T Rivers is a pseudonymous journalist who covers East and Central Africa.
The Biden administration is selling its COVID relief bill as a historic milestone in the war on poverty. In reality, it’s a temporary measure whose anti-poverty impact is roughly the same as last year’s CARES Act signed by Trump. For Biden to claim an anti-poverty legacy, he needs to make the child benefit permanent.
On Monday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias announced he is resigning as Spain’s deputy prime minister to run for election in the Madrid region. Iglesias’s move to regional politics is aimed at blocking the formation of another far-right government in the capital — but it also highlights his own party’s need to go beyond relying on one brilliant communicator.
Finally, it appears that the filibuster’s days may be numbered. This is good news, because the closer we get to scrapping the filibuster, the closer we get to passing major labor law reform like the PRO Act.
Vice President Kamala Harris now touts herself as a police reform advocate. But troubling incidents — including fatal shootings by police officers in the state — during her time as California’s “top cop” suggest that wasn’t always the case.
At a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, with Bernie Sanders presiding, economists, labor experts, and the day’s star witness — Jennifer Bates, an Amazon warehouse worker in Bessemer, Alabama — exposed the grim workings of an economy that continues to funnel wealth and power to a tiny capitalist elite.
150 years since the Paris Commune, the militants who built the world’s first working-class government are often commemorated as martyrs rather than taken seriously as revolutionaries. Yet in the years after 1871, socialists sought to draw practical lessons from this experience — and build the organizations that could turn the Commune’s promise into lasting social change.
Ten years ago, inspired by revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, Yemenis challenged an authoritarian ruler and dared to dream of a new future for their country. But a backlash by Yemen’s old guard and interference by foreign powers crushed those hopes and plunged the country into war.
On this day in 1871, the working class of Paris seized control of the capital and established the Commune. Though it ruled for just two months, the world’s first workers’ government still stands as a vivid example of the kind of society workers themselves can create, according to their own vision of freedom and equality.
Lenin was so enthused by the Paris Commune that he danced in the snow the day the Bolshevik government had lasted longer than its French forebear. Both the successes and ultimate defeat of the commune gave practical lessons to generations of Russian revolutionaries — most importantly, that working-class rule was possible.
Despite America’s self-image as a land of immigrants, over its history, the United States has deported more people than any other nation in the world. Yet migrant workers have found ways to sabotage the deportation machine to win their dignity and rights.
The Trump administration worked hard to restricted and prevent shareholder actions and divestment strategies against fossil fuel industries. Reversing those rules under a Biden administration is key to defeating the planet’s worst polluters.
Capitalism is often presented as synonymous with peaceful exchange. But the system has always reproduced itself through violence in defense of private property and power.
Rideshare drivers across California rallied in support of the PRO Act, a major labor law reform bill that could transform working conditions for gig workers. We spoke with one of the organizers about how Proposition 22 misled drivers, why gig workers need collective-bargaining rights, and the difficulties of organizing these workers.
Former state senator and Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign cochair Nina Turner is running for Congress. In an interview with Jacobin, Turner reflects on the heartbreaks and new opportunities of both Bernie campaigns, the left agenda she will bring to Capitol Hill, and why policies like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal are racial justice issues.
A hundred years ago today, the German Communists tried to spark a revolution, but their would-be uprising ended in disaster. In this extract from a recently discovered memoir, Rosa Luxemburg’s biographer Paul Frölich describes the failure of the 1921 March Action and its impact.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison claims that the alliance with Washington is crucial to keep Australia safe from aggressors. But a look at history shows this to be a myth. The alliance has always been a vehicle for Australia’s rulers’ imperial ambitions.
In their sequel to 2016’s Shattered, Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen give a behind-the-scenes look at Joe Biden’s 2020 run — a campaign even more inept than Hillary Clinton’s, driven first and foremost by defeating Bernie Sanders, and saved in the end only by blind luck and historical accident.
Bolivians went to the polls last week for the first local elections since the 2019 coup. Evo Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism party won big — and it would have even performed even better without the undemocratic scheming of the Right.
Vivian Gornick’s brilliant half-century writing career can’t be captured in a single essay or volume. To engage with her writing is to be left wanting more of her writing.
Kenyon College student workers are on an unfair labor practice strike today. The strike comes during a campaign to organize the first US union representing all undergraduate workers on a campus. Jacobin spoke to several strikers and two campus maintenance workers supporting them about why they’re organizing — and how other students can follow their example.