Opal Lee is a writer.
The bipartisan obsession with schooling as an investment in “human capital” in the US since the 1970s has fostered a highly unequal society. We need wide-ranging redistribution to tackle inequality — and to defend public education against right-wing backlash.
John Brophy earned the moniker “Mr. CIO” in the 1930s for his excellent organizing for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He was steadfast and never flashy, which is perhaps why he’s been forgotten. It’s also what makes him a model for our times.
Unions representing grad workers, postdocs, and faculty at Rutgers University have been without a contract for almost nine months; earlier in March, they voted by 94% to authorize a strike. We talked to two workers about their contract fight.
During the Cold War, Yugoslav socialist Tito tried to chart a course apart from the Soviets. But his actions enraged Stalin — putting Tito on the unlikely path of seeking Western support and revealing the difficulties of nonalignment amid great power politics.
Anxiety that automation is coming for workers’ jobs has reached a fever pitch. But talk of robots replacing humans often conceals a less complicated reality: management uses technology to undemocratically reorganize and intensify labor.
Vladimir Putin promised to “denazify Ukraine,” but this week he suppressed Russia’s own watchdog monitoring the far right. Unable to crush Ukraine, his government has turned its fire on domestic critics of war and nationalism.
After bailing out Silicon Valley Bank, the federal government is considering the rescue of First Republic Bank. But just two months ago, First Republic pressured regulators not to adopt rules to minimize the risk of government bailouts for insolvent banks.
On this day in 1980, El Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero was murdered by US-backed assassins. Only weeks before, he had written to US President Jimmy Carter to withhold support from El Salvador’s military dictatorship. We reprint the letter here in full.
In the 2023 New York budget fight, Governor Kathy Hochul is relying on billionaires like Michael Bloomberg to try to build support for an austerity budget — rather than listening to wildly popular left-wing demands to tax the rich.
Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas helped create a financial disaster as head of Chicago Public Schools, making bond deals worth $666 million — whose exorbitant interest payments to Wall Street are now robbing the city’s school system.
Conservative commentator Peter Hitchens thinks the Nazis were leftists. His case doesn’t even begin to add up.
Workers’ fear of new artificial intelligence technology makes sense: that technology has the potential to eliminate their jobs. But if we didn’t live under capitalism, AI could be used to liberate us from drudgery rather than hurl us into poverty.
Responding to the Inflation Reduction Act, the EU has unveiled its own green industrial plan. It has little to do with real decarbonization — but hands public money to big business, fueling a global race among “clean-tech” oligopolies.
Over the past two centuries, US imperial interventions have had a devastating impact on the peoples of Latin America. Those interventions have also played a crucial role in US domestic politics, enabling new power blocs to cohere and develop their strategies.
The latest UN climate report was just released, and it’s brought the usual doom loop of grave headlines as emissions keep rising. The way out isn’t getting people to “believe the science” but building a pro-worker climate politics that can win power.
Under existing law, Joe Biden and his health secretary have the power to lower the price of medicines developed with taxpayer funds. They’re refusing to do so for the $180,000-a-year cancer drug Xtandi — after a furious lobbying campaign by Big Pharma.
The wildest fantasy of hypercapitalist ideologues isn’t to expand democracy but to avoid its reach or even snuff it out.
After Silicon Valley Bank’s near collapse, commentators rightly focused on the unfairness of state intervention for an institution that had acted irresponsibly. But little attention was paid to the role that banks like SVB play in financing US militarism.
Twenty years ago, George W. Bush and Tony Blair lied their way into invading Iraq. The mainstream media cheered them along.
Donald Trump has implored conservatives to hit the streets if he ends up indicted in New York. It might be cause for worry — if Trump had any ability to mobilize mass numbers of supporters anymore.