Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president has changed politics as we know it.
Category: Labor
Punched in the Face: Minneapolis Labor and the Fight for #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd
While much of the labor movement in Minneapolis has embedded itself in the city’s struggle against police brutality, union leadership at the national level has shied away from demands that it clean house.
“Dirty Break” for Independent Political Action or a Way to Stay Stuck in the Mud?
Does the history of Minnesota’s Farm-Labor Party in the 1920s and 1930s hold any lessons for socialists today? Kim Moody responds to an article by Eric Blanc.
Firing Up the House of Labor to Fight for Racial Justice: Confronting Hard Truths
Defending truths about union democracy and the inseparability of racial and economic justice in our society has shown to be extraordinarily demanding work, yet it is an unavoidable goal if the organized power of the working class is to (help) free the human race.
The American Working Class on Unfamiliar and Dangerous Terrain: A Fightback Begins
The pandemic and the shutdown have taken a toll, but they now provide an opportunity to rebuild the American labor movement from the bottom up.
The New Deal Against the Environmentalists
Not only was the “greenest” of the original New Deal programs not established by nascent environmentalists, it was also internally fractured by their influence.
Can We Save the Postal Service?
The U.S. Postal Service is in deep trouble. The postal Board of Governors has asked Congress for $75 billion to keep the agency afloat; without it, the outgoing Postmaster General said, USPS could “run out of cash” by September.
Where Do We Stand? Reasons for Optimism
In 2008-9 a common slogan was “The banks got bailed out. We got sold out!” This populist attitude has persisted since then and re-emerged even more strongly in this Crisis.
Class Struggle and Social Protest in the Coronavirus Pandemic
The pandemic and the shutdown have taken a toll, but they now provide an opportunity to rebuild the American labor movement from the bottom up. While the challenges will be great, working class resistance is growing and socialists with a rank-and-file strategy and class struggle perspective are involved in the fight.
A Mon Valley Memoir: Lessons From The Last Stand Of Steelworkers in Homestead
In his lively new memoir, Stout argues that younger activists still have much to learn from past rank-and-file struggles in blue-collar industries even if they are now entering workplaces in “a neo-liberal world.”
Men in the (Indian) Sun
On 1 May 2020, which was International Worker’s Day, 18 Indian migrant workers boarded and hid in a cement mixer which was carrying them from Mumbai to Uttar Pradesh.
Neoliberal Healthcare Fails the COVID Test
The decades of neoliberal restructuring, combined with this specific, Trump-led incompetence and just profound callousness towards the lives of working people, is going to lead to upwards of a quarter-of-a-million people dying from this overall.
Reimagining the Frontline from Heaven’s Edge
“I hated unions,” says Sathya Vani, now Joint-President of Sri Lanka’s Domestic Workers’ Union (DWU). “My parents were part of a union, who did nothing for them. So for a long time I avoided trade unions.”
Vani’s parents . . .
Trump Puts Business before Health as Country Reopens
President Donald Trump has now announced a three-phase plan for reopening the country, though many medical experts have expressed doubts and 81 percent of Americans believe we should not reopen until it is safe to do so. Putting profits ahead of people, Trump puts the entire country at risk.
Bernie, Biden, and Hegemony
The struggle against capital has not been defeated, just because Sanders was unsuccessful in his bid for the presidency. Instead, what we’re witnessing is more and more people becoming engaged with the notion of worker struggle.
Where to Begin? Growing Seeds of Liberation in a World Torn Asunder
What faces us in the post-COVID-19 world as we struggle to uproot capitalism and its malignant racism, sexism, heterosexism, and environmental destruction, both in theory and in practice?
Political Struggle Amidst the Pandemic in the United States
Following over a month with large parts of the United States shutdown, the coronavirus hospitalization rate peaked last week, and the principal debate now is over when and how to restart the economy.
“What if?” COVID-19, Trump and Class Struggle in America
When I first wrote this article on Friday, March 27, the Covid-19 death toll in the US had surpassed 1,600, although casualties are mounting so fast this number will seem impossibly old in a day or two. By April 2 the number . . .
Saint Paul Teachers’ Strike on the Eve of COVID-19
After over nine months of negotiations, on March 10, 2020 members of Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) took to the streets to fight for the schools our students deserve. Then, just one week later, we were back in our . . .
Essential Workers: Class Struggle in the Time of Coronavirus
A newscast on SUR Peru Sunday showed residents of Lima at their windows clapping and thanking the masked sanitation workers loading bags of trash into a garbage truck. The screen read, “Coronavirus: Cleaning in Lima, Anonymous Heroes.” Residents knew whose . . .
The Coronavirus Strikes and their Significance, So Far
Across the United States we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers’ failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them . . .
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