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 UK’s Boris Johnson had been coasting through the COVID-19 crisis — but that was before his aide Dominic Cummings’s flouting of social-distancing rules set off a nationwide furor. It’s reminded the country of everything they hate about the Tories: their privileged obliviousness and their belief that normal rules don’t apply to them.
Dave Rubin very much wants you to think of him as a serious man of ideas. But his new book shows him to be a shallow thinker who doesn’t even understand his own ideas.
Public health experts have been sounding the alarm about the spread of coronavirus in American prisons. Yet despite repeated warnings, newly released data show that America’s addiction to incarceration continues unabated — endangering all of us, both inside and outside prison walls.
Donald Trump’s erratic, dangerous response to the coronavirus crisis has sent an unmistakable message: better thousands die than I lose in November.
Former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray was viciously attacked throughout the primary for criticizing mainstream Democrats. In an interview with Jacobin, she spoke about what she learned from the campaign, how she came to the Left, and the empty, opportunistic anti-racism of neoliberal Democrats.
Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot has worked hard to portray herself as a “progressive” mayor. But her coronavirus response has largely shielded the city’s corporate elite — while rejecting policies pushed by democratic socialists on the city council that would benefit working-class residents.
Sigmund Freud often regretted the fact that most of his patients were drawn from the upper classes. But when socialists turned Vienna “red” after World War I, neurotics both rich and poor gained access to free treatment and new experimental methods.
The uprising in response to George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer this week has led to predictable calls to condemn looting. But the real looting in our society comes from the military, the police, the pharmaceutical companies, private equity, the landlords, the real estate speculators, and the billionaires — not protesters against police brutality.
Despite decades of protests against them, the IMF and World Bank continue to force the same discredited neoliberal policies on poor governments and their people. Countries in economic distress desperately need alternative sources of aid that won’t demand adherence to free-market orthodoxy.
Jerry Stiller was one of those mensches from a bygone era who is almost hard to believe in now, as startling to encounter as a member of a species thought to be extinct walking into your living room.
We have so many miseries in American society because rich people are hoarding all of our resources. We shouldn’t applaud them when they toss us a few dollars as philanthropy.
As nursing-home deaths spike during the COVID-19 crisis, hospital and nursing-home companies are pushing for state laws all over America that would shield their executives and owners from responsibility — and trying to convince lawmakers by spending serious cash.
A full investigation into the murder of Honduran indigenous leader Berta Cáceres doesn’t just uncover the story behind her assassination. It also provides a glimpse into the US-backed militarized narco-state of post-coup Honduras.
China’s new national security laws are a significant escalation against the protest movement in Hong Kong. Rather than act through Hong Kong officials to carry out its will, Beijing has decided to directly restrict the free speech rights of Hong Kong residents.
The Blowback podcast reaches deep into the memory hole and pulls the Iraq War back up into the sunlight. It’s vital listening for anyone who is hazy on the specifics of how the US ended up invading Iraq, killing at least half a million people, and sparking bloody, never-ending conflicts throughout the Middle East.
In 2018, hospitals, nursing homes, and their lobbyists gave $2.3 million to New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s political apparatus. Now health care executives are getting immunity for their deadly negligence during the coronavirus pandemic. Critics say New York’s liability shield is linked to higher nursing-home death rates during the pandemic.
Amid spiraling unemployment and looming economic ruin, the federal government must give ordinary Americans the assistance they need, beginning with a monthly $2,000 check. Without such basic supports, we risk a dangerous groundswell of demands for the premature reopening of the economy.
Like many during this pandemic, my coworkers and I were told on September 11, 2001, to possibly risk our lives by staying on the job. Instead, we walked out.
Abe Shinzo’s government was slow to respond to COVID-19, lagging behind neighbors like South Korea. The public health crisis has been worsened by the recklessness of Abe’s foreign policy, which relies upon an erratic US sponsor whose bases are a vector for spreading the disease.
Socialists and other radicals played crucial roles in American labor’s greatest victories. To rebuild a fighting union movement, socialists must organize in the workplace.