The US Blockade on Cuba Must End
For sixty years, the United States has aimed to strangle Cuba’s economy and inflict misery on the Cuban people. Blockades are methods of war — and it’s time for the war on Cuba to end.
21007 Article(s) by: Opal Lee
Opal Lee is a writer.
Beating Nuclear Arms Into Plowshares
The US nuclear arsenal gobbles up massive resources for death that should be used for human life. For decades, Catholic activists have put their bodies on the line to insist we dismantle that arsenal.
Why Socialists Should Distrust Antitrust
People are right to be disgusted by giant corporations. But the liberal “antitrust” response too often valorizes small-scale competition instead of solidarity and worker organization.
Luca Is Another Beautiful, Overstuffed Pixar Sob Sandwich
Pixar’s latest film, Luca, is so chock-full of twists and turns, it reveals just how much that once-little animation studio has helped shape our current “bingeworthy” narrative standard.
In Belarus, Peaceful Student Protesters Are Languishing in Jail
A year since election fraud sparked Belarus’s biggest ever protests, Alexander Lukashenko’s regime speaks of a return to normality. But the country’s universities have seen a purge of dissidents, with hundreds of students arbitrarily expelled or even jailed.
Australian Business Has Used the Pandemic to Attack Workers — Now It’s Time to Fight Back
Much of Australia is back under pandemic lockdown thanks to Coalition mismanagement. The Liberals have used the crisis to bolster big business. Now the workers’ movement needs to champion its own measures to counter the pandemic and rebuild the economy.
What Biden’s Child Tax Credit Is Getting Wrong
Joe Biden’s Child Tax Credit is an important lifeline for poor and working-class families. But his administration has bungled the rollout: 90 percent of eligible children still haven’t been reached, consigning them to brutal poverty.
Jamaica’s 1831 Revolt Dealt a Hammer Blow to Colonial Slavery
In 1831, slaves in Jamaica took up arms against murderous exploitation by the island’s plantation owners. Their courageous rebellion, at the halfway point between Haiti’s revolution and the US Civil War, was a landmark in the battle for slave emancipation.
James Carville Has Never Stopped Being Wrong
Like an aged one-hit wonder, James Carville has made a career of playing his favorite tune over and over: a warmed-over centrist jeremiad against the Left that has proved to be as wrong as it is stale.
Joe Biden’s Stimulus Is Financing Republican-Backed Tax Cuts for the Rich
Republicans are taking advantage of the White House’s refusal to invoke a law that would ensure stimulus money isn’t used for tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Woodcraft Folk Are the Socialist Boy Scouts
Unlike scouting groups like the Boy Scouts who promote jingoistic patriotism, Britain’s Woodcraft Folk are left-wing, coeducational, anti-militarist, and egalitarian. It’s the type of democratic, cooperative institution kids need.
It’s Time to Nationalize Supermarkets
Supermarkets under capitalism are exploitative and ecologically damaging, shaping what we produce as well as what we consume. In public hands, following a different logic, they could supply the creative core of a democratically planned socialist economy.
The Federal Writers’ Project Fueled the Cultural Ferment of the New Deal Era
FDR’s Federal Writers’ Project employed thousands of out-of-work writers to produce guidebooks, compile local histories, and collect stories of the country at a moment of turmoil. We need an equivalent program today.
Chasing After Big Tech Will End in Disaster for Alberta
Alberta’s politicians want to graft a tech sector onto the province’s unsustainable petrostate economy. Instead of combining Big Oil with Big Tech, they should be using public investment to foster green development and a just transition.
Esther Bejarano (1924–2021)
Esther Bejarano, who died Saturday at age 96, was an Auschwitz survivor and a lifelong communist. A talented musician, in later life she continued to raise her voice against the resurgent far right, setting an example for anti-fascists everywhere.
A New Texas Law Puts a Bounty on Abortion Care Providers’ Heads
Texas’s new “heartbeat bill” offers private citizens $10,000 to successfully sue organizations that help women get abortions. It’s a public subsidy for the anti-abortion movement that harms working-class women.
There Is No Silver Lining to South Africa’s Zuma Insurrection
South Africa’s immense poverty and inequality have been weaponized by former president Jacob Zuma and his supporters through a massive economic sabotage campaign. Any response must address the miseries saturating the country as well as the chaos now unleashed.
A System That Makes Housing a Commodity Can’t Serve Human Needs
Even before the pandemic, America was in the midst of a massive housing crisis. Now, it’s far worse. Our housing agenda has to include investing in public housing, universal rent control, just-cause eviction, and a broad push to decommodify housing.
Big Tech Firms Can’t Be Trusted to Decide Children’s Futures
The rise of online learning during the pandemic has accelerated the already rapid growth of the educational technology sector. But the Silicon Valley firms taking over the classroom remain far too unaccountable — and they’re massively extending the automated processes that unfairly decide children’s futures.
The Billionaire Space Race Is the Ultimate Symbol of Capitalist Decadence
Billionaires like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are parasites, worse than socially useless. But they’ve got to justify their existence somehow, so, like five-year-olds, they’re now pretending to be astronauts.