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.
This October’s historic referendum in Chile saw a massive 78 percent vote to abandon the Pinochet-era constitution. Today, social movements are pushing for a new document that offers broad welfare and environmental guarantees — but first, they must confront an oligarchy hell-bent on thwarting any fundamental change.
The Austrian socialist architect Josef Frank resisted modernists who wanted to make homes look like workplaces — an idea with new resonance in an age when so many of us are working from home and feel like we can’t escape from our work.
Two years ago, the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion both captured media attention through bold direct action. Since then, Sunrise has combined protest with political work challenging fossil-fuel interests. XR and other groups tepid about electoral politics should do the same.
Reversing the damage wrought by Donald Trump’s NLRB is not enough. To boost workers’ bargaining power, Joe Biden’s labor board will have to overturn decades of precedents that hamstring organizing and trample on workers’ rights.
In The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson dares to imagine humanity actually winning the fight against climate change. It’s a magisterial and complex novel that reminds us politics can still change the future for the better.
Revelations about McKinsey’s grotesque actions to further the opioid epidemic should remind us how closely entwined the company is with the Democratic Party. We should work toward a day when McKinsey’s presence on your résumé is as disqualifying as a gun manufacturer or a tobacco company.
Some “anti-elitists” on the Right say they want the GOP to be the party of the working class. But what they’re really offering is a PR campaign that won’t fundamentally change the lives of workers.
Democrats focused more on courting GOP voters than younger voters in the last election, former Bernie Sanders senior staffer Jeff Weaver argues. The strategy was a disaster, damaging downballot Democrats across the country — and it could backfire even more when Trump is gone.
After winning the election on a “listen to the scientists” message, Joe Biden is actually rejecting the global scientific consensus on how to handle the pandemic.
People often say that Margaret Thatcher’s austerity policies were a “tough pill to swallow” but ended up saving Britain from ruin. In fact, the evidence is that she left the UK economy weaker and more unequal. We must reject apologetics for Thatcherism.
This year’s election cycle was the most expensive in history — and, thanks to oligarch-friendly campaign finance laws, we don’t even know where much of it came from.
Working time reduction has always been used as a way of distributing available work and reducing unemployment. In our era of crisis, we need to fight for a four-day week.
Much of the American mainstream media adopted a highly combative, watchdog approach to covering the Trump White House. Will the media abandon that approach under a President Joe Biden?
During Spain’s Civil War, Dolores Ibárruri was famed worldwide as La Pasionaria, the brilliant orator who stirred anti-fascists’ souls. Fleeing to Moscow in 1939, she soon became the exiled Communists’ leader — both political guide for a defeated party and a “Spanish mother” confronting the expectations of her male comrades.
Tax records we’ve reviewed show a health care industry front group run by a former Hillary Clinton aide has already amassed millions to block a public health insurance option. Even small reform isn’t possible without confronting powerful interests.
Born 125 years ago today, communist leader Dolores Ibárruri was the most famous symbol of the Republican cause in Spain. Known as “La Pasionaria,” she coined the battle cry “¡No pasarán!” — expressing the fearlessness which made her a heroine for generations of anti-fascists.
We can’t win and carry out a Green New Deal without winning building trades workers and unions to an environmentalist agenda that also benefits them. New York’s recently announced massive investment in offshore wind, high-speed rail, and more, backed by both labor and environmental groups, shows how it can be done.
An undemocratic power grab by hard-right politicians in Peru was defeated by popular mobilization on the streets. The Peruvian political crisis has deep roots in a failed model of technocratic, neoliberal governance that has turned the state into a plaything of private interests.
Earlier this year, Spotify announced it would give artists and record labels a boost in promotion if they accepted a lower royalty rate — rates that are already abysmally low. Between fights over compensating artists and the unionization of podcast company workers, it’s clear that even the world of digital streaming has class conflict at its heart.
As Joe Biden staffs his incoming administration, battle lines have been drawn between progressives and centrists. But the real winner has been corporate America, whose lobbyists and consultants have been getting the bulk of the plum jobs.