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
One of Donald Trump’s last decisions in office was a squalid diplomatic deal with Morocco, granting US recognition of its occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for Moroccan recognition of Israel. Since the move, the Saharawi population has faced intense military repression — yet the Biden administration refuses to say whether it will reverse Trump’s colonial handover of the territory.
With former Brazilian president Lula da Silva now eligible to run in next year’s election, Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on power is looking weaker than ever before. Amid the tide of reaction, Lula’s return means there is finally some hope for democracy and social justice in Brazil.
While Nomadland goes out of its way to avoid talking politics, its genius is in locating the emotional truth of what it’s like to be one of the many millions of Americans cast adrift by disaster.
On this day in 1979, the most remarkable social revolution in the modern history of the Anglophone Caribbean began. Today, we remember not only the crisis and imperialist invasion that brought the Grenadian Revolution to an end, but its tremendous accomplishments.
Marco Rubio grabbed headlines today by offering a strange and half-hearted endorsement of the unionization drive in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama. Don’t be fooled, though: Rubio’s absurd “right-wing economic populism” isn’t serious about fighting for the working class.
A wave of Democratic lawmakers from across the political spectrum have now called for New York’s governor to resign. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have conspicuously failed to follow suit.
Ballots are due by March 29 in the first warehouse-wide union drive at a US Amazon facility. The Alabama workers are up against an avalanche of anti-union propaganda, but if they win a union, it would mark a historic incursion by labor into the heart of a formidable anti-union employer.
John Sayles is one of the most talented left-wing filmmakers in US history. We spoke with him about radical politics, independent filmmaking, and his legendary 1987 labor movie Matewan.
The US has never seriously considered far-reaching responses to the coronavirus pandemic like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to stay at home without immiseration. The result: unnecessary mass deaths, with more on the way.
There were many good things in the stimulus package. But claims that Biden’s Democratic Party has embraced structural change are overblown: an injection of much-needed cash isn’t the same thing as empowering workers or creating a constituency for change.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is an embodiment of centrist Democrats’ worst instincts. He says he wants to win over Republican-voting workers, but he is consistently on the wrong side of populist economic issues like a minimum wage hike that are wildly popular among those workers.
Emmanuel Macron has revealed what the political center of the twenty-first century looks like in practice: a war on workers, authoritarian demagogy, and a further emboldening of the far right.
The newly passed COVID-19 relief bill will not solve every aspect of the crisis, and it won’t fundamentally reverse our massive wealth inequality. But the bill will make a substantial difference in people’s lives — and in the process create fertile terrain for the Left to organize.
Walter LaFeber, a giant in the field of American diplomatic history, died this week at 87. His work refused to prettify the destructive record of US foreign policy and emphasized the unacknowledged economic motives behind American statesmen’s high-flying rhetoric.
Canadian NDP MP Niki Ashton has faced absurd attacks for agreeing to join an event with British Labour politician Jeremy Corbyn. Canada’s Left should see the absurd charges of antisemitism against Ashton and Corbyn for what they are: an attempt to delegitimize socialist ideas.
The right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch turns 90 today. His news empire has been instrumental in reshaping the world in the image cast by conservative elites. The need to build a robust and democratic alternative media has never been more urgent.
A massive round of layoffs at the Huffington Post confirms that the media industry stands at the edge of a precipice. The only way it can shield itself from the whims of sadistic media baron owners who care nothing for journalism is by looking beyond capitalist ownership.
The good news: in passing the American Rescue Plan, Democrats are finally rejecting the logic of austerity. The bad news: the party did not use the bill to secure essential long-term economic protections for Americans, nor do anything that would anger the wealthy.
Workers’ pensions have been under attack for decades in the United States, so the passage of pension relief for over a million workers as part of the latest COVID-19 relief bill is a welcome development. Now we need to fight to defend and expand pensions for all workers.
As we face a mounting ecological crisis, combined with racism and violence against First Nations people and refugees, Australia’s state and federal governments are ramping up anti-protest laws and even harassing the media. We need an organized fightback.