Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
As COVID-19 rips through American prisons, incarcerated people have braved violent repression to demand a humane response to their suffering. In an interview with Jacobin, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson explains the current wave of prisoner protest — and what it could signal about the future of American politics.
David Sirota, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign, argues that a key mistake of the campaign was Sanders’s refusal to more forcefully articulate the contrasts between his record and Joe Biden’s.
For three decades, economic woes and the crumbling of old party ties have fueled the rise of Italy’s populist right. Faced with the coronavirus, Giorgia Meloni is becoming an increasingly prominent voice — leader of a Fratelli d’Italia party directly linked to the fascist past.
Having never recovered from the last recession, America’s states are now being dealt another dose of austerity from the federal government, forcing more budget cuts across welfare, education, and even health care. It’s the opposite approach of what’s needed. Unless we can fund these services, the crises will only deepen.
We not only need to defend the United States Postal Service from privatization — we need to deepen its role in our economy.
The bitter defeats of Corbyn and Sanders have changed nothing about the task before us: supplanting the neoliberal center and offering ordinary people a real alternative to the neo-nationalist right.
The suffering of women during the coronavirus pandemic illuminates where feminists need to push harder. Medicare for All, free higher education and a living wage, and a housing and job guarantee would go far in giving women the autonomy necessary to protect themselves and their children.
Socialism is back on the agenda in the United States, thank God. And today’s newly minted socialists shouldn’t be afraid to embrace Marxism.
The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre died forty years ago today. Sartre’s philosophy and political values can still inspire struggles for freedom today.
In a new interview, Noam Chomsky gives his thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic, the depravities of capitalism, and the urgent need for a new era of solidarity and labor struggle.
For thirteen years, Israel has kept two million Palestinians in Gaza chained inside the world’s largest open-air prison camp. Now the global COVID-19 pandemic is bearing down on the occupied enclave. What will happen if thousands of desperate civilians try to escape?
For nearly three weeks after it surfaced, Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden was ignored or downplayed in the media. A Jacobin analysis shows that she’s been covered unlike any other accuser in the post–Me Too era.
In the latest installment of our “Modern Health” column, we hear from a dancer who was badly injured on the job. Despite having insurance, he didn’t seek full treatment — because he knew he couldn’t afford it.
Locked down, smartphones are giving many of us some comfort and connection now. But the hardware and software that make our phones so indispensable are also tracking us twenty-four hours a day. This crisis will only open the door to more privacy intrusions in the name of public health.
With millions of people now working from their homes, frantic bosses are buying high-tech surveillance software to track their employees’ every keystroke. It’s the latest example of how capitalism is built on employer despotism.
From the case against Joe Biden to the economics of a feasible socialism and a new EP Thompson podcast, we have a busy week of audio and video content for you.
Pundits are panicking about whether the Left will help Joe Biden defeat Trump. The former vice president probably doesn’t want it, but here’s some advice for him from the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Donald Trump has decided to use federal dollars to directly foot the bill for uninsured COVID-19 patients, while Joe Biden is still clinging to the Affordable Care Act. It’s a boneheaded move that is allowing mainstream Democrats to be outflanked by Trump on health care.
The United States’ COVID-19 response has paled in many respects to Argentina’s. But it’s not just Argentina’s public health response that the United States should learn from — it’s also the country’s history of popular resistance that will be crucial to fighting unequal and undemocratic responses to the pandemic.
This weekend’s revelations about the conduct of Labour Party staff in undermining the party’s 2017 general election campaign and abusing elected representatives are shameful. They demand an immediate and full investigation.