Category: Social Policy

Thinking Out Loud about the End of Social Democracy

The Sanders challenge is over and the question for socialists is, where do we go from here? Up until recently this debate has ranged along familiar lines: the need for independent political action and the obstacles socialists face in recruiting . . .

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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.

In the Tempest of Coronavirus: Racism and Class Struggle

This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.
COVID-19 is now in all U.S. states with 530,026 cases and 20,614 deaths (as of April 12). Statistics suggest that the virus has peaked for . . .

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Class and Race Inequality, Health, and COVID-19

The demographic data collected and reported in the media for sickness and mortality rates due to COVID-19 has focused on age and to a certain extent gender. While mass hardship from unemployment has been widely reported, we have heard little . . .

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Are We “All in This Together”?

The coronavirus crisis has provoked different reactions. Many have responded with compassion, kindness, and solidarity. Some have used it as another opportunity for money gouging, scams, and rip offs. Collective human warmth and love has battled cold individual selfishness and . . .

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What Is COVID-19 Teaching Us About Being Human?

Grocery aisles stand devoid of toilet paper rolls, paper towels, meat, and canned products as panic-stricken urbanites stock their pantries and garages to avoid multiple trips to the supermarket, or maybe even to avoid doomsday scarcity. When people do visit . . .

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“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 . . .

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The UK’s National Health Service, COVID-19, and the Price of Tory Austerity

One of the most astounding statistics to emerge from the escalating coronavirus pandemic is how the death rate from the virus in Germany is markedly lower than other countries.
As of March 26, 2020, Germany had recorded more than 35,000 COVID-19 . . .

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How China contained Covid-19 and the dangerous world to come

This interview with Kevin Lin explains how medical personnel in Wuhan, China sounded the alarm in late December as the coronavirus began to spread. After an initial period of denial and scapegoating, Chinese leaders took decisive actions to contain the . . .

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Bailouts are class warfare

The global capitalist economy has quickly stumbled into recession, a process already unfolding before the COVID-19 pandemic came into full view. The effects of the spreading virus have led to rolling closures and shutdowns to large swathes of different international . . .

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An Ideological War

I believe that there is an ideological war going on right now and that the left needs to be prepared to do battle. In the very first days of this crisis, we saw moratoriums on evictions, expedited unemployment benefits, CA . . .

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America Faces the Deluge

This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.
The United States stands before the deluge. Coronavirus is spreading, the economy is collapsing, anxiety is everywhere. Federal and state government responses were slow . . .

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A Medical, Economic and Social Crisis

The global coronavirus outbreak is not (fortunately) the end of civilization, nor is it (unfortunately) the end of capitalism. It is, however, a very deep systemic crisis with interlocking public health, environmental and economic dimensions — and reveals the need . . .

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Fifteen Years of Urban Entrepreneurialism: Lessons from New Orleans

It has been fifteen years since Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf Coast, leaving mass destruction in its wake. New Orleans, one of the places most severely hit, was left eighty percent under . . .

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The American Working Class, Coronavirus, and the Recession

This article was originally written for Viento Sur, a political magazine published in the Spanish state.

Human Rights Violations in New York City and the Urgency to Alleviate Suffering

On January 31, 2019 Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio conducted a rushed press conference where they signed an agreement between Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the New York City Housing Authority . . .

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France: Covid-19: A Very Political Virus

I’ll begin by telling you a story. In August 1940, when the Luftwaffe was crushing London with its bombs, British bourgeois politicians were very reluctant to open the subway system so that people could take refuge there. It took the . . .

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Demands from Grassroots Organizers Concerning COVID-19

Greetings friends, I spent about 48 hours working on this resource because I believe it is needed. I hope that you will find it useful in your work and advocacy.  – Kelly
The Trump administration has botched its response to COVID-19. Due . . .

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13 theses on the imminent ecological catastrophe and the (revolutionary) means of averting it

I. The ecological crisis is already the most important social and political question of the 21st century, and will become even more so in the coming months and years. The future of the planet, and thus of humanity, will be determined in . . .

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How Mayor Lumumba was Bought: The Closed Bloomberg Meeting in Jackson, Mississippi

The saying that politics makes for strange bedfellows is a statement that speaks to the many allegiances, alliances and compromises that one must make when engaging in electoral politics. One might think that there could be no more stranger bedfellows . . .

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On Student Peer-to-Peer Economic Power

You can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions.
“What are the jobs of the future?” is the wrong question to ask about both work and education. It presumes a capitalist class determining the structure of employment . . .

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