A People’s History of Baseball
Communists fighting the color line. Baseball players resisting owners. America’s pastime has a fascinating, untold history of radical struggles against racial injustice and labor exploitation.
19523 Articles by: Benjamin Case
Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
Happening Is an Abortion Story About Working-Class Women
Audrey Diwan’s film adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s abortion memoir, Happening, captures the violence and drama of its source material. It depicts a time when sex, for young women — without the resources of contraception and abortion — carried unfathomable consequences.
Starbucks Is the Country’s Worst Labor Law Violator. Joe Biden Should Rein It In.
No company in America is busting unions as shamelessly as Starbucks is right now. President Joe Biden and his labor board could put a stop to it — if they choose to.
In America, There Is Mass Death, Then There Is Nothing
It doesn’t matter how many people are slaughtered. It doesn’t even matter if they’re children, as they were in Texas yesterday. In America, the response to gun violence is nothing.
For Enrico Berlinguer, Communism Meant the Fullest Spread of Democracy
Born 100 years ago today, Italian communist Enrico Berlinguer grew up under Fascist dictatorship. In postwar decades, he became leader of Europe’s biggest Communist Party — and an iconoclastic champion of a democratic path to socialism.
Starbucks Workers Are Winning 90 Percent of Their Union Elections
Starbucks workers are unionizing at a breakneck pace. We ran the numbers and found that more than 2,000 Starbucks workers are now unionized — and that number will likely triple in the coming months.
Workers Have Won the First Union at a Major US Video Game Company
Workers at World of Warcraft–maker Activision Blizzard have voted to unionize. Fourteen-hour workdays and alleged rampant sexual harassment were among the issues that prompted them to organize the first recognized labor union at a publicly traded video game producer.
Big Pharma Is Pressuring Joe Manchin to Oppose Drug Pricing Reforms
Joe Manchin stalled and killed the Build Back Better bill under pressure from big business. He could now support a compromise budget with drug pricing reforms, but the pharmaceutical industry is doing everything it can to make sure he doesn’t.
The Olympics Are Globally Mobile. Now the Anti-Olympics Movement Is Too.
Olympic Games host cities experience increased gentrification, police surveillance, and environmental destruction. Anti-Olympics activists hosted their second transnational summit in Paris last weekend to put an end to the games’ destruction.
The Chilean Right Made Colonia Dignidad Possible
Chileans have long known about Colonia Dignidad, a German colony in Chile depicted in the Netflix series A Sinister Sect whose settlers committed countless acts of pedophilia, murder, and torture. Less discussed: the Chilean right’s complicity in those crimes.
School Privatizers Are Leaning Hard Into the Culture Wars
A billionaire-backed network of free-market fundamentalists is ginning up controversy over “wokeness” in American schools with an ulterior motive: to demolish public education.
Fewer Americans Are Identifying as Middle-Class
According to Gallup polls, the number of Americans who self-identify as below middle-class, including those who identify as working-class, is on the rise — a rise especially pronounced among those age 18–34.
Australia’s Left Is Breaking Through
The Australian election saw historic defeats for the Right and its backers in the Murdoch media. But the Labor Party can’t change the country without fighting for a robust, progressive economic agenda.
Right-Wing Death Threats Won’t Stop Gustavo Petro From Becoming Colombia’s Next President
Left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro has been fighting Colombia’s far-right paramilitaries for decades. The revelation of a recent plot to murder Petro is unsurprising, but his campaign still appears strong ahead of Sunday’s election.
How Amazon Invented “Plat-Fordism”
Market ideologues paint Amazon as a model of a flexible, networked platform capitalism. Yet Amazon’s growth has revitalized parts of the Fordism that Silicon Valley claimed to have overcome — including the rise of an organized blue-collar workforce.
The Commodification of Jean-Michel Basquiat
When he was alive, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic art leveled a powerful opposition to inequality and racism. Since his death, his work has been co-opted, emptied of all political content, and commodified to be sold as an image of New York’s vanishing cool.
When Jeff Bezos Tweets, He Wants His Journalists and Joe Biden to Listen
The world’s second-richest man is using social media to push back against any hint that corporate greed is stoking inflation — and to send a message about his news preferences in the Washington Post, the paper he owns.
A Loyal CIA Operative’s Mind Is Not a Pretty Place
Longtime CIA operative Ric Prado just published a memoir. From training murderous right-wing paramilitaries to complaining about “hellholes” the world over, it’s shockingly candid — but the content is hardly surprising to anyone familiar with US foreign policy.
Joe Biden Has Botched the Summit of the Americas
The United States is excluding Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the forthcoming Summit of the Americas. Washington probably wasn’t expecting that much of Latin America, led by Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, would publicly push back in response.
Australian Voters Have Demanded Action on Climate Change
Thanks to its stubborn inaction on climate change, the conservative coalition was trounced in this weekend’s election in Australia. With Greens and independents set to hold the balance of power, it’s time for the climate movement to step up its demands.