Category: Labor

Richard, We Hardly Knew Ya: A Letter to “The Chief-Leader”

With a new generation of militant radical organizers looking to industrialize into union jobs and kick-start a new militant minority in the U.S. labor movement, their effort is receiving both wide support and wary when not damning criticism. Among the . . .

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Education Workers in Chicago Are Challenging the U.S. Ruling Class

Though the media is casting the strike of education workers in the Chicago Public Schools as (just) another episode in the wave of teachers’ strikes, and the press in Chicago is doing its best to defeat the union, this contract . . .

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The Irishman Cometh: Teamster History Hits the Big Screen (Again)

When I was working with the Teamster reform movement forty years ago, truck drivers concerned about union corruption had to proceed warily.
In the late 1970s, too many affiliates of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) were run by grifters or . . .

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One Member/One Vote: CA Health Care Workers Show How To Endorse, Democratically

At the national, state, and even local level, union political endorsements are often made with insufficient membership involvement.
Union leaders and legislative/political directors like to get their favorite candidates endorsed, without too much debate or discussion.
Instead of giving every member a . . .

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Sunday September 22: Livestream International Labor Solidarity Dialogue

Facebook Livestream Dialogue between Chinese, Algerian, Sudanese, Iranian, Venezuelan and U.S. Labor Activists on International Labor Solidarity.

How Should the U.S. Left Think about China?

Editors’ note: This is the second of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.
[Interview with the author on Democracy Now.]
On the U.S. left, China is treated for the most part as an afterthought, an . . .

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The Amazon Burns and the Politics of Death: Resisting the Commodification of Our Future

The Bolsonaro administration is allowing the Amazon to burn as part of a project to accelerate capital accumulation, but is meeting massive resistance both at home and abroad.

A Second Look at the Workplace Democracy Plan

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign presents socialists with an unprecedented opening for explicitly socialist politics. And Sanders’ Workplace Democracy Plan (WDP) represents a coherent set of policies through which to examine that opportunity. In a recent Jacobin article, Barry Eidlin . . .

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“We’re All Hong Kongers Now”

Ecosocialists must stand in support of the millions of democracy protesters in Hong Kong and call on American trade unions and the left to join us. The Chinese Communist Party is on a suicide mission to destroy planet Earth in . . .

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200 years after Peterloo, do we face a new wave of repression?

Over a hundred events are taking place around Manchester to mark the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, when the yeomanry cut down a peaceful crowd demanding democracy. Ian Allinson argues that the right are pressing Boris Johnson to ramp up surveillance and repression of the left under the guise of counter-terrorism, just when the Prevent strategy is being reviewed.

Director Stéphane Brizé Depicts Class Struggle With Dark Realism in “At War”

Although New Politics has already run Steve Early’s review of this movie, we think this film fills a gap in radical cinematography so well that we’re also running a second, somewhat different review.

A Plant Closing War, Viewed From Inside

Last winter, protesters wearing yellow vests commanded center stage in France. Their grassroots challenge to the neoliberal regime of President Emmanuel Macron drew on a long tradition of labor militancy, including factory closing fights. When these protesters still had blue . . .

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review

Learning from the “Red State” Walkouts

Red State Revolt is based on Eric Blanc’s “on the ground” reporting for Jacobin on the 2018 walkouts of education workers in Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arizona. He aims to tell the stories of the walkouts . . .

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review

Anarchists of Connecticut

The complex history of working-class anarchism and syndicalism in the United States has been understudied. A good part of the problem is language. German, Spanish, Finnish, and Yiddish sources have been utilized by a handful of scholars, but mostly decades . . .

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Localism’s Contradictions in Hong Kong

Earlier this week, Hong Kong had been rocked by perhaps the largest demonstration ever in the city’s history. In response to a murder case committed by a Hong Kong man in Taiwan, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) proposed a bill . . .

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South Africa: Something’s Got to Give

The election of a new government should be a time of celebration. 25 years since the end of Apartheid should be the time of immense celebration. Yet, 25 years since the “dawn of democracy” and South Africans are engulfed by . . .

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Brazil: Success of the General Strike of June 14

In a week of intense political polarization, the movements of the working class, youth and the oppressed again held a strong national demonstration, in continuity with the expressive acts of 15 May and 30 May. There were stoppages in more . . .

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Behind the US-Iran Tension

Clearly the attacks on Norwegian and Japanese tankers off the Gulf of Oman on Thursday 14 June increase the risk of a miscalculation leading to military clashes in the region. However, these attacks were probably not carried out by any . . .

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Lessons from the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America

A friendly criticism of Gutmann-Gonzalez and Brown

A recent article, written by Abigail Gutmann-Gonzalez and Keith Brower Brown, in the Bread and Roses caucus’s blog, The Call, asserts that the East Bay DSA’s campaigns have been a remarkable success. The title of this essay, “Lessons from The . . .

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Are we at a tipping point? Assessing the US political terrain

“Liberal democracy is crumbling.” A Harvard Law Professor opened a recent talk with this matter-of-fact statement and the audience readily murmured its assent.
The daily headlines certainly seem to confirm this assessment—that we are a nation in crisis. Yet, the nature . . .

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Discrediting Charges of Authoritarianism and Violence-Worship in Marx’s Worldview

This blog post is based on a presentation on chapters 2 and 8 of Terry Eagleton’s Why Marx Was Right to the Lower Manhattan DSA Branch Political Education meeting, May 14, 2019.
Milton Berle, the 1950s television comic superstar, had a . . .

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