Enver Motala is an associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela University.
The Right wants it both ways on PPP loans and student loans, insisting it was fine for the government to forgive pandemic loans to businesses but terrible if it does the same with college loans to ordinary people. None of its arguments make any sense.
Since Joe Biden announced the cancellation of $10,000 of student debt per borrower, right-wingers have been frothing at the mouth with outrage. The Right’s desperate response shows exactly why student debt cancellation makes for good politics.
Chipotle workers in Lansing, Michigan, have organized the first-ever union at the company. Could Chipotle be the next Starbucks, with unionization efforts spreading like wildfire?
The stakes are high in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election: four more years of the reactionary, corrupt, right-wing rule of Jair Bolsonaro or a return of the most transformative president Brazil has ever seen, Lula da Silva.
After 1945, Italy had strong left-wing movements and an anti-fascist consensus that stemmed from the wartime resistance. Since the 1990s, however, a corrosive “anti-political” mood has displaced anti-fascism, and the far right has been the main beneficiary.
Fashionable academic theorists have dismissed the Marxist approach to nationalism as outdated and inadequate. But it remains an indispensable guide to national independence movements — urging support for them when they represent a challenge to capitalist rule.
Despite high-profile victories in the 1960s and ’70s, farmworkers in the US have been poorly paid and heavily exploited for generations. They deserve the power of a union.
The Right broke Ontario’s health care system. Now they can’t wait to replace it with a parallel, two-tiered system that benefits the rich.
The city of Oakland’s longest rent strike has ended in victory for tenants. They didn’t just win necessary repairs or rent control; they decommodified their housing, getting profit-motivated landlords out of the picture altogether.
The new TV show A League of Their Own, about the true story of the WWII-era women’s baseball league, captures its racial segregation — with a central character based on trailblazing black women players who were forced to play in the male Negro Leagues instead.
The US military has a long history of recruiting poor people by offering benefits like free college. With Joe Biden’s partial student debt forgiveness, GOP war hawks are fretting that the military won’t be able to prey on desperate young Americans anymore.
Over 80 percent of the Chilean electorate voted to replace the country’s dictatorship-era constitution. As Chileans head to the polls on Sunday to finally vote on the new constitution, the Right is stoking fears to prevent its passage.
For three decades, revisionists have systematically turned Italy’s discussion of World War II away from Fascist crimes and toward the Italians killed by anti-fascist partisans. The effect has been to trivialize the Fascist past — and legitimize a new far right.
Teri Castillo, a housing organizer and Democratic Socialists of America member, is fighting on the San Antonio City Council for public investment in housing, health care, education, utilities, and more. Castillo says the era of municipal austerity must end.
Aubrey Plaza’s title character in Emily the Criminal is trapped by crushing student loan debt, a punitive criminal justice system, and low wages. She, like so many other Americans, feels like she’s out of legitimate options — because she is.
Starbucks is “fighting dirtier and dirtier all the time” in its attempt to smash the nationwide union drive, Starbucks Workers United field director Daisy Pitkin writes. Workers are organizing and striking — they need consumers to step up their support.
Student loan debt shouldn’t exist. Neither should medical debt. The Biden administration’s cancellation of some student loan debt is justified — and canceling medical debt would be, too.
Socialists are becoming a problem for New York’s Democratic establishment. Mayor Eric Adams declared war on the socialist movement and endorsed candidates to challenge the Democratic Socialists of America. For the most part, he failed.
The next Bernie Sanders campaign, if it happens at all, could be used to build an organization that helps transcend the Left’s current impasse. Bernie 2024 — but make it a new beginning instead of a last hurrah.
In 1910, Winston Churchill sent troops to the coalfields of South Wales to put an end to a strike. Though the miners were defeated, this episode radicalized the Welsh working class and helped sever ties between conservative Liberals and trade unions.