The Case for Carceral Minimalism
The American carceral state is a machine of human rights abuses. But abolition hasn't convinced the country that it can end them. To build mass support for dismantling it, we need carceral minimalism.
Blog
Centrist Dems Really Do Hate the Left More Than Trump
The years-old joke goes that centrists fight the Left harder than they fight Donald Trump. It’s no longer a joke: after “rolling over and playing dead” after 2024, centrists like Third Way are now coming back alive — to fight against socialism.
The Left Can’t Win Without an Internationalist Vision
The globalization hype of the early 2000s has given way to an intense focus on national borders and competition between states. But the Left can’t afford to abandon its own form of internationalism based on the idea of universal human emancipation.
Uncovering America’s Forgotten Massacre in the Philippines
In 1906, US troops slaughtered up to 1,000 Moros at Bud Dajo in the southern Philippines, then called it a battle. Historian Kim Wagner explains how an empire can commit atrocities and how it teaches itself to forget them.
For 60 Years, The Battle of Algiers Has Inspired Resistance
When The Battle of Algiers premiered at the Venice Film Festival, 60 years ago this month, the French delegation refused to attend. From the moment of its shooting, in the aftermath of Algeria’s liberation war, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film was deeply political.
Jonathan Demme’s Wild, Humanist Cinema Deserves a Reappraisal
The Criterion Channel’s new Jonathan Demme retrospective is a chance to look beyond The Silence of the Lambs and rediscover one of America’s most adventurous, surprising, and charming filmmakers.
Hollywood Is Losing Not Just Jobs but Entire Lineages
Runaway production isn’t just costing Hollywood jobs. It’s severing the intergenerational chains along which film crafts are passed down, replacing an industry town’s living inheritance with a dislocated workforce that must always start from scratch.
Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work
Two University of California tech workers explain their unionization process — and how unions can help recapture the original promise of tech being used to better people’s lives rather than make the worst people in the world ever richer.
The Deadly Military-Vet-to-ICE Pipeline
US police have long recruited military veterans with conditions that make them prone to violence and aggression. The problem is even worse when it comes to ICE, whose leaders valorize brutality and allow officers to kill with impunity.
The US Beats Europe — in Wasteful Health Care Spending
People sometimes point to individual consumption to argue that the US is better off than Western Europe. But this comparison neglects how much more unequal the US is and how much more money we burn in our irrational private health care system.
What to Do When Your Union Contract Is Voted Down
The answer to union contracts being voted down is not for organizers to lower workers’ expectations. It’s to seize that vote as an opportunity to organize those expectations into collective power.
Yes, the Left Won Big Last Night
Before the votes had even been counted, some were treating last night’s Michigan result as a defeat for the Left. This is hard to square with the fact that well beyond Abdul El-Sayed’s win, progressives and socialists won major races.