The first liberal Democratic president took office exactly 100 years ago this spring. So why aren’t contemporary liberals bestowing the same praise on Woodrow Wilson as they lavish on Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson? Granted, if he were running today, …
Many supporters of the Tiananmen movement hoped that the regime would reassess the protests of 1989. A similar set of 1976 demonstrations were initially dubbed “counterrevolutionary riots” but then reassessed as a “patriotic” struggle. But the situation relating to the June 4 Massacre is very different.
The sickening murder of a British soldier in the London district of Woolwich last week has unleashed a surge of Islamophobia across the pond that makes U.S. reactions to the Boston bombings look tame. Most conspicuous were militant demonstrations by …
Dissent invites you to join us at this year’s Left Forum. We will be hosting or co-hosting four panels, described below. Left Forum will take place at Pace University in New York City from June 7-9. Register here to take …
Savannah port truckers organizing; Seattle fast food workers striking; Chicago teachers suing; and a bankruptcy judge’s blow to retired mineworkers. Sarah discusses the new NYC bike share program through a labor lens. Josh talks about the first prolonged strikes by US Walmart employees. And find out how to participate in Belabored’s new explainer!
Monetary and fiscal policy, according to conventional political wisdom, amounts to a choice between encouraging growth and restraining it, between policies that lower the unemployment rate (but risk a higher rate of inflation) and those that control prices (but risk …
Last Thursday, in a major policy speech at the National Defense University, President Obama unveiled the legal scaffold his Department of Justice has been erecting, one piece at a time, around the “targeted killing” program that has become the signature …
Josh and Sarah interview Gabriel Thompson, biographer of Fred Ross, the little-known organizer who trained Cesar Chavez. They also discuss the latest strikes by low-wage workers, a strike in Dubai of immigrant workers, & more.
Last Friday, thousands of Philadelphia high school students walked out of their schools and marched on City Hall to protest a proposed austerity budget that would categorically eliminate extracurricular activities, libraries, and guidance counselors. As a former high school teacher …
In Dissent’s Spring 2012 Food issue, Marion Nestle pointed out that changing the food system is as radical an objective as those pursued by the civil rights, women’s rights, and environmentalist movements. “But food has one particular advantage for advocacy,” …
In his interview with David Moberg in Dissent, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins explains that he resigned from the National Academy of Sciences to protest its “involvement in research for the military.” This strikes me as late and incongruous. The discipline Sahlins …
On March 15, a group of over 200 student activists from across the country gathered outside the Department of Education for one of the most effective uses of direct action tactics I have ever been a part of. The group …
Within half an hour, thousands of women had spread from one block throughout the entire Lower East Side. They broke glass and climbed into butcher shops; seized kosher chicken and beef and flung it into the streets. They forced anyone …
Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board rejected, new strike authorizations, and Sarah and Josh discuss the state of fast food workers’ organizing efforts. They interview journalist Jake Blumgart about recent developments around anti-sweatshop activism, at-will employment, the future of Atlantic City, and high-stakes testing at a sushi restaurant.
On May 2, as President Obama arrived in Mexico City, hundreds gathered outside the heavily fortified United States Embassy to protest his visit, U.S. immigration policies, and U.S. economic and political influence in the region.
