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
A new documentary on Eric Hobsbawm presents a sensitive portrait of a historian who achieved international acclaim despite his Communist politics. Yet Hobsbawm’s Marxism is fundamental to understanding his work, and why he undertook it in the first place.
Border guards expelling Syrian refugees after they’ve already been granted asylum has shown the hollowness of European Union humanitarianism. An expansion of the EU-wide Frontex force will make things even worse.
An open letter by retired generals warns French president Emmanuel Macron that unless he clamps down on anti-racist movements, the armed forces will step in to “restore order.” In a country with a long history of military coups, the spread of far-right talking points is undermining democracy.
The fight to save City College of San Francisco from closure is a story about how educators around the country can defeat the onslaught of austerity against public schools serving working-class students.
In recent months, the Saudi lobby has increasingly moved from K Street to Main Street — traveling widely outside the Beltway in a bid to shore up support for the country’s brutal monarchy.
The welfare state wasn’t created by enlightened dialogue or “sensible” moderate politics. It was a concession won by workers against bosses through decades of struggle.
Next month, a little-discussed election will decide who will occupy one of the country’s most powerful offices: the Manhattan district attorney. But a divided left could throw the race to a Wall Street–funded opponent of criminal justice reform.
For the first time since it was introduced 30 years ago, New York state’s single-payer health care bill, the New York Health Act, has the votes to pass — at least on paper. But getting it signed into law will take a major grassroots mobilization.
Rich people have enormous carbon footprints. But the fundamental problem with their climate impact isn’t what they consume — it’s that they own the means of production, and it’s extremely profitable for them to pollute.
Scott Morrison has responded to scandals over misogyny and sexual assault with token gestures and hollow words that won’t get near the root of the problem. In order to challenge sexism, we have to empower working-class women through economic justice and redistributive policies.
Extremist Israelis marched in Jerusalem last week chanting “Death to Arabs.” It’s part of a deeply worrying trend of rising far-right Zionism in a country that was already saturated in it.
Mexican-American workers have a long tradition of radical organizing, stretching back to the days of the Industrial Workers of the World and the mid-century Communist Party. And in 1968, with a longtime Communist Chicano family at the center, Mexican-American students in LA launched the largest student walkout in US history.
HBO’s Mare of Easttown is constructed around a familiar, virtually surefire plot: a shocking crime in a small town leads to an investigation that ultimately reveals every major local scandal in an astoundingly errant community. And it works.
Fifty years ago today, on May Day 1971, thousands of antiwar protesters descended on Washington, DC, to protest the Vietnam War. The ensuing three days of disruptive actions directly confronted the Nixon administration — and resulted in the largest civil disobedience–related detentions in US history.
To win over German workers and replace their socialist loyalties with fascism, the Third Reich made a Nazi version of May Day a national holiday. But the real International Workers’ Day is the one that lives on today.
Throughout his career, two misleading stereotypes distorted our view of Raúl Castro. He was neither a pale shadow of his brother, nor a one-dimensional pro-Soviet ideologue, but a major historical figure who played a key role in shaping the Cuban system and then reforming it.
Over the past few months, pharma giants like Pfizer and Moderna have become household names and fodder for affectionate memes. But their prominence reflects how the market has cannibalized science and public health during a global crisis. Big pharma still is not your friend.
Israel has effectively made the establishment of a separate Palestinian state impossible. It’s clear what’s needed now: a single, democratic state with full rights for all people.
On immigration, the Biden administration — far from offering an alternative to Trumpist policies that so many commentators characterized as fascistic — has largely followed in Trump’s footsteps. But Biden has encountered only a tiny fraction of the criticism Trump attracted for pursuing many of the same anti-immigrant policies.
Every winter, thousands of North American tourists flock to sunny destinations in Mexico to be served by workers on poverty wages. The Mexican government has promoted tourism as a route out of poverty, but the profits from the industry are flowing away from local communities.