Democrats in Congress may be on the verge of imposing a monumental wealth tax on billionaires, which could cost some of America’s richest people billions of dollars each. Yet with the exception of Elon Musk, few billionaires have weighed in publicly on the idea. We found one who would. Leon Cooperman is a legendary investor and hedge fund manager with a net worth

The infrastructure and budget reconciliation bills moving through Congress are a mixed bag when it comes to health care, income support programs, and the care economy. On climate and environmental issues, however, they are not just inadequate but disastrous. They represent, at best, a huge lost opportunity to tackle the climate crisis at the required scale

In 1975, Congressman Thomas Rees (D-Calif.) summarized the phone calls he was getting from constituents about the war refugees housed on a Marine base in his district: “They think of the Vietnamese as nothing but diseased job-seekers.” In a Florida military town, kids joked about organizing a “Gook Klux Klan.” California Gov. Jerry Brown demanded Congress

NEW YORK —Afrah Raisa, a 19-year-old student at Hunter College, was introduced to Shahana Hanif’s city council primary campaign in February 2021 by her high school teacher. By June, Raisa had knocked on over 1,000 doors in Brooklyn’s largely immigrant Bangladeshi neighborhood of Kensington, where she’s lived since she immigrated at age 9, on behalf of the

In Washington, good things happen only rarely. But even when they do, they must happen for the dumbest reasons. In a nation like America where the middle 60% of earners hold less combined wealth than the top 1%, a wealth tax on the rich is a very good idea. And, against all odds, we are now on the precipice of maybe, just maybe, getting a wealth tax on billionaires signed

At the end of September, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) told reporters he would not support President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act—a generational investment in social programs, including public funding for childcare and paid family leave—because, “I cannot accept our economy or basically our society moving toward an entitlement mentality.”

On October 14, 10,000 John Deere workers in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia went on strike after overwhelmingly rejecting the new contract negotiated between John Deere and their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). “When you factor in the pandemic, being deemed essential workers, and in our case, having a company turning a record profit, the

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. The 2017-18 school year was difficult at Lakeland Union High School. Disciplinary problems came in waves for the Oneida County school — in February 2018, two students were arrested for making terror threats — just days after the mass shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High

A lot of important history is being made right now, and something potentially game-changing is unfolding among the American workforce. At this very moment, 10,000 UAW members at John Deere are on strike in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas; 35,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente have authorized a strike; 1,400 workers at cereal giant Kellogg’s are on strike

The United States is experiencing a wave of worker militancy and a White House administration that actually wants to take concrete actions to defend and grow labor unions. That strange sensation you're feeling is optimism about labor’s prospects, reflected in the giddiness of #Striketober. Let’s take this opportunity to restore the legal right to strike.

PHILADELPHIA —Alisha Gillespie’s three children call her a “gentle giant” because of her height and demeanor. She’s had a difficult life. Her mother disowned her after Gillespie had a child at 17, and she spent some time unhoused. Before she landed her most recent job in the dietary department of a hospital (lost during the pandemic), her children would pump

A version of his piece originally appeared in Jacobin. Since the Taliban took control of Kabul and the central government on August 15, efforts to support Afghan women have become extremely challenging. According to some prominent U.S. feminists with strong ties to Afghan women, the Taliban “has no legitimacy beyond the brutal force it commands,” and governments,

NEW YORK CITY—Outside the gated entrance to City Hall, a dozen yellow taxi drivers huddle under the canopy of a tent to take shelter from the pelting rain. They sit alongside a line of their sunflower-yellow parked cars, next to a sidewalk makeshift memorial and protest shrine with a backdrop of signs that read: Respect the Drivers, No More Suicides; No More Bankruptcies,

As the spread of Covid-19 forced millions of workplaces to close in March 2020, Cesar Moreira continued to report to a bottling plant in Wharton, N.J., where he works as a batching technician. During 12-hour shifts, Moreira mixes vats of powdered concentrate and sugar to churn out brand-name beverages like Gatorade and Arizona Iced Tea. Management for Resfresco

