Opal Lee is a writer.
To win over German workers and replace their socialist loyalties with fascism, the Third Reich made a Nazi version of May Day a national holiday. But the real International Workers’ Day is the one that lives on today.
Throughout his career, two misleading stereotypes distorted our view of Raúl Castro. He was neither a pale shadow of his brother, nor a one-dimensional pro-Soviet ideologue, but a major historical figure who played a key role in shaping the Cuban system and then reforming it.
Over the past few months, pharma giants like Pfizer and Moderna have become household names and fodder for affectionate memes. But their prominence reflects how the market has cannibalized science and public health during a global crisis. Big pharma still is not your friend.
Israel has effectively made the establishment of a separate Palestinian state impossible. It’s clear what’s needed now: a single, democratic state with full rights for all people.
On immigration, the Biden administration — far from offering an alternative to Trumpist policies that so many commentators characterized as fascistic — has largely followed in Trump’s footsteps. But Biden has encountered only a tiny fraction of the criticism Trump attracted for pursuing many of the same anti-immigrant policies.
Every winter, thousands of North American tourists flock to sunny destinations in Mexico to be served by workers on poverty wages. The Mexican government has promoted tourism as a route out of poverty, but the profits from the industry are flowing away from local communities.
Justin Trudeau’s government claims that the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) can solve Canada’s infrastructure problems. In reality, the CIB is a vehicle for private interests to get their hands on public assets and revenue streams. It should be excluded from coronavirus recovery plans.
Louis Menand’s new history of Cold War art and thought The Free World wants to rehabilitate liberal anti-communism. To do so, it downplays both the political repression of the US left and imperial America’s genocide against its Third World political opponents.
It’s hard to come up with a better encapsulation of capitalism’s dreary imprint on culture than the latest innovation in the field of advertising: the retroactive insertion of product placement ads into classic movies.
At Rutgers University, unions have banded together to advance work-sharing as an alternative to the administration’s demands for massive job cuts. The approach has been an engine of solidarity between different groups of workers that has helped cut through the zero-sum logic of austerity.
The US public poured billions of dollars into developing a COVID-19 vaccine, yet drug companies are reaping the profits and jealously guarding the intellectual property from poor countries. Let the drug companies cry: we should release the vaccines immediately.
The horrific COVID crisis in India isn’t just the result of rich countries’ criminal hoarding of vaccines and intellectual property — it’s the fault of Narendra Modi’s far-right government, which has prioritized private profits over public health.
In his first 100 days as president, Joe Biden has proven unusually willing to associate his administration with the labor movement’s agenda. Unions have a greater opening to win an expansive pro-worker agenda than they have in decades. But we haven’t seen real change yet.
Hulu’s docuseries Sasquatch uses Bigfoot as a hook to zero in on an unsolved 1993 triple homicide in the weed empire of Northern California. The series has some compelling material to work with — which it proceeds to squander.
As the links between capitalism and ecological crisis become more and more evident, the political philosophy of ecosocialism has been gaining support. Left-wing environmentalists have no shortage of ideas: now they need a strategy that can achieve the necessary power.
We can oppose the saber-rattling and militarism of the US’s China hawks without downplaying the oppression of the Uyghur people.
New York University’s finances are flush, yet the administration has stonewalled grad workers on wages and other demands, including limiting New York police officers’ access to campus buildings. Now, the thousands-strong union is on strike.
The marginal tax bracket at the heart of our income tax system obfuscates the key question about taxes in a democratic society: Who pays what? In the 1930s, France’s Popular Front government had a solution — until it was dismantled by the right-wing Vichy regime.
From chiefs and kings to billionaires today, a small handful of humans over thousands of years have figured out how to amass tremendous power and wealth. We talked to an anthropologist about how the ruling class got started.
No one expected Joe Biden to rein in US empire. But after 100 days, he’s been terrible even on his own terms — failing to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, coddling authoritarian leaders like Mohammed bin Salman, and looking on as countries like India are pummeled by the COVID-19 crisis.