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Class Struggle

Struggle To Save Chinatown From Arena Moves To City Council

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - A special session of the Philadelphia City Council was held Nov. 12 for council members to question representatives of 76DevCorp about their master plan and Community Benefits Agreement for a $1.5 billion basketball arena called “76 Place” they want to build adjacent to Philadelphia’s historic Chinatown. With Mayor Cherelle Parker being an enthusiastic proponent of the arena plan, it was not surprising that her staff members were on hand to help the owners’ representatives answer questions or that the event was planned without input from communities that will be most impacted.

Resisting Youth In The Age Of Fascist Dream-Worlds

Hyper-capitalism is the death knell of democracy. It reduces everything to a commodity, monetizing and pathologizing every aspect of life. The blind faith in markets and unfettered individualism has dismantled the social state, ravaged the environment, and fueled staggering inequality. By divorcing economic activity from its social costs, liberals have obliterated civic culture, creating a vacuum filled by despair and alienation. Into that vacuum emerged a band of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, radical Christian nationalists, and a cruel band of misogynists and neoliberal fascists.

Implications Of A Second Trump Term For Working Class And Oppressed

In the immediate aftermath of the media calling the elections in favor of the Trump-Vance ticket, African Americans in various states across the U.S. received text messages ordering them to report to plantations to resume the slave labor which was the bulwark of colonial and antebellum periods of North American history. This particular attempt at intimidation was chosen for obvious reasons. In the U.S., it would take a Civil War between 1861 and 1865 to destroy the structural basis for African enslavement. Later at the conclusion of 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation issued by then-President Abraham Lincoln.

Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class

For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increases in the cost of living. This is the result of corporations’ never-ending thirst to squeeze as many profits out of workers as possible. Throughout this time, both major parties have been complicit in this corporate assault. They have maintained their power, and a corrupt two-party system, by dividing the working class along lines of race, gender, and education. Frustration with the Democrats and their unwillingness to confront corporate power or offer real solutions to working people’s economic concerns led many working people to vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving him the margin of victory.

Despite Fierce Opposition, City Council Introduces Billionaires’ Arena Bill

Which side are you on? That’s the question being asked of 17 Philadelphia City Council members over the next few weeks. On one side are several billionaires proposing a $1.55 billion 76ers basketball arena next to the Chinatown community in Center City.

Why All Hurricanes Should Be Named ‘Jim’

The devastation effectuated by Hurricane Helene represents yet another elucidation of a quintessential climate crisis that is right here and right now. It demonstrates that climate change is not a conclusion that awaits us, but a set of present day precarities taking and altering lives right now. According to initial assessments, Helene could cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $175 billion , and of course, there is no way to quantify the estimated 230 lives that were taken, thus far, with the death toll expected to rise. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, continued this season of carnage and calamity with a death toll of approximately 20 people and an estimated $50 billion in damages.

A New Frontier For Rail Labor: Why Not?

For decades, rail labor has been content with incremental changes, celebrating small victories that feel more like stopgaps than real wins. We’ve traded away larger gains for short-term stability, often without realizing the long-term costs. Just as past generations gave away firemen, brakemen and cabooses with little to show for it, we now find ourselves at another crossroads—staring down a future where one-person crews and automation loom large. The question isn’t if these changes will happen, but when. Why not seize this moment to rethink our approach? Why not stop asking how we can hold onto the scraps of what we once had, and instead demand a bigger seat at the table for the future?

135,900,000 Reasons Why The Working Class Is So Angry

Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go. Working people understand that the periodic ups and downs of the economy can legitimately lead to job loss. But they also know that in many cases the reason they lost their job was not mismatches in supply and demand. Rather, their jobs were sacrificed to satisfy out and out corporate greed. Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work, trouble lies ahead. Just ask the 33,000 workers at Toys R Us, who lost their jobs when that fabled company was driven into the ground by KKR, a huge private equity company.

