Democracy Archives - Page 40 of 56

Democracy

Gray is Beautiful, Part 2

On the Social Condition and Fractured Society in Donald Trump’s America

March 24, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Gray Beauty I came to appreciate the beauty of the gray listening to a lecture by Adam Michnik at The New School for Social Research in 1996. In his lecture, likewise entitled “Gray is Beautiful,” Michnik declared: “Radical movements -- whether under black or red banners -- gladly use democracy in order ...

Democracy

Gray is Beautiful, Part 1

On the Social Condition and Fractured Society in Donald Trump’s America

March 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This is the first part of a three-part post, originally drafted as a lecture, drawn from my published and unpublished writings over the past decade, to be presented to Democracy Seminar participants in Gdansk, Warsaw, Budapest, and Berlin (to a group of Turkish exiles). Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ...

Europe & Central Asia

Labor Rights in the Time of Pandemic

Hungary’s return to the 19th Century in response to Covid 19

March 23, 2020 • by Laszlo Bruszt

This step is unprecedented in the post-second World War continental law that uses Labor Codes to provide guaranteed rights to employees. It also deviates from the more recent treatment of labor relations during the pandemic in the OECD countries. This move back to absolute ‘freedom of contract’ is reminiscent of ...

North America

For the Love of Humanity, We Should Never Stop Talking About “Bernie Bros”

A response to Jesse Singal

March 19, 2020 • by Anne Taylor

In the 2016 election cycle, I worked for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Those months are a blur. In October 2015 I was an eager volunteer in a student group at the University of Colorado Boulder; within two months the campaign hired me as their first field organizer in the ...

For the Love of Humanity, We Should Never Stop Talking About “Bernie Bros”

Activism

Life and Protest in Hong Kong Amid COVID-19

An Interview with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Author of Vigil: Hong Kong On The Brink

March 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Mark Frazier

Mark W. Frazier [MF]: Your book was released on February 11, in the midst of a public health crisis in mainland China that has meant massive disruptions to life and work in Hong Kong, the cancellation of a major international arts festival, and the cessation (for now at least) of ...

Life and Protest in Hong Kong Amid COVID-19

North America

The Great Immobility

March 17, 2020 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Less obvious is the lesson we could come to learn about mobility. At first glance, the restrictions on travel to the United States seem to affirm a common trope: our borders need to be sealed against immigrants who would do us harm. Build the Wall; stop the germs! But there is another ...

North America

Confessions in a Time of Plague

Or, the Virtues of Ideological Inconsistency

March 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A revised version of my doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Robert Dahl while I was a grad student at Yale, my book was titled Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View. In it, I offered an earnest defense of neo-Marxist theories of power circa 1986 (drawing on the work of theorists such ...

Democracy

Coronavirus Testing Lag? Not My Fault, Says Trump

The president who insists that he alone can solve all problems runs away from this one. It could be fatal.

March 14, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

This quotation, from Trump’s answer, when a reporter asked him if he took responsibility for the lag in testing for the novel coronavirus, will be in every single history book written about this era. He went on. When PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked why he doesn’t take responsibility for ...

Coronavirus Testing Lag? Not My Fault, Says Trump

North America

COVID-19: The Fierce Urgency of Now

National political organizations need to recalibrate: this is not business as usual

March 13, 2020 • by Micah L. Sifry

Indivisible isn’t alone. The Joe Biden for President campaign is currently asking people to sign-up to knock on doors for him in Florida, Arizona, and Illinois. AccessNow, the digital rights organization, just sent me an email asking for nominations for the “Privacy Defenders and Offenders” project, with the winners of the Privacy Defender ...

Democracy

Testament of our Revolution

What we can learn today from the Czechoslovak Experience of 1977

March 12, 2020 • by Martin Palouš

-James Dodd On February 21, 1990, Václav Havel -- still under arrest less than four months previous as a “subversive element” -- addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in his new capacity as Czechoslovak President. He was welcomed as a leader of the Velvet Revolution, which brought to an ...

North America

Next Steps for the Left – and for America

Why the Democratic Party must coalesce around Joe Biden – and Biden must compromise with the left

March 10, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that no candidate will win a majority of Democratic delegates. But seems clear now that Biden will have a plurality. At this point, it makes no sense to prolong the internal battle within the Democratic Party and endure a conflict at the July convention ...

Next Steps for the Left – and for America

North America

Will Sanders Democrats Support a Politics of Coalition — or Isolation?

Some Thoughts on Where the Left Goes From Here

March 10, 2020 • by Leo Casey

Asked why he continues to do poorly with African-American voters, Sanders responded with a dodge that his campaign was actually “winning among people of color in a very significant degree.” While it is certainly true that Sanders has won impressive levels of support from Latino voters, the same is clearly ...