In America, There Is Mass Death, Then There Is Nothing
It doesn’t matter how many people are slaughtered. It doesn’t even matter if they’re children, as they were in Texas yesterday. In America, the response to gun violence is nothing.
19260 Articles by: Karl Leffme
Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
For Enrico Berlinguer, Communism Meant the Fullest Spread of Democracy
Born 100 years ago today, Italian communist Enrico Berlinguer grew up under Fascist dictatorship. In postwar decades, he became leader of Europe’s biggest Communist Party — and an iconoclastic champion of a democratic path to socialism.
Starbucks Workers Are Winning 90 Percent of Their Union Elections
Starbucks workers are unionizing at a breakneck pace. We ran the numbers and found that more than 2,000 Starbucks workers are now unionized — and that number will likely triple in the coming months.
Workers Have Won the First Union at a Major US Video Game Company
Workers at World of Warcraft–maker Activision Blizzard have voted to unionize. Fourteen-hour workdays and alleged rampant sexual harassment were among the issues that prompted them to organize the first recognized labor union at a publicly traded video game producer.
Big Pharma Is Pressuring Joe Manchin to Oppose Drug Pricing Reforms
Joe Manchin stalled and killed the Build Back Better bill under pressure from big business. He could now support a compromise budget with drug pricing reforms, but the pharmaceutical industry is doing everything it can to make sure he doesn’t.
The Olympics Are Globally Mobile. Now the Anti-Olympics Movement Is Too.
Olympic Games host cities experience increased gentrification, police surveillance, and environmental destruction. Anti-Olympics activists hosted their second transnational summit in Paris last weekend to put an end to the games’ destruction.
The Chilean Right Made Colonia Dignidad Possible
Chileans have long known about Colonia Dignidad, a German colony in Chile depicted in the Netflix series A Sinister Sect whose settlers committed countless acts of pedophilia, murder, and torture. Less discussed: the Chilean right’s complicity in those crimes.
School Privatizers Are Leaning Hard Into the Culture Wars
A billionaire-backed network of free-market fundamentalists is ginning up controversy over “wokeness” in American schools with an ulterior motive: to demolish public education.
Fewer Americans Are Identifying as Middle-Class
According to Gallup polls, the number of Americans who self-identify as below middle-class, including those who identify as working-class, is on the rise — a rise especially pronounced among those age 18–34.
Australia’s Left Is Breaking Through
The Australian election saw historic defeats for the Right and its backers in the Murdoch media. But the Labor Party can’t change the country without fighting for a robust, progressive economic agenda.
Right-Wing Death Threats Won’t Stop Gustavo Petro From Becoming Colombia’s Next President
Left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro has been fighting Colombia’s far-right paramilitaries for decades. The revelation of a recent plot to murder Petro is unsurprising, but his campaign still appears strong ahead of Sunday’s election.
How Amazon Invented “Plat-Fordism”
Market ideologues paint Amazon as a model of a flexible, networked platform capitalism. Yet Amazon’s growth has revitalized parts of the Fordism that Silicon Valley claimed to have overcome — including the rise of an organized blue-collar workforce.
The Commodification of Jean-Michel Basquiat
When he was alive, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic art leveled a powerful opposition to inequality and racism. Since his death, his work has been co-opted, emptied of all political content, and commodified to be sold as an image of New York’s vanishing cool.
When Jeff Bezos Tweets, He Wants His Journalists and Joe Biden to Listen
The world’s second-richest man is using social media to push back against any hint that corporate greed is stoking inflation — and to send a message about his news preferences in the Washington Post, the paper he owns.
A Loyal CIA Operative’s Mind Is Not a Pretty Place
Longtime CIA operative Ric Prado just published a memoir. From training murderous right-wing paramilitaries to complaining about “hellholes” the world over, it’s shockingly candid — but the content is hardly surprising to anyone familiar with US foreign policy.
Joe Biden Has Botched the Summit of the Americas
The United States is excluding Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the forthcoming Summit of the Americas. Washington probably wasn’t expecting that much of Latin America, led by Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, would publicly push back in response.
Australian Voters Have Demanded Action on Climate Change
Thanks to its stubborn inaction on climate change, the conservative coalition was trounced in this weekend’s election in Australia. With Greens and independents set to hold the balance of power, it’s time for the climate movement to step up its demands.
Everything Everywhere All at Once Is the Most Insane Movie of the Year
Hot dog fingers, a talking raccoon, butt plug karate, Michelle Yeoh in dominatrix gear: Everything Everywhere All at Once has something for everyone. Past the absurdity is a deeply (and sometimes overly) sentimental tale about a family struggling to make it.
Neoliberalism Hasn’t Helped Much of the Global South
For a brief period after World War II, Third World nations played an active role in shaping the world economic order and fostering development. For all its promises and a few success stories, neoliberalism hasn’t done the same.
Remembering Jeffrey Escoffier, Queer Socialist Pioneer
With Jeffrey Escoffier’s passing this week, the world has lost a great thinker who took sex as seriously as politics and never lost sight of their intimate connections. Farewell to a titan of the queer socialist left.