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.
We’re witnessing a national police riot that hasn’t showed any signs of slowing. The instances of brutal police violence against protesters are so numerous that it’s hard to keep track of them all — but here are some of the worst abuses we’ve seen.
Developed for the trenches of World War I, tear gas is being deployed indiscriminately against protesters across the United States today. It’s an unconscionable use of force that violates international regulations — and it shows police officers are operating with complete impunity.
Boris Johnson has learned a trick from David Cameron: no matter how badly a member of the government misbehaves, ignore demands for their resignation and wait until the press loses interest. So far, the strategy is working for him in the current Dominic Cummings scandal — but his luck might run out.
Amy Cooper’s calling the police on a black man in New York’s Central Park represents an extreme example of racist behavior. But it also offers a window onto the experiences of black Americans that highlights the importance of affirmative action and radical redistributive policies as central to anti-racism today.
Last week, the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto blasted a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site so as to expand its iron ore mine in Western Australia. It’s the latest example of the powerful mining sector exploiting a legislative system built on indigenous dispossession.
When the US spearheaded the Mexican war on drugs in 2006, many suspected links between members of Felipe Calderón’s administration and the cartels they were charged with stamping out. Now, fresh evidence makes clear that not only were top government figures profiting personally from links to the cartels, but that the US knew about it all along.
Brands like Pepsi, Nike, and Amazon are embracing Black Lives Matter on social media. Don’t be fooled: corporate anti-racism isn’t about solidarity – it’s just a marketing campaign.
Donald Trump wants to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military troops on the streets of American cities. It’s an act of desperation that will probably backfire — but an alarming sign of the lengths he may be willing to go to save his disintegrating presidency.
For years we’ve heard about body cameras and bias training to reform the racism and brutality of the police. That won’t cut it. The only way to get better policing is to get less of it — by defunding the police.
In response to the nationwide protests, Donald Trump seems ready to take the United States to a place many have been fearing since his election. Escaping from it means recognizing that he didn’t get us there alone.
In the past, radical-led unions have been at the forefront of the struggle against police brutality. Unions must step up and do the same today — because racial justice movements can’t win radical reforms without the institutional power of organized workers.
Donald Trump is attempting to drum up hysteria about antifa to clamp down on protest and dissent in the United States. Don’t let him.
For organizers in Central Pennsylvania, the Bernie Sanders campaign was an opportunity to build social-democratic politics in conservative territory. As Pennsylvanians go to the polls today, those organizers emphasize that Sanders’s unprecedented campaign was a success in putting left politics on the map in rural regions like theirs.
Democrats have done a miserable job of acting as an opposition party to Trump — but not because they don’t have significant power to halt his authoritarianism. Here are 10 things Democrats could do to push back right now. If they don’t use their power, Democrats are complicit in Trump’s barbarities.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has been rightly criticized for letting the New York Police Department run wild with brutality in the recent racial justice protests. But he’s not the only “progressive” in New York bowing to the boys in blue — the city council, supposedly to de Blasio’s left, has long been under the NYPD’s thumb, too.
The Civil War of 1917–21 brought the third wave of pogroms in the former Russian Empire, mostly perpetrated by the counterrevolutionary forces. But even some Red Army units committed antisemitic atrocities — and independent Jewish socialists played a decisive role in forcing the Soviet state to stop them.
US police have used rubber bullets against civilian protesters on a massive scale the past week. These projectiles actually originated in Northern Ireland — and their history is anything but “nonlethal.” There can be no justification for police use of rubber bullets.
It’s fashionable to claim that the “rise of the robots” or the “disappearance of work” have changed everything about labor in the twenty-first century. But when it comes to extracting profit from workers, today’s era of ruthless capitalism is fundamentally the same as those of the past.
The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a fresh round of soul-searching in establishment media outlets about the problems of urban America. Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we’ll never be able to solve them.
Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered in 2016 during a fight against a hydroelectric megaproject. In a Honduras characterized by corruption and impunity after the 2009 US-backed coup, the murder was the grand finale of a campaign of terror and violence against activists like Cáceres.