initiative votes in Colorado and Massachusetts suggest that taxing the rich and increasing public spending is more popular with voters when it’s clear exactly how these measures will improve people’s lives.
For the fifth time, the National Labor Relations Board has filed charges against Starbucks for illegal firings of union supporters, claiming the company has repeatedly violated labor law in its attempts to destroy the fledgling union.
Taiwan’s working class has been able to make significant gains in recent decades despite the pressures of economic liberalization. That’s because its unions have received crucial support from a wider network of social movements and advocacy groups throughout the country.
Today’s union-busters owe much to the bosses of the Progressive Era, who refused to recognize unions and fired labor organizers. Employers have never been “enlightened,” instead fighting tooth and nail to maintain their dictatorial powers.
Whatever their professed values, when it comes to the ballot box, rich people are out for themselves.
Knowing that inequality and powerlessness helped produce European fascism, C. Wright Mills exposed postwar American power and warned of an authoritarian turn in The Power Elite. The book speaks to our own moment of inequality and right-wing anger.
Regardless of what you may think about Elon Musk or Matt Taibbi, the “Twitter Files” offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the firm embarked on an act of unprecedented press censorship — and that should make us very uneasy.
Beyond the rhetoric of liberal politicians and the complexities of congressional sausage-making, one fact should not be forgotten: it was the Democratic leadership — not Republicans — who spearheaded last week’s efforts to trample on the rights of workers.
A passionate search for America’s utopian communes inadvertently reveals what’s wrong with building enclaves of progress cut off from the real world.
Finally, some good letters. We were about to give up.
More unequal societies are less trusting, more violent, less healthy, and more stressed.
Are modern American unions doomed merely to succumb to dealmaking with business Republicans and centrist Democrats?
Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone chronicled the growing loneliness and isolation of wealthy societies. Twenty years later, the problem is far worse than he could have imagined.
We talk to activist and filmmaker Astra Taylor.
The lionization of mainstream media is just sentimental marketing.
Democrats aren’t losing Hispanic voters — they’re losing the entire working class.