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The Flint Disaster: Why Doesn’t Black Health Matter?

By: H. Jack Geiger, MDFebruary 3, 2016

The lead-poisoning disaster in Flint, Michigan is more than a shocking public health failure. It is an assault on human rights – a recognition that has been largely absent from most discussions of how and why this could have happened in the advanced industrial democracy of the United States. It is arguably the largest discrete violation of its type since the infamous and grossly unethical Tuskegee syphilis medical study of the last century. The water poisoning in Flint was finally forced into official recognition by a brave and stubborn pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who documented what was really happening to Flint’s vulnerable children and other residents.

The Sanders Campaign and the Left

By: Lance Selfa, Ashley Smith

Winter 2016 (New Politics Vol. XV No. 4, Whole Number 60)

Senator Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic Party nomination for president has certainly energized thousands. It has also rekindled an old debate on the American left that revolves around the question: Should the left join, endorse, support, or work for campaigns in the Democratic Party?

Bernie Sanders and the Dilemma of the Democratic “Party”

By: Jason Schulman

Winter 2016 (New Politics Vol. XV No. 4, Whole Number 60)

Some months ago I responded to a piece that appeared on the New Politics blog by my longtime fellow NP editorial board member and friend Barry Finger.¹ In my own blog, I argued that Barry had a better, more sophisticated understanding of the peculiarities of the Democratic Party and the U.S.

Washington and Moscow: Halt the Bombing and Stop Supporting Dictators in the Middle East!

By: Campaign for Peace and Democracy

Winter 2016 (New Politics Vol. XV No. 4, Whole Number 60)

Outside powers have had a long and shameful history of cynically supporting dictatorships in the Middle East because maintaining friendly autocratic states in the region suits their geopolitical objectives. And today those criminal policies are flagrantly on display.

Is an Injury to One an Injury to All? Some Critical Thoughts on Trade-Union Internationalism Today

By: Katy Fox-HodessJanuary 29, 2016

The necessity of working-class internationalism must surely be one of the left’s most invoked truisms, providing the semblance of a solution to the problems facing embattled workers and governments of the left. But too often the concept is deployed in vague, even contentless ways. The global economic crisis has put the issue of ‘internationalism’ into greater focus – particularly, perhaps, in Europe, where political and monetary union is in question as never before.

Contemporary American Radicalism: The View from Below

By: Dan La BotzJanuary 12, 2016

Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps. Radicals in America: The U.S. Left Since the Second World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 355 pp. Photos. Bibliography. Index.

Howard Brick’s and Christopher Phelps’ Radicals in America, covering the period from 1939 to 2014, is a masterful narrative history of the left of our time, an account that integrates the experience of the post-war left into American political, economic, and social history, with an eye to the cultural context as well.

The Graphic Juggernaut

By: Kent WorcesterDecember 12, 2015

Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Kate Evans, Verso, 2015, paperback, $16.95

Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, David Klein (author) and Stephanie McMillan (editor and illustrator), Amazon digital services, 2015, eBook, $2.95

Gene Basset’s Vietnam Sketchbook: A Cartoonist’s Wartime Perspective, Thom Rooke, Syracuse University Press, 2015, paperback, $24.95

My War, Szegedi Szüts, Dover, 2015, paperback, $12.95

The graphic lit juggernaut rolls on. Even as DC and Marvel crank out superhero comics at roughly the same pace they have for the past twenty or thirty years, trade publishers and university presses are issuing nonfiction narrative art on a scale that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Back in the day, the four books under review would have represented a significant percentage of like-minded cartooning to appear in any given season. Now practically every publishing house under the sun boasts a new graphic novel line or at very least a fistful of titles aimed at the words-and-pictures market.

Puerto Rico and the Fiscal Crisis

A view from the Puerto Rican diaspora

By: Manuel E. Melendez LavanderoDecember 3, 2015

Puerto Rico is undergoing a profound fiscal crisis. Our country is besieged by the big interests of Wall Street’s credit agencies and vulture funds, which as they’ve done in other parts of the world, such as Spain, Greece and Argentina, only seek an uncontrolled increase in their profits. These profits come at the cost of great sacrifices to working people, which include drastic cuts to social services that will have a special impact on education and health care.

In order to impose their inhumane demands, they use their powerful influence within government structures, in the courts and in the mass media to guarantee payment of the immoral and odious debt, with no concern for the deterioration of our quality of life and the elimination of hard-won labor rights. They establish, de facto, a dictatorship of oligarchic and monopoly capital over the whole of society, the working class majority stripped of the financial resources needed to insure a dignified subsistence.

Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution

By: Sandy BoyerNovember 23, 2015

Even a somewhat cynical 71 year old socialist like me could be thrilled to see Bernie Sanders talking about the need for an American political revolution on MSNBC. To be honest, I’m not sure that I ever expected to see a leading presidential candidate say we need a revolution on prime time TV.

When Bernie Sanders says we need a political revolution, he’s mostly talking about turning many thousands of new people out to vote. That would obviously be a very good thing. It’s just not enough to win the meaningful social changes that would add up to a political revolution.