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that, while we’re all interconnected—through the air we breathe, our public health systems, the economy—the government is largely absent in American life, leaving us to fend for ourselves as individuals in the so-called “free market.” The crisis has wreaked economic havoc on working Americans. But U.S. billionaires

Like Frito-Lay, Nabisco, John Deere, and Heaven Hill Distillery, cereal giant Kellogg’s has seen consumer demand skyrocket during the pandemic, reporting profits of $1.25 billion in 2020. To meet this demand, many workers in Kellogg’s plants around the US report pulling 12 to 16-hour shifts seven days a week, leaving little time for anything outside of work

On August 25, Camilo Enciso, a 41-year-old anti-corruption advocate and attorney, says he was walking inside the Walled City of Cartagena, Colombia, a popular tourist destination known for its colonial architecture and spacious plazas. He had traveled there from his home in Bogotá for a wedding, and was taking a nighttime stroll. Suddenly, he recalls, a

Two blocks from the Mississippi State Capitol in downtown Jackson, Robert Shaffer, head of the state AFL-CIO, sits on a couch in his office trying to explain how unions could become more powerful in Mississippi. “It’s just,” he says, then pauses for an uncomfortably long time. “It’s difficult.” It’s not that Shaffer doesn’t know how to do it. His problem is getting

Everybody, it seems, welcomes the arrival of new restaurants, cafés, food trucks and farmers markets. What could be the downside of fresh veggies, homemade empanadas and a pop-up restaurant specializing in banh mis? But when they appear in unexpected places – think poor neighborhoods populated by immigrants – they’re often the first salvo in a broader effort

Writing in 1976, three years after the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, ITT columnist Roberta Lynch covered the anti-abortion movement as it ballooned in size, propelled by a crusading Catholic Church and an opportunistic far right. She examined how this hardline movement was able to mobilize people from various political walks of life, including veteran

We conclude our series of interviews from rural Wisconsin with farmers and community members fighting to defend life as they know it from the onslaught of Big Agriculture and the factory farming industry. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for “The Wisconsin Idea,” Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and

Ten thousand John Deere workers went on strike today. Sixty thousand IATSE members may be on strike by Monday. They will join the thousands of nurses, miners, hospital workers, factory workers, and others already on strike across America. Here we are, in our long-awaited strike wave. What does this thrilling development tell the labor movement about what

In mid-November the Teamsters (IBT) will count the votes to determine who will lead North America’s logistics union for the next five years. Whoever wins will have two enormous items at the top of their to-do list: scaling up logistics organizing, including at Amazon, and bargaining the country’s largest union contract, UPS. Current General President James

On August 29, in the final days of our 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, the United States launched a drone strike, firing a 20-pound Hellfire missile at an aid worker named Zemari Ahmadi as he parked his car outside his home in a residential neighborhood of Kabul. The lethal strike killed Ahmadi and nine members of his family, including seven children, five

In less than two weeks, a tiny group of a half dozen workers in Barkhamsted, Connecticut will vote on whether to become the only unionized Dollar General store employees in America. These six people in a small town about 20 miles northwest of Hartford now find themselves positioned to gain a historic toehold for organized labor inside a booming, low-wage industry.

On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I want to tell you about my people, the Garifuna. We’re an Afro-Indigenous people, descended from Arawaks and Africans. Our ancestral territory spans the Caribbean border of Central America. Latin American and Caribbean communities like ours are rarely noticed in U.S. media — except when we migrate. In summer 2021, U.S. Vice

American families have struggled for decades to make ends meet with wages simply not rising as fast as the cost of living and a social safety net that has been so decimated that the United States now spends less on children than nearly any other wealthy nation on earth. This year there was a small glimmer of hope that such a trend might be halted and even reversed.

