U.S. Politics & Society

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, contrary to all expectation, has become the most important left insurgency in the United States in nearly half a century. A year ago, even his most optimistic supporters might have hoped that Sanders would enliven the presidential debates by challenging Hillary Clinton on issues of Wall Street power and big money corruption, and perhaps garner a quarter to a third of the primary vote. Instead, Sanders won

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2016-05-02 Rachel Sherman

Behind the Scenes with the One Percent

The pop culture genre of “secret look into the lives of the upper class” dominates representations of the wealthy in

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2016-04-30 Kati Sipp

The Internet vs. the Labor Movement: Why Unions Are Late-Comers to Digital Organizing

Over the past decade, the importance of digital organizing has soared in electoral and issue based campaigns on the left. The idea that an electoral field organizer need not be a capable database user is patently ridiculous at this point. Political campaigns understand that they need to invest in staff with expertise in digital organizing—whether those are people who can write e-mail subject lines that will…

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2016-03-29 Jennifer Wolff

Debtors’ Island: How Puerto Rico Became a Hedge Fund Playground

You could call it a perfect storm: a fiscal crisis converging with a deep secular economic decline.1 Once touted as the showcase of U.S.- led economic development, debt-strapped Puerto Rico is currently embroiled in a struggle for survival. During the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico grew at a rapid pace, betting on cheap labor, privileged duty-free access to the U.S. market, and tax incentives for U.S. companies. By the 1970s, however, the formula had lost steam and …

Events Race U.S. Politics & Society

2016-02-22 Charles Lenchner

Steven Pitts: The Battle for Good Jobs in the Black Community

Black-Lives-Matter-protest-in-Toronto-july-2015-Jalani-Morgan-660x350-1452594794-400x300

Featured Race U.S. Politics & Society

2016-02-22 Adolph Reed

The Black-Labor-Left Alliance in the Neoliberal Age

The report, A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor, brings together the perspectives and voices of significant black

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2016-01-19 Joseph A. McCartin

Public Sector Unionism under Assault: How to Combat the Scapegoating of Organized Labor

The Great Recession struck with ferocity in 2009 just as public employees, for the first time, became the majority of

U.S. Politics & Society

2015-06-08 Nikil Saval

Marxism and Little Magazines: Gathering in the Newest Left

When I entered graduate school in English literature in 2007, like many others I did so under the impression that anything could pass as “studying literature,” and that I was secretly training to be an intellectual. To study literature in the 2000s obviously meant different things at different universities. But there is no doubt that the reputation of English departments, in places like the New York Times, invariably meant that they were hothouses of what is called “Theory,” a politicized blend of philosophy from German and French (mostly left-wing) thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2015-06-08 Ted Fertik

Does the Working Families Party Work? An Appraisal of 25 Years of Semi-Independent Politics

For a long time, labor and progressives have had essentially one electoral strategy: elect Democrats, and hope for the best. Every cycle, prominent progressives issue statements that somehow, this time, things will be different. Somehow, they never are. A prominent labor movement strategist recently put the matter bluntly: “in election after election the labor movement and other progressives have been arguing that . . . the Democrats must run on an aggressive, populist, economic message.

Featured U.S. Politics & Society

2015-02-03 Michael Hirsch

After the Fall: An Autopsy of the Midterms

Surveying the wreckage of his party’s 2014 election campaign, Howard Dean, on the November 9th Meet the Press, was candid, with such sound bytes as, ““Where the hell is the Democratic party …You got to stand for something if you want to win.” The Republicans’ message was, “We’re not Obama.” What was the Democrats’ message? “Oh well, we really aren’t either.”
Translation: “Get my message; we need a message.”
No matter how hard the Democrats tried to demonize their Republican rivals — they couldn’t.