5LL - Lefty Links 201-300

Abortion
"Shout Your Abortion!"
Lillian Cicerchia, Jacobin
The Alabama abortion ban and the spate of draconian “heartbeat” laws are vicious attacks on reproductive rights. We have to fight back with an unequivocal demand: free abortion on demand.
Grassroots Funds Are Ensuring Abortion Access Despite Bans
Lornet Turnbull, Truthout
Across conservative states and in cities such as Jackson, home of the state’s only abortion clinic, or in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, grassroots organizations are working nonstop to support reproductive justice.
Anarchism
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
David Graeber, The Anarchist Library
Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Anarchism As A Spiritual Practice
Anna Ronan, DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus
In seeking to dismantle systems of oppression in the world, I think it’s about time we did the same within ourselves.
The Bully's Pulpit
David Graeber, The Baffler
On the elementary structure of domination
Every State Should Be A Microstate
Nick Slater, Current Affairs
Life is better when your state is small…
Automation
'Robots' Are Not 'Coming for our Job'—Management Is
Brian Merchant, Gizmodo
This is not a faceless phenomenon of inexorably improving technology that we all must submit to. This is, quite often and quite simply, rich business owners and the executive classes locating new ways to make themselves richer.
Banks
The One Strategy That Could Finance the Whole Green New Deal
Ellie Anzilotti, Fast Company
The current banking system in the U.S. doesn’t meet the equity or environmental aims of the Green New Deal. But the push to establish government-run banks that do is gaining momentum as an alternative.
Capitalism
The Dirty Secret Behind Warren Buffett's Billions
David Dayen, The Nation
Warren Buffett should not be celebrated as an avatar of American capitalism; he should be decried as a prime example of its failure, a false prophet leading the nation toward more monopoly and inequality.
No Logo at 20: Have We Lost the Battle Against the Total Branding of Our Lives?
Dan Hancox, The Guardian
It was the bestseller that brilliantly critiqued the political power of the ‘superbrands’ and shot Naomi Klein to fame. Two decades on, we ask her, how does it stand up in our world of tech giants and personal brands?
Climate Justice
A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Naomi Klein, The Intercept
What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like then?
The City of Tomorrow
Samuel Miller McDonald, Current Affairs
What decarbonized, climate-resilient, and equitable cities could look like…
We Considered Ourselves to be a Powerful Culture
Aisling McCrea, Current Affairs
There is something different between the inventive, enthusiastic way the U.S. Department of Energy reacted to the nuclear waste problem in the 1980s, and the timid, bounded way it reacts to climate change now.
Waste Only
Sharon Lerner, The Intercept
How the plastics industry is fighting to keep polluting the world
A Red Deal
Nick Estes, Jacobin
The Green New Deal can connect every struggle to climate change. A Red Deal can build on those connections, tying Indigenous liberation to an anti-capitalist fight to save the planet.
Co-Ops
Workers Should Be in Charge
Peter Gowan, Jacobin
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.
Socialism and Workers' Coops
Richard D. Wolff, CounterPunch
Worker coops convert workplaces into genuine, democratic communities: something capitalist enterprises could only ever pretend to support elsewhere in society.
If You Hate Capitalism You Will Love This Map
Edward Ongweso Jr, Vice
The Black Socialists of America are hoping to put alternatives to capitalism on the map with their newest project.
Debt
The People Power Behind Sanders' Debt Cancellation Plan
Sarah Jaffe, The Washington Post
The group that eventually became the Debt Collective, an organization that brings debtors together to use their debt itself as leverage, began at Occupy.
Drugs
Make America Trip Again
Garrison Lovely, Current Affairs
Are psychedelics a solution to our political turmoil, a dangerous unknown, or something else entirely?
Turn On, Tune In, Rise Up
Emma Stamm, Commune
“Acid communism” represents the idea that psychologically profound experiences — including the use of psychedelic drugs — should be used to galvanize anticapitalist movements.
Education
Grades Are Capitalism in Action. Let's Get Them Out of Our Schools.
Richard D. Wolff, Truthout
Meritocracy redirects the blame for capitalism’s failures onto its victims. Schools teach meritocracy, and grading is the method.
Elections
Put Aside Your Purity Politics and Embrace My Feckless Centrism
Matthew Brian Cohen, McSweeney's
As the 2020 presidential election draws closer, it’s more important than ever for Democrats to put aside their differences to unite around my feckless centrist candidate.
Labor Needs a Party
Paul Blest, Splinter
The United States is unique among Western democracies. We do not, and have never really had, a party of labor.
Are These Teenagers Really Running A Presidential Campaign? Yes. (Maybe.)
