Opal Lee is a writer.
Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015 as a veteran anti-war activist, only to have to spend the next five years apologizing for his supposed “racist allies” and “terrorist links.” The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey shows how the space to criticize Israel has narrowed — but also how the Left has failed to defend its own right to call out injustice.
In post–World War I Paris, wounded Senegalese veteran Lamine Senghor used his experience to denounce the evils of imperialism. A militant in the French Communist Party, he married working-class politics with a consistent anti-racism — putting the unity of the colonized peoples at the heart of the fight against oppression and injustice.
With Jair Bolsonaro at the helm, Brazil’s democracy is in crisis. Veteran of the Brazilian left and the armed struggle against the dictatorship, and a principal strategist of the Workers’ Party, José “Zé” Dirceu spoke to Jacobin about the need for a broad front coalition to defeat Bolsonarismo.
In 1980s South Korea, hundreds of protesters were maimed and blinded by tear gas grenades fired by police. But the demand to stop the state’s use of tear gas soon itself became the focus of protests — a fight against police brutality which rallied millions of South Koreans behind the pro-democracy movement.
We absolutely need to defund the police and put the money in social services. To attack inequality and invest in poor and working-class neighborhoods of color, we need a massive increase in public spending. That means wresting resources from the rich.
Four decades since Spain’s transition to democracy, nostalgists for the Franco era are sharply resisting calls to topple its monuments and recognize its victims. Their fight to control historical memory isn’t just a “culture war” — it’s a bid to defend the power of businesses that profited from the fascist regime.
One likely bright spot in today’s French elections is Grenoble, where incumbent mayor Éric Piolle is set to romp to a second term. Head of a list backed by Greens, La France Insoumise, and the Communists, he told us how he is uniting the Left — and why he thinks city halls can provide a different way of doing politics.
Fossil fuel companies are once again receiving a bailout bonanza of COVID-19 stimulus money. Money that could go to helping workers is propping up the agents of climate change.
There have been huge turnouts for Black Lives Matter protests in every major city in Australia. Organized in solidarity with demonstrations in the US, they’re fueled by racist policing at home and the staggering rate of Aboriginal deaths in police custody.
Socialists need to understand the class antagonisms and nuances of campaign finance law.
A new study finds that American jails — not just prisons — are a major hot spot for spreading coronavirus. The solution is simple: stop arresting so many people.
Saudi Arabia created the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. So why is the UN praising the kingdom for tossing Yemen a measly amount of humanitarian aid?
In Sunday’s mayoral elections, a united slate of left-wingers and Greens is set to win France’s second-largest city for the first time in decades. Faced with this challenge, the conservative establishment has radicalized, accusing the broad left of planning a “Cuban-style putsch” on the streets of Marseille.
Incoming LA teachers’ union president Cecily Myart-Cruz was a leader of the city’s landmark 2019 strike. Now she explains why it’s important to get police out of schools and what the labor movement can do about it.
Some commentators have criticized Bernie Sanders for not going far enough on Palestine. But his denunciation of Israeli land grabs in the West Bank, plus his agenda for transformative policies at home, constituted the most meaningful challenge to the status quo of US-backed Israeli colonialism.
The Supreme Court has made some surprising recent rulings defending rights for LGBT people and immigrants. Those rulings should be applauded — but they also shouldn’t distract us from how the court is continuing to erode democracy and worsen inequality with new rulings that are huge boons for the rich.
Newly released emails from Madrid’s right-wing government show how authorities instructed care homes not to take elderly coronavirus patients to hospitals. The result was one of Europe’s highest death tolls — the outcome of a privatized care system that prefers saving money over saving the lives of the vulnerable.
From her earliest days as shadow education secretary, Labour leader Keir Starmer set about undermining Rebecca Long-Bailey — because her socialist politics and trade union loyalties were incompatible with his agenda.
Liberalism is often presented as a loose set of principles like reason, freedom, and the rule of law. But over almost two centuries, the Economist has provided a window into the dominant strand of liberalism in action — with imperial conquest and undemocratic regimes defended in the name of upholding “free trade.”
Ross Douthat wants to tempt socialists with his argument that this wave of racial justice protest is hopelessly in thrall to the logic of woke capitalism. Don’t take the bait.