Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has repeatedly defended the police even as they’ve brutalized protesters. It’s a reminder that his progressive reputation was always overblown — and that when push comes to shove, he’s always going to side with the real estate interests that cops protect.
The Bernie Sanders campaign advanced left politics in the US by leaps and bounds. But the campaign could have gone further if it had made the kind of organizing that won states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada central to the campaign’s operations throughout the country.
In an interview, Noam Chomsky talks about the “absolutely unprecedented scope and scale” of the protests against the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the importance of Lula’s presidency in Brazil, and why Donald Trump’s refusal to act to stop the impending catastrophe of climate change makes him “the worst criminal in human history.”
Google’s censure of right-wing outlets over repulsive racist content was pushed by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, an outfit with strong ties to the Labour right. As awful as outlets like the Federalist are, do we really want Blairites who claim Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite to decide what is and is not acceptable to publish?
When tenants organize against negligent, rent-gouging landlords, the deck is stacked against them. Marcela Mitaynes, a tenant organizer and Democratic Socialists of America–endorsed candidate for New York’s State Assembly, argues that’s not just because landlords are incredibly powerful in cities like New York, but also because they have the NYPD backing them up.
Liberal pundits in Sweden are quick to assert the country’s Black Lives Matter protests are an “import of American racial discourse,” at odds with local realities. Yet neoliberal welfare reforms and a racialized war on drugs are eroding the egalitarian policies that have long made Sweden so distinct.
Bill de Blasio campaigned as a reformer who would end stop-and-frisk and scale back racist police violence. But in the face of NYPD pushback, he has been a coward, blocking police reforms and letting the cops run wild in the streets. He should resign in disgrace.
The United States’ hyper-punitive approach to sexual offenders has fueled mass incarceration while doing little to actually help survivors.
Rising from the ruins of World War I, in the 1920s Vienna’s socialist administration was famous for its innovative housing and public health programs. But at the heart of “Red Vienna” were its services for children, guaranteeing that even the poorest young people could share in the joys of childhood — and the foundations of a fulfilling life.
The New York Review of Books has dismissed Perry Anderson’s study of Brazil as a product of stodgy, doctrinaire leftism. But it’s their own reviewer, Larry Rohter, who lets dogma get in the way of facts.
Bill Gates, Andrew Cuomo, and other corporate education reformers are trying to use this moment of crisis to push through free-market school reforms. Their agenda is the exact opposite of what we actually need: a fully funded public education system that attacks racial and class inequalities.
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against France’s bid to criminalize the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel. The ruling was a victory for Palestine solidarity activists — and the first setback for Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to smear antiracists as the “new antisemites.”
A new report on Labour’s defeat highlights the damage caused by its Brexit stance, exposing the decades-long weakening of its roots in the working class. There’s no quick fix to Labour’s problems — we need to do the long work of rebuilding the structures that tie our MPs to working-class life.
Adem Somyurek was sacked from his position in the Australian Labor Party last week for alleged branch-stacking. It’s the latest indicator of how Labor has been emptied of all mass politics and become a forum for factional power brokers to vie for control of the creaking party machine.
South Africa has imposed one of the world’s most draconian COVID-19 lockdowns, slapping hundreds of thousands of mostly black and working-class people with criminal charges. The authoritarian response highlights again the lost promise of the post-apartheid government and the deep disparities that still plague the country.
Capitalism runs on economic coercion, presenting most people with the choice to work or starve. But many workers, from prisoners to college athletes, face other types of coercion that exact a heavy cost for anyone who dares to tell the boss “no.”
In turnout, perseverance, and in the ethnic and racial diversity of those participating, the last month of protest in response to the police murder of George Floyd is like nothing the US has experienced before. And most shocking of all, the protests are winning.
Cities across France are seeing a historic wave of protest against racism and the killing of young black people. The French revolt was sparked by the demonstrations in the United States — but it’s fueled by police brutality at home.
Set in Britain in the near future, the newly published sequel to the 1982 classic A Very British Coup presents a hellish but believable vision of political disillusionment and post-Brexit malaise.
Liberals are right to condemn Donald Trump for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and his undisguised contempt for democracy. But Trump is no aberration: his rise was only possible because of a Republican and Democratic political consensus that has ravaged American politics and society for a generation.