Candyman Wrings Terror Out of the Horror of Gentrification
At a time of widespread urban gentrification, Candyman suggests that the ghosts of the displaced won’t disappear so easily.
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
America’s Origin Story Is a Myth
The foundational myths of the United States celebrate the conquest of the frontier as the creation of a nation founded on principles of equality. Nick Estes thinks it’s time Americans grappled with the truth.
To Defend Democracy, We Need Mass Action
We can’t sit on our hands waiting for Joe Biden to protect abortion and the climate. Movements for the New Deal and civil rights showed us how to beat the Supreme Court and other reactionary, undemocratic institutions: mass action.
Spain’s Hospitals Have Suffered Death by a Thousand Cuts
Spain’s requisitioning of private hospitals is a fine example of government mobilization to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet the country’s overwhelmed wards also show how neoliberal policies have chipped away at public health care — starving hospitals of resources while siphoning them off to paid-for alternatives.
Joe Biden Needs to Get Serious About Voting Rights
As a matter of both principle and self-interest, Joe Biden should pull out the stops to abolish the filibuster and safeguard the right to vote, which is now under threat from GOP governments in dozens of states. So far, he seems uninterested.
Gavin Newsom Keeps Throwing Workers Under the (Self-Driving) Bus
California governor Gavin Newsom, who has been dubbed the "leader of liberal America," has snubbed labor repeatedly in recent weeks — eliminating union jobs by allowing self-driving buses and vetoing a bill to extend unemployment to striking workers.
Decades of Hospital Closures Led to This Disaster
The United States has been closing vitally needed hospitals for decades. Now, with a pandemic afoot and triage tents popping up in Central Park, we need to stop holding our hospital system hostage to the whims of the market.
Kim San, Martyr of Korean Socialism
From the struggle against Japanese rule in Korea to his work with China’s revolutionaries, Kim San lived a life committed to socialism and the struggle against imperialism. He deserves to be remembered today.
Ecuador’s Government Is Persecuting the Man Who Doubled Health Care Spending
In office from 2007 to 2017, Ecuador’s left-wing president Rafael Correa more than doubled investment in health care. But Lenín Moreno’s austerian regime has abandoned that legacy — and is now using the courts to silence those who criticize its response to COVID-19.
Saving Bulgarian Communism’s “Concrete Spaceship”
Captured on a thousand Instagram feeds, the UFO-like monument to the Bulgarian Communist Party is one of the Eastern Bloc’s most famous architectural relics. A battle to save it from decay has brought Bulgaria’s past back into political debate — and highlighted the death of the radicalism that motivated the project to start with.
The Antiwar Tour
Two American veterans journeyed to Japan to apologize for US war crimes. They found a growing grassroots antiwar movement.
South Africa Needs a Left Alternative to the ANC
The recent unrest in South Africa wasn't an expression of progressive politics. The Left will have to find a way to channel popular discontent into mass left movements — or we'll get nativism, and, inevitably, authoritarianism instead.
The First Neoliberals
How free-market disciples and union busters became the prophets of American liberalism.
“Not Me, Us” Means Building Democratic Membership Organizations
Bernie Sanders didn’t just put policies like Medicare for All on the map nationally — he also insisted we need to build a mass movement to win. The next phase of the Sanders movement must involve building democratic, nationwide membership organizations.
J. B. Pritzker Should Lift Illinois’s Rent Control Ban to Provide Relief for Renters
Illinois cannot act to provide relief for its renters struggling under the coronavirus pandemic because of a 1997 rent control ban pushed by the Right. But this could change if its governor, J. B. Pritzker, used his emergency powers to lift that ban and aid the millions of Illinoisans who can’t pay the rent.
Corporate Pressure Groups Are Cheering On the Supreme Court’s War on Unions
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case with high-stakes consequences for the labor movement. Corporate lobbying groups are pressuring the court, vilifying unions as violent and harmful so as to combat the national labor organizing surge.
How Italy’s Far Right Fell in Love With the United States
In 1945, Italian fascists saw US forces as occupiers, not liberators. Yet in postwar decades, neofascists sought to insert themselves into the Western anti-communist alliance: an “Atlanticism” that continues to inspire the far right today.
Mike Rowe’s Dirty Job
Mike Rowe wants Americans to get interested in blue-collar jobs, but for all the wrong reasons.
Albania’s History of Communism and Postcommunism Has a Message for Our Time
From its late break with the Ottoman Empire to the Cold War rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania has followed an unusual path through modern history. But the country’s experience of communism and postcommunism is full of valuable lessons for the politics of today.
Between King and Kaiser
The Great War spurred the separatist movement, but it also blurred the lines between nationalism and socialism on the Irish left.