Our lives are filled with innumerable choices, such as for the countless array of products for us to buy, assuming we can afford them. Our politics are often framed as a question of individual, not collective, choice such as the freedom to choose to have an abortion or the act of casting one’s vote in … Continued
“The bosses have two parties,” they said. “We need one of our own.” In 1996, representatives and activists from hundreds of local and international unions came together to launch a workers’ party — long missing from U.S. politics. Labor Party participant and economist Howard Botwinick discusses the organization’s challenges and promise, and the lessons from … Continued
The federal minimum wage languishes at $7.25 an hour and has not been raised since 2009. Given the disproportionate number of workers of color who receive the minimum wage or less, legal scholar Ruben Garcia argues that the fight for racial justice has to include raising the minimum wage. Resources: Ruben J. Garcia, Critical Wage … Continued
While the wealthy disproportionately own real estate in the U.S., in many locales the properties of low income homeowners and especially homeowners of color are assessed and taxed at levels higher than their actual market value. On average, African Americans and Latinos pay more than ten percent higher taxes than whites for similar properties. Property … Continued
Commercial sex and imperialism — army bases and brothels — have often gone hand in hand. But in the early 20th century an emergent U.S. empire defined itself as rooted in sexual purity. Historian Eva Payne describes how a heavy price for this notion of American exceptionalism was paid by women in the United States, … Continued
Billions of dollars have been spent on Alzheimer’s research over many decades, yet no effective treatment exists. Investigative journalist Charles Piller has revealed one reason for the impasse: pivotal scientific research into Alzheimer’s disease — affirming the hypothesis that it’s caused by sticky amyloid plaques in the brain — was based on manipulated images. Resources: … Continued
The union movement is suffering from a conundrum. While the U.S public overwhelmingly supports unions, labor lacks the capacity to help workers organize and unionize. Labor scholar and organizer Eric Blanc argues that there is a new and promising way of organizing from the bottom up, which emerged during Trump’s first term and flourished through … Continued
Many assume the majority of people living on the streets struggle with mental illness or just need jobs — and that homelessness is unfortunate, but intractable. Longtime advocate for the unhoused, Mary Brosnahan, argues that these are myths, and that much of what we assume about homelessness is wrong. She posits that at its root … Continued
We assume that the collection of our data by Big Tech companies — to scrutinize, categorize, and use for commercial and other unsanctioned purposes — is unique to our era. But scholar Anita Say Chan illustrates how the eugenics movement in the 19th and 20th centuries amassed and analyzed data in order to justify social … Continued
It was the first of its kind program of mass surveillance: the surreal, and initially-secret, deployment of an unmanned plane flying in circles over the city of Baltimore. Sociologist Benjamin Snyder discusses the Baltimore Police Department’s short-lived experiment in spying on the city’s residents. He considers how technologies like the spy plane are both embraced … Continued
