The union organizing campaign currently underway at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama could prove to be the most important labor fight in the South since the failure of Operation Dixie, the movement’s last large-scale push to organize the South in the late 1940s. The story of that historic effort holds lessons for the struggle today.
Leftists have been burned so many times by Hollywood depictions of radicals. So it’s a welcome surprise when, once in a blue moon, mainstream filmmakers actually do the history of American radicals justice, as in the new film on Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, Judas and the Black Messiah.
Rush Limbaugh was a right-wing demagogue who also happened to have considerable talents as a broadcaster — and he used them to make the world a worse place for the ordinary people he claimed to speak for.
Republicans are gearing up to use gerrymandering yet again to entrench their power and smother democracy at the state level. But Congress has the constitutional authority to ensure a “republican form of government” prevails at the state level — and it should act immediately to quash partisan gerrymandering and attacks on voting rights.
Some prominent academics have taken to lecturing teachers and their unions for insisting that reopening schools is still too dangerous. Those academics are wrong: teachers are insisting on a safe, solidaristic approach to opening schools back up that protects parents, students, staff, teachers, and all of us.
If you’ve found yourself impulsively shopping online during quarantine, you’re not alone. And there’s no shame in it. But this is our corona-capitalist dystopia: purchasing things we may or may not need while desperately needed public services are left to rot.
For the better part of a year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has basked in an absurdly undeserved, media-driven reputation as a wise and competent COVID-19 statesman. Now reality is finally catching up with him.
The first round of Ecuador's presidential election handed first place to left-wing candidate Andrés Arauz. It was a total repudiation of Lenín Moreno's neoliberal agenda. But more work is needed to cement a coalition that can win power and an anti-austerity program.
Socialist New York State Sen. Julia Salazar has some harsh words for Andrew Cuomo’s botched handling of COVID-19, his “power grab” at the pandemic’s beginning, and his refusal to tax the rich: “It is dangerous for Gov. Cuomo to continue to be the most powerful person in our state.”
An attack on El Salvador’s main opposition party has left two people dead and amounts to one of the worst acts of political violence since the peace accords signing in 1992. The country’s right-wing president, Nayib Bukele, should be held responsible for helping to stoke the violence.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is threatening retribution against progressive elected officials demanding answers about underreported COVID-19 deaths and his effort to help an industry group shield nursing home executives from liability. Between his cover-ups and his bullying, Cuomo might as well be New York’s Richard Nixon.
Despite the best efforts of former AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney, organized labor has continued its decline. Not only have we been politically defeated, but our very historical memory of struggle is under assault. We desperately need to find a way to make “big labor” truly big again.