
The Donald Trump of Central America
President Nayib Bukele is El Salvador’s Donald Trump. His hard-right bluster and media-centric populism threaten to deal a devastating blow to the country’s once-mighty left.
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.
President Nayib Bukele is El Salvador’s Donald Trump. His hard-right bluster and media-centric populism threaten to deal a devastating blow to the country’s once-mighty left.
Puerto Rico governor Rosselló offered the island no way out, no road map — just failure cloaked in rhetoric. That’s why mass movements forced his ouster — and why they’ll keep organizing for a recovery for all Puerto Ricans, not just the rich.
John Delaney’s campaign for president has lasted two years, cost millions of dollars, and yielded poll numbers as close to zero as you can get. That’s the good news.
Strikes have spread to more than 200 emergency rooms across France, as nurses and health-care assistants call out the neglect of public hospitals. The striking workers don’t want to disrupt vital services — they’re acting to stop Emmanuel Macron from running them into the ground.
Conservatives like to claim that leftists are opponents of free speech. But that’s nonsense: it was radical labor organizers who founded the ACLU and who fought for civil liberties as a means to resist capitalists’ power.
Once a hawkish supporter of Israel, Elizabeth Warren has recently adopted a more balanced stance. That’s undoubtedly a good thing — but she’ll have to go much further to truly support Palestinian rights.
At a recent town hall in Queens, AOC received a rapturous reception from constituents, many of them activists who spoke out about their local organizing work. The lesson was clear: to keep up the fight, she and her Congressional colleagues will need more than applause — they’ll need a movement behind them.
DoorDash took a page from traditional restaurant managers: it stole workers’ tips. But even as it reversed course under public pressure, the delivery platform highlighted the exploitation at the core of capitalist employment.
Remember the frenzied, paranoid style of right-wing anti-Clintonism? The lies, the conspiracy theories, the deeply personal disgust? Well, it’s back — only this time it’s migrated to the Democratic Party and its unhinged attacks on Bernie Sanders.
Urban planning often sees inclusion and access as the keystones of a free and just city. But socialists should instead think about ownership: who owns property, and the power it gives them.
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party began life as a liberal opposition to Hungary’s Soviet-backed regime. But far from waging a generic fight for freedom, Orbán and his crony capitalist allies turned Hungary into the laboratory for a new far right.
Eugene Scalia has spent his career as a corporate lawyer fighting for the interests of capital. Now that he’s in line to run the Labor Department, Marx’s quip about the capitalist state as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie has never looked more accurate.
Boris Johnson, a friend of Steve Bannon and a self-declared enemy of Jeremy Corbyn’s “red-clawed socialism,” will be a disaster for working people.
With Boris Johnson as prime minister, a no-deal Brexit is a real possibility. The Left must start organizing now to avert it.
The threat is climate change, not immigration. Pro-migrant politics should be part of any effort to tackle the climate crisis.
Boris Johnson’s career has been one long romp of consequence-free irresponsibility. Now, as he faces an impossible Brexit and unprecedented public scrutiny, his lucky streak is about to end.
Brexit is giving the Lib Dems the opportunity to rebrand as a reforming, progressive party. But they’re still a force for privilege and austerity. New leader Jo Swinson will only make matters worse.
Kumail Nanjiani’s new Uber-based buddy flick, Stuber, says a lot about woke masculinity, economic precarity, and the death of the old-school “taxi movie.” It’s also not very good.
For forty years, the UAW has sought to act as management’s “partner” in running the auto industry. The results have been a disaster.
For decades, government policy helped make segregation worse. But we can use the power of the government to reverse it in the twenty-first century.