The Many Faces of Regime Change in Cuba
Cubans confront a host of problems amid a national health emergency — and the Biden administrative is only adding to punitive sanctions with the intent to make everything worse.
20383 Article(s) by: Opal Lee
Opal Lee is a writer.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What the NBA Championship Means to Me
NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes in Jacobin about the meaning of the Milwaukee Bucks’ victory this year, and his own Bucks championship in 1971.
Let’s Make the US a Welfare Nation
With the new Child Tax Credit, two-thirds of people in the US now receive monthly benefit checks. That’s a very good thing — it means delivering poor, working-class, and middle-class people clear material gains while also destigmatizing the welfare state.
Climate Doom Won’t Save the Planet
This summer has been a cascade of climate disaster. But we shouldn’t assume that ever-worsening floods and heat waves will spur political change — we need a working-class strategy that can excite and win over people to save the planet.
These Stunning Photos Show How Workers Held Their Own Olympics
The 1931 Workers’ Olympiad in Vienna was an inspiring example of mass-scale sports, free of corporate influence. These photos from the games show how the workers’ movement promoted collective joy and class pride, even outside the factory gates.
The Genoa G8 Was the Beginning of the Italian Left’s Long Defeat
Twenty years ago, protests at the Genoa G8 summit proclaimed that “Another World is Possible.” But today, Italy’s weak and divided left lacks a vision for a real alternative to capitalism.
How Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Paved the Way for Donald Trump’s America
Much like Ronald Reagan’s defeat of the air traffic controllers, Scott Walker’s assault on public sector unions should be remembered as a turning point in American history that opened the floodgates to new attacks on the working class — and as a harbinger of Trumpism.
Julius Deutsch, an Anti-Fascist Who Organized Workers on the Sports Field
Austrian socialist Julius Deutsch was a key figure in Red Vienna’s workers’ sports clubs. Founder of the Schutzbund workers’ militia, Deutsch and his comrades used the class pride built on the sports field to mobilize against rising fascism.
André Gorz’s Non-Reformist Reforms Show How We Can Transform the World Today
In the 1960s, radical thinker André Gorz developed a novel concept that went beyond the tired reform versus revolution debate. With non-reformist reforms, popular movements can win immediate gains that shift power away from elites — and clear the way for more radical transformations.
McDonald’s and the Failed Promise of Black Capitalism
McDonald’s has long portrayed itself as a champion of black uplift through black ownership of its franchises. But McDonald’s version of black capitalism, like the idea of black capitalism as a whole, has only ever benefited the few, not the many.
Workers Are Being Crushed by Governors’ Unemployment Benefit Shutoffs
Republicans are cutting off unemployment benefits at a time when huge numbers of workers still desperately need them — and the Democrats aren’t putting up a fight over it.
The Summer List You Didn’t Know You Needed: Jacobin’s 2021 Beach Reads
Here at Jacobin, we don’t just offer you radical political dispatches — we give you practical advice on how to improve your summer. Here are our top beach reads for the sweltering summer months.
Jeff Bezos’s Vanity Space Flight Was a Uniquely American Disgrace
Only in a country whose ruling class has grown deeply deluded could a space joy ride like Jeff Bezos’s be seen as cause for public celebration rather than the symptom of moral rot and institutional decay that it so clearly is.
I Survived Anders Breivik’s Terrorist Attack. But His Politics Are Still With Us.
This day in 2011, far-right terrorist Anders Breivik murdered 69 people at the Norwegian Labor Party’s youth camp on Utøya island. A survivor of the attack writes about how he escaped — and the danger that Breivik’s far-right politics still represent today.
Americans Owe $140 Billion to Collections Agencies Because of Medical Debt
A newly published study finds that the amount of medical debt owed by Americans is even larger than previously thought. It’s just further proof of the moral abomination that is for-profit health care.
It’s Literally Impossible to Afford Rent on the Minimum Wage
Even modest rental housing is now out of reach for millions of full-time workers — and the pandemic has made an already bleak situation even worse.
Extinction Rebellion’s Liberal Moralism Can’t Save the Planet
Catapulted to media attention by its stunts, Extinction Rebellion has wasted its platform on a message of individualized guilt and obedience to the powerful. To avert climate disaster, we need economic transformation, not pointless moralism.
Slavoj Žižek: Last Exit to Socialism
Slavoj Žižek writes in Jacobin that today’s exploding ecological crises open up a realistic prospect of the final exit of humanity itself. Might socialism be our off-ramp, or is it already too late?
Michael Brooks on Why the War on the Poor Must End
Two years ago, our late friend and comrade Michael Brooks wrote an unpublished piece about his family’s experience with food stamps and Trump’s assault on the SNAP program. We publish it today, the anniversary of Michael’s passing, as a tribute to his memory.
Socialists Should Take the Right Lessons From the Russian Revolution
Socialists have rightly taken inspiration from the Russian Revolution for generations, but many of the lessons drawn from it are wrong for our own time. To make change today, we need to take democratic socialism seriously as a theory and practice.