Following the publication of her first two books, Sally Rooney said she would love to know how to write a “Marxist novel.” This raises the question: What, in the 21st century, constitutes a Marxist novel? Rooney’s novels have always explored class tension, but none feature capitalists at war with the working class. Her characters, as her fiction repeats ad

A proposed concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Burnett County, Wisconsin, is slated to house 26,000 hogs and produce millions of gallons of liquid manure every year. Residents fear the irreparable damage a facility of that size could do to their air, land, and waterways, as well as to their property values and the local economy, and many fear there’s

For Lisa Peyton-Caire, the founding CEO and president of the Wisconsin-based Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness (FFBWW), the fight for health equity started after losing her 64-year-old mother to heart disease. Peyton-Caire soon realized middle-aged Black people were not only dying prematurely of cardiovascular disease. They were dying at a younger

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Revelator, an initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity. Many journalists have difficult beats — the specialized topics they cover exclusively or repeatedly. Some write about homicides, some cover local politics, others specialize in investigating sexual assault. For the past 15-plus

There is nothing the Democratic Party loves more than indulging in some existential hand wringing over its declining popularity in the crumbling American heartland. Indeed, this was the favorite pundit pastime of the entire Trump era. Amid the wailing over cultural differences and economic insecurity, a rarely heard word is “unions.” Yet, a new report adds

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and a group of Democratic lawmakers proposed on September 28 a legislative package that would spend $25 million on helping the state’s agricultural industry. Evers announced the package at the World Dairy Expo in Madison alongside State Sen. Brad Pfaff

Last week, a memo from the top lawyer of the Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, asserted that certain college athletes should be legally considered employees. This decision took a wrecking ball to the myth of the “student athlete,” and opened the door for the unionization of players in big time college sports. For one

On Monday, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union representing behind-the-scenes entertainment workers, reported that members voted by a margin of 98 percent—with 90 percent turnout—to authorize a strike. The near-unanimous vote follows a stall in contract negotiations between the union and the Alliance of Motion

Members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. According to an announcement from the union Monday morning, 90 percent of members voted, and 98 percent of voters said yes to strike authorization. The vote could result in roughly 60,000 workers walking off the job and bring the

It was a cool Friday in Minneapolis, made cooler by the shadows of the skyscrapers towering over People’s Plaza. In the brick-lined courtyard between the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall on September 17, the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign and its allies held a rally whose purpose had come undone the day before. Yes 4 Minneapolis is working

As the congressional battle over President Biden’s domestic agenda reached a critical juncture last Thursday, some national labor leaders appeared to come down on the side of conservative Democrats aiming to stall or significantly downsize the proposed $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill. Dubbed the Build Back Better Act, the reconciliation bill

par·tic·i·pa·to·ry bud·get·ing noun 1. When local residents decide how public money gets spent “What is that, ‘for the people, by the people?’ ‘By the people’ always seems to be missing in the equation. So this is putting the people back into that equation.” —Gwendolyn Garth, a Cleveland-born artist and community activist As in, a “listening session” or something?

"Oh, we don't have closed captions for this." I felt the disappointment in my stomach. Later that same week, I went to another online poetry event—for the first few minutes. I left once it became apparent closed captions weren’t available there either. I have visual and auditory disabilities, making closed captions the easiest accommodation for me to participate

In the spring of 2020, as Covid-19 emerged as a threat, the schools where Heather and Zach Fjelstad worked as special education teachers went virtual. Like educators nationwide, the Fjelstads had to readjust their classroom practices to fit a computer screen, while keeping an eye on their infant and toddler. As they attempted to engage their students online,

It’s crunch time for the Biden Budget, and likely for the future of the Biden administration, Democratic control of Congress, the fate of American democracy and hope for the world. No pressure! We tend to see political issues in ideological terms of Left versus Right, but in this situation that really gives too much credit to those throwing sand in the gears.

