Saoirse Gowan is a member of the steering committee of Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America and the DSA Housing Justice Commission.
The far-right mob that took over the Capitol today never would have gotten past the front door if the federal police hadn’t allowed them to storm in. The simple fact is that left-wing protesters get treated with brutality, while right-wing protesters get coddled.
The uprising in response to George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer this week has led to predictable calls to condemn looting. But the real looting in our society comes from the military, the police, the pharmaceutical companies, private equity, the landlords, the real estate speculators, and the billionaires — not protesters against police brutality.
It is indefensible that people should have to fear eviction during a health crisis. Coronavirus calls for emergency controls on the housing market now.
Evicted author Matthew Desmond knows how serious the housing crisis is. That makes it even more unacceptable that he’s supporting Michael Bloomberg’s neoliberal half measures, instead of Bernie Sanders’s plan for public housing construction and national rent control.
Workers at the privatized Cinder Bed Road bus garage near Washington, DC are on strike as part of a broader labor upsurge in the nation’s capital. They’re fighting for better wages and benefits for themselves — and for better public services for all of us.
The Labour Party announced today that in the next election, it will fight for Universal Basic Services, making public services free at the point of use and universally accessible. It’s a landmark in the fight to curb the influence of the market over our lives.
The United States is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. We need a bold new housing agenda that includes millions of new social housing units, universal rent control, an end to speculative profiteering, the elimination of homelessness, and a federal homes guarantee.
Bernie Sanders’s plan for worker-owned funds isn’t just notable because it could lead us toward a democratized, sustainable, socialist economy. It’s also the product of a growing collaboration between the Left in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The size of the housing crisis can be daunting, but with a committed political movement and a little bit of state power, it can be confronted.
Every day, private equity companies snatch up firms and strip them dry. But there’s an alternative: allow workers to buy their workplace and run it themselves.
The welfare state isn’t enough. A future Bernie Sanders government needs to pursue policies that diminish the power of capital and radically democratize the economy.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s goal is to create nothing less than a twenty-first century democratic socialism.
A social wealth fund could massively reduce wealth inequality — and democratize the economy at the same time.
Corbyn’s Labour Party is advancing a transformative project that could push beyond traditional social democracy — and toward democratic workers’ control.
How can we solve the housing crisis? Simple: have the government build more housing.
Market-based solutions can’t attack climate change. Let’s try nationalization.
Swedish labor economist Rudolf Meidner spent his career pushing radical reforms that would shift power from business to workers.
The overriding aim of democratic socialist strategy is to weaken the power of business, before breaking with capitalism entirely.
In the 1970s, the Swedish labor movement developed a plan to gradually socialize ownership. What can we learn from it today?