Cristina Groeger is a history professor at Lake Forest College and a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
The Chicago teachers’ strike is about who will shape Chicago: billionaires who buy politicians to privatize schools, or working-class communities who want affordable housing, decent jobs, good schools, and justice. Here are some of the private equity barons and luxury developers in Chicago whom the teachers are up against.
We already know that we desperately need single payer for health care. But the recent failures of California’s PG&E show how we need a single-payer system for our energy grid, too — to stop the reckless, dangerous behavior of private companies getting rich off what should be a public good, and to fight climate change.
The recent protests demanding the fall of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi were Egypt’s largest since the 2013 military coup. Years of repression have devastated the organized opposition and its networks — but a fresh revolt by Egyptian youth has shown that the regime is anything but secure.
By endorsing Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have positioned themselves as electoral anchors in the years to come.
The independent law professor Kais Saied’s victory in the Tunisian presidential election saw voters punish the parties who have ruled the country since the Arab Spring. Yet if “anti-corruption” has become a rallying point for Tunisians, the deeper economic woes that drove the 2011 uprising remain unresolved.
They say, “Bernie is too old.” We say, “Better to be old and right than young and a shithead.”
After years of retreat, we need to reject the approach of conservative NGOs and fight for abortion without apology.
During the Cold War, the US trained cops in more than fifty countries to suppress dissent. This “police professionalization” helped produce death squads in countries like El Salvador and mass incarceration in the United States.
Tomorrow’s historic Brexit vote in Parliament could go either way and Britain’s future hangs in the balance. With an election looming, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour prepares to present its vision of Britain’s future to voters.
On November 10, Spain faces its fourth general election in as many years. As the national question continues to polarize Spanish politics, the rising protests in Catalonia are reenergizing the pro-independence left — and causing further strategic dilemmas for Podemos.
Ken Loach’s newest film, Sorry We Missed You, is a devastating indictment of our economy and its infinite capacity to generate misery for average people.
Chicago teachers are on strike today. A high school teacher explains to us why the strike is the union’s best tool to fight for better conditions in the city’s schools and an end to austerity.
Before his assassination in 1973, Amílcar Cabral was one of Africa’s leading anti-colonialists — a brilliant agronomist and socialist whose leadership of the armed struggle against Portuguese rule brought the empire to its knees.
Everywhere you look, the wealthy and powerful are touting “green investing” as a way to fight climate change. It’s not — it’s just a scheme to make some rich people even richer.
Ecuador’s Lenín Moreno promised a less “divisive” approach than his left-wing predecessor Rafael Correa. But Ecuadorians are seeing through his con and resisting austerity and neoliberal reforms.
The long prison sentences for the organizers of Catalunya’s outlawed independence referendum are just the latest sign of Spain’s repressive turn. The Catalan crisis has brought the state’s authoritarian impulses to the surface — and set a terrible precedent for criminalizing dissent.
The Chicago Teachers Union is on strike this morning. In the face of incredibly restrictive, anti-worker labor law, they’re fighting to win written commitments on class size, staffing levels, privatization, and for the city’s entire working class.
The Chicago Teachers Union has established itself as a union that fights for the entire working class. In striking tomorrow, the union’s strategy is about solidarity — not only within their own union, but with SEIU Local 73, whose members earn poverty wages and are also walking off the job.
Elizabeth Warren is up in the polls lately. Where is her new support coming from? A look at the polls shows she is drawing from Biden’s supporters and perhaps from undecided and lower-ranked candidates — but not Bernie Sanders’s supporters.
Schools need nurses. A key demand by the Chicago Teachers Union in their strike that kicks off tomorrow, rejected so far by Mayor Lori Lightfoot: putting more nurses in the city’s schools.