Frances Abele CM is Distinguished Research Professor and Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy Emerita at Carleton University. She is a research fellow at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation and the Broadbent Institute. Much of her work focuses on indigenous-Canada relations.
Last year, a protest movement in Sri Lanka stormed the presidential palace and forced the president to flee the country. It reminded many of the hartal strike action in 1953, one of the most impressive displays of working-class power in Asia’s modern history.
Within the labor movement, all of the bright ideas and strategic insights in the world won’t amount to much if the democratic rights of union members themselves aren’t respected, restored, and expanded.
May’s election in Thailand was a crushing defeat for its conservative bloc and a triumph for the progressive Move Forward Party. But the conservatives have used an undemocratic political framework to exclude the party and maintain their grip on power.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has leveraged relationships in the right-wing dark money world to win lucrative public pension investments and consulting business from state financial officers — possibly violating ethics rules around lobbying.
Rising temperatures and strict productivity standards make a brutal combination for Amazon warehouse workers. In Southern California, these workers are fighting to end the exclusion of indoor workers from basic workplace protection from the heat.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has achieved more than just policy victories during his five years in office. He has reshaped the national political field and established a new cycle of left-wing governance.
Wildfires in Hawaii have killed over 100 people, and hundreds remain missing. From draining historic wetlands to failing to invest in safe energy infrastructure, the capitalist thirst for profits above all else helped create the disaster.
Sixty years ago today, hundreds of thousands gathered at the Washington Mall, where they heard Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Since then, we’ve beaten a retreat from the march’s vision of racial and economic justice.
This year, Democrats used their control of the Michigan legislature to pass a suite of pro-worker reforms, including repealing right-to-work laws. We spoke with Michigan House member Joey Andrews about these wins and the current moment in labor.
Iran has been subjected to extensive sanctions for the better part of the last decade. The sanctions were meant to target the country’s elite; instead, they have hurt the poor most and enabled the richest households to take a greater share of Iran’s wealth.
Greece’s recent elections saw two new far-right parties enter parliament for the first time. Grinding austerity is not fueling continued popular resistance but the rise of conspiracy theorist cranks who promote war among the poor.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Ignore the lies and distortions — the reality, as the latest research shows, is that scores of socialists influenced or were themselves key figures in the civil rights movement.
Chile’s 2019 protests witnessed some of the most audacious public art the world had ever seen. Today, amid a right-wing backlash, the radical imagination displayed on Santiago’s graffiti-covered walls feels like a distant dream.
Imprisoned, exiled, and threatened with death, Peruvian activist Hugo Blanco never once wavered in his commitment to peasant liberation. Latin America’s unbreakable revolutionary will be sorely missed.
Writers are striking to save film and TV from destruction by corporate giants. New Deal-era schemes like the Federal Theatre Project and the Group Theater offer a tantalizing glimpse of how entertainment could be run as a public good, not as a business.
Juggalos, the intense Insane Clown Posse fanbase, have long been targeted by police, including in a dubious federal investigation under the legacy of a Red Scare law. The group’s crime, it seems, is its very existence as a visible working-class counterculture.
Unlike other war criminals from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger’s reputation has never received public rehabilitation. He hasn’t needed it — despite his murderous rap sheet, the media and political establishment has always fawned over him.
Newly released emails show an oddly friendly relationship between the Secret Service and the Oath Keepers militia ahead of the January 6 capitol riot. It’s a reminder that we still don’t know the full story of what happened that day.
Since coming to office in 2018, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has made tackling inequality a key tenet of his Fourth Transformation. Millions have been lifted out of poverty, and the divide between rich and poor is shrinking.
Canada has long brandished its image as an honest international broker and champion of human rights. Its massive arms shipments to Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, paint a very different picture.