Faced with the unemployment crisis of 1890, jobless workers in Melbourne formed a union to fight for relief. But the Australian labor movement remained indifferent to their struggle — and soon paid the price. Those self-defeating attitudes are still alive in unions today.
If the Labour Party has a future, MP Jon Trickett argues in Jacobin, it needs to unite divided workers and win postindustrial regions with a clear economic program and the rhetoric of class, not culture, war.
In Wollongong in the 1980s, four young socialist activists founded the Jobs for Women campaign to take on the mighty Port Kembla steelworks, demanding equal employment rights. The solidarity they built achieved a historic victory that reverberated across Australia.
Some freelancers have come out against the PRO Act, insisting that the pro-labor bill threatens their livelihoods. But they needn’t worry: the bill would transform labor relations for the better, it wouldn’t “kill” freelancing.
After years of stagnant poll numbers and declining electoral results, Germany's Die Linke party hopes that its new leadership team will return it to the promise of the 2000s. But as its social base in the former East fragments, the left-wing party doesn't just need a different marketing strategy — it needs to rebuild its roots in working-class life.
Eddie Murphy is one of the most talented actors alive. Yet his brilliance is wasted in this sloppy sequel to the classic 1988 film Coming to America.
Today, protests in forty towns and cities across the Netherlands are highlighting the role of Dutch-based firms like Shell in fueling climate crisis. Workers are at the forefront of the struggle — offering hope for a mass environmental movement that goes beyond the middle class.
The City of Chicago has now fully banned the police department from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants. That’s because two socialist city council members, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, pushed for years to end that collaboration.
The ongoing union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, could prove to be a key beachhead for union organizing in the South. But it’s not the first time Bessemer has seen union fights. Nearly a century ago, the town was home to anti-racist union organizing with the Communist-led union Mine-Mill.
One of Donald Trump's last decisions in office was a squalid diplomatic deal with Morocco, granting US recognition of its occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for Moroccan recognition of Israel. Since the move, the Saharawi population has faced intense military repression — yet the Biden administration refuses to say whether it will reverse Trump's colonial handover of the territory.
With former Brazilian president Lula da Silva now eligible to run in next year’s election, Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on power is looking weaker than ever before. Amid the tide of reaction, Lula’s return means there is finally some hope for democracy and social justice in Brazil.
While Nomadland goes out of its way to avoid talking politics, its genius is in locating the emotional truth of what it’s like to be one of the many millions of Americans cast adrift by disaster.