Opal Lee is a writer.
This week the UK was officially declared to be in a recession. The economy is suffering from a long-term refusal by the government to increase public investment — helping make Britain one of the worst economic performers among rich countries.
Public education advocates in Los Angeles are running two school board candidates this year in an effort to halt creeping privatization. Their opponents in the charter school lobby are also eyeing the school board — and have millions to spend on their agenda.
On immigration policy, the Democrats are moving toward Trump and the Republicans. The mainstream media seems to think this is a good idea.
Israel is preparing to launch a ground assault against the Palestinian town of Rafah, where one million refugees are sheltered. It will likely mean a surge in civilians deaths — for which the US and other Western governments also will be culpable.
A government report found that a year’s worth of records that could include war-crime allegations is missing from the US military’s Middle East operations command center — a period that coincides with an independent watchdog group’s claims of war crimes.
In 2019, local union members of the Vermont AFL-CIO elected officers to top positions in an attempt to make the federation more progressive, democratic, and effective. Their record is impressive.
When the US suspended aid to the main UN aid agency in Gaza, the Spanish government increased its funding. While most Western countries follow a dogged pro-Israel line, left-wing ministers in Spain have been a rare dissenting voice.
Los Angeles County has proposed that Lyft take over its public bike share program. LA bike share workers fear Lyft will gut their program and undermine their union — so they’ve joined with public transit advocates to fight privatization.
Rafah, one of the last refuges for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s vicious assault on Gaza, is now under intense bombardment. The episode is just the latest chapter in a long history of violence the small border town has suffered at Israel’s hands.
Colombian elites are determined not to let leftist president Gustavo Petro serve out his full term. As top judicial officials target him and his cabinet, drug cartels and their links to the far right remain uninvestigated.
A new Pentagon policy bars the US Defense Department from working on films that cooperate with Chinese censorship demands. It’s a new front in the economic battle with China — and it ignores the Defense Department’s own influence over film content at home.
On Sunday, activists occupied the British Museum to demand that it end its partnership with BP after Israel granted the energy firm gas exploration licenses off the coast of Gaza. Here, the activists write about why they occupied the museum.
An invasion of Rafah would be the most dangerous stage of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians yet, causing death on a scale unseen even in these four months of sheer brutality.
Since October 7, US officials have been quietly admitting in the press that Joe Biden fully supports Israel’s war — and that talk about the president’s supposed anger at massive civilian casualties in Gaza is purely PR to keep the war going.
Across the US, right-wing state legislatures have disregarded popular will to enact costly school privatization plans. In North Carolina, they flouted democracy to advance their agenda.
Last year Kenyan courts ruled that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, broke the law by firing workers who had attempted to unionize. Meta responded by refusing to pay its employees for over eight months and fighting labor law.
Old-money WASPs once ruled America with an air of clannish exclusivity. Then the economic crises of the 1970s upended their world, opening the corporate floodgates to new-money barbarians — and replacing elite social norms with wanton money lust.
Each February 14, tourists flock to Terni, Italy, hometown of third-century martyr Saint Valentine. Yet Terni’s “city of love” identity is itself rather new, as politicians seek tourist dollars to replace its once-mighty steelworks.
Cynical politicians like John Fetterman and Benjamin Netanyahu are trying to pit calls for a cease-fire in Gaza against efforts to bring Israeli hostages home. The reality is a cease-fire is the only way to do just that.
Last fall, democratic socialists in Tacoma, Washington, led a victorious campaign to establish robust protections for the city’s renters. Jacobin spoke with two campaign leaders about the effort.