Tag: Working-class
America Is on the Right Track
Negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality. In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious. This is not rocket science: Evolution designed humans to pay special attention to threats. So, unsurprisingly, the share of American headlines denoting anger increased by 104 percent from 2000 to
The Wrong Way to Do Politics at the Office
In a 2005 episode of The Office, Michael Scott, the office manager, requires his employees to choose an upside-down index card from a tray and place it on their forehead. The cards bear a racial or ethnic label—Black, Jewish, Italian, and so on—and Michael tells the employees to treat one another according to the label listed on the card and to “stir the melting pot” by playing to racial stereotypes. The scene, which ends with Michael getting
Labor’s Winning Weapon | The Nation
The Climate Movement Wanted More Than the IRA. Now What?
Since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August, the first major climate legislation in U.S. history has been smothered with praise: Journalists and climate experts have suggested that the IRA will “save civilization” and herald “an unstoppable transition.” Rather than punishing companies for their emissions, the law creates numerous financial incentives to encourage the growth of green industries and subsidize eco-friendly consumer purchases such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.
The roughly $370 billion that
The Federal Reserve Attacks American Workers
Are Latinos Really Realigning Toward Republicans?
Once the backbone of the Democratic base, working-class white voters have been migrating toward the Republican Party since the 1960s, largely out of alienation from the Democrats’ liberal stands on cultural and racial issues. Half a century later, those working-class white voters—usually defined as having less than a four-year college education—have become the indisputable foundation of the Republican coalition, especially in the era of Donald Trump.
Now a chorus of centrist and right-leaning political analysts are claiming that the
20 Reader Ideas for Who Could Replace Biden
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked, “Should Joe Biden run for reelection? If not, who would you choose to replace him on the Democratic ticket?” If Up for Debate correspondents were representative of the American electorate, Biden would be in trouble––the overwhelming
Roe Is the New Prohibition
The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.
The culture war I’m talking about is the culture war
Vivek Chibber on the Future of Marxist Thought
The fundamental aim of Vivek Chibber’s latest book, The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn, is to restore the central role that economic and structural forces play in studying the hierarchies of power and privilege in modern capitalism. This class-based understanding of social relations—one principally influenced by Marx, and which dominated leftist thought until the 1970s—gives pride of place to the material conditions that impose real constraints on people’s economic choices. Marx, Chibber
What the Labor Movement Can Learn From Its Past
Essential, fed up, in demand: These are terms often used to describe American workers in the COVID era. Companies have laid off millions of people; the coronavirus has killed many others. Panicked employers have scrambled to raise wages and offer perks in response to the “Great Resignation.” More than 100,000 workers either striked or threatened to during October 2021, which some dubbed #striketober.
Throughout the pandemic, Kim Kelly, a labor journalist and organizer, has reported on