In 2012, Marissa Mayer became the first woman CEO of the major tech firm Yahoo! In the same year, she also became a new mom. A few months later, as she revoked the right of her employees to work remotely—a right that many depended upon to care for their children—she paid to have a private…
Kim Moody’s “Rank and File Strategy” has influenced much of DSA’s approach to labor organizing. To draw out what he calls socialist “class consciousness,” Moody recommends fomenting member-led struggles in unions that advance self-empowerment. By joining “transitional organizations,” or rank-and-file reform caucuses such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), he believes, workers gain experience…
On April 11 of this year, Donald Trump signed into law two bills that significantly increased the dangers faced by sex workers. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) may have sounded as if they were meant to target those who coerce…
For years, pro-choice feminists equated the right to abortion with reproductive justice. But for scores of women, access to abortion is just one element of a multi-pronged battle. As socialists, we need to join with women of color in the fight for reproductive justice and move away from pro-choice single-issue organizing. The reproductive justice movement…
If I were to ask you, ‘What were the largest gatherings of U.S. socialists in the last 100 years?’, you might suggest the conferences of the Socialist Party at the beginning of the twentieth century or the 2017 DSA convention. But who would mention the socialist feminist conference held in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1975?…
Before launching into critiques of China, we must learn to understand the complexity of its situation. Understanding a method of resistance and solidarity is undoubtedly difficult, but perhaps China’s working-class and intellectual communities have already been offering us some models.
In 2018, we are awash in 50th anniversary commemorations of the events and legacy of 1968: the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre, the McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, assassinations, campus occupations, police riots, and much more. One commemoration to which democratic socialists should pay particular attention, in part because their forebears had so much to…
Rural hospital closings are killing rural America. A strong push by DSA to combat the trend through building support for single-payer healthcare could give rural Americans hope. According to a Huffington Post report on rural hospital closings in Georgia by Lauren Weber and Andy Miller, if you want to watch a rural community die, destroy…
Medicare for All (M4A) will mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people. That is the highest stake in the campaign to win M4A. As a recipient of Medicare because I can no longer work, I write from frightening and painful experience. But first, some background. Because Medicare as it now stands…
There are still those in the labor movement who believe that unionists should oppose single-payer Medicare for All because good union-negotiated benefits strengthen member loyalty and help to organize new members. This misunderstanding persists because the provision of healthcare is deeply embedded in the employment relationship. More than 150 million people in the United States…
