Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Europe. He is particularly interested in organized labor, social and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
John Sweeney, who won the AFL-CIO presidency in 1995 as part of a progressive reform leadership slate called New Voice, died earlier this month at the age of eighty-six. He failed in his quest to revive the US labor movement — but he succeeded in pushing the main body of trade unionism firmly to the left.
In the recent GameStop saga, Chamath Palihapitiya portrayed himself as a defender of the little guy and floated running for office. But beyond the shrewd PR, he’s just another corporate-friendly Third Way centrist with an intense devotion to free-market triumphalism.
The fall of the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, ten years ago today, was a triumph for popular mobilization. But the revolutionary forces lacked the political organization and vision needed to head off a counterrevolutionary backlash that restored the authoritarian state’s power.
For decades, presidents have used their power to declare emergencies to sideline badly needed regulations and entrench the national security state. Now a group of Congress members led by AOC is proposing that those powers be used for good: to force action to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Former Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis’s bombastic way of painting the union’s class enemies as out-of-touch corporate hacks was genius political theater, and her commitment to democratic, militant unionism was unflagging. Lewis played an integral role in transforming teachers’ unionism — first in Chicago, then around the country.
Plastic pollution is choking up the oceans and killing wildlife. It’s the fossil fuel giants who are driving the growth of plastics, not demand from consumers. We need a new approach to environmental regulation that reins in corporate polluters instead of enabling them.
Progressives are swooning and right-wingers are hyperventilating. But a closer look at Joe Biden’s first month in office shows a presidency that — for better and for worse — looks a lot like Barack Obama’s so far.
New Deal job programs didn’t just absorb unemployment but allowed thousands of artists and writers to work on ambitious creative projects. Works Progress Administration funding allowed a golden age in US culture — but drew vicious anti-communist attacks, offering a foretaste of McCarthyism.
Mainstream news outlets like the Washington Post are working overtime to argue against the $2,000 survival check we were promised by the Democrats.
Lawmakers and wonks who insist on means-testing every government program like to posture as champions of the poor and downtrodden. But the fake Robin Hood act is just a cover for their deep-seated suspicion of the welfare state.
George Miller’s Mad Max film series has become synonymous with the postapocalyptic genre. At their core, however, Miller’s films aren’t so much a prediction of the future as an indictment of our capitalist present and the ruthless individualism that maintains it.
Joe Biden is sounding the right notes about halting US participation in the Saudis’ catastrophic war in Yemen. But now, more than ever, it is vital to hold a firm line about what ending support for the war means: an end to all US assistance, no exceptions, before one more Yemeni dies.
Three decades since the USSR collapsed, the small Baltic states still have many visual reminders of a half century of Soviet rule. Today, the husks of grand modernist buildings look like monuments to the state’s vanity — but their legacy also reflects the efforts of local architects who resisted stylistic conformism.
Zohran Mamdani is one of five new democratic socialists that just joined the New York State Legislature. We spoke to him about housing justice, taxing the rich, and why it’s crucial for elected officials to speak out for Palestinian rights, even at the state and local level.
Ghostbusters’ Slimer embodied the hedonistic greed of the Reagan era. But the reboot’s Muncher is a reflection of our sad and depressed 2020s.
A looser union with more room for state and regional autonomy, as two recent books advocate, would cede much of America to the mercies of the Right.
Thankfully, almost nobody likes a Nazi, and even fewer still like a Nazi steeped in a creepy online subculture.
If you want to see the future, imagine a finger clicking “mute” on anything criticizing an establishment presidential candidate, forever.
Means testing is bad politics and bad policy. Democrats should stop worrying and just pass a bill with $2,000 stimulus checks for everyone, no questions asked.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been criticized for her Instagram video last week recounting the Capitol riot. But AOC showed exactly how a left-wing politician should act: courageous, genuine, and refusing to back down in the face of right-wing threats.