“Shutdown: New phase in a very American coup” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on October 11, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

They didn’t wear jackboots, but the shutdown of government by an extremist faction of the Republican Party can only be described as a new phase in a very American coup. The barbarians of the far right are at the gates. Our democracy, I would say with no hint of dramatization, is under siege.

The immediate trigger of this assault was this faction’s out-of-control obsession to defund the Affordable Care Act.

“Detroit: Through the lens of class and race” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on September 23, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

“Labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself when in the black skin it is branded.” – Capital, Vol. 1, Karl Marx

Much has been written about the trauma that Detroit is going through. And much of the commentary places the blame for this crisis in one of two places.

“Ingredients for a movement that can transform our country” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on June 28, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

I have written before that the people’s movement that is now emerging doesn’t yet possess the transformative power of the movement of the 1930s. That movement set in motion an era of broad, deep-going, democratic, anti-corporate restructuring of our political and economic institutions – and also changed the thinking of tens of milliions.

“Obama and the right’s “brave new world” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on May 23, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

Political pundits seem to agree that the past couple of weeks haven’t been kind to the Obama administration. First, the controversy around the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi resurfaced. Then the story broke that the IRS has allegedly been targeting tea party organizations applying for special tax exempt status. And finally an uproar greeted the Justice Department’s sweeping subpoena of Associated Press journalists’ phone records.

“Keep hope alive, build a transformative movement” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on April 10, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

It is easy to become frustrated with the pace and the scale of change in recent years. Over the past 30 years or more, we have lost far more battles than we have won. Nearly every section of the working class – none more so than racially oppressed workers – has lost income, job opportunities, and rights as the capitalist class has ferociously pressed its offensive. Entire regions have been turned into economic wastelands. Many cities have become placeholders of poverty, inequality, and racial segregation. The temperature of the planet tracks upward. And wars and the buildup to wars for geoeconomic and geopolitical advantage, albeit disguised in the language of containing threats to world peace and stability, continue apace.