Rent Controls in the UK Are Not a Fantasy
With 445,000 UK tenants in arrears, it’s clear the landlord class is out of control. Rent controls can rein in its exploitation.
19565 Articles 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.
The Right Wants to Starve Workers Into Submission. Does Joe Biden Agree?
On Fox News, Laura Ingraham asked, “What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing.” With benefits set to expire, Joe Biden has three weeks to decide whether he agrees with her.
Liberals Don’t Understand the American Empire
The Trump presidency briefly made liberals critics of US actions around the world — but now he’s gone, they’re back to believing America is the solution to the destruction it creates.
Gig Companies Are Bringing the Disastrous Prop 22 to a State Near You
The gig companies, fresh from their Prop 22 victory in California, are seeking to repeat their success in Massachusetts, pushing a ballot measure that would strip app-based drivers of existing labor protections like the minimum wage.
Yet Again, the US Was Defeated in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam and Iraq, US elites sold us a vision of the world in which the United States alone has not just the power but the duty to forcibly reshape the world how it sees fit. They have again proven utterly incapable of doing so.
The Purge Has Nothing to Say
The Purge franchise and its offshoot, The Hunt, try to feed the appetite for dark social satire about the barbaric inequalities of the modern United States. But they end up delivering little more than weak fantasies of resistance.
AMLO Wants a United Latin America
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called for a union of Latin American countries. Drawing on the revolutionary vision of Simón Bolívar, it aims for regional integration as a bulwark against foreign interference. Could it work?
Texas’s Fossil Fuel Elite Is Driving Us to Climate Disaster
Oil and gas donors have spent $100 million on elections in Texas. Now storms made worse by climate change have flooded the state capitol building in Austin.
When Oklahoma Was the Heartland of American Socialism
In 1917, impoverished Oklahoma tenant farmers were the backbone of the US’s flourishing socialist movement. That year, hundreds mobilized — armed — to march on Washington and force an end to the World War I draft.
To Fight Racism, Organize With Your Coworkers
Too many anti-racist efforts today obsess over individual actions like microaggressions. We need to fight racism in a collective project rooted in shared material interests — as the United Packinghouse Workers of America did in its heyday.
The White Lotus Is a Perfect Satire of Today’s Rich
HBO’s brilliant The White Lotus reminds us that class society permeates everywhere, even on a tropical island — something that US television traditionally does its best to hide.
Landlords Hate Rent Control Because It’s Good for the Rest of Us
Rent control means more money and control for renters and less for landlords. It’s why they hate it — and why we should fight for it.
COVID Is Exposing Australia’s Neoliberalized Health System
In Australia, decades of neoliberal policies have crippled our capacity to respond to public health crises like COVID.
PayPal and the ADL: A Match Made in Censorship Hell
PayPal has announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to defund extremist and hate movements. The problem is that, for the ADL, that often means groups fighting against Israeli apartheid.
Putting in Time on the Line at Dodge Main
After the upsurges of the 1960s, a small but dedicated number of leftists decided to find jobs in industries like auto manufacturing with the intention of stoking radicalism on the job. Mark Levitan was one of them.
Annette Fascinates but Doesn’t Convince
Leos Carax’s Annette, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, is audacious. But the film thwarts its own truth-telling ambitions by refusing to put its characters’ inner turmoils in dialogue with anything but themselves.
Jeremy Corbyn: Climate Crisis Is a Class Issue
In a column for Jacobin, Jeremy Corbyn writes that we need class politics to transform our economies and save humanity from climate apocalypse. There’s no other way.
Italian Identity Doesn’t Have to Belong to the Far Right
Xenophobic nationalism has assumed a central role in Italian political life in recent decades. But calls for the country’s Left to “reject Italian identity” are a dead end — and risk distancing it from its own popular traditions.
How the Philippines Were Crucial to the Making of American Empire
From its vicious occupation in the early 20th century to its military bases in the present, the US has long had a brutal, domineering relationship with the Philippines. And crucially, it’s depended on the labor of colonized Filipinos themselves.
Americans Are Migrating Toward Climate Disaster, Not Away From It
Census data shows Americans are moving out of locales most insulated from climate change and into the most climate-threatened regions. The results could be disastrous in the near future.