William G. Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is co-author of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment (2016) and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier; he covers local justice matters at www.justtalk.blog
Fifty years ago today, British miners concluded a national strike after defeating their Conservative government. The 1972 victory opened up a decade of working-class radicalism, before Margaret Thatcher’s counterrevolution crippled organized labor.
A Starbucks location in Calgary awaiting its ballot results may prove to be the spear tip of a Canadian answer to the labor surge of its US counterparts. The longtime union-busting company may find itself on the receiving end of an emboldened workforce.
Decarbonization won’t be achieved through market-led solutions. It’s only by democratizing the economy and resisting privatization that a meaningful and sustainable transition to green energy can be won.
Before launching his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin claimed that the country he is now attacking is a Bolshevik creation. His mythical vision of history draws on the darkest tsarist imperialism.
Both Uber and a Teamsters local are backing a new Washington State bill that would give rideshare drivers new benefits — while codifying their status as independent contractors rather than employees.
After 1945, the Soviets soon replaced Germans as the State Department’s main enemy in Europe. Washington’s ever closer ties with Bonn drew on the logic of the Cold War — but also on the private networking organizations where business and political elites met.
War is nothing but organized killing, and there can be no justification for it. Today we must do what we can to support Ukrainian refugees and to show our solidarity with the brave protesters across Russia who insist that war is not carried out in their name.
Major League Baseball is mired in a lockout, as team owners refuse to budge just weeks before Opening Day. It’s a perfect time to look back at when the players revolted against the owners and started their own league: the 1890 Players’ League.
The Republican-led Congressional Budget Office has realized what many of us have long known: the existing corporate-run health care system is immiserating millions — and Medicare for All could quickly fix the catastrophe.
Several tensions run deep in Russian society: Politics are decided by elections without democracy. A growing number of Russian billionaires have outlandish wealth but no political power. And Putin is a populist without the people.
There’s something about the phrase “price controls” that drives some people — mainly economists — around the bend. But history shows that market economies rarely go very long without needing some form of price control — especially in a crisis.
On this day in 1941, Dutch workers went on strike in solidarity with Jews facing Nazi persecution. Maurice Ferares is one of the strike’s last surviving organizers, and his life of activism links him to some of the last century’s great political struggles.
Ben Stiller’s excellent new limited series, Severance, turns the corporate workplace into the setting for a new and timely subgenre: “job horror.”
Historian Sheila Rowbotham remembers Edward Carpenter, a poet, philosopher, socialist, and pioneer of gay rights amid the repression of Victorian England.
The Pentagon claims it’s serious about reducing American military emissions, which eclipse those of some developed nations. But the US military has helped perpetuate the climate crisis and continues to obscure its contribution to climate change.
The Democratic Unionist Party supported the Leave campaign, but they’ve been the big losers from Boris Johnson’s Brexit. The union with Britain isn’t in danger yet, but the DUP now faces the prospect of being overtaken by Sinn Féin in this year’s election.
The BBC’s new medical drama This Is Going to Hurt is set amid the chaos of an austerity-starved National Health Service. It comes at just the right time, as the pandemic forces the UK to take stock of the damage austerity has done to the NHS.
The software on Boeing’s 737 MAX was designed to override human controls — but ended up smashing the planes into the ground. Netflix’s Downfall shows how the firm’s obsessive cost-cutting ignored safety concerns and killed hundreds of people.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is based on obviously reactionary pretexts. The Left has nothing to do with his agenda — and should make no apologies for opposing a US military response.
Vladimir Putin has launched his invasion of Ukraine, seemingly expecting that his forces can subdue Ukrainian resistance. But the attack could severely destabilize his regime — with Russians already showing a notable lack of enthusiasm for war.