Opal Lee is a writer.
On Tuesday, despite urgent pleas from public health experts for postponement of the balloting, voters reported being forced into unsanitary environments and jumping through arduous hoops to vote. The culprit was the party that believes in science and voting rights.
Now isn’t the time to blindly follow orders from bosses. To make sure our response to coronavirus is safe and just, workers need to take on-the-job action like sick-outs and strikes — as New York City educators have over the past week.
As COVID-19 continues to expose the failings of the fragmented, profit-driven health system in the United States, the case for Medicare for All is stronger than ever.
The US and UK responses to coronavirus have failed miserably. But Denmark has moved swiftly to help workers by protecting wages and preventing layoffs — showing yet again, in the midst of a pandemic, that we’d all be better off living in a social democracy.
The Democrats have an opportunity to push for desperately needed, sweeping economic change in response to coronavirus. Instead, they’re letting themselves be outflanked by Republicans.
You might be feeling down about how the primaries are going. But the socialist left is stronger than ever. We spoke with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar for some words of inspiration.
With the spread of coronavirus now global, arbitrary travel bans such as those implemented by the Australian government are ineffective and nourished by old xenophobic anxieties. The solution to this crisis can only be a coordinated, international effort.
Robert LeVertis Bell is a public school teacher and socialist in Louisville, Kentucky running for city council. In an interview with Jacobin, he talks about his experience participating in the recent red-state teachers’ upsurge, fighting gentrification, and how campaigns like his can be used to build a broader movement that is bigger than any one candidate.
Whatever happens in today’s primaries, Latino voters have made clear they have a strong appetite for leftist policies. By following Bernie Sanders’s lead and focusing on the pressing needs of rank-and-file Latino workers, democratic socialists can continue to unleash the power of this potent voting bloc.
On March 13, 1920, twelve million workers struck across Germany to block an attempted military coup. The successful resistance was organized by the workers’ councils — a form of grassroots democracy that allowed the masses to assert their own power.
The Bernie Sanders campaign is beholden to no one in high places, has no affiliated elites to please or negotiate with, and has helped unleash new working-class militancy in America. The question now is, how can we sustain this extraordinary left turn in American public life to transform society?
The pharmaceutical industry has so far failed to develop a coronavirus cure. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: the privatized health care model can’t provide the drugs we need to combat even deadlier bacterial epidemics, because they’re producing drugs for profit rather than human need.
The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created in the first place, and how we can finally dismantle it.
Despite the strange circumstances and urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, last night’s debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders highlighted two visions of our political crises that largely haven’t changed: Biden arguing for a return to normalcy, Sanders insisting that something is deeply wrong in our society.
Joe Biden’s relentless lying in last night’s debate, and the media’s astonishingly servile reaction, have made it clear that the “post-truth era” will not be over when the Trump administration ends.
We all deserve a functioning state that can provide for everyone, and a society that values solidarity above all. That’s the only thing that can get us through the coronavirus pandemic.
The media and the Democratic Party establishment’s singular focus on paid sick leave leaves out millions of contract and informal workers. We need to think much bigger — now.
In last night’s debate, Joe Biden claimed that Italy shows public health care doesn’t help the response to coronavirus. But the Italian health service is providing a vital defense against mass infection — ensuring that any ill person can get proper treatment, regardless of their ability to pay.
Spain has announced it will take over private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to fight coronavirus. Yet in the PSOE-Podemos coalition, some ministers are still defending fiscal austerity. Their neoliberal dogma could get people killed.
Joe Biden is now pledging to “spend whatever it takes” to overcome this pandemic. But he’s spent his career putting public health programs on the chopping block as part of a decades-long crusade against government spending.