Jeremy Gong is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a public school teacher in New York.
Since Bernie Sanders’s defeat in 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US left has been largely disorganized. The time is ripe for Bernie and the Squad to create a new mass organization to confront today’s crises.
We can’t sit on our hands waiting for Joe Biden to protect abortion and the climate. Movements for the New Deal and civil rights showed us how to beat the Supreme Court and other reactionary, undemocratic institutions: mass action.
Recent socialist electoral campaigns have been essential to the rebirth of the US left. Now the Left needs to commit to rebuilding the labor movement from the bottom up. If we don’t, major reforms — not to mention socialism — will remain off the agenda.
Reading Marxist theory isn’t just for highfalutin academics — just ask the millions of workers whose ideas about the role they could play in changing the world were transformed by both study and practice.
Mass protests across the country have beat back police repression and won public support for scaling back police power. The Democrats who built the overpolicing and mass incarceration regime now feel left out and want to channel that energy back into familiar territory: getting them reelected.
At times of widespread misery, a single incident of blatant injustice can cause enormous, unexpected outrage — outrage that then fuels far wider protests and more radical demands. This is exactly what we’ve seen across the United States since George Floyd’s murder.
Instacart workers are walking off the job today in protest of what they say are dangerous working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. We spoke with one of them.
If we are going to avert the worst-case COVID-19 scenario and prevent unimaginable human suffering, we have to fight — and even nationalize — the corporations that are trying to profit off of this crisis at everyone else’s expense.
The wealth that billionaires like Michael Bloomberg hoard and use to try to buy the political system has been stolen from the working class and the planet we all share.
Detroit autoworkers put out excellent rap videos from the GM picket lines supporting the strike. If the working-class movement is going to get stronger, we will need a lot more class-struggle culture like this.
Last week’s passage of a bill in the California state legislature ending the rampant misclassification of workers as independent contractors was a huge win. The bill was animated by the spirit of unions fighting for the entire working class — the exact principle that should animate all unions.
Misclassifying workers as independent contractors hurts workers and enriches bosses, and is central to the business strategy of companies like Uber and Lyft. California state legislators passed AB 5 this week to stop this exploitative model. It’s a victory that must be defended from Uber and Lyft’s fightback.
A new bill in California would end the legal loophole that allows Uber and Lyft to pay drivers incredibly low wages and avoid paying benefits. It’s no surprise that the companies are mobilizing against the law: their business model is based on abusing their drivers.
If we want a Green New Deal that can take on climate change, we need to challenge powerful business interests.
A strategic focus on uniting the working class doesn’t mean marginalizing the struggle against racism and sexism.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won because she put forward a bold, clear message of class politics.