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.
New research shows why inequality is even worse than it looks on paper. Thanks to weak leverage, the same workers who earn the lowest wages also suffer the worst violations of labor rights at the hands of employers.
There are moments when even the most committed of democrats find themselves despairing of political democracy. But the system has proven again and again to be the last best hope of ordinary people in defending their pursuit of happiness against tyrants of all stripes — both public and private.
The current guest worker system prioritizes agricultural growers’ profits over immigrants’ and workers’ rights. Joe Biden should seek a different way: building an immigration system based on family reunification, community stability, and immigrant workers’ rights to decent wages, health, and housing.
The early German socialist movement was a largely male affair, with widespread sexist attitudes compounding a state ban on women taking part in politics. But by the 1900s, a proletarian women’s movement had forced working-class women’s demands onto the agenda — insisting that they didn’t need fathers and husbands, or bourgeois ladies, to speak on their behalf.
Watching Meghan Markle and Prince Harry talk to Oprah about the depraved monarchy last night, I couldn’t help but wonder why I live in a country where the Queen is the head of state. Canada needs to dump the British monarchy and never look back.
Fifty years ago today, a group of New Left activists executed a daring burglary of an FBI field office in Pennsylvania, exposing the bureau’s COINTELPRO operations against the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war activists, and socialists. We should remember these activists today as heroes.
On International Women’s Day, the good news is that the new COVID-19 relief bill will include a kind-of, sort-of universal child benefit — a policy that feminists have long called for. But the overly complicated, burdensome way the policy is implemented means that on this issue, the Left still has its work cut out for it.
Thousands of home care workers in New York are forced to work twenty-four-hour shifts while being paid for only half the time. That’s outrageous — and on International Women’s Day, we should heed their call in taking up the struggle for control over our time.
The bodies that govern international sport are riddled with corruption and in need of drastic change. We need an alternative socialist vision for how sports should be run that gives priority to social well-being and international cooperation over nationalism and private profit.
Lelio Basso was a major figure of the postwar Italian left who urged its parties to follow through on their revolutionary programs and avoid subordinating themselves to the ruling Christian Democrats. Italy’s Socialists and Communists should have heeded his advice.
In the twentieth century, socialists and communists used municipal power in Paris to build some of Europe’s most ambitious social housing projects — housing that was not only beautiful but made for and by the city’s working class.
In the ongoing union drive in Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon is playing a massive role in influencing the outcome of the election. This should be a crime — bosses should be legally prohibited from interfering with their workers’ union organizing.
The past year has shattered our normal existence, forcing us to confront a deadly pandemic while trying to maintain some semblance of sanity.
Faced with protests for opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s release, the Russian left is torn over whether to join a movement which raises no general social demands. Navalny’s personalized clash with Putin highlights the present hollowness of Russian democracy.
Today, the NBA will host an All-Star Game over the objections of many of its players. But back in 1964, stars were willing to go on strike and not play the exhibition, despite threats from ownership, to win retirement pensions and basic protections. It’s a classic reminder that no matter who you are, collective action works.
Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema was once a Green Party member and a committed antiwar activist. Now she’s best known for a viral thumbs-down on a $15 minimum wage vote. It’s the timeless story of an earnest do-gooder turned Washington monster and what happens when we don’t hold politicians accountable.
Italy’s new premier, Mario Draghi, has pointed to “digitalization” as the key to economic recovery, heralding tax incentives to boost start-ups and foreign investment. But for all the breathless talk of digital revolution, Draghi’s recipes are all-too familiar: rolling out the red carpet for the likes of Elon Musk while doing nothing to help the millions of unemployed.
A series of shocking revelations have exposed endemic sexual harassment and abuse in Australia’s parliament. To change things, we need to hold abusers to account and empower women at work.
Renamed after Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, the Russian city of Tolyatti was chosen as home for a FIAT-backed auto plant in 1966, soon making it the USSR’s largest planned industrial center. Yet its urban landscape shows signs of planners’ concern to create livable spaces focused on community need, not just industrial production.
Kevin Costner’s ’90s blockbusters Waterworld and The Postman could have been compelling portraits of impending dystopias. Instead, they sucked. And they sucked in a way that indicates exactly why their dystopias might yet come true.