SEATTLE — On the shores of Puget Sound, where evergreens mingle with industrial cranes, three activists hoist an orange banner into the air. Poised above the Seattle skyline, it addresses Washington’s Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell directly, demanding they “Save Wild Salmon” and “Restore Snake River.” Just below the banner, about 50 protestors

Loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been widely criticized for saddling poor, desperate cash-strapped countries with debt, while requiring a host of damaging reforms as a condition, from the gutting of public health systems to the imposition of austerity measures. But on top of the debt principal itself, and the interest rates countries

Creating real, lasting progressive change in the South is hard. In the 1860s, it took an invasion by the U.S. military. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement did it by bringing the moral weight of the entire world’s attention to bear. But permanent institutions in the South that have the power to enact lasting reforms without being crushed by latent cultural

Soon after Chicago’s 33rd Ward alderwoman, Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, took office in 2019, she helped create the Democratic Socialist Caucus on City Council, joining five other representatives endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Democratic socialists now account for 10 percent of the Chicago council, and the caucus has led the charge to

An election this November will decide who will lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the North American union of 1.4 million members representing workers in nearly every sector, including logistics, package delivery, construction, film and television, manufacturing, and transportation. For more than 20 years, the union has been run

“They say I ‘came out of nowhere,’” India Walton, 39, said at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) convention in August. She was referring to the political establishment and media punditry that had dismissed her underdog campaign for mayor in the Democratic primary in Buffalo, N.Y. “What they really mean is that people like me aren’t supposed to become

Since being confirmed as the National Labor Relations Board’s top lawyer two months ago, Jennifer Abruzzo has wasted no time laying out a strong pro-worker agenda. A memo released in August outlining her priorities indicated her intent to revisit a number of policies in ways that could make them much friendlier to unions and to worker organizing. Among the

On Thursday, food production workers at El Milagro—Chicago’s most popular tortilla company—staged a temporary walkout, alleging years of workplace violations and abusive conditions made worse by the pandemic. After leaving their shift early, nearly 100 workers picketed outside El Milagro’s flagship taqueria and neighboring tortillería in the Little

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Stateline, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts. On any given day, Mary Ellen Pratt, CEO of St. James Parish Hospital in rural Lutcher, Louisiana, doesn’t know how she’s going to staff the 25-bed hospital she manages. With the continued surge of the Covid-19 delta variant, she’s had to redirect

By the time Covid-19 hit, Lily, 28, had been with her employer for four years and in her part-time role for the past two. Not once in those four years had her hourly wage moved above the state-required minimum in her upstate New York town— currently, $12.50. Lily was living with her parents to save money, and, because her job was in ticketing sales for professional

When Thomasine Wilson started her career as a home care worker 20 years ago, she had no fixed work hours. She toiled at the whim of her employer—without overtime, days off or paid sick leave. "We had no one who advocated for us," Wilson says. In recent years, the momentum behind building the power of domestic workers has grown. The National Domestic Workers Alliance

BESSEMER, ALA.—Here is what a 1920s city looks like in a 2020s world. Along Bessemer’s broad downtown streets sit an array of small shops that have somehow managed to survive into the age of big box retailers: the rug store, the dusty furniture store, the store that sells sewing machines. They sit alongside empty, peeling husks of all the stores that didn’t make

On August 5, 2021 labor advocates across the country lost a champion with the death of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Eleven days later, another working-class advocate, activist-sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, succumbed to a long illness. Between the arc of their overlapping but very different careers lay both the promise and tragic unfulfillment

Over the summer, Max traveled to Wisconsin to report on a crucial struggle that has been largely ignored by corporate media. Residents of rural Polk, Burnett, and Crawford counties in western Wisconsin have been embroiled in battles over the proposed construction of industrial "hog factories" in their communities, which would collectively house roughly

On July 30, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) began an around-the-clock sit-in on the Capitol steps. Acting more like an organizer than an elected official, Bush was protesting the expiration of the eviction moratorium that offered protection to more than 11 million renters during the pandemic. On August 3, when the St. Louis congresswoman finally went home to sleep,

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 20 years of brutal occupation, should just be the beginning. The United States must also end the disastrous “War on Terror,” including the bombing campaigns targeting Somalia and Yemen. And it must also put a stop to the brutal sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and other countries in the Global South. But it’s

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Wisconsin Examiner. On the highway between Fort McCoy—where thousands of Afghan refugees have been temporarily living for the last month—and the city of Sparta, a hand painted sign in blue and white says “Fuhrer Biden,” except the “i” in Biden is a swastika. The two communities next door to the U.S.

