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Nick French is an associate editor at Jacobin.
Workers in Alameda County, California’s public health system say they have long struggled under austerity and mismanagement. They are currently on strike, demanding safe working and patient care conditions, and democratic accountability for a health system that should serve the needs of the public.
The great black freedom struggles of the past have been joined by many white people — not just out of a sense of moral obligation or sympathy for the oppressed, but out of a sense of shared interest and a desire for collective liberation. That spirit of solidarity should be central to anti-racist struggle today.
After brutal police violence failed to stop huge protests against the murder of George Floyd, governments across the country imposed curfews in an attempt to curtail dissent. But protesters have defied the restrictions in mass numbers — and in some cities, forced elected leaders to repeal the curfews.
Socialists and other radicals played crucial roles in American labor’s greatest victories. To rebuild a fighting union movement, socialists must organize in the workplace.
During the Great Depression, radicals played key roles in helping organize the worker upsurges that led to the New Deal’s pro-worker policies. We can do the same today in fighting back against the economic misery and unsafe working conditions of the coronavirus pandemic.
From failing to develop a vaccine, to evicting the jobless and cutting off their health care, to needlessly subjecting workers and the public to infection: capitalism will be responsible for millions of coronavirus-related deaths.
The pharmaceutical industry has so far failed to develop a coronavirus cure. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: the privatized health care model can’t provide the drugs we need to combat even deadlier bacterial epidemics, because they’re producing drugs for profit rather than human need.
Critics insist that socialists want to squelch freedom. But the exact opposite is the case: democratic socialism is about expanding freedom — and liberating us from the tyranny that pervades everyday life under capitalism.
Polls show that many older Americans don’t support Bernie Sanders. But we don’t want to write those boomers off — we want to warmly invite them to join our movement that’s fighting for dignified lives for us, for them, and for their children and grandchildren.
The wealth that billionaires like Michael Bloomberg hoard and use to try to buy the political system has been stolen from the working class and the planet we all share.
No one should be surprised by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders — just like Sanders, she has continually challenged the neoliberal status quo.
Rich people love to give away money for charitable causes to convince you that they’re not so bad after all. Don’t be fooled: we need to dispossess the benevolent rich of their ill-gotten gains, too.
American inequality thrives on the myth that the rich deserve their millions because they’re better, smarter, and more hardworking. The college admissions scandal shows that’s a lie.
The teachers strikes of the 1960s and ‘70s embraced workplace militancy but alienated parents and other communities who should have been allies. By striking on behalf of the entire working class, today’s teachers aren’t making that same mistake.
After two wildcat strikes in recent months, Oakland teachers are now on the verge of a district-wide strike. Like other recent teacher walkouts, Oakland educators are up against a school-reform agenda pushed by billionaires.