Category: Critique
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The left needs better answers for scared people
These are insecure times. My relatives in Tehran are bracing for bombs to fall again. Fighter planes screamed through the skies here in Athens a few weeks back — it was an airshow, technically, but it didn’t feel like one. War talk is on TV panels every night; algorithms serve images of conflict straight to my…
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How an Exxon CEO’s legacy of climate denial and misinfo outlives him – and ways a psychologist offers to counter it
Raymond, Exxon’s CEO from 1993 through 2005, including after its 1999 merger with Mobil, made these claims despite mounting global evidence that burning fossil fuels was driving climate change. Exxon’s own scientists had produced some of the most accurate early models of human-caused climate change years earlier, showing how greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil…
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How organizers are addressing sexual violence in movement spaces
Within movements, there is sub-movement to address sexual harm in organizing spaces. Many people who have done this work, including Peters-Golden, say a culture of putting the cause above oneself, or not wanting to make the movement look bad, results in movements becoming spaces rife with abuse.
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What’s it going to take to get to mass strikes?
A strike led by activists can look energetic and inspiring, but it will rarely be durable. A strike led by leaders is slower to launch, harder to coordinate, and far more powerful because it rests on deeper relationships and trusts.
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Giving a voice to the Venezuelan people
Admin’s note: This article is from 2019, nearly 7 years ago. The situation has changed in many ways, but much also remains the same, hence the republication. María Corina Machado now heads the US-backed neoliberal opposition, although she is far from the most popular opposition figure in Venezuela, even on the right. The stance of…
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On Contesting Populism
Cultural similarities such as nationality, dress, composure, vocabulary, and music override income, employment, health, education, and physical safety as the basis for coming together. Populist movements are therefore always cross-class endeavors. On the radical left, our small-scale populism has us hemmed in with little to no presence beyond university campuses and subcultural radical scenes (punk,…
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The Performing Arts Proletariat vs. The Band Directors
As long as music has existed musicians and performing artists have always been considered laborers of their craft which is their music-making and performances on stage or the road. Even in larger ensembles like the orchestras and choirs of Bach and Handel, there were still amateur musicians who performed alongside the greats. When doing so…
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Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence
By Maurizio Valsania from Università di Torino, originally published on September 12th, 2025 at theconversation.com under CC BY-ND 4.0 The day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, commentators repeated a familiar refrain: “This isn’t who we are as Americans.” Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on…
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To Build our Power, We Must First Understand our Employer’s Power
While many unions do corporate research to design organizing or contract campaigns, it’s usually just a staff project. The members, and even local leaders, are expected to take marching orders from the staff team. This approach is backwards, write the authors. Their model involves members in the research right from the start, all the way…
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Objectivity is a myth – cultural values and beliefs always influence science, just like other professions
Over time, scientists realized that sperm are too weak to penetrate the egg and that the union is more mutual, with the two cells working together. It’s no coincidence that these findings were made in the same era when new cultural ideas of more egalitarian gender roles were taking hold.
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