Directing the Revolution
Political cinema can sometimes be too highbrow for a mass audience. But in the 1960s and early '70s, French-Greek director Costa-Gavras showed that films with a revolutionary message can also be popular.
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Bernie’s Plan for Racial Justice
The micro-scandals alleging that Bernie Sanders doesn’t take racism seriously won't end any time soon. We should call them what they are: cynical attacks on a politician whose commitment to racial justice is intertwined with fighting economic inequality.
Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger would have turned 100 today. Few figures in American history have lived as influential and deeply radical lives as he did. Let's celebrate him today.
A Religion of Unity
For black meatpacking workers, multiracial class politics was the path to economic and social advancement.
Medicare Turns Fifty-Four Today. We Need to Defend and Expand It
Fifty-four years ago today, Medicare became the law of the land. The program has been massively successful despite continued efforts to destroy it. While defending Medicare, our next step is clear: Medicare for All.
Micah White Is the Ultimate Occupy Grifter
Micah White, the guy who says he “cocreated” Occupy Wall Street, just went to Davos to “achieve great changes” with the 1 percent. Sometimes social movement activism becomes just another scam.
Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong
The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created in the first place, and how we can finally dismantle it.
How McCarthyism and the Red Scare Hurt the Black Freedom Struggle
In the years immediately following World War II, the movement for black equality, rooted in the militancy of black workers, was making massive strides. The McCarthyist anticommunist campaign of the late 1940s dealt a hammer blow to that project, attacking its unions and scattering its activists, ultimately narrowing the ambitions of the black freedom movement.
The Freedom Rides Made the Most of a Multiracial Activist Base
Today’s protests for racial justice are strikingly multiracial. Civil rights organizers have historically considered this an asset and often used it creatively and strategically to their advantage, as they did during the Freedom Rides through the American South in 1961.
Noam Chomsky: Trump’s Inaction on Climate Change Makes Him “the Worst Criminal in History, Undeniably”
In an interview, Noam Chomsky talks about the “absolutely unprecedented scope and scale” of the protests against the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the importance of Lula’s presidency in Brazil, and why Donald Trump's refusal to act to stop the impending catastrophe of climate change makes him “the worst criminal in human history.”
Last Week’s Pro Athletes Strikes Could Become Much Bigger Than Sports
Professional athletes have an enormous amount of power that they put to good use this past week in a series of unprecedented strikes. But workers of all types have similar kinds of power — and could, just like athletes, use it to shut society down to fight injustice.
The Left Can Win the American South
Republicans captured the South through racist “dog-whistle” appeals and by exploiting the deindustrialization that ravaged the region after NAFTA. But we can't write off the South as hopelessly reactionary — there’s a base for progressive politics that speaks to workers of all races.
The Meaning of January 6, 2021
A long history suggests that while the crisis of the moment dictates directing the state’s security resources and personnel toward the Right, this focus will, inevitably, shift back to the Left.
The Art of Saying Nothing
Louis Menand’s new history of Cold War art and thought The Free World wants to rehabilitate liberal anti-communism. To do so, it downplays both the political repression of the US left and imperial America’s genocide against its Third World political opponents.
Segregation Is Still Alive in Mardi Gras’s Birthplace
Decades after the end of Jim Crow, cities like Mobile, Alabama, are still shot through with racial segregation. That segregation is reflected in the city’s Mardi Gras culture, where some social societies still maintain white-only membership.
When a New Left Activist Departed Campus for the Factory Floor
After participating in 1960s progressive movements, Jon Melrod took his activism to the factory floor, becoming a militant rank-and-file autoworker. Radicals like him made serious contributions to labor struggle at a time when unions were under attack.
The Institute for Christian Socialism Wants to Bring Left Politics to American Christianity
The Institute for Christian Socialism is trying to build left-wing solidarity within religious communities. In their eyes, an awareness of and commitment to socialism is inherent to the Gospel.
Gun Control Alone Won’t Suppress the US’s Death Drive
Mass shootings are only the latest horrific chapter in the US’s long history of gun violence, which stretches from prerevolutionary slave patrols to our ongoing trade in military technology. Confronting this bloodlust will require more than just gun control.
Amazon Workers in North Carolina Are Building a Union
Since the Amazon Labor Union’s victory in New York, interest in organizing has surged nationwide. In North Carolina, worker-organizers are building solidarity by helping coworkers struggling with starvation wages and an increasingly punitive management.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction Is Essential Reading
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America is one of the greatest modern studies of revolution and counterrevolution. It’s also an extraordinary example of a materialist and class analysis of race under capitalism.