Racism and social unrest The police killings of New York 23-year-old Sean Bell in a hail of 50 shots on Nov. 25 and of Atlanta 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston on Nov. 21 were jarring reminders of the reality of racist police terror, especially in Black and oppressed...
November 4, 2008, is Election Day in the United States. Tens of millions of people will cast their vote for the next president of the United States. The 2008 elections have several interesting features. It will most likely be remembered as the one where the leadership...
One of the many profound contributions that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made to the cause of socialist revolution was their analysis of the relationship between the economy and other aspects of society, like politics and culture. Beginning with Marx’s 1845 “Theses...
Where did the word “democracy” originate? What did it mean to the people who first used the term? Democracy” comes from the fusion of two Greek words, “demos” (the people) and “kratein” (to rule). Athens, the leading city-state of ancient Greece, was home to the first...
A tale of two classes More than any other revolution before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789 inspired people across the globe to look beyond the societies in which they lived and see the possibility for social change. Even though it came...
This article first appeared in the December 2004 issue of Socialism and Liberation, on the heels of the controversial last presidential election. It has been slightly edited for clarity. About one week prior to the 2004 Presidential election, a conflict in Ohio drew...
More than 300 million people live in the United States. Of these, over 10 percent—nearly 30 million people—have no right to vote. The number who will be blocked from voting keeps going up. In April 2008, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, which bars...
Since when did unions become a special interest? Many people complain about the influence of “special interests” in politics. Reformers claim that lobbying on behalf of these special interests distorts the democratic voting process during elections and in Congress. Of...
U.S. democracy has been poisoned from the start. Schools and media alike preach reverence to “Democracy,” which allegedly makes the United States so great, powerful and the envy of the world. “Democracy is why the United States is so hated by its enemies,” so the...