Jacobin

Centrist Democrats are writing off New York City socialist wins as a fluke reducible to gentrification and low turnout. But it was the Democratic Party machine itself that spent decades cultivating a depoliticized electorate.

US governments have long relied on Mexico as a southern gendarme, even as it proudly declares its sovereignty. Faced with Trumpian imperialism, the challenge for Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is to make that independence more real.

The Democratic establishment’s hysteria over the Democratic Socialists of America’s organizing methods has it exactly backward: the Democratic Party has almost no ability to democratically organize voters, while DSA is reviving grassroots campaigning.

New research confirms that policy messages on climate favored by college-educated liberals often fall flat with working-class Americans. The good news? Workers are favorable to pro-climate policies that speak directly to their everyday material concerns.

The centrist Searchlight Institute has released a health care policy proposal with the hope that Democratic candidates will adopt it. The grab bag of policies is internally contradictory and cruel in places — and fails to insure everyone.

Once respectable opinion fretted about distinguishing the “deserving” poor from the “undeserving.” Today, as sentiment against the ultrarich surges, the Economist argues that it is in fact billionaires who deserve our gratitude, sympathy, and protection.

When 50,000 people briefly crossed into Ceuta in North Africa, many pundits damned the lax Spanish line on migration. In truth, the hardening of the border around Ceuta since the 1990s has made such desperate attempts to storm the barrier more common.

A slate of union-backed working-class Democratic candidates is running on an economic-populist platform in swing districts. If the Blue Collar Brigade proves successful, their strategy could set a precedent for winning working-class votes.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration for protesting Israel’s genocide. He spoke to Jacobin about why he is now suing the administration.

The record-breaking Spider-Man: Brand New Day is gleeful, undemanding fun that doesn’t pretend to be anything more. In a superhero monoculture that keeps draining Hollywood of money, talent, and ambition, that’s about the best you can hope for.

The Cuban Revolution was not just a transformation of the county’s political-economic order. It was a revolution in culture as well, bringing literacy to the masses and inspiring diverse artistic and intellectual ferment.

A grocery industry expert argues that as our food supply becomes increasingly consolidated, expensive, and even dangerous, socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s publicly subsidized grocery plan takes bold steps to provide good, affordable food.

The areas of Kashmir under Pakistani administration are supposed to have political autonomy, but that has long been a sham. The Pakistani authorities have responded to popular protests demanding real democracy with brutal repression.

Peru has been home to the world’s most ambitious experiments in participatory democracy. American progressive and democratic socialist mayors should look to them for both inspiration and warning.

At next week’s convention for the National Association of Letter Carriers, a 200,000-strong union of US Postal Service mail carriers, a whole ecosystem of reform groups, slates, and podcasters are pushing for a change in leadership.

Pundits who say politicians should strategically “moderate” their views have a simple problem: the majority viewpoint is often changing. Just look at Matt Yglesias’s advice to Democrats on Israel, where the moderate position rapidly shifted under his feet.

The tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have now burst into the open as a bitter public feud. Two oil-rich absolute monarchies are using much poorer neighbors like Yemen and Sudan as battlegrounds for their destructive proxy wars.

After the conviction of Jair Bolsonaro for trying to overthrow Brazilian democracy, his far-right movement had to find a new presidential candidate. His son Flávio has picked up the baton, but his campaign is already plagued by scandals.

At the redesigned Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the art-world tradition of mistaking spiritual anti-hierarchy for class politics is alive and well. LACMA treats labor as a source of authenticity but ignores its own workers’ demands for a living wage.

In his latest work, Slow Poison, Mahmood Mamdani grapples with Uganda’s decades of authoritarian rule. The book examines the politics of purification and violent exclusion at the heart of fascism in the postcolonial context.