Now Who’s the Boss?
When and where organized labor’s been on the move.
21043 Article(s) by: Jonathan Sas
Jonathan Sas has worked in senior policy and political roles in government, think tanks, and the labor movement. He is an honorary witness to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. His writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, National Post, the Tyee, and Maisonneuve.
When Unions Built Social Housing
Throughout the mid-20th century, immigrant associations and labor unions bought and built thousands of co-ops to house working-class New Yorkers. A left-led co-op revival might provide a way out of our present-day urban housing crisis.
Sharing the Big Apple
Union co-ops were a source of both affordable housing and displacement for New York’s workers.
Downstate Socialism
New York’s socialist movement found a mid-century standard-bearer in an Italian American congressman from the Bronx.
Mayor Mamdani’s Budget Can Add Up
New York’s incoming socialist mayor faces real fiscal constraints — but also real opportunities. With a strong tax base, modest reforms, and a clear political mandate, Zohran Mamdani has the tools to govern.
Issue 60: Misery Index
Crunching the numbers on the class war.
The Oligarch Upstairs
Some of the most over-the-top apartments in New York City are owned — and left empty — by überwealthy foreign nationals.
When the Rich Say “We’re Leaving”
Every time we want to change society to benefit average people, we have to deal with ultrawealthy crybabies.
Colonial Plunder Didn’t Create Capitalism
Despite what you may have heard, colonial plunder didn’t give rise to capitalism. In an interview with Jacobin, Vivek Chibber discusses why the “colonialism-created-capitalism” argument fails, and why Marxism provides a better account of its emergence.
Making a May Day 2028 General Strike a Reality
In the wake of the historic stand-up strike two years ago, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain called on the labor movement to prepare to strike together on May 1, 2028. What will it take to make a successful general strike a reality?
Sortition Can Help Cure What Ails Our Democracy
Americans are frustrated with our increasingly oligarchic political system. Selecting an assortment of lawmaking deliberative bodies through random lotteries could help fix it, by empowering ordinary people rather than unaccountable politicians.
Threatened With Jail for Offering Blankets to Migrants
Twenty-four aid workers in Greece are being tried on trumped-up smuggling charges after they gave blankets and water to migrants. Some have been in pretrial detention for months in a case highlighting the EU’s authoritarian clampdown on migrant rescue.
American Socialists Aren’t Tired of Winning
More than 100 democratic socialist elected officials, staffers, and organizers from across the US met in New Orleans for the How We Win conference last weekend. The gathering demonstrated American socialists’ growing influence and confidence.
Google Paid to Fete Key Lawmakers at a Secret Summit
Google recently paid state lawmakers upward of $2,000 as “gifts” to cover their attendance at a secret all-inclusive summit with “educational” sessions discussing artificial intelligence and other issues that many of these officials will soon be voting on.
Labor Isn’t a Special Interest. It Promotes the Common Good.
Decades of data shows that nonworkers, including retirees and students, make up one of labor’s most consistently pro-union constituencies. The movement has more allies than it realizes, and harnessing them could reshape its strategic horizon.
Far-Right Billionaire Vincent Bolloré Returns to Africa
Billionaire Vincent Bolloré is known for his use of his media empire to promote Islamophobic pundits in France. Now the corporation he controls is buying up TV broadcasting and film across Africa.
The Hague Group’s Insurgent Multilateralism
The US claims to uphold a rules-based global order while letting Israel commit brutal crimes with impunity. Into that breach has stepped a coalition of states, the Hague Group, willing to act on the basic principles of morality abandoned by the old system.
What Incels Learned From Feminism
Confusing marginality with insight leaves movements vulnerable to reactionary mimicry. A renewed engagement with Karl Marx’s structural account of exploitation can give feminism a path out of standpoint theory’s dead end.