CHICAGO—His shift on the strike line over, James Walsh lingers on the sidewalk to wave his picket sign amid a deafening racket of passing truckers and drivers hammering their horns in support. “I think we got a chance,” Walsh said last week. “We are emptying out their shelves,” he added optimistically. Nearly four decades ago, Walsh went to work at what was once

I’m sorry to say that we have reached the point at which it is finally appropriate to say, “It’s time for some game theory.” The Democratic Party—a loose collection of natural enemies knitted together only by their shared refusal to say racial slurs in public—has managed to pull off a series of political feats so ludicrous you almost have to admire it: win the White

A decade has passed since activists first camped in New York’s Zuccotti Park as part of Occupy Wall Street, calling attention to our wildly inequitable—and undemocratic—financial and political systems. The protests soon spread across the United States. But despite the punditry and analysis Occupy provoked, its legacy remains murky. While many cite the

When Occupy Wall Street was evicted from its home base in Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011, by the NYPD in a paramilitary-style operation under cover of the night with a press blackout, the obituaries were being written. The day before, Occupy Oakland, which vied with New York as the leader of the leaderless movement, was evicted for the second and final time.

As unprecedented natural disasters ravage the United States, while federal commitments to climate finance have lagged, the Massachusetts legislature is poised to make a statewide commitment to global climate initiatives. A bill winding its way through the Massachusetts House and Senate could make the state the first in the nation to legislate in support

MILWAUKEE—Shyquetta McElroy’s son put up a sign in their front yard to celebrate his middle school graduation in June. McElroy says she felt like the “proudest mom on the planet.” But her elation was bittersweet. McElroy thinks back on how emotionally and intellectually grueling it’s been for her son. He is 14 and reads at a second-grade level. He has dyslexia,

Around 400 union distillery workers in Bardstown, Kentucky, hit the picket line September 13 after rejecting a contract offer from Heaven Hill Distilleries, which included healthcare price hikes that reduce take-home pay, cuts to overtime, and drastic scheduling changes. Heaven Hill produces some of the most popular bourbon brands in the world, including

As Senate Democrats on Tuesday announced a compromise voting rights bill backed by the entire caucus, advocates of election reform were quick to press Sen. Joe Manchin—who was part of the negotiations after opposing a previous broader proposal—to drop his resistance to reforming or abolishing the filibuster. The new Freedom to Vote Act retains parts of the

CHICAGO—On September 9, around 200 Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) employees and supporters held a rally in front of the iconic museum to demand that management recognize their union. Standing next to one of the oldest and largest museums in the United States, several of the workers spoke passionately about the

On September 14, the United States declined to support as-is a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO), put forward by South Africa and India in October 2020, to suspend key intellectual property rules that relate to the Covid-19 vaccine. While the United States expressed frustration about “lost momentum” around negotiations over the intellectual

Fire in the West is expected, and not so long ago, it seemed something the West experienced more than anywhere else. Nationally, big fires were treated as another freak of Western violence, like a grizzly bear attack, or another California quirk like Esalen and avocados. Now the wildland fires flare up everywhere. There are fires in Algeria and Turkey, Amazonia

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the so-called War on Terror—initiated by George W. Bush and continued by successive administrations since—has turned the whole world into a potential battlefield, forging a path of ruin across many countries, most horrifically Iraq and Afghanistan. While the Biden administration has (rightfully) withdrawn from Afghanistan,

