Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
As health systems around the world are thrown into crisis, tech firms are winning lucrative government contracts to roll out spurious apps and digital services. We need technological innovation to combat this pandemic, but it must be administered publicly to prevent the further commodification of our health care.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza has turned the strip of land into the “world’s largest open-air prison.” And now the overcrowded enclave has its first confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The ranks of the uninsured are growing, and people are already dying from a lack of coverage. Yet Joe Biden says coronavirus has nothing to do with Medicare for All. He’s wrong: its time has come.
The United Kingdom emerged from the horrors of World War II and established a national health system. We can do the same thing with the coronavirus crisis and Medicare for All.
Mainstream media coverage of Mexico’s leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his response to the coronavirus crisis has been terrible. While world health authorities have commended Mexico’s approach, the media — blindly parroting AMLO’s right-wing opposition — have panned it.
Brazil’s fragile health care system and densely populated cities threaten to turn the COVID-19 outbreak into a full-scale social collapse. President Jair Bolsonaro’s dismissal of the pandemic as a “little flu” is feeding dissent even among his allies — threatening to hasten the far-right leader’s downfall.
From why the free market can’t cope with coronavirus to the rise of Modi and Bolsonaro to how shock therapy destroyed Russia in the 1990s and what the UK Labour Party does after Corbyn, we have a bunch of videos coming out this week.
Two years after forcing Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate over sexual misconduct allegations, prominent Democrats now have to decide whether to stand on principle or keep silent about the latest assault accusations against Joe Biden. We asked them — and so far, most are choosing to keep silent.
Against CDC guidelines and health experts’ urgings, the DNC and Joe Biden’s campaign urged Americans to vote earlier this month — undoubtedly spreading coronavirus further. But don’t expect any accountability for it, from mainstream media or anyone else.
Our global crisis of democracy is real, but its solution isn’t rebuilding political norms. It’s rebuilding working-class power.
Joe Biden’s astonishing propensity to make things up is a major liability for him. But Democratic voters have been largely kept in the dark about those lies by liberal media outlets.
The Democratic establishment’s response to the latest allegations of sexual harassment against Joe Biden show the cynicism of a party elite that switches its feminism on and off whenever it’s expedient.
New York’s jails have become a focus of COVID-19, with 103 inmates and 80 staff testing positive already. One Rikers Island detainee told Jacobin about the outbreak in the prison — and the inhumanity of trapping people in a hotbed of infection.
Spain’s requisitioning of private hospitals is a fine example of government mobilization to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet the country’s overwhelmed wards also show how neoliberal policies have chipped away at public health care — starving hospitals of resources while siphoning them off to paid-for alternatives.
It’s been a week since I was laid off, and my husband is out of work, too. Today, I need a rent suspension. Tomorrow, I need a homes guarantee.
Instacart workers are walking off the job today in protest of what they say are dangerous working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. We spoke with one of them.
Amazon workers are preparing to walk out of a Staten Island warehouse, claiming that COVID-19 is rampant there. “My job description says have a high school diploma and lift fifty pounds. It doesn’t say risk my life working during a pandemic.”
The Australian government is preaching unity in the face of coronavirus but its emergency measures, which protect business interests above all else, are set only to deepen inequality.
People tend not to rebel against their oppressors, because the cost is simply too high. But sometimes they do, overcoming extraordinary odds — and understanding how and why rebellions like the Civil Rights Movement happen is crucial for socialists today.
Instead of letting Amazon use coronavirus to dominate even more of the economy, the company should be nationalized and reoriented to serve the public good instead of predatory capitalism.