New Hampshire SEIU Breaks from International–Endorses Bernie

By: Steve EarlyNovember 20, 2015

They don't put the slogan “Live Free or Die” on New Hampshire license plates for nothing!

There has been an inspiring statewide local union response to SEIU's predictably short-sighted headquarters embrace of Hillary Clinton. This Sanders endorsement comes from public workers who know Bernie well because they live and work just across the Connecticut River from Vermont–or, in some cases, are Vermonters themselves.

My Week with Libertarians: An Accidental Socratic Socialist vs. Capitalism’s Euthyphros

By: Bryant William SculosOctober 30, 2015

This story begins where all good stories do; I hit a bit of a rut with the second to last chapter of my dissertation, a dissertation which looks at the psychological aspects of capitalism that undermine arguments for global justice that are deeply entrenched in the liberal political-philosophical tradition. When I get stuck, I try to motivate myself by reminding myself how necessary this kind of demystifying critical scholarship is. Naturally, I usually turn to Fox News for such motivation. However, for whatever reason, I decided to look on Facebook for something that would piss me off and send me on a writing blitz.

NYC Day of Climate Protests a Step Forward

By: Nancy HolmstromOctober 18, 2015

The last protest of the day of the New York City Climate Protests was at a Broadway theatre where Gov. Cuomo was scheduled to attend. It was a spirited demonstration complete with a little orchestra and playful costumes focused on persuading Cuomo to veto the Port Ambrose Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant off the coast of Long Island right near JFK airport. Opponents argue that it is very dangerous security risk, terrible for the environment, and would kill the chance for a 700-megawatt wind farm that would create 17,000 local jobs.

Fish in a Manmade Pond

By: Will SolomonOctober 1, 2015

Economic oppression remains ubiquitous. In the West we are moving towards, or are already at, a condition of corporate governance enforced by the state apparatus. This is not capitalism as it is commonly understood— allowing for the ostensibly free pursuit of capital, an open market economy— nor is it democracy, or even sovereign nation states. It is a new corporatocracy, in which powerfully entrenched (international) corporations reign supreme, and define policy and economic planning in perpetuity.

An Auto Worker Writes to the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

By: Denny Walker CrumSeptember 22, 2015

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) has reached a tentative agreement with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and is presenting the proposed contract to its members for a vote beginning this week. The contract affects some 40,000 unionized hourly workers.

At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007 the UAW agreed to let Fiat Chrysler establish two tiers, that is, workers doing the same job would have different rates of pay, with newer workers sometimes working for $17 an hour while more senior workers might earn as much $28 an hour. Such a system had been introduced earlier in the auto parts plants.

The Potential of Urban Agriculture

By: Scott SzpisjakSeptember 16, 2015

Recently the local food movement seems to have sprung up from nowhere. Yuppies are flocking to farmer’s markets and community gardens across the nation to help the environment and local farmers. But this movement is not at all inclusive; urban agriculture has often been actively suppressed amongst low income populations. This is not always the case, however, especially in times of economic crisis. For example, in the seventies, urban agriculture was promoted in New York’s Lower East Side as a productive way to use land that served no other purpose. But when the gentrification of SoHo spread in the eighties as the economy improved, land prices shot up and gardens which had been tolerated previously were bulldozed with nary a thought to the people who relied on them for access to healthy food.

What is the left supposed to do electorally?

By: Matt BruenigSeptember 15, 2015

Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK Labour Party. As usually happens when the left scores an electoral victory, the center-left and others has made sure to inform Corbyn and his supporters that it is bad that he won and that he never should have tried to win. I am more familiar with this in the American context where every left-wing electoral effort is similarly cast as irresponsible. Given these attitudes, I am left to wonder what exactly people think the left is supposed to do electorally?

Jill Stein Campaign Seeks to Meet Matching Fund Goals

By: Dan La BotzSeptember 12, 2015

[The following item comes from the Jill Stein campaign for the Green Party presidential nomination.]

Now is the time to support a serious, independent, left candidate for Presidential in 2016. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for President, is already garnering media attention, building support in social justice movements and frontline struggles and taking on the undemocratic Presidential Debate Commission.

Union-Backed "Fight For $15" Campaign Marginalizes Larger Struggle for Worker Power

By: Arun GuptaSeptember 10, 2015

Interview with Arun Gupta, journalist and a founding editor of New York City’s Indypendent newspaper, conducted by Scott Harris:

http://btlonline.org/2015/mp3/150918a-btl-gupta.mp3

It’s been almost three years since the movement for a living wage burst into protest, first in New York City and then in dozens of other cities and towns across the U.S.

Bernie Sanders and #BLM: A Response to Dan La Botz

By: Paul StreetAugust 30, 2015

In a recent New Politics essay, Dan La Botz argues that “the debate between” Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement is “one of the most important discussions of our time.” It is “a great debate about the priorities and the program of the American people” that “could lead to the construction of a new analysis and lay the basis for a new and broad social movement” that helps us “find a new way forward against both capitalism and racism” – “a new movement that combines the fight for greater economic equality with demand for racial justice, perhaps a movement for socialism.”

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