Is Social Democracy Viable?

If it is, it will need better arguments, organization, and leadership, according to a U.K. Labour Party post-mortem

The U.K. Labour party recently released a report that analyses their defeat in the 2019 election. The results should alarm anyone interested in the future of social democracy. The report concludes that the crushing failure of the 2019 Corbyn campaign had been years in the making. Shifting electoral demographics, organizational dysfunction, ...
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Is Social Democracy Viable?

The U.S. Needs to Protect Free and Fair Elections

Here’s how

When eight states and Washington, D.C., all held elections facing the dual challenges of Covid-19 and demonstrations protesting anti-Black violence prompted -- this time -- by the killing of George Floyd, we learned that cumbersome voting systems have become more fragile than ever. Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Maryland were unable to ...
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The U.S. Needs to Protect Free and Fair Elections

The New School’s Leading Man

How Alvin Johnson reimagined higher education

Alvin Johnson is the leading man in the history of The New School. He saved it from financial failure again and again and again; he attracted intellectuals to its faculty, most auspiciously those fleeing fascist Europe in the 1930 and 40s and he persuaded artists such as Thomas Hart Benton ...
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The New School’s Leading Man

Americans Have Been in the Streets for Almost Ten Years

The legacies and lessons of Occupy Wall Street, the Women’s Resistance, and Black Lives Matter

In his call with governors on June 1, President Donald Trump said the current protests are “like a movement, and it’s a movement that if you don’t put it down, it’ll get worse and worse. This is like Occupy Wall Street.”  Astonishingly, like that broken clock that is correct twice a ...
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Americans Have Been in the Streets for Almost Ten Years

The New Abolitionists

And what they can learn from their predecessors

On the same weekend when hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of countless American cities, I saw a yard sign reading “Black Lives Matter!” in Genoa, New York -- which came as a real shock. Genoa is an overwhelmingly Republican town of 1,900 residents, with a tiny black ...
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The New Abolitionists

The Story Behind DSA’s Non-Endorsement of Joe Biden

“Be it therefore resolved, the Democratic Socialists of America will not endorse another Democratic Party presidential candidate should Bernie Sanders not prevail”

I joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the fall of 2017. I’m a millennial, but by then, I’d been an activist for the better part of twenty years. I’d been in the anti-war movement as a high school student after 9/11. I grew up in the suburbs of ...
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The Story Behind DSA’s Non-Endorsement of Joe Biden

The Empire Strikes Back

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement faces an uncertain future

On May 22, 2020, the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing announced it would debate a new national policy for Hong Kong, a draft piece of legislation with an imposingly long and misleadingly soporific title: “Decision of the National People’s Congress on Establishing and Completing the Hong Kong Special Administrative ...
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The Empire Strikes Back

The Fascist Politics of the Pandemic

Around the world, far-right leaders’ responses to the pandemic feature key elements of fascist ideology

There is nothing like a pandemic to bring out the fascist ideology in countries under far-right rule. In the world's three largest democracies, national leaders are using the COVID-19 crisis to wage war on immigrants and minorities, while testing the limits of common sense. NEW YORK/NEW HAVEN -- In stark contrast ...
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The Fascist Politics of the Pandemic

Liberty in the Time of Corona

What does it take to be free in a liberal democracy?

The coronavirus pandemic has led to the severe curtailment of civil liberties and the lockdown of billions of people worldwide. Some states’ reaction to the pandemic has been seen as more effective than others. In particular, authoritarian governments, such as China, now boast about their efficient management of the crisis and are providing support and ...
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Liberty in the Time of Corona

Do Not Presume a Fair Election

“Obamagate” reveals the skulduggery still to come.

The president and his confederates in the United States Congress have spent the last several days manufacturing a controversy for the press corps to report and debate. Donald Trump has dubbed it “Obamagate.” It seems to have something to do with the previous administration’s lawful handling of the case of former ...
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Do Not Presume a Fair Election