Over a Hundred Thousand Israelis March to Protest Netanyahu Government
Tens of thousands of Israelis marched in central Tel Aviv and in two other major cities on Saturday night, protesting far rightwing PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the legal system and weaken the Supreme Court — undermining democratic rule just weeks after his election. Despite cold, rainy weather, marchers, many covered with umbrellas, held Israeli flags and placards saying “Criminal...
Lockheed-Funded House Appropriations Chair Vows to Protect Defense Spending
This article was produced by Sludge, an independent, ad-free investigative news site covering money in politics. Click here to support Sludge. Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who co-founded the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus in 2011 to fend off budget cuts to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 weapons system, is the new chair of the committee that doles out hundreds of billions of dollars to fund defense...
The South Has a New Union — and Workers Have Black Women to Thank
This story was originally published at Prism. Cummie Davis, a certified nursing assistant in North Carolina, still speaks wistfully of the one union job she’s had in her life. It was at a telecommunications company, and she was forced to leave the position in 1993 when she couldn’t find day care options for her son, who was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that causes fluid buildup in the...
China Miéville: Marx’s Communist Manifesto Has Much to Teach Us in 2023
“The Communist Manifesto” is one of the most widely read political documents in the history of the world. It influenced millions of people against capitalist oppression and toward a more just and humane social order. It is also a brilliant display of literary and poetic expression by its author, the German revolutionary philosopher Karl Marx, which few, if any, political commentators since have...
Following in MLK’s Footsteps Means Resisting Christian Nationalism
Martin Luther King Jr. yanked the burnt Ku Klux Klan Christian cross from his front lawn as his child looked on. It was 1960. Many Black families in Atlanta woke to charred crosses left as a warning to civil rights activists. Sixty-one years later, a Christian nationalist group called Jericho’s Road stoked the January 6 insurrection with prayer vigils and marches. A right-wing mob waving flags...
New York Climate Groups Sue Over New Energy-Guzzling Crypto Mining Operation
Three climate action groups said Friday that New York’s decision to allow a Canadian cryptocurrency mining company to control a fracked gas power plant is a clear violation of the state’s landmark climate protection law as they sued a state commission in Albany County Supreme Court. The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of Clean Air Coalition of Western New York and the Sierra Club...
Resident-Owned Communities Are a Step Toward Housing and Climate Justice
This story was originally published by Prism. Natividad Seefeld has tried to quit her role as co-op board president many times. As she heads into her 12th year in the volunteer position, the problem is that she’s too good at the job: managing the everyday and long-term infrastructure, community, and logistical needs of the Park Plaza Cooperative, a resident-owned manufactured housing community in...
US Hospitals Rely On Exploited Volunteer Staff, Potentially Violating Labor Laws
Mount Pleasant, S.C. — Most of the 30 volunteers who work at the 130-bed, for-profit East Cooper Medical Center spend their days assisting surgical patients — the scope of their duties extending far beyond those of candy stripers, baby cuddlers, and gift shop clerks. In fact, one-third of the volunteers at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital are retired nurses who check people in for surgery or...
America’s Biggest Museums Have Failed to Return Native American Human Remains
As the United States pushed Native Americans from their lands to make way for westward expansion throughout the 1800s, museums and the federal government encouraged the looting of Indigenous remains, funerary objects and cultural items. Many of the institutions continue to hold these today — and in some cases resist their return despite the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and...
Record Police Killings in 2022 Show Need to Continue Organizing for Abolition
Law enforcement killed a record number of Americans in 2022, two years after the largest racial justice uprising in the U.S. According to the Mapping Police Violence database, police slayed 1,183 people in the U.S. last year. Of those murdered, according to the database, 25 percent were Black, although Black people make up less than 13 percent of the national population. One would think...
From SNCC to Black Lives Matter: Longtime Activists Discuss Black Liberation
When they met in 1965, Gwendolyn Zoharah and Michael Simmons had already dedicated their lives to organizing to topple Jim Crow. Both were members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights organization that emerged from the sit-ins and civil disobedience throughout the South. Like many of their SNCC co-organizers, both had been arrested, attacked and estranged from...
HarperCollins Debut Authors Say They Won’t Work With Strikebreaking Editors
This story was originally published by Prism. Workers at the HarperCollins Union have been on strike for over two months, braving the fierce New York City winter and picketing outside the company’s offices. Now, sources say their labor is being outsourced to temporary workers. While some authors are crossing the picket line and continuing to work with “scab” — or strikebreaking — editors...
New Biden Policy Could Protect Migrant Worker Whistleblowers From Deportation
Migrant workers and advocates on Friday applauded a Biden administration policy to help protect noncitizen employees who are victims or witnesses of labor rights violations “from threats of immigration-related retaliation from the exploitive employers.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that noncitizens will be able to submit requests for temporary relief from deportation or...
Oklahoma Bill Signals Growing Push to Prosecute People Who Have Abortions
Originally published by The 19th As state lawmakers weigh new restrictions on abortion, some Republicans are revisiting a longstanding taboo of not prosecuting pregnant people for seeking abortions in places where the procedure is banned, though the topic remains divisive among anti-abortion advocates. State restrictions have so far fallen just shy of imposing criminal penalties on people who seek...
Thousands Rally to Protest Destruction of German Village for Coal Mine Expansion
Thousands of people demonstrated in the pouring rain on Saturday protesting the clearance and demolition of a village in western Germany that is due to make way for the expansion of the coal mine Garzweiler. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined the demonstrators as they protested the clearance of Luetzerath, walking through the nearby village of Keyenberg. Protesters chanted “Every...
Why Won’t the FDA Adopt a Truly Bold Playbook on Medication Abortion?
On January 3, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly made long-awaited changes to the regulations surrounding mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion. Though the agency merely updated its website without even issuing a press release, the news was met with fanfare: “Abortion Pills Can Now Be Offered at Retail Pharmacies, F.D.A. Says”; “Abortion Pill Could Soon Become Much...
McCarthy’s Concessions to MAGA Diehards Have Paved the Way to Brutal Austerity
At the start of January, Kevin McCarthy’s difficulties in cobbling together a House majority to support his bid to become speaker produced endless comedy fodder for the late-night shows. Fourteen times, McCarthy went up for election. Fourteen times he lost. With each loss, each humiliating reminder that one had to look back to the pre-Civil War days to find a speaker’s election this drawn-out...
Trump Organization Hit With Maximum Fine of $1.6 Million for Tax Evasion Scheme
Former President Donald Trump’s company was handed a $1.6 million fine by a judge on Friday as a result of the 17 convicted felonies committed by the Trump Organization as part of its 15-year tax fraud scheme — the maximum penalty that can be handed down for such a crime in New York, but one that amounts to pocket change for the multibillion dollar company. A New York State Supreme Court judge...
Watchdog Calls for Investigation Into IRS Over Repeated Failure to Audit Trump
A government watchdog group has filed a complaint calling for an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after the long-awaited release of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns revealed that the agency had failed to conduct a full presidential audit of Trump while he was in office. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote in a complaint filed this week...
Keenan Anderson, Cousin of Black Lives Matter Cofounder, Killed by LAPD
Harrowing video footage released this week shows officers with the Los Angeles Police Department forcibly restraining and repeatedly using a Taser on 31-year-old Keenan Anderson — a high school teacher and cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors — following a traffic accident. Soon thereafter, Anderson was transported to a local hospital where he suffered cardiac arrest and died.