Wokeness Kills Class Politics And Empowers Empire

Oftentimes the idea of “wokeness” or “woke” ideology, whether calling it as such or acknowledging its existence, can be thought of as coinage of the right wing. Christian Parenti, professor at John Jay College, journalist and author, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to make the case that what he and many others define as “woke” is actually a weapon used to further suppress marginalized people, prevent the awareness of class politics and class struggle and further divide the working class. “What a lot of the story comes down to,” Parenti tells Hedges, “[is] detaching class struggle from cultural struggles.

Statement On NYPD Mass Subway Shooting Over $2.90

Yesterday, the NYPD shot Derell Mickles, a Black man in Brooklyn for the alleged "crime" of jumping a turnstile. This marks the second NYPD shooting in just 48 hours. Amidst a landscape where Democrat political figures swiftly condemned recent assassination attempts on Donald Trump, proclaiming that "violence has no place in America," we ask: where is this sentiment when it comes to the NYPD shooting Black men? Once again, the state used the hollow excuse of "fare evasion" to justify an assassination attempt on a Brooklyn man. This is not an isolated incident but a pattern of state violence targeting the working class in general and Black people in particular.

Low-Wage Corporations Fleece Their Workers To Massively Inflate CEO Pay

Most people believe in fair pay for honest work. So why aren’t low-wage workers better paid? After 30 years of research, I can tell you that it’s not because employers don’t have the cash — it’s because profitable corporations spend that money on their stock prices and CEOs instead. Lowe’s, for example, spent $43 billion buying back its own stock over the past five years. With that sum, the chain could have given each of its 285,000 employees a $30,000 bonus every year. Instead, half of Lowe’s workers make less than $33,000. Meanwhile, CEO Marvin Ellison raked in $18 million in 2023. The company also plowed nearly five times as much cash into buybacks as it invested in long-term capital expenditures like store improvements and technology upgrades over the past five years.

How Liberal Elites Fail To Understand Economic Anxiety

There is an ideological tendency among some liberal economists today that wants us to believe that Bidenomics has been the best thing since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. A key advocate of this belief is economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. On September 7th, 2023, Krugman published an article titled “I’m OK, But Things Are Terrible” in which he claimed there is a disconnect between actual economic conditions and perceptions about the economy: “[t]he strange thing is that these bad ratings are persisting even as the economy, by any normal measure, has been doing extremely well.” Krugman and others who are fans of Bidenomics find it odd that when workers are asked about “the economy” their views are generally negative.

The People Versus The Billionaires

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Several thousand people turned out for the Save Chinatown Coalition rally on Sept. 7 to protest the Philadelphia 76ers’ proposal to build a new $1.55 billion arena near Chinatown called “76 Place.” While the National Basketball Association team’s billionaire owners repeatedly say a new arena at 10th and Market streets would provide “economic opportunity for surrounding areas,” community residents, who have been fighting this proposal for over two years, argue that it would be an “existential threat” to this historic Philadelphia neighborhood. The impact studies commissioned by the city, released in late August, support the residents’ arguments.

Radical Municipalism Is Paving The Way For Direct Democracy In LA

Home to almost 10 million residents in 2022, Los Angeles County can sometimes seem like a vast political paradox. Known as a quintessential example of urban sprawl, it is also the most overcrowded county in America. Over the past 20 years, robust grassroots organizing built multiracial movements for organized labor, immigrant rights and housing justice while electing multiple self-identified leftists to L.A. City Council. At the same time, brutal overpolicing, ethics scandals and rising gentrification have been constant challenges for organizers and activists there. This summer, L.A.’s controversial efforts to reduce homelessness have reentered the national spotlight.

Science Should Save All, Not Just Some

Discussions around global equity and justice in science typically emphasize the lack of diversity in the editorial boards of scientific journals, inequities in authorship, “parachute research,” dominance of the English language, or scientific awards garnered predominantly by Global North scientists. These inequities are pervasive and must be redressed. But there is a bigger problem. The legacy of colonialism in scientific research includes an intellectual property system that favors Global North countries and the big corporations they support. This unfairness shows up in who gets access to the fruits of science and raises the question of who science is designed to serve or save.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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