-
Jan 13, 2025 | 
dissentmagazine.org | MacKenzie Marcelin |Natasha Lewis |Michael Kazin |Todd Gitlin
A Public Model for Home Insurance We must reimagine our disaster risk finance system so it reduces exposure and provides protection fairly. and ▪ Winter 2025 With every extreme weather event, housing is damaged and belongings are lost. Insurance is supposed to be the safety net that helps people to recover and restart their lives.
-
Jan 13, 2025 | 
dissentmagazine.org | Patrick Iber |Timothy Shenk |Michael Kazin |Patrick Blanchfield
The Public We Need It is hard to call people into a political project that is deeply incompatible with their sense of what it means to act morally in the world. ▪ Winter 2025 Working on the foreign policy advisory group for the Bernie Sanders primary campaign in 2019 and 2020 changed the way that I process and think about politics. I saw up close the challenges that candidates face in channeling popular frustrations and demonstrating that they have the ability to address them.
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
portside.org | Michael Kazin
n his political songs, however, Newman deploys satire in deft and original ways to highlight a horrific aspect of the nation’s past. Perhaps the greatest example is “Sail Away,” recorded in 1972. As the strings of an orchestra swell behind him, a slave trader eager to dispatch people in bondage across “the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay” speaks to a gathering of unwitting Africans.
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
newrepublic.com | Michael Kazin
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Most musicians on the left write songs that lack a decent sense of humor about serious matters, whether past or present.
-
Nov 8, 2024 | 
dissentmagazine.org | Michael Kazin |Wendy Brown |Joshua Leifer |Patrick Iber
Toward a Revival of Left Populism
Progressives need to fight and organize for a politics that focuses on class inequality in a consistent and persuasive way.
▪ November 8, 2024
Perhaps the only positive consequence of the victory of an utterly despicable nominee and his down-ballot faithful is that progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party are groping their way toward a common solution: revive an aggressive populism of the left.
-
Oct 17, 2024 | 
progressivehub.net | Michael Kazin
To become a party based among workers again, Democrats must remember that partisan commitment often grows from local roots. By Michael Kazin, DissentA primary reason why the “party of the people” once secured the allegiance of working-class Americans was that a sizeable number belonged to labor unions in the private sector.
-
Oct 15, 2024 | 
dissentmagazine.org | Michael Kazin |Andrew Elrod |Aziz Rana |Mark Engler
The Decline of Union Hall Politics To become a party based among workers again, Democrats must remember that partisan commitment often grows from local roots. ▪ Fall 2024 Everybody knows most white working people no longer vote for Democrats, but there’s no agreement why. Leftists blame neoliberals for enacting policies that deregulated business instead of redistributing wealth.
-
Sep 24, 2024 | 
dissentmagazine.org | Timothy Shenk |Harold Meyerson |Michael Kazin
My Favorite Mistake It’s easy to come up with plans for remaking society. It’s much harder to work alongside ordinary people to build coalitions that can change the rules of the game. ▪ Fall 2024 My first issue as co-editor of Dissent was published in the summer of 2018, which at the time felt like the beginning of something.
-
Sep 24, 2024 | 
thenation.com | Michael Kazin
The Nation WeeklyFridays. A weekly digest of the best of our coverage. By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. You can read our Privacy Policy here. There was another reason Bryan decided to make the Scopes trial what became his final stand.
-
Aug 30, 2024 | 
dissentmagazine.org | Michael Kazin
A Demonstration of Working-Class Power
Labor Day was the first national holiday that a social movement had both created and persuaded the state and businesses to honor.
▪ August 30, 2024
Labor Day began as a demonstration of working-class power. On September 5, 1882, the Central Labor Union of New York City planned a parade around Union Square in Manhattan, followed up by a lavish picnic.
