Yi San is a freelance writer based in New York.
The protests and occupation of the US Capitol yesterday are a small taste of the kind of brazenly undemocratic power grabs the authoritarian right has executed in countries like Bolivia. Regardless of what actions Trump and his supporters take to cling to power, the response of the Left, labor, and the millions of anti-fascists across the US and world should be the same: mass, ongoing mobilizations opposing them.
The kid-glove treatment of yesterday’s far-right protesters was a shocking departure from the wanton police brutality that is the norm for leftist protesters of any kind. When racial justice or antiwar protesters take to the streets, police repression is fierce and unrelenting. When right-wingers protest, they’re given free rein.
The promise of $2,000 survival checks helped the Democrats gain control of the Senate. They should send them out immediately, and absorb the lesson of this election: when Republicans are forced to confront bold proposals to help the broad working-class majority, they lose.
Though Tuesday’s gratifying Democratic victories in Georgia are unlikely to move the needle of politics very far, they came as a satisfying vindication of arguments the Left has been making for years.
Yesterday’s events were the expression of a dangerous authoritarian movement that has been long in the making.
Donald Trump has long stoked the kind of abhorrent far-right action that we saw storm the Capitol today. But it’s not just Trump who deserves the blame: mainstream conservatives created this monster, too.
The far-right mob that took over the Capitol today never would have gotten past the front door if the federal police hadn’t allowed them to storm in. The simple fact is that left-wing protesters get treated with brutality, while right-wing protesters get coddled.
Julian Assange’s extradition to the US has been blocked thanks to a technicality, but he still faces the injustice of years in prison in the UK. While world leaders remain quiet, AMLO stands alone in speaking up for freedom of speech — and has offered Assange asylum in Mexico.
Big pharma firms like Pfizer are marketing COVID-19 vaccines for a profit, yet the research behind them would have been impossible without universities and public funding. The lack of an international public health response has placed capitalist profit over human need — and will leave billions of people unvaccinated.
Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can rescind recently passed Trump administration rules that weaken protections for workers and the environment. Will Democrats use that power?
The exit polls from Georgia are clear: voters think Congress is doing too little to help them and too much for large corporations.
The lawless behavior of Donald Trump and Georgia’s GOP senators recently captured on tape is, like so much about Trump, appalling. But it reflects an American political culture in which the powerful are never held accountable for any kind of wrongdoing, no matter how blatant or evil.
Opponents of the $2,000 survival checks claim they’re poorly targeted. That’s nonsense. They would help the working class and poor far more than the rich.
Joe Biden is no friend to progressive politics of any kind. But after constant pressure, the president-elect has changed his stance on $2,000 survival checks if Georgia Democrats win.
Julian Assange’s defeat of extradition to the United States was a huge victory — one that couldn’t have been achieved without a public pressure campaign. That same public pressure will now be needed to free Assange from prison.
Why is there so much misery in a world of plenty? Why do private profit and wealth come before human needs and lives? Marxism has answers to these questions — answers that are actually easy to understand.
Workers in the restaurant industry are in dire straits all across the country. But the RESTAURANTS Act proposed in Congress is a $120 billion handout to industry owners with no substantive guarantees for the workers who are suffering immensely right now. We can’t trust celebrity chefs and CEOs with trickle-down relief.
The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They’ll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce.
The socialist historian C. L. R. James was born 120 years ago today. His landmark text, The Black Jacobins, is a majestic account of the Haitian Revolution and is still the authoritative history of a heroic struggle for freedom and dignity.
Cold War stereotypes have blocked our understanding of European politics after 1945. On both sides of the future Iron Curtain, liberation from Nazism unleashed a spirit of radical democracy that might have led Europe down a very different path if not for superpower intervention.