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.
When people fall behind on property taxes, this shouldn’t become an opportunity for private profiteering. But that’s precisely what happens in tax lien sales, where city governments collude with financial predators to extract wealth from struggling people.
A month after Israel began its brutal war on Gaza, Yemen’s Houthis launched a blockade of shipping routes in the Red Sea. The US-led attempt to restore safe navigation was a disaster that has exposed deep fragilities in the global maritime trading system.
The GOP is smuggling a $5 billion school voucher program into the budget reconciliation bill. It’s a major giveaway to wealthy school-privatization boosters — and a slap in the face for many of Donald Trump’s own voters.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s comments about autism are part of a long legacy of right-wing politicians deciding which people’s lives are and are not worth living.
Palestinians mark May 15 as Nakba Day, anniversary of the foundation of Israel. That state was born amid mass displacement and ethnic cleansing — and it’s getting even worse today.
The late Uruguayan statesman José “Pepe” Mujica argues that capitalism is not just property relations but a set of cultural values that the Left must confront with a culture of solidarity.
Centered in the lawless region of Southeast Asia known as the Golden Triangle, the scam industry is a new kind of capitalism built on corruption, organized crime, and slave labor — and it’s growing.
In the name of defending intellectual diversity and protecting Jews, Indiana University is investigating a Jewish professor over his criticism of Israel. It’s exactly what critics of the state’s newly passed SEA 202 law feared would happen.
In the California legislature, Democrats are pushing a bill that could hand control of the state’s energy markets to the pro–fossil fuel Trump administration. Expert analyses suggest the bill could jeopardize California’s trailblazing clean energy laws.
The GOP’s budget reconciliation bill includes a ban on state-level artificial intelligence regulations that could undermine efforts in several states to rein in pricing consultants like RealPage, a company that helps landlords use AI to “optimize” rent hikes.
Red Star Over Palestine, a history podcast from Jacobin Radio, looks at the different strands of the Palestinian left and the role of figures like Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani in Palestinian politics and culture.
Nations across the Global South were forced to surrender economic self-determination under the banner of free trade. Absent a collective response, Donald Trump’s dismantling of this order will only further erode developing nations’ economic sovereignty.
The border detention and interrogation of left-wing streamer Hasan Piker is just the latest incident that suggests Donald Trump is using the immigration system to harass his critics.
Alberta’s right-wing separatist push, driven by political opportunism and petro power, could pose a serious challenge to Canadian democracy — with potentially wide-ranging consequences for workers, the economy, public services, and the country as a whole.
A cease-fire deal pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink of conflict, but the danger hasn’t gone away. The ongoing denial of democratic rights in Kashmir ensures that the region will remain a source of instability and potential conflict.
As Donald Trump changes his tune on cutting taxes for the rich, House Republicans are scrambling to save their personal tax cuts.
Corporate America and the rich have used anti-racism to distract from broader inequality. Ensuring that every racial group has identical access to society’s limited resources does nothing to change an economy that exploits the many to enrich the few.
GOP lawmakers have just added a ten-year federal preemption of state-level artificial intelligence laws to the House’s budget reconciliation bill — effectively nullifying all local efforts to regulate AI technology.
Public broadcasting isn’t the enemy of free speech. Profit-driven media is. Trump’s attack on NPR and PBS distracts from the real path away from censorship and toward viewpoint diversity: a large, democratically controlled, publicly funded media ecosystem.
Recent Canadian legislation allows for a way forward in the face of trade shocks: give workers more ownership and control. Democratically run firms could offer workers everywhere a path toward stability, fairness, and long-term economic strength.