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.
Our cities have siphoned money away from public goods like education and social services, and funneled the cash into ever-larger, ever-more-militarized police forces. It’s time to reverse that.
While it’s far too soon to declare victory, let’s take stock of how far political demands have come since the 1992 LA Rebellion.
Donald Trump’s dangerous and unhinged response to the George Floyd protests shows why he must be defeated in November. But Joe Biden’s policy proposals and disturbing record on criminal justice suggests the era of resistance will have to continue with Biden in the White House.
Workers caught in the grip of the criminal justice system aren’t just denied their human rights by oppressive police and judges — they’re held under the thumb of their bosses. Mass incarceration is devastating for the labor movement.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a vision of space that serves the narrow interests of capitalists. But we don’t want to be indentured servants on a Martian colony — we want solar exploration that benefits humanity as a whole.
Ever since the PSOE and Unidas Podemos formed a governing coalition in January, Spain’s right-wing opposition has denied its democratic legitimacy. Calls for police mutiny and resistance against the COVID-19 lockdown show how the Spanish right is imitating its Latin American counterparts, seeking to create a climate of chaos that can bring down the government.
The liberal establishment is desperate to return a centrist to the White House in November and reestablish the country’s more stable military dominance of the world order, disrupted only briefly by Donald Trump. Joe Biden’s terrible track record on foreign policy — including his championing of war in Iraq — suggests a return to Obama-style strong military interventions abroad.
Argentina’s 1976–1983 military dictatorship relied on widespread torture and disappearances to eradicate all political opponents, real or imagined. Seeking to conceal the junta regime’s one-sided terror, the Right still refers to those years as a “dirty war.” But the only accurate way to describe the dictatorship is as a period of “state terrorism.”
The COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in a drastic short-term fall in carbon emissions. Without structural change, however, we’re still on a disastrous trajectory. To avoid calamity, we need to transform our economic system.
China’s response to the pandemic has sharply contrasted with Trump’s, with a far stronger public health response in China but little aid for the poorest. Both countries’ responses to the crisis show that a strong state doesn’t stand in contradiction with neoliberalism — rather, it’s a key element of it.
On the 76th anniversary of D-Day, to honor those who perished in the struggle against fascism, we could do little better than to combat imperial hubris wherever we find it, including at home.
After brutal police violence failed to stop huge protests against the murder of George Floyd, governments across the country imposed curfews in an attempt to curtail dissent. But protesters have defied the restrictions in mass numbers — and in some cities, forced elected leaders to repeal the curfews.
A Chicago bus driver alleges in a new lawsuit that when he tried to discuss opposing the transport of police to protests with his coworkers, the Chicago Transit Authority retaliated against him. If the allegations are true, they’re an attack on the First Amendment and the ability of workers to organize.
The May jobs report showing a drop in the unemployment rate shouldn’t have been a surprise, with many states having lifted their shutdowns. But if Congress uses the report to excuse not passing another stimulus — especially one that includes relief for state and local governments — the economy could face a collapse.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio claims he wants to change the most unjust policies of American life in the 21st century. The problem is, he is instinctively hostile to the protests and grassroots organizing necessary to win such change.
The reforms that have been pushed by presidents and police chiefs, mayors and city councils in response to the horrifying, unending stream of blatant police brutality and police murder have failed and will continue failing. The police aren’t going to get any nicer — we must defund them, full stop.
It’s a common refrain that socialists are naïve, unrealistic dreamers. But precisely the opposite is true: we know that power corrupts, so we want to democratize all spheres of society.
Bromides about a V-shaped economic recovery after the pandemic just distract us from the size of the task that we face. We were already headed for crisis before COVID-19 — only a far-reaching reorientation of the economy can stave off social collapse.
Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton are beating the drums to ramp up the authoritarian brutality already on display all across the country by staging an actual military invasion of American cities. If we don’t stop them, the results will be dire.
Activists and advocates in New York City have long called for the city to make sharp cuts to the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force. The uprising against police brutality, in New York and around the country, has suddenly put serious momentum behind those demands.