Jamie Lauren Keiles, The New York Times
The retired senator Mike Gravel gave two young fans his Twitter password and permission to campaign in his name. It might be a stunt — or the future of politics.
How to Enliven the Presidential Debates
Pete Davis, Current Affairs
Make them less like joint press conferences, more like tent meetings…
Entertainment
The Anti-Capitalist Brilliance of Early Adam Sandler
Miles Klee, Mel
Why are juvenile ’90s flicks like ‘Billy Madison’ still so funny? Here’s a theory: Because they challenge the grim authority and corruption of American empire
Hollywood's Labor Force Has Always Had to Fight for Workers' Rights
Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue
The people who write movies and television, scripting the comedies and dramas that we love to binge, are locked in a gnarly battle for their rights, careers, and livelihoods, and the dispute involving them, their union, and their talent agents is lighting up Tinseltown.
The Magic Kingdom
Sarah Marshall, The Baffler
The dark side of the Disney dream
"You Don't Have A Choice. It's the Moral Thing to Do."
Meagan Day, Jacobin
Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby, hosts of Street Fight Radio, talk about their twisting paths to the Left through punk and libertarianism in suburban Ohio, hating your job and barely making it, and how to prevent angry young white men from going over to the alt right.
Can the Left Win YouTube?
Shaan Amin, The New Republic
A new cohort of left-wing video creators is smart, savvy, and entertaining. Is that enough to counter the internet’s alt-right trolls?
Feminism
Capitalism's Crisis of Care
Sarah Leonard and Nancy Fraser, Dissent
In an interview, Nancy Fraser contends with liberal feminism’s troubling convergence with contemporary capitalism, and offers a radically different vision of gender justice.
The Feminist Imperative to Believe Another World Is Possible
Astra Taylor, Jezebel
What would a truly feminist political movement or truly egalitarian and liberated society be like? How can we organize toward such an end, and are the obstacles mostly external or, actually, inside our heads?
Silvia Federici in Conversation with Astra Taylor
Astra Taylor, The Believer
Part of a group of feminist thinkers who have reinvented and expanded Marxism, Federici has helped put women’s work, long banished to the margins of anti-capitalist analysis, at the center.
Fiction
World Without Men
Lyta Gold, Current Affairs
The wisdom and weirdness of feminist utopian novels…
The Secret Rebellion of Amelia Bedelia, the Bartleby of Domestic Work
Sarah Blackwood, The New Yorker
She’s a figure of rebellion: against the work that women do in the home, against the work that lower-class women do for upper-class women.
We Should All Be Reading More Ursula Le Guin
Siobhan Leddy, The Outline
Her novels imagine other worlds, but her theory of fiction can help us better live in this one.
Guns
Where Is the Left on Gun Control?
Jacob Bacharach, The Outline
Despite the upswing of progressive politics, little has been said about our country’s problem with guns.
Healthcare
The Cooperative Acupuncture Clinics Popping Up in Middle America
Valerie Vande Panne, In These Times
With skyrocketing healthcare costs, residents of Middle America are turning to acupuncture.
The Politics of Going to the Bathroom
Natalie Shure, The Nation
Access to adequate restrooms is a fundamental necessity for everyone, but it’s harder to come by the less structural power you have.
We Have A Dental Care Crisis. Medicare for All Could Solve It.
Natalie Shure, In These Times
Guaranteed dental coverage would finally put an end to the deep inequities in U.S. oral health.
The Transformative Potential of Single-Payer
Timothy Faust, The Outline
Our neighborhoods have been made unsafe; our water has been made poisonous; we are hostages, trapped in our own bodies, to the billing departments of American healthcare.
How 'Medicare for All' Went Mainstream
Robert Draper, The New York Times
In the last presidential election, the idea of abolishing private health insurance was confined to the far left of American politics. Now it’s the central argument of the Democratic primary race.
Historical Figures
Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger
Dick Flacks and Peter Dreier, Jacobin
Pete Seeger would have turned 100 today. Few figures in American history have lived as influential and deeply radical lives as he did. Let's celebrate him today.
Revisiting the Meidner Plan
Peter Gowan and Mio Tastas Viktorsson, Jacobin
In the 1970s, the Swedish labor movement developed a plan to gradually socialize ownership. What can we learn from it today?
How Chinese American Women Changed U.S. Labor History
Huiying B. Chan, Open City
Women workers and organizers remember staging the massive 1982 Garment Strike in Chinatown
Bernie's Red Vermont
Matthew Zeitlin, The New Republic
How Sanders’s brand of American socialism emerged from the crucible of the Green Mountain State’s squabbling counterculture
Emma Goldman, One of History's Best-Known Anarchists, Was Born 150 Years Ago
Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue
Goldman continues to command an outsized legacy in the history of radical working class struggle.
