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Anti-Bernie Sanders Attack Ads Are Going to Be Awesome

Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls and might be the Democratic nominee for president of United States. If that happens, you know that Republicans will go after him for being a “democratic socialist.” Soviet nostalgia, here we come!

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In the Middle of the Night, Bernie Was Tipped Toward Victory by Working-Class Immigrant Votes

Until late Wednesday night, as the bungled Iowa caucus results trickled in, pundits declared South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg the likely winner in a narrow margin over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.). That evening, Iowa finally began to report the results of the special satellite locations across Iowa where many members of Iowa's working class caucused. At 97% reporting—with major questions around Iowa's process and a recanvass ordered—the New York Times is now giving Sanders a 54% chance of a win, a reversal from its near-certain prediction the day before that Buttigieg had won. 

Turnout didn’t match the record-breaking numbers set by Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. But Iowa factory workers, ethnic and racial minorities, and people with disabilities were empowered to caucus this year with 60 new satellite locations in the state at worksites, college campuses, mosques, Latino Catholic parishes and union halls across the state. The satellite locations went overwhelmingly for Sanders.

At the Hoover Elementary Satellite Caucus in Cedar Rapids, where instructions were read in eight languages and 80% of attendees were reportedly first-time voters, Sanders won nine of the nine delegates.

The Sanders campaign was instrumental in pushing for the satellite caucuses and turning out new, nontraditional voters to them. Sanders volunteers say they appeared to be the only one aggressively canvassing working-class immigrant neighborhoods in Des Moines and Iowa City. (The Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.) According to the campaign, it knocked on a total of 500,000 Iowa doors in January, and its 200 paid staff and thousands-strong volunteer army filled 10,000 canvass shifts the weekend before the caucus.

Kamal Ahmed of Iowa City, a Sudanese American and regular Democratic voter, said he received literature in the mail from other campaigns but that only Bernie canvassers actually knocked on his door. 

In These Times spent a week before the caucus shadowing a group of ten Sudanese Sanders supporters from the Pheasant Ridge apartment complex in Iowa City as they prepared to caucus at one of two locations. 

“I am caucusing for Bernie because he focuses on the working class and how to make day-to-day life better for workers,” says Eltayeb Elamin, 47.

Elamin was identified twice as a Bernie supporter by volunteer canvassers out doorknocking his Pheasant Ridge apartment building, where many Sudanese Americans live.

But Elamin actually committed to caucus for Sanders as part of a collective of eight other Sudanese women and men who had backed Sanders in 2016. The group met informally several times before coming to a consensus together about which candidate to support this year.

“The Sudanese have a strong community in a lot of ways and we always come together to discuss social issues and the issues that affect working people,” Elamin says. 

“It is very normal to see Sudanese people sitting together, talking about politics,” agrees Bakhit Bakhit, 70, another member of the collective, who also caucused for Sanders in 2016. “I see Bernie trying to build a grassroots social base, which is unusual in this country where elections are the only thing that matters, the Democratic Party has no social base, and the winner writes the platform.”

“Bernie fights for all working people,” says Bothayna Sati-Hussian, 54, of why she supports Sanders. “He fights to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, he fights to make tuition free for all students, and he fights for Medicare for All for everybody.”

On caucus night, after two busloads of Sudanese Americans from Pheasant Ridge arrived at the satellite caucus for foreign language speakers at Caring Hands and More in Iowa City, it awarded all nine of its delegates to Sanders.

The story in Des Moines was the same. At Des Moines' Bosnian Islamic Center Zen Zen satellite caucus, where many caucus-goers were Bhutanese Nepali refugees exiled from their place of birth, Sