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.
It’s hard to overstate the wickedness of Big Pharma’s lobbying efforts to ensure patent protection for COVID-19 drugs and potential vaccines. But the real architect of these crimes is not CEOs or shareholders, but the market.
Recently obtained documents show that in 2011, the US funded rock bands in Venezuela — through a group sympathetic to right-wing forces that later attempted a coup. Giving money to young musicians seems innocuous, but it’s part of a long history of US meddling in the democratic processes of countries to advance American interests.
A consensus is growing in the corporate world that working from home will be the new normal after coronavirus. Companies will sell it as a perk — but it will mean handing the boss even greater control over our lives.
At times of widespread misery, a single incident of blatant injustice can cause enormous, unexpected outrage — outrage that then fuels far wider protests and more radical demands. This is exactly what we’ve seen across the United States since George Floyd’s murder.
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s state Democratic Party, and the state’s legislative leaders have refused to enact a bill proponents say would deter police violence. They have also raked in more than $1 million from police unions.
We’re witnessing a national police riot that hasn’t showed any signs of slowing. The instances of brutal police violence against protesters are so numerous that it’s hard to keep track of them all — but here are some of the worst abuses we’ve seen.
Developed for the trenches of World War I, tear gas is being deployed indiscriminately against protesters across the United States today. It’s an unconscionable use of force that violates international regulations — and it shows police officers are operating with complete impunity.
Boris Johnson has learned a trick from David Cameron: no matter how badly a member of the government misbehaves, ignore demands for their resignation and wait until the press loses interest. So far, the strategy is working for him in the current Dominic Cummings scandal — but his luck might run out.
Amy Cooper’s calling the police on a black man in New York’s Central Park represents an extreme example of racist behavior. But it also offers a window onto the experiences of black Americans that highlights the importance of affirmative action and radical redistributive policies as central to anti-racism today.
Last week, the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto blasted a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site so as to expand its iron ore mine in Western Australia. It’s the latest example of the powerful mining sector exploiting a legislative system built on indigenous dispossession.
When the US spearheaded the Mexican war on drugs in 2006, many suspected links between members of Felipe Calderón’s administration and the cartels they were charged with stamping out. Now, fresh evidence makes clear that not only were top government figures profiting personally from links to the cartels, but that the US knew about it all along.
Brands like Pepsi, Nike, and Amazon are embracing Black Lives Matter on social media. Don’t be fooled: corporate anti-racism isn’t about solidarity – it’s just a marketing campaign.
Donald Trump wants to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military troops on the streets of American cities. It’s an act of desperation that will probably backfire — but an alarming sign of the lengths he may be willing to go to save his disintegrating presidency.
For years we’ve heard about body cameras and bias training to reform the racism and brutality of the police. That won’t cut it. The only way to get better policing is to get less of it — by defunding the police.
In response to the nationwide protests, Donald Trump seems ready to take the United States to a place many have been fearing since his election. Escaping from it means recognizing that he didn’t get us there alone.
In the past, radical-led unions have been at the forefront of the struggle against police brutality. Unions must step up and do the same today — because racial justice movements can’t win radical reforms without the institutional power of organized workers.
Donald Trump is attempting to drum up hysteria about antifa to clamp down on protest and dissent in the United States. Don’t let him.
For organizers in Central Pennsylvania, the Bernie Sanders campaign was an opportunity to build social-democratic politics in conservative territory. As Pennsylvanians go to the polls today, those organizers emphasize that Sanders’s unprecedented campaign was a success in putting left politics on the map in rural regions like theirs.
Democrats have done a miserable job of acting as an opposition party to Trump — but not because they don’t have significant power to halt his authoritarianism. Here are 10 things Democrats could do to push back right now. If they don’t use their power, Democrats are complicit in Trump’s barbarities.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has been rightly criticized for letting the New York Police Department run wild with brutality in the recent racial justice protests. But he’s not the only “progressive” in New York bowing to the boys in blue — the city council, supposedly to de Blasio’s left, has long been under the NYPD’s thumb, too.