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.
Some freelancers have come out against the PRO Act, insisting that the pro-labor bill threatens their livelihoods. But they needn’t worry: the bill would transform labor relations for the better, it wouldn’t “kill” freelancing.
After years of stagnant poll numbers and declining electoral results, Germany’s Die Linke party hopes that its new leadership team will return it to the promise of the 2000s. But as its social base in the former East fragments, the left-wing party doesn’t just need a different marketing strategy — it needs to rebuild its roots in working-class life.
Eddie Murphy is one of the most talented actors alive. Yet his brilliance is wasted in this sloppy sequel to the classic 1988 film Coming to America.
Today, protests in forty towns and cities across the Netherlands are highlighting the role of Dutch-based firms like Shell in fueling climate crisis. Workers are at the forefront of the struggle — offering hope for a mass environmental movement that goes beyond the middle class.
The City of Chicago has now fully banned the police department from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants. That’s because two socialist city council members, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, pushed for years to end that collaboration.
The ongoing union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, could prove to be a key beachhead for union organizing in the South. But it’s not the first time Bessemer has seen union fights. Nearly a century ago, the town was home to anti-racist union organizing with the Communist-led union Mine-Mill.
One of Donald Trump’s last decisions in office was a squalid diplomatic deal with Morocco, granting US recognition of its occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for Moroccan recognition of Israel. Since the move, the Saharawi population has faced intense military repression — yet the Biden administration refuses to say whether it will reverse Trump’s colonial handover of the territory.
With former Brazilian president Lula da Silva now eligible to run in next year’s election, Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on power is looking weaker than ever before. Amid the tide of reaction, Lula’s return means there is finally some hope for democracy and social justice in Brazil.
While Nomadland goes out of its way to avoid talking politics, its genius is in locating the emotional truth of what it’s like to be one of the many millions of Americans cast adrift by disaster.
On this day in 1979, the most remarkable social revolution in the modern history of the Anglophone Caribbean began. Today, we remember not only the crisis and imperialist invasion that brought the Grenadian Revolution to an end, but its tremendous accomplishments.
Marco Rubio grabbed headlines today by offering a strange and half-hearted endorsement of the unionization drive in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama. Don’t be fooled, though: Rubio’s absurd “right-wing economic populism” isn’t serious about fighting for the working class.
A wave of Democratic lawmakers from across the political spectrum have now called for New York’s governor to resign. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have conspicuously failed to follow suit.
Ballots are due by March 29 in the first warehouse-wide union drive at a US Amazon facility. The Alabama workers are up against an avalanche of anti-union propaganda, but if they win a union, it would mark a historic incursion by labor into the heart of a formidable anti-union employer.
John Sayles is one of the most talented left-wing filmmakers in US history. We spoke with him about radical politics, independent filmmaking, and his legendary 1987 labor movie Matewan.
The US has never seriously considered far-reaching responses to the coronavirus pandemic like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to stay at home without immiseration. The result: unnecessary mass deaths, with more on the way.
There were many good things in the stimulus package. But claims that Biden’s Democratic Party has embraced structural change are overblown: an injection of much-needed cash isn’t the same thing as empowering workers or creating a constituency for change.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is an embodiment of centrist Democrats’ worst instincts. He says he wants to win over Republican-voting workers, but he is consistently on the wrong side of populist economic issues like a minimum wage hike that are wildly popular among those workers.
Emmanuel Macron has revealed what the political center of the twenty-first century looks like in practice: a war on workers, authoritarian demagogy, and a further emboldening of the far right.
The newly passed COVID-19 relief bill will not solve every aspect of the crisis, and it won’t fundamentally reverse our massive wealth inequality. But the bill will make a substantial difference in people’s lives — and in the process create fertile terrain for the Left to organize.
Walter LaFeber, a giant in the field of American diplomatic history, died this week at 87. His work refused to prettify the destructive record of US foreign policy and emphasized the unacknowledged economic motives behind American statesmen’s high-flying rhetoric.