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.
Since Trump’s victory, authors like Michael Lind have portrayed the “white working class” as victims of metropolitan elites. But seeing the class war as a culture war overlooks working people’s greatest strength: our power to fight for our common interests, above cultural divides.
Rival campaigns and hostile journalists are scraping the bottom of the barrel with their latest attacks on Bernie Sanders supporters. Now, apparently, getting owned on Twitter is “harassment,” and when a nurses’ union donates to Bernie, it’s “dark money.”
The response to the coronavirus shows that neither the US nor the world is ready for a global pandemic. We desperately need a public health system that rejects philanthrocapitalism and prioritizes preparedness over corporate profits.
US wars have historically been used to beat back and repress exactly the kind of Left movements that we need to tackle the climate crisis. We can’t just focus on fighting climate change or US imperialism — we have to stop both.
Jeff Bezos is donating billions of dollars through his new foundation. But as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argues, we need to redistribute his power, not just his wealth.
Five years after Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras capitulated to the Troika, the Left’s challenge to European neoliberalism is weaker than ever. The Greek case showed how the Left could exploit ruling-class crisis — but also the tragic consequences of a failure to prepare for power.
Protesters in Iraq are rejecting the imprints of war and sectarianism that have destroyed the country — and attempting to build an egalitarian homeland that will put ordinary Iraqis first.
Among the mass protests that erupted across the globe in October last year, Lebanon’s were some of the largest, targeting both a failing neoliberal system and ingrained sectarianism. Now in their fourth month, the protests are showing no sign of diminishing.
What makes Bernie Sanders so threatening to the Democratic establishment is that he stands for what millions of Democrats thought their party stood for all along.
Unemployment has become a billion-dollar industry where private firms are turning massive profits for placing precarious workers in bullshit jobs.
Last Saturday’s Irish election was a historic breakthrough for Sinn Féin, the most-voted party for the first time. An organizer for the party writes how austerity drove a working-class backlash — and how Sinn Féin plans to turn voter revolt into real change.
Nithya Raman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who is running for city council in Los Angeles. In an interview with Jacobin, she describes her history organizing around sexual harassment and homelessness, the need to stop gentrification in LA, and why a homes guarantee is a critical demand.
Shareholder activism is a limited tool for mitigating the worst abuses of corporations. But now, major business groups are fighting to restrict people’s ability to engage even in that.
In cities across America, housing has played a key role in maintaining and deepening inequality. Nowhere is this more so than in Los Angeles, with its homelessness crisis, soaring rents, and luxury condos. Nithya Raman’s grassroots campaign for city council is pushing back against the developers, boosters, and lobbyists that keep it this way.
Frankfurt School cofounder Max Horkheimer is today credited as an insightful analyst of authoritarian culture. But Horkheimer’s ever-pessimistic outlook reflected the political defeats of his time — and an oft one-sided view of the loss of working-class agency.
Harvard University has always been a key site in which wealthy elites learn how to defend their class. But it has also been home to students who refuse to enroll in that project and opt instead to fight for the ethic of solidarity.
Weapons of mass destruction shipped from Europe are decisive to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. But in Italy, the dockers who are supposed to load the warships are taking strike action — showing how workers can block the machinery of destruction.
You only need to look at one graph to understand what happened in New Hampshire: the poorer the town, the better Bernie Sanders performed.
An admirer of dictators, a lowbrow misogynist, an unfiltered bigot — Michael Bloomberg is the only Democratic contender who might actually be worse than Trump.
The world of private equity, blank check companies, and complicated investment vehicles is, by design, alien to most people. But the maneuvering and backroom deals of these companies have stark, real-world implications.