“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.

“Hugo Chavez empowered and united” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on March 12, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

The powerful voice of Hugo Chavez – a voice for economic justice, democracy, empowerment, national independence, continental solidarity, peace, anti-imperialism, and socialism – has been stilled.

While local and global elites sigh in relief and belittle his life in the major media, the untimely death of Chavez is also evoking a heartfelt cry from millions of abused, marginalized, and exploited people across the globe – none more so than in Venezuela and throughout Latin America.

“Obama, Coalition politics, and the struggle for reforms” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on February 14, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech reveals once again that president is a democratic reformer (on domestic issues) in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

And the fact that the president has a disposition toward reform is of great significance – not only to the millions who are struggling to mitigate the worst effects of 30 years of right-wing extremism and capitalist globalization, but also to people who desire social change of a radical nature.

Here’s why.

“Is the right-wing era over? Not yet” first appeared on PeoplesWorld.org on January 11, 2013. Read it on PeoplesWorld.org.

Is the era of right-wing ascendancy over? I would argue that it is a bit premature to reach that conclusion.

Now don’t get me wrong. Right-wing extremism isn’t the same animal that it was a decade or two ago. Its “glory days” are behind it. The outcome of the elections last year – not to mention the divisions in the Republican Party that are cropping up now around the fiscal cliff and the president’s nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary – reflect a political movement that is no longer in a commanding position politically and ideologically.