125 Years After the Pullman Uprising, We Could Be on the Verge of Another Sympathy Strike Wave
Ryan Smith, In These Times
In 2019, workers across the U.S. are proving that the legacy of the Great Pullman strike is still alive today.
You Know Who Was Into Karl Marx? No, Not AOC. Abraham Lincoln.
Gillian Brockell, The Washington Post
The two men were friendly and influenced each other
Housing
How Community Land Trusts Can Help Address the Affordable Housing Crisis
Oksana Mironova, Jacobin
The United States is in the middle of a massive housing crisis. Community land trusts can help address it.
Locked Out
Maria Stoian, The Nib
Airbnb promises anyone can “live like a local” while driving out the people who actually live there, and making the usual suspects rich.
Rents Are Rising, and Neighborhoods Are Changing. Renters Mobilized to Form A Tenants' Union.
Marissa J. Lang, The Washington Post
For decades, there has been no centralized effort to organize renters on Districtwide issues like single-family home renters’ rights, gentrification and rent control.The new D.C. Tenants Union is vowing to change that.
Imperialism
The US Created MS-13
Belen Fernandez, Jacobin
The depictions of MS-13 as animals are as simplistic as they are dehumanizing. And they obscure what spawned the violent gang in the first place: US imperialism.
Inequality
Reclaiming the Future
Astra Taylor, The New Republic
On the growing appeal of socialism in an age of inequality
It's Time to Get Rid of the Lottery
Leah Muncy, The Outline
States should not rely on a scam to fund much-needed services.
The Left
How a New Generation of Socialists Can Win Power (While Avoiding the Mistakes of the Past)
Kristen R. Ghodsee, In These Times
In his new book The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara lays out a compelling vision for how today’s socialists can forge a political path to power in the 21st Century.
Can We Please Relax About 'Socialism'?
David Bentley Hart, The New York Times
Only in America is the word freighted with so much perceived menace.
We Are (Still) the 99 Percent
Emily Stewart, Vox
Occupy Wall Street was seen as a failure when it ended in 2011. But it’s helped transform the American left.
Logic and the Left
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
Exposing the hollow sophistry of conservatives and claiming logic for the left…
Why We're Socialists, Not "Progressives"
Natasha Fernandez-Silber, Jacobin
It’s not enough to just be “progressive.” To tackle the many problems we face today, we need to name the system that’s behind all of them, capitalism — and fight for the only viable alternative, socialism.
LGBT+ Rights
Raytheon Said "Gay Rights!"
George Civeris, The Outline
On the disorienting language of late-stage Pride.
Mass Incarceration
Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind
Rachel Kushner, The New York Times
In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice.
Some Reflections on Prison Labor
Ruth Wilson Gilmore and James Kilgore, The Brooklyn Rail
Ultimately, we need to view work and worker activity inside prisons through a broader lens.
On the Business of Incarceration
Craig Gilmore, Commune
The real problem with prisons is prisons, not profit.
Meat
Empire of Meat
Alicia Kennedy, The Baffler
The American beef industry was built on centuries of exploitation
Media
Seize the Media
Kim Kelly, Commune
It’s time for journalists to really make the news.
Mental Health
Who Owns Tomorrow?
Chloe Watlington, Commune
In order to defeat the sicknesses that have been imposed on us, we, the sick, will have to be the ones who fight. (CW: Suicide)
I Feel Better Now
Jake Bittle, The Baffler
Depressed by the burden of life under capitalism? There's an app for that!
Meritocracy
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition
Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic
Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.
Nature
We Must Force Our Children To Love Flowers
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
If you do not weep with joy in a garden centre, has something gone wrong?
Organizing
This 86-Year-Old Radical May Save (or Sink) the Democrats
Alex Traub, The New York Times
Frances Fox Piven has become the intellectual guru of activist progressives. But not everyone is ready to storm the barricades with her.
A Gathering of Comrades
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
Why the DSA convention filled me with hope…
Palestine
Lifehacker: Tarek Loubani on 3D-Printing in Gaza
Staff, Logic
Dr. Tarek Loubani thinks it’s fucked up that doctors and nurses have to pay $200 for a stethoscope that can be 3D-printed for $3.
Policing
'Cops' Has Finally Received the Thorough Investigation It Deserves
Eli Enis, The Outline
A new podcast explores how the reality show has shaped opinions about police — often with their explicit help — for over 30 years.
