James Bloodworth is a writer and journalist from London.
This May Day, we’re celebrating the life of George Woodbey, a former slave who became a leading socialist. Though he’s often forgotten today, Woodbey’s life speaks to the crucial connection between labor struggles and fights against racial oppression.
In 1923, Eugene V. Debs wrote a powerful May Day address for the black socialist magazine the Messenger that called for “the emancipation of all races from the oppressive and degrading yoke of wage slavery.” We republish it here in full, for the first time since it appeared 100 years ago.
In 1886, workers came together on the original May Day to demand an eight-hour day. Today, from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses, that struggle continues.
The climate and biodiversity crises unleashed by capitalist development are already happening. Predicting a sudden apocalypse may draw attention to impending climate catastrophe, but it ultimately diverts us from the work needed to preserve a livable planet.
A $42 billion bailout for the restaurant industry is advancing in Congress. It contains zero substantive relief measures for restaurant workers.
Many fear that Twitter under Elon Musk will fall to bigots and harassers. Maybe. But instead of arguing over who should be kicked off Twitter, we should ask what it’s designed to do to those who stay on it.
In Sweden, far-right militants burned Qurans in the street, sparking days of rioting. Mainstream politicians’ focus on denouncing the counterprotesters showed how far the country has to go in admitting the reality of Islamophobia.
A combination of conservatism and careerism has characterized Keir Starmer’s approach to politics. In the context of his ideological trajectory, his most recent round of purges of the Left comes as no surprise.
We really, really need unions. But not all unionism is created equal. We need unions that are willing to fight the bosses rather than cozy up to them. We need class-struggle unionism.
Prison journalism provides a window into the concealed world of mass incarceration, gives a voice to the incarcerated, and sheds light on the politics of the carceral state. Free and uncensored prison journalism is essential to criminal justice reform.
Ontario recently signed on to Justin Trudeau’s national childcare program. However, the foot-dragging and chicanery of the province’s premier, Doug Ford, has led to a second-rate deal. Kids and childcare workers deserve better.
We have a rare opportunity to rebuild a fighting labor movement in the United States. To take advantage of it, workers must be armed with battle-tested strategies and tactics — and that means being willing to go on strike.
The massive Starbucks unionization drive is about striking a blow against the authoritarian power of management.
Corporate responsibility pledges are an increasingly common response to public scrutiny. But trusting private companies to keep their promises hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future.
On April 11, Kenyon College student workers began an indefinite strike to win union recognition. Jacobin spoke to four student organizers about what their fight means for the growth of undergraduate student worker unions across the country.
Republican lawmakers are quietly building a nationwide effort to pass anti-divestment bills that would punish financial institutions that consider the climate crisis in their business deals — all while oil and gas companies flood their campaign coffers.
The rote memorials hailing Orrin Hatch’s civility and bipartisanship miss the point. Hatch was a committed, often fierce right-wing warrior who served corporate power and reshaped the political order toward greater misery.
Talk of the “Great Resignation“ is everywhere. But a close look at the numbers reveals something interesting: more workers are quitting their jobs in Trump-voting states with low unionization rates than in states with high unionization rates that rejected Trump.
David Foster Wallace was one of the great American writers of the neoliberal era. With a career spanning the years of Reagan’s reelection to the collapse of Lehman brothers, his novels, for all their complexity, reiterated the dominant ideology of the times.
The debut folk horror film You Won’t Be Alone, set in 19th-century Macedonia, is an amazingly mature piece of work that weighs the overwhelming, bloody brutality of the world against its strange enchantments.