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 recent NDP convention passed several important left-wing motions, and Canada’s conservative pundits lined up to ridicule the prospect of a left turn by Jagmeet Singh’s party. Beneath the bluster, they’re clearly worried that left ideas have the potential to gain wide support.
Anti-colonial revolutionary Thomas Sankara struggled to free his country, Burkina Faso, from the domination of foreign corporations and neoliberal economic institutions. And in 1987, he was assassinated for it.
Ongoing protests by Indian farmers are the biggest challenge Narendra Modi’s right-wing government has faced since coming to power. We can get a clearer picture of this movement and its prospects for success by comparing it to the major struggles of India’s past.
The last week has seen wall-to-wall praise for the royals across the British press, with Prince Philip painted as everything from a military genius to a trailblazing feminist. But the compulsory cap-doffing isn’t just a bit of ceremony inherited from the past — it’s part of a very modern deference to the wealthy and privileged.
Coupang is South Korea’s answer to Amazon. Just like the American retail behemoth, Coupang’s business model depends on abusing its workers.
The Mexican right knows it’s set to lose the upcoming midterm elections — that’s why it’s desperately trying to use the courts and the National Electoral Institute to wage war on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA party.
Read past the headlines, and it turns out Joe Biden’s supposed withdrawal from Afghanistan is nothing of the kind — it delays ending the war while envisioning continued “anti-terrorism” action in the future with no end in sight.
The Indian state under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meting out vicious repression against dissenters to his right-wing Hindu nationalist vision. Yet that constant need to crack down on protests also reveals something: his far-right project is undeniably brittle.
Bernie Sanders is pushing to lower the eligibility age for Medicare and boost its coverage by adding dental, hearing, and vision benefits. Bernie’s plan would be a huge step toward Medicare for All.
Fujimorismo is the glue holding together right-wing politics in Peru. In the second round of the country’s elections, trade unionist Pedro Castillo has the potential to destroy it. But he’ll have to unite the Left first.
Weeks after voting to kill a $15 minimum wage, senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin will discuss “finding bipartisan solutions” at the conference of a major lobbying group fighting minimum wage and labor legislation. They know which side they’re on.
The German socialist philosopher Erich Fromm sought to explain the social psychology of right-wing authoritarianism after the Nazis drove him into exile. His work is full of valuable insights that can inform struggles for political and economic freedom today.
When human rights lawyer Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the oil giant Chevron, the company retaliated by setting out to destroy Donziger’s life. Now in his twentieth month of house arrest on the orders of a Chevron-linked judge, his Kafkaesque story is a window into the corrupt and corporate-captured US legal system.
Was the New Deal bad for black people? Rep. Jim Clyburn says it was. He’s wrong — and it’s time we set the record straight about both the New Deal’s real flaws and its overall hugely egalitarian impact on workers of all races, including black workers.
When Trump hyped bogus claims of election fraud as a pretext to overturn an election he lost, the media portrayed it as the gravest threat to democracy in the history of the Republic. When exactly the same thing happened in Bolivia, they said it was actually good.
The surprise victory of a candidate representing a “Marxist and Leninist” party shows that rural Peru is not to be ignored. But much more organizing is needed if the Peruvian left is to build lasting political power.
The Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of major corporations, was lauded by mainstream media in 2019 for pledging to prioritize the common good over shareholders. Well, now they’re demanding to protect tax cuts that disproportionately enrich CEOs.
On Thursday, a rent cap introduced by Berlin’s city government was struck down by the German Constitutional Court. But public opposition to the private landlords has been building for years — and now, a referendum on forced renationalization looks like the only way of breaking their power.
Tony Blair’s New Labour government left the fundamental architecture of Thatcher’s economy in place — and failed to break the cycle of deepening inequality. It’s not just the criminal Iraq War, Blairism failed at every level.
Scott Morrison responded to the sexual abuse crisis in Australia’s parliament by making Amanda Stoker, a hard-right Christian and defender of misogyny, assistant minister for women. Stoker’s elevation is part of a right-wing campaign against women under the cloak of Christianity.