Poverty
5 Myths About Global Poverty
Roge Karma, Current Affairs
Don’t be fooled by the simplistic talking points of capitalism’s defenders…
Racial Justice
Corporations Profit From Racism. It's Time For Us to Stand Up to Them
Rashad Robinson, The Guardian
We must prevent corporations from writing the exploitation of black and brown labor into the law in permanent ink
Socialists of Color to the Front
Eli Day, In These Times
LeftRoots, a socialist group with majorities of women and people of color, is strategizing to win.
In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start On the Plantation.
Matthew Desmond, The New York Times
Recently, historians have pointed persuasively to the gnatty fields of Georgia and Alabama, to the cotton houses and slave auction blocks, as the birthplace of America’s low-road approach to capitalism.
Rojava
In the Heart of Syria's Darkness, A Democratic, Egalitarian and Feminist Society Emerges
Dor Shilton, Haaretz
Four million people, thousands of communes, a non-hierarchical social structure and a cooperative economy. Why is no one talking about Rojava?
Science
What Is A Radical Analysis of Science?
Helen Zhao, Science for the People
What is, in fact, a radical analysis of science? How does it go beyond critique of the misuses, abuses, and distortions of and within science to further our political project?
Solidarity
Sara Nelson: "Solidarity Is A Force Stronger Than Gravity"
Sara Nelson, Jacobin
This month, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson addressed over 1,000 delegates at the Democratic Socialists of America convention. Here's what she had to say about the labor movement's power to defeat bigotry, the proud legacy of democratic socialists, and why solidarity is the "greatest force for good in human history."
One for All
Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, The New Republic
To avert global catastrophe, we urgently need to resurrect the ancient ideal of solidarity.
Tech
Successful People Listen to Audiobooks
Nora Caplan-Bricker, The Baffler
Keeping company with my Audible app over lunch, I’ve come to see it as the buddy our tech overlords have granted me in the isolation that they help to impose.
Big Mood Machine
Liz Pelly, The Baffler
Spotify pursues emotional surveillance for global profit
Wayfair's Walkout Against Concentration Camps
Eric Blanc, Jacobin
Hundreds of Wayfair workers in Boston walked out on Wednesday to protest their company’s complicity in Trump's migrant detention camps on the border. We spoke with walkout leader Maddie Howard about the workers’ decision to take action on the job against the camps.
Surviving Amazon
Sam Adler-Bell, Logic
Amazon has built a vast logistics empire by subjecting its workforce to extreme forms of technological discipline — designed to keep workers isolated, fearful, and maniacally productive.
Trade
How the Left Should Think About Trade
Benjamin Studebaker, Current Affairs
Socialist trade policy should focus on global labor rights and reject the false dichotomy between “protectionism” and “free trade”…
Transportation
Americans Shouldn't Have to Drive, but the Law Insists On It
Gregory H. Shill, The Atlantic
The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.
Unions
Sara Nelson's Art of War
Kim Kelly, The New Republic
The flight attendant union leader knows how to strike fear in the heart of bosses—and not just in the airline industry.
I Was Skeptical of Unions. Then I Joined One.
German Lopez, Vox
A union isn’t just right for Vox Media, but for everyone.
Video Games
Would Marx Beat Engles at Fortnite?
Sam Adler-Bell, The Outline
‘Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle’ is a new, sociological investigation of how videogames and gaming fit into contemporary capitalism.
Water
When It's Not Poisoning Us, the U.S. Water System Is Robbing Us Blind
Ankita Rao, Vice
People can go into such extreme debt over unpaid water bills—even incorrect ones—that they lose their homes.
Work
One Year Off, Every Seven Years
Meagan Day, Jacobin
How about this for a demand? You work for six years and you get a whole paid year off to do whatever the hell you want.
The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less
Shayla Love, Vice
The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being. But is it a utopian fantasy?
In Appeal to Moderates, Sanders Calls for Worker-Ownership of Means of Production
Eric Levitz, New York Magazine
Sanders’s plan for giving workers at major corporations an ownership stake in their firms is by far the most “socialist” policy he has ever endorsed as a national politician.
We Need to Revive the Fight for Overtime Pay
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
Too many employers demand more than 40 hours a week without paying for overtime…
Bernie's Plan for Workplace Democracy Is the Boldest Presidential Plan for Workers' Rights Ever
Barry Eidlin, Jacobin
Bernie Sanders’s Workplace Democracy Plan, unveiled yesterday, is the best plan for promoting workers’ rights ever proposed by a major US presidential candidate. Whether they support or oppose it, all the other Democratic candidates will have to respond to it.
Capitalism Is Making Us Sick: A Q&A With Emily Guendelsberger About Her New Book, On the Clock
Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
At an Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, a call center in North Carolina, and a McDonald’s in San Francisco, Guendelsberger dealt with threatening customers and isolation at work, physical pain and emotional turmoil.
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