Few scenes are as emblematic of the barbarism of American capitalism as the now-routine “sweeps” in which police round up homeless people and destroy their belongings. By some estimates, it would be cheaper to just provide them with housing. A homeless man moves his...
Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne’s new detective show, Poker Face, is a brilliant working-class riff on Knives Out. Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face. (Paramount, 2023) It’s a relief to watch Poker Face, the new hit mystery series created by Rian Johnson of Knives Out and...
As public officials across America prepare to funnel even more of government workers’ savings to private equity moguls, they risk gambling away public retirement money as private equity values drop and industry executives continue to rake it in. Exterior view of the...
The US-dominated economic order constructed after Bretton Woods did not take the Global South into consideration. A new, just system will have to change that. An artisanal gold miner digs at the Bantakokouta gold mine in southeastern Senegal on February 2, 2023. (John...
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913. Far from being a face of respectability politics, she was a defiant and seasoned working-class organizer who despised the cringing submission that Jim Crow induced and who doggedly fought oppression in all its forms. Rosa Parks...
Some Democrats apparently thought voting for the GOP’s ludicrous anti-socialism resolution would keep them safe from Republican attacks. They’ll find out soon enough how wrong they were. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during his weekly news conference on...
House Republicans have wasted no time in red-baiting the Left, and the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party has apparently been happy to join them. Representative Nancy Pelosi during an event to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act...
In Russia, mounting authoritarianism and the wartime crackdown on dissent have hobbled trade unions. A five-day strike by food couriers showed that at least some workers are refusing to be muzzled. Yandex.Eats food delivery couriers push their scooters along a...
I have had what I have been privately referring to as a poetry block for several years: I can barely read it, I certainly can’t write it, and it’s difficult to properly read anything about it. I used to live for poetry, and I still make a living by, occasionally,...
Across Eastern Europe, the war in Ukraine has reinvigorated narratives that present life under Soviet rule as akin to Nazi genocide. It’s bad history — and it indulges the nationalist groups who collaborated with Adolf Hitler. The Memorial of Red Army Soldiers is...
We all know that the rents are too damn high and that our cities’ efforts at providing affordable housing have been failures. The reason they fail is because the “affordable housing” playbook does not consider housing as a public good. A public housing building south...
The United Packinghouse Workers of America was a beacon of “civil rights unionism.” And in the aftermath of Emmett Till’s grotesque lynching in 1955, the union spearheaded a mass campaign on Till’s behalf in the North and South. Four women from the United Packinghouse...