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.
Police around the world have increasingly been equipped with “nonlethal” weapons. But the myth that these weapons are harmless tools of crowd control normalizes the use of rubber bullets and tear gas against protesters — and fuels police violence that often does kill people.
ProPublica’s bombshell story about the financial malfeasance of the richest Americans has stirred bipartisan outrage in Washington. Unfortunately, it’s mainly outraged against the whistleblower who exposed the story.
The pandemic has exposed gaping holes in Ontario’s workplace compensations system. Sick and injured workers, often employed in frontline industries, have been left out of work without compensation.
Major corporations like Apple want us to believe they care about the planet and are addressing their unsustainable practices. Surprise, surprise — they don’t and they aren’t.
If Democrats had used their huge 2008 congressional majorities to rescue families thrown out of their homes during the financial crisis, we may have averted Donald Trump’s narrow victory in 2016.
Last November, left candidate Edmilson Rodrigues defeated a Bolsonaro ally to become mayor of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon. The Belém experiment could be a chance to push back against a destructive far-right government that grossly mismanaged the pandemic.
Alexa Avilés is a community organizer in South Brooklyn, member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and candidate for New York City Council. In an interview, she discusses her history of education organizing, recent billionaire-funded scaremongering attacks against her, and why she’s running for office as part of a citywide socialist slate.
Democratic leaders claim to be powerless against the handful of conservative Democrats blocking progressive reform. Yet when it comes to government surveillance or funding war, those Democrats always know how to force rank-and-file lawmakers to fall in line.
Tasked with carrying out what ought to be state functions, but dependent on private interests, NGOs will never challenge the basic structures of capitalism.
Commonwealth College was a radical experiment in socialist education nestled deep in the Arkansas mountains. It taught and trained over 1,500 worker-activists before becoming an early casualty of American anti-communism.
The working class in capitalism is not a coherent class but a fragmented one — an amalgam of individuals trying to survive. It’ll take politics to change that.
The filibuster saga isn’t simply about Joe Manchin. It’s about the Democratic Party overall, and their continued interest in allowing process to prevent them from governing.
The US military spends trillions on death abroad that could be spent on improving life back home.
The last year has seen the largest increase in billionaire wealth in history, but it has little to do with innovation — states across the world are pursuing policies which guarantee that the rich get richer.
Historians often neglect Japan’s New Left protest movement in the late 1960s, but it was one of the largest in any country. Radical student activists brought the university system to a halt — and changed the future of Japanese politics.
The first installment of reporting based on the Pentagon Papers was published half a century ago today in the New York Times. Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg risked life imprisonment to expose the lies and brutality that the US war on Vietnam was based on.
In Britain, even as the Labour Party is in turmoil at the national level, left-wing city councils in places like Preston are bringing socialist policies to life at the local level.
Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd has come up with a plan for Labor that he calls the “Fourth Way.” But on closer inspection, Rudd’s would-be alternative is a rehash of the timid, conservative approach to politics that has kept Labor out of power for a decade.
After six weeks of massive protests against neoliberalism and state violence in Colombia, right-wing president Iván Duque is relying on brute force to stay in power.
Conservatives are rushing to ban “critical race theory” from public schools, arguing it is ahistorical propaganda. But their own version of US history is a sterilized, hagiographic account that closes off connecting the issues of yesteryear with the problems of the present.