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.
Like the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change is a threat to all humanity. But it’s working-class people who are suffering most — and faced with both crises, Emmanuel Macron’s government is not taking concrete action to help.
Before the pandemic, we were already in the middle of a mental health crisis. Now it’s even worse. We need a Medicare for All system not just to treat our medical needs, but our mental ones, too.
Unlike their European counterparts, the Socialist Party of America stood firm against World War I, refusing to give in to the siren song of nationalism. Here, in honor of Memorial Day, we reprint in full their 1917 antiwar proclamation insisting that “the working class of the United States has no quarrel with the working class of any other country.”
A reply to Angela Nagle and Michael Tracey.
My vision of democratic socialism wouldn’t be Utopia. But here’s the case it would be better than the status quo during both normal times and these times of crisis.
Opponents of Medicare for All have cast it as a political nonstarter since it would “force people off their health insurance.” Now, as millions of laid-off workers lose their employer-provided insurance, the cynicism of that claim is being laid bare.
Minor league baseball players make poverty wages and, because they don’t have a union, enjoy little say over their working conditions. A new organization of retired players is trying to change that.
In one of Europe’s most unequal countries, Spain’s working class is particularly suffering during the pandemic. Unidas Podemos’s “COVID tax” on millionaires’ assets will help rebuild long-neglected public services — and end decades of bipartisan tax giveaways to the rich.
For all its populist hues, Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland began in 2012 as a “party of professors” insisting on ordoliberal dogmas. Today, the conservative business elites who fed its rise are again in the headlines, now for pushing German judges to block aid to Europe’s hardest-hit economies.
President Donald Trump’s motivation behind a payroll tax holiday is not to help families through this crisis, but to set the stage for devastating cuts to Medicare and Social Security. And Democrats might end up helping him.
As the Left attempts to chart a new course in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign, there’s no better time to learn from America’s most underrated socialist, labor leader, and civil rights legend, A. Philip Randolph.
Palestinian workers play a vital role in Israel’s economy, but they’ve been left exposed to the danger of COVID-19 without any support from the Israeli authorities or their own leaders. The pandemic has exposed the harsh realities of life for workers under Israeli occupation.
The German state emphasizes the need for social distancing — except for the Romanian migrants working in its farms. The EU’s neoliberal order has deepened the continent’s labor market inequalities, making a mockery of the rhetoric of European solidarity.
When former Spanish Communist Party leader Julio Anguita was buried last week, crowds in his native Córdoba broke quarantine to sing the Internationale next to his coffin. The “Red Caliph” saved his party from the doldrums of the 1980s — and helped lay the basis for today’s Unidas Podemos.
Australia’s compulsory superannuation system has made us all shareholders in a vast financial investment industry worth almost $3 trillion. These collective funds are enormously powerful, yet when it comes to retirement, lower-income earners are left with all too little in their hands.
The news broke this week that Jane Roe, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, was paid by the anti-abortion right to publicly switch sides later in life. But while the news is shocking, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that no single person was responsible for the partial victory of Roe — it takes collective action to win social change.
Thirty years ago today, Yemen united as one country in a mood of optimism about the future. Those hopes were to be cruelly disappointed, thanks to the destructive, self-serving record and rivalry of Yemen’s political elites.
Domestic workers have always been among the hardest hit by recessions. Fear of contagion may make the coronavirus crisis the worst yet — a catastrophe for millions of the most economically vulnerable workers.
Jeff Bezos is reportedly on pace to be the world’s first trillionaire. That’s a grotesque indictment of our society — and the only way to change it is to organize Amazon workers to wrest back the extraordinary power and wealth that Bezos is hoarding.
Mainstream accounts of republicanism in Northern Ireland tend to focus exclusively on the armed campaign that produced one of the most devastating conflicts in postwar Europe. Left out, however, is the radical, grassroots movement for civil rights that was a driving force for popular republicanism from the late 1960s.