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
On Medicare for All, the Left has won the battle of ideas. But that’s not enough, as the DNC’s rejection of M4A shows. We have to get serious about overcoming the entrenched economic and political power that is stopping us from having free public health care for everyone.
We talked to Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss about the internationalism that animated the Vermont senator’s 2020 campaign.
Uber and Lyft want you to believe they’re suffering an unfair assault by the state of California’s government to end drivers’ independent contractor status. The reality: Uber and Lyft are very wealthy and very powerful, and they’re using that wealth and power to threaten a capital strike, a withdrawing of investment in a way that would hurt drivers and riders, to get what they want.
Philosopher Richard Dien Winfield has spent his career studying concepts like truth, justice, and freedom. Now he wants to put these principles into practice by bringing an agenda of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and full employment to the nation’s capital.
One year after Puerto Ricans ousted their governor in mass protests, the long-standing structures of political and economic oppression remain in place on the island. But the uprising proved the power of collective action — and Puerto Ricans have become more resolved to build democracy from below and challenge their colonial status.
Expanded, free public transit, funded by taxes on the rich, can be at the heart of a just transition to a green economy.
Earlier this month, workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the largest art museums in the world, voted overwhelmingly to unionize. We spoke with two workers about how they fended off the museum’s fierce anti-union campaign — and why all white-collar workers should organize.
With days before the fall semester, Marquette University is sending its workers and students into harm’s way. And without a faculty union, administrators and trustees are accountable to no one for the damage they’re doing.
We are all told to be enthusiastic about the Democrats’ political fraudulence and terrible policy platform so we can defeat Trump. But anyone who is paying attention and can remember our recent political past isn’t happy — we’re completely demoralized. And that’s okay.
Even as John Kasich reassured conservatives Joe Biden wasn’t moving left, Michelle Obama lectured progressives to muster Obama 2008–style enthusiasm for him regardless. It’s an incoherent message that could cost the party come November.
The recent news that the Democratic Party may abandon the public option after November’s election vindicates the Bernie Sanders strategy for pushing no half-measures on health care reform and demonstrates yet again why nothing short of unwavering support for M4A is enough.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit and workers at the online clothing company Everlane faced layoffs, they decided to organize. One laid-off Everlane worker describes the difficulties of remote service work in the 21st century, building solidarity among coworkers who never meet in person, and why other online service workers should get organized.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a fleeting sense of radical possibility quickly gave way to a wave of cuts and privatization. After COVID-19, get ready for a repeat, as leaders around the world push for austerity again.
The German socialist thinker Erich Fromm developed a powerful critique of authoritarian culture in response to the rise of Nazism. Today’s Left has much to learn from that critique, and from his defiant political optimism in the face of dark times.
Movie theaters are set to reopen soon, but neither the safety of viewers, nor support for the film industry itself, can be guaranteed.
The Black Lives Matter protests have had an electrifying impact. To build on that momentum, we need to forge strategic unity between different struggles against oppression, in the US and the wider world.
Trump just scored a victory for workers at the Tennessee Valley Authority — but on the Right’s reactionary, anti-immigrant terms. All while the socialist left was AWOL.
For the past three months, shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works in Maine have been waging the US’s biggest private sector strike of the year. With a tentative agreement now in place, it’s looking like they’re in for a big win.
The DNC is the four-yearly apotheosis of the Democratic Party’s love of progressive symbolism and empty rhetoric in place of real political vision. This year, it’s not even committing to that.
Sex panics keep happening because they tap into Americans’ deepest fears about the need to protect innocents from the threat of evil — fears that are endemic among the Left as well as the Right. Meanwhile, lives are destroyed in the process.