Opal Lee is a writer.
The United Auto Workers has long been hobbled by two-tier contracts, corruption, and a lack of internal democracy. At its recent convention, rank-and-file reformers did their best to fight on all of those issues — but the old guard is still firmly in charge.
Once a coveted job, conditions for railroad workers have badly deteriorated. But railroad workers are central to our economy — so central that a current impasse between railroad companies and associated unions has prompted Joe Biden to intervene.
Police and mass incarceration are only the most visible and obvious manifestations of the prison-industrial complex. Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that the prison-industrial complex is a holistic social organizing principle that pervades life under capitalism.
Remember all that talk of Joe Biden being the next FDR? Going into the midterms, the most he’s going to deliver is one minor tweak to the welfare state — hardly the sweeping measures to help workers and the poor that we were promised.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the former dictator, won a crushing victory in this year’s Philippine presidential election. Responsibility for this disaster lies with the liberal politicians who failed to carry out the most basic social reforms while in power.
Abortion activists had to defend Roe when reproductive rights hung in the balance of its defense. But it was always a weak foundation for those rights. We shouldn’t want Roe back — we should demand much, much more.
Climate change means workers have to labor in increasingly dangerous heat during the summer months. Corporations are happy to put workers’ lives on the line — and the federal government isn’t doing enough to stop it.
The last few years have seen unprecedented mobilization of mass outrage against the most blatantly racist aspects of US policing. But we can’t confront police abuses without addressing their role in our society as managers of an unequal class status quo.
Actor B. J. Novak’s impressive directorial debut, Vengeance, sends a Brooklyn writer out to West Texas in order to turn a family’s grief into a podcast. It’s a satire that nails our era like no other.
To stop the worst of climate change, we have to choose: Are we going to save the planet or are we going to continue making fossil fuel companies happy? It’s impossible to do both.
J. B. Pritzker is a billionaire Democrat who hasn’t even signed on to Medicare for All. But the Illinois governor has captured the imaginations of some progressives simply by doing what most Democrats won’t: running on popular ideas and following through.
For politicians and the media, the big question seems to be, are we technically in a recession or not? For the millions of people struggling, the question is: What’s the difference?
Elon Musk and his billionaire brethren have all sorts of harebrained solutions to fix US transportation. But we already know what would benefit workers: well-funded public transit and fast trains, powered by a renewable energy grid that serves everyone.
Labor’s climate bill is little more than symbolism. With escalating climate disasters and soaring inflation, it’s bad policy and even worse politics.
For a few days in July 1877, workers took over St Louis and a communist party ruled the Midwestern city. The often forgotten St Louis Commune was a landmark event that showed the US isn’t immune to Paris Commune–style eruptions of class consciousness.
In a global economy defined by overproduction and underconsumption, American and Chinese corporations are struggling to extract profits from developing nations. Without massive wealth redistribution, consumption won’t return to stable levels.
Tabitha Arnold is a socialist textile artist whose work focuses on working-class organizing. In an interview, she discusses her work, how art is warped by wealthy patrons’ dictates, and why artists shouldn’t confuse their art with political organizing.
Both labor and the reproductive rights movements are fighting for the same thing: the right to control our own lives.
Inflation is eroding paychecks and rising interest rates are hurting people with mortgages. Anthony Albanese’s government could defend workers’ living standards by taxing the rich and controlling prices, but Labor’s neoliberal orthodoxy stands in the way.
China did not develop capitalism during the 18th century, despite having a market economy as strong as Britain’s. The raw material for China’s 20th-century capitalist takeoff came from an unlikely figure: Mao Zedong.