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, In These Times contributing editor Naomi Klein wrote that the U.S. has “become [an] expert in the art of sanitizing and dehumanizing acts of war committed elsewhere.” Twenty years on, the “forever war”—which former President George W. Bush declared would be won swiftly (“it

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, carried out 20 years ago, also inaugurated the era of the War on Terror—a brutal, ill-defined war that has now lasted longer than World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War. The War on Terror isn’t discussed much these days. Even President Biden’s recent pullout from Afghanistan only dominated headlines

(Content warning: bullying, harassment, suicide.) Evan Seyfried was a loving son, brother, friend, and a dedicated worker. For 19 years, with a virtually spotless record, Evan worked at a local Kroger grocery store in Milford, Ohio, where he eventually became the dairy department manager. From October 2020 to March 2021, however, Evan suffered a torturous

This article was published in collaboration with UpNorthNews and In These Times’ The Wisconsin Idea, an investigative reporting initiative focused on rural Wisconsin. Chuck Boyle drives around Marinette and the Town of Peshtigo, regularly pulling over at places where creeks and drainage ditches intersect with the road. Born and raised in Peshtigo, an

Teaching is a forward-looking practice. Each semester I outline what lessons my students can take from our classes, in light of their dreams and career plans. As it turns out, it’s impossible to educate for a future you are not confident exists. As Covid-19 escalated in 2020, I began teaching in the Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Department at Texas Christian

On September 1, Jimmy Williams Jr. officially became the president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT). At 43, he is the youngest president in not only IUPAT’s history, but also within the building trades unions and any major affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Williams has big plans for his tenure: to diversify his union, grow and strengthen

Republican lawmakers and governors in several states are planning or considering forced-birth legislation mirroring Senate Bill 8 in Texas, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to go into effect this week—stunning and angering abortion providers and rights advocates across the country. In a number of states where extreme anti-choice bills have been blocked

Twenty years into a nebulous “War on Terror,” the United States is in the grips of a full-fledged climate crisis. Hurricane Ida, whose severity is a direct result of human-made climate change, flooded cities, cut off power to hundreds of thousands, killed at least 60 people, and left elderly people dying in their homes and in squalid evacuation facilities.

For many around the country, the new school year has already begun. And many districts are pushing through with in-person schooling, even though we are in the midst of another COVID-19 spike, with new cases around the country rising to their highest point since January. With large swathes of the population still unvaccinated, including 50 million children

Police abolition has become a national conversation since the George Floyd uprisings. Many university police chiefs are encouraging the misconception, however, that campus police are somehow different from other police forces—despite their long history of racist violence. To take just one example, a campus police officer at the University of California,

In the depths of last year's Covid-19 lockdown, between the case counts and death counts and reports of economic stagnation, other news offered glimmers of life spared. The internet flooded with videos of animals returning to their ancestral stomping grounds to find them paved over and crowded with houses full of gawking humans. New York City-based writers

On Madeline Island, an ancestral homeland of the Anishinaabe people, fresh food is surprisingly scarce. This island on Lake Superior is home to an affluent vacation community and almost 300 year-round residents. Before Big Agriculture took over, dairy farms once dotted the south shore of Lake Superior, and before that abundant game and foraging. Though

Editor's Note: Since it's completion in 1963, when it plugged the flow of the wild Colorado River and drowned a mythically beautiful canyon beneath the waters of Lake Powell, Glen Canyon Dam has gained a mega-villain infamy in many environmental circles to rival its behemoth physical stature. The dam's evil has had no more prolific publicist than the writer

On Sunday August 29, New Orleans and neighboring areas were hit by Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest storms to make landfall in Louisiana’s history. The rebuilt levy system in the city held, preventing the large-scale flooding wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Yet the damage caused by Ida has been “catastrophic,” according to Louisiana Gov. John Bel

Imperial ambitions in Afghanistan have once again been thwarted. This time, it’s the Americans who slunk off in defeat—or “withdrawal,” as President Joe Biden calls it. In 1992 it was the Soviets who withdrew from Afghanistan, and in 1842, 1880 and 1919, during the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the British. The grandiose plans for “nation building” long forgotten,

