The election of Donald Trump and the siege of the US Capitol on Jan. 6 made clear the rising political power of the right in America, but this is not an isolated phenomenonâright-wing power is surging across the globe. From India, Brazil, and the Philippines, to Hungary and the US, we find right-wing political movements that are challenging the established…
JK Rowling, the now-infamous author of the Harry Potter series, has been rightfully condemned for her stances on trans people and gender identity. But what are we supposed to do with her still-popular and influential books and the deep attachments we have to them? It would be easy to condemn Harry Potter and all its fans as neoliberal trash, but, as…
Last October, 52 workers at the Sabre Industries manufacturing plant in Sioux City, Iowa, walked off the job after repeated demands for wage increases were reportedly ignored by management. I was covering the Kelloggâs strike in Omaha, Nebraska, for TRNN at the time when I received a Twitter DM from one of the workers at Sabre alerting me to the sudden…
Even before Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, pundits and politicians in the West have uncritically made bizarre claims that we are witnessing Vladimir Putinâs master plan to ârevive the Soviet empireâ or re-establish the pre-Soviet Russian empire. At the same time, in other corners of political discourse occupied by the left, it…
This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on March 31, 2022. It is shared here with permission. In initial vote tallies today, Amazon warehouse workers in New York are ahead by hundreds of votes in favor of forming a union, while in Alabama the election is too close to call, pending a court hearing. âUnionizing Amazon was always going to be a…
From the moment Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, people in the West have been glued to their TV, computer, and phone screens, furiously consuming news about the war and posting their reactions online. As the war in Ukraine enters its second month, itâs become clearer than ever that our corporate and social media ecosystem has not given us…
The New Deal is often held up as the zenith of Democratic success in the United Statesâand for good reason. With bottom-up pressure from a rapidly growing and increasingly militant labor movement, the programs that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed under the New Deal banner instituted some of the largest changes to working-class Americansâ…
Since Russian troops invaded on Feb. 24, news about the war in Ukraine, which has officially entered its second month, as well as news about the inestimable amount of pain and destruction the war has wrought on the people of Ukraine and the ripple effects it is having on the rest of the world, has been coming out at a furious pace. And yet, while trying…
This story originally appeared in openDemocracy on March 8, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Europe finds itself in a bind; horrified by Russiaâs action in Ukraine, yet, at least in part, funding Moscowâs war chest through the billions spent on Russian gas imports. As a consumer in the European…
As the Russian military invasion of Ukraine enters its second month and diplomatic relations between the US and Russia are at their most strained point in decades, seven-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner is being held as a political prisoner by Russian authorities. As famed sports analyst and journalist Dave Zirin recently wrote for MSNBC News, âWhile…
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a historic civil rights organization that, for 50 years, has been advancing social justice through legal, educational, and advocacy efforts, primarily in the Deep South. However, after overwhelmingly voting to unionize in 2019, staff at SPLC say the organization has been stalling negotiations over their first union…
Whenever women have raised their voices and demanded equity in our society, or whenever oppressive gender relations have been threatened, a vicious backlash or counterattack inevitably follows. Sometimes under the cover of religion, other times justified by appealing to culture, tradition, or science, male supremacy and misogyny are central and alarmingly…
As Russiaâs assault on Ukraine grinds on and fears over the deployment of chemical or nuclear weapons grows, Iran nuclear talks are picking up speed down in Vienna. The aim of these negotiations, ostensibly, is to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which the US withdrew from under President…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 27, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. The White House document on the proposal, according to the Post, states: âThe Billionaire Minimum Income Tax will ensure that the very wealthiest Americans pay a tax rate of at least 20 percent on…
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on March 24, 2022. It is shared here with permission. Madeleine Albright, who died Wednesday at the age of eighty-four, was Americaâs first female secretary of state. But the countless headlines touting that fact risk reducing her accomplishments to gender. Thatâs not fair: she was so much more than a trailblazer…
Hundreds of non-tenure-track lecturers and adjunct faculty at Howard University, one of the most storied higher education institutions in the US, have been fighting for nearly four years to negotiate their first union contract with the university administration. On Wednesday, March 23, just hours before they were set to go on strike, the union bargaining…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 25, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. Calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resignâor face impeachment proceedingsâmounted late Thursday after text messages revealed that his wife urged former White House Chief of Staff…
When a Terre Haute, Indiana, man was arrested for not walking on a sidewalk on a street that doesnât have one, the Police Accountability Report investigated. We obtained body camera and dashcam video evidence that offers a rare glimpse into the indifference of American law enforcementâevidence that not only contradicts the allegations made by the…
Ever since World War II, the US economy has become increasingly reliant on the war industry to provide jobs. It was, in fact, World War II that converted our existing economy into one dependent on government spending from the Pentagon and its associated agencies and industries. But it is possible to convert the economy back the other way, from one centered…
We are diving right back into our special series of conversations with teachers, organizers, scholars, and activists in Wisconsin that TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) recorded in the summer of 2021 as part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times…
A white voter in her 70s insisted to canvassers she had nothing against Black people, âbut all of that rioting going on in Minnesota was just plain wrong.â In the middle of a conversation about enhanced unemployment benefits during the pandemic, one Latinx voter told canvassers that African Americans âsit around, collect unemployment, buy fancy…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 23, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. In a move that shocked progressive political observers, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Wisconsin legislative districts drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and sent the case back to the stateâs…
While Baltimore artists, influencers, and reporters shuffled into the Baltimore Museum of Art for a preview of Guarding The Art, an upcoming exhibition that the BMAâs very own security guards curated in collaboration with curatorial staff, workers stood on the steps of the museum demanding their union be recognized by management. On Tuesday, March…
Since full-time lecturers at Howard University originally voted to unionize, they have spent nearly four years bargaining with the university administration to get their first contract. On March 23, just hours before lecturers and nearly 200 adjunct professors, who have been fighting for their second contract, were set to strike, the union secured a…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 22, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday deflected attacks from Republican senators who questioned her work as a defense attorney for GuantĂĄnamo Bay detainees, as well as a false allegation…
