Spain has announced it will take over private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to fight coronavirus. Yet in the PSOE-Podemos coalition, some ministers are still defending fiscal austerity. Their neoliberal dogma could get people killed.
Containment isn’t enough. We need a wartime mobilization to expand coverage, capacity, and production in order to test, trace, and treat coronavirus. And Bernie Sanders must play a major role in advocating for more aggressive measures.
Faced with impossible choices between going to work and facing potential exposure to coronavirus or staying home and losing needed income, workers at a Brooklyn cafe got organized. To ensure a just response to coronavirus, millions more working people will need to get similarly organized in our workplaces, in our communities, and in politics.
The power of organized labor won the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 49 years ago today. That victory has saved thousands of lives in workplaces across the country — but we need to think even bigger than regulatory reforms now.
Domestic workers have always been among the hardest hit by recessions. Fear of contagion may make the coronavirus crisis the worst yet — a catastrophe for millions of the most economically vulnerable workers.
African countries have shown impressive ingenuity in dealing with the coronavirus. But the legacies of colonialism and Western-imposed austerity have left them ill-equipped to attack the deadly virus.
The 2008 bailout was a giant giveaway to corporate America. 2020 is more of the same.
Newly released emails from Madrid’s right-wing government show how authorities instructed care homes not to take elderly coronavirus patients to hospitals. The result was one of Europe’s highest death tolls — the outcome of a privatized care system that prefers saving money over saving the lives of the vulnerable.
The Serbian government’s reintroduction of a curfew in Belgrade triggered violent protests in July, showing the popular distrust in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But with the rallies drawing everyone from middle-class liberals to far-right football hooligans, the protests above all show the lack of coherent opposition to Aleksandar Vučić’s authoritarian government.
When the pandemic began, defenders of our for-profit health system — including many Democrats — scrambled to insist we didn't need a Medicare for All system. Yet new infections are still surging in the US while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on coronavirus.
Joe Biden didn’t campaign on significant coronavirus relief measures despite the incredible pain felt across the country right now. It’s up to the Left to demand he pursue such measures in office, centered on three issues: addressing economic misery, expanding health care, and paying for it all by taxing the rich.
The response to the coronavirus shows that neither the US nor the world is ready for a global pandemic. We desperately need a public health system that rejects philanthrocapitalism and prioritizes preparedness over corporate profits.
The media and the Democratic Party establishment’s singular focus on paid sick leave leaves out millions of contract and informal workers. We need to think much bigger — now.
The Democrats have an opportunity to push for desperately needed, sweeping economic change in response to coronavirus. Instead, they’re letting themselves be outflanked by Republicans.
In the face of inadequate health and safety protections against coronavirus on public transit, Detroit bus drivers walked off the job Tuesday demanding management take action. They won.
Joe Biden just abdicated national leadership by disappearing for a week in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. According to mainstream media, it’s no big deal.
The coronavirus epidemic has shown the complete bankruptcy of neoliberalism. But the neoliberal order won’t be toppled if we don’t give it a hard push.
The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for us to think again about Marx’s idea of human freedom. As David Harvey writes in Jacobin, emergency steps to get through the crisis also show us how we could build a different society that’s not beholden to capital.
Since the 2003 war against Iraq, a massive 70 percent of the country’s health care infrastructure has been destroyed. As hospitals are besieged by victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, a state enfeebled by two decades of conflict is again at a breaking point.
A chorus from politicians and mainstream media is rising to demand we “look forward, not backward” on the criminally negligent US response to coronavirus. The aim of these arguments is simple: to block efforts to hold Donald Trump and his cronies accountable for their incompetence and malice.