Recent Bullets
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Take It Over: The Struggle for Green Production in Oshawa
In November 2018, Detroit-based General Motors dealt a staggering blow to 2,700 Canadian workers when it announced plans leading to the closure of a key automotive assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario. In its heyday decades earlier, GM Oshawa had been the largest auto complex in North America and had employed twenty-three thousand workers. But those … Keep reading »
The Neoliberal University
Opposition grows to performance-based funding model for post-secondary education in Ontario Announced in the Ontario Budget, the Ford government’s reckless new market-based approach to funding postsecondary education will fundamentally compromise the integrity of Ontario’s higher education system. This alarming shift in education funding will create greater inequity, hurt students, and threaten the quality of education in … Keep reading »
The Brexit Crisis and British Labour
Two Speeches from the 2019 TUC Congress Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the UK Labour Party, speaking at the 151st annual TUC Congress in Brighton. Congress, thank you for that warm welcome. It’s an honour to be asked to address you again. I’m proud that trade unions and the Labour Party are working as closely together … Keep reading »
As Bolsonaro incinerates the Amazon, urgent action is needed for climate justice
Did South Africa need another high-profile reminder of climate chaos, after the Cape Town drought in 2015 to 2018; the two cyclones in March to April that ravaged Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe and killed more than 1,000 of our neighbours; and Easter Monday’s “Durban Rain Bomb,” which dropped 170mm that day, leaving 71 people dead? … Keep reading »
The United Auto Workers and the Big Three Automakers: A Tale of Corruption
What follows is a somewhat complex tale of what happens when a labor union, structured to be unaccountable to the rank-and-file membership, embraces a system of labor-management cooperation rather than a class-conscious understanding that workers and their employers are adversaries with fundamentally opposed goals and desires. Unfortunately, what is true of the United Auto Workers … Keep reading »
Make UK Public Transport Free
It’s time for radical proposals to rebuild Britain’s social fabric and combat the climate crisis. Here’s one: make public transport free. Keep reading »
The Vicissitudes of the Latin American State
A Conversation with Mabel Thwaites Rey In early May, while in Buenos Aires, I had an extended conversation with Mabel Thwaites Rey, one of the leading theorists of the Latin American state and preeminent analyst of the rise and fall of the progressive tide of social movements and governments in the twenty-first century. She is a … Keep reading »