I fear for the fingers of our cultural elites. They are in grave danger of being mangled by all this hand-wringing. The ongoing panic over the evils of cancel culture threatens to send the highest reaches of media and academia into a spiral of self-pity from which they might never recover. The shame of it all is that the solution they are grasping for has been sitting

Following the Taliban’s seizure of power, people across the political spectrum have expressed concern about the fate of Afghans who helped the United States and are therefore at risk of retribution. (This concern is not universal: We are also seeing a rise in far-right, anti-Afghan refugee sentiment.) Pundits and politicians who gave little attention to

The fast food industry, one of the most ubiquitous low-wage employers in America, has been notoriously immune to unions. For nearly a decade, the Fight For $15 campaign has been successfully working to raise the industry’s wages—but despite its slogan of “$15 and a union,” has not produced any actual unions. Now, an unrelated group of Starbucks employees in

The building trades unions are some of the most powerful in the labor movement. Because their members are well-paid, their dues are often higher than in other unions, giving them more resources to influence change. They also hold a certain cultural cachet, exemplifying what many people (wrongly) think the working class looks like: white men in hard hats. But

This year, school was bad. Really bad. I’m scared of going into fourth grade. I don’t think I’m ready, and I’m not sure if I care. I am 10. I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a neurological disorder called pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH). It’s really rare. My exact type is unknown, but it’s most likely type 2A. I can do a lot more things than most

In recent decades, progressives have largely been confined to the pious margins of American politics. One prime example was the fight over the Affordable Care Act under President Obama, when left-wing members of Congress demanded the inclusion of a public option, only to be rolled over by more conservative members of the Democratic Party. But this week it

In the summer of 2014, in the wake of the Occupy movement that targeted concentrated wealth, tech entrepreneur Nick Hanauer issued a warning to his fellow billionaires: “The pitchforks are coming.” At the time, Hanauer noted, the super-rich such as himself were rapidly growing their bank accounts while poverty swelled and the social safety net continued

When you look at a student like myself, you don’t know that I am working multiple jobs, that I have gone without health insurance at some points, that I’ve been living at home with my parents for more than a year. You also do not know about my family’s medical debt, or about my father’s periods of unemployment, or that my mother’s job as a preschool aide isn’t enough

On August 12, the military contractor CACI International Inc. told its investors that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is hurting its profits. The same contractor is also funding a think tank that is concurrently arguing against the withdrawal. This case is worth examining both because it is routine, and because it highlights the venality of our “expert”-military

Repelling down skyscrapers to clean windows is already a very dangerous job. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, high-rise window cleaners with SEIU Local 26 in Minneapolis were also sent into office buildings to disinfect "hot spots" where outbreaks had occurred, resulting in many workers contracting the virus. Now, after their previous contract expired,

Every time I walk out the door, two words jump into my mind: “Chinese virus.” Beyond the fear of catching Covid-19, I’ve had to navigate the fear of being violently targeted because of my heritage. I avoid people outside, noticing the looks they give me. I still don’t dare cough or sneeze in public. I grip my pepper spray, never knowing if I will need it. These words

For workers organizing a union at Colectivo Coffee Roasters, the last five months have been a grueling exercise in waiting. “I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs, I’m so nervous,” Lauretta Archibald, a former Colectivo baker and union activist, texted me in early April. That day, she and other union supporters had expected to learn the results of a union election

The Biden administration has withdrawn from the brutal 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, but there are signs that the country will be the target of war by other means: economic punishment. Amid a deepening economic crisis, the flow of global money to Afghanistan is being cut off: The United States froze the country’s financial reserves, the International

In Minnesota, a strike by unionized high rise window cleaners at two companies has entered its second week—an example of the tensions growing across the country as workers seek to collect on promises that employers made to them before the pandemic. Around 40 cleaners are on strike, representing about half of the city’s entire work force in the specialized industry.