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
The May jobs report showing a drop in the unemployment rate shouldn’t have been a surprise, with many states having lifted their shutdowns. But if Congress uses the report to excuse not passing another stimulus — especially one that includes relief for state and local governments — the economy could face a collapse.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio claims he wants to change the most unjust policies of American life in the 21st century. The problem is, he is instinctively hostile to the protests and grassroots organizing necessary to win such change.
The reforms that have been pushed by presidents and police chiefs, mayors and city councils in response to the horrifying, unending stream of blatant police brutality and police murder have failed and will continue failing. The police aren’t going to get any nicer — we must defund them, full stop.
It’s a common refrain that socialists are naïve, unrealistic dreamers. But precisely the opposite is true: we know that power corrupts, so we want to democratize all spheres of society.
Bromides about a V-shaped economic recovery after the pandemic just distract us from the size of the task that we face. We were already headed for crisis before COVID-19 — only a far-reaching reorientation of the economy can stave off social collapse.
Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton are beating the drums to ramp up the authoritarian brutality already on display all across the country by staging an actual military invasion of American cities. If we don’t stop them, the results will be dire.
Activists and advocates in New York City have long called for the city to make sharp cuts to the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force. The uprising against police brutality, in New York and around the country, has suddenly put serious momentum behind those demands.
In the years after the defeat of Nazism, Britain’s fascist movement alarmingly began to rebuild. But a group of young British Jews sprung into action to beat the fascists off the streets.
Born on this day in 1868, the republican socialist James Connolly was Ireland’s most famous revolutionary. Over a century after he was killed by the British, his writings on imperial violence and the capitalist degradation of human life are more relevant than ever.
It’s hard to overstate the wickedness of Big Pharma’s lobbying efforts to ensure patent protection for COVID-19 drugs and potential vaccines. But the real architect of these crimes is not CEOs or shareholders, but the market.
Recently obtained documents show that in 2011, the US funded rock bands in Venezuela — through a group sympathetic to right-wing forces that later attempted a coup. Giving money to young musicians seems innocuous, but it’s part of a long history of US meddling in the democratic processes of countries to advance American interests.
A consensus is growing in the corporate world that working from home will be the new normal after coronavirus. Companies will sell it as a perk — but it will mean handing the boss even greater control over our lives.
At times of widespread misery, a single incident of blatant injustice can cause enormous, unexpected outrage — outrage that then fuels far wider protests and more radical demands. This is exactly what we’ve seen across the United States since George Floyd’s murder.
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s state Democratic Party, and the state’s legislative leaders have refused to enact a bill proponents say would deter police violence. They have also raked in more than $1 million from police unions.
We’re witnessing a national police riot that hasn’t showed any signs of slowing. The instances of brutal police violence against protesters are so numerous that it’s hard to keep track of them all — but here are some of the worst abuses we’ve seen.
Developed for the trenches of World War I, tear gas is being deployed indiscriminately against protesters across the United States today. It’s an unconscionable use of force that violates international regulations — and it shows police officers are operating with complete impunity.
Boris Johnson has learned a trick from David Cameron: no matter how badly a member of the government misbehaves, ignore demands for their resignation and wait until the press loses interest. So far, the strategy is working for him in the current Dominic Cummings scandal — but his luck might run out.
Amy Cooper’s calling the police on a black man in New York’s Central Park represents an extreme example of racist behavior. But it also offers a window onto the experiences of black Americans that highlights the importance of affirmative action and radical redistributive policies as central to anti-racism today.
Last week, the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto blasted a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site so as to expand its iron ore mine in Western Australia. It’s the latest example of the powerful mining sector exploiting a legislative system built on indigenous dispossession.
When the US spearheaded the Mexican war on drugs in 2006, many suspected links between members of Felipe Calderón’s administration and the cartels they were charged with stamping out. Now, fresh evidence makes clear that not only were top government figures profiting personally from links to the cartels, but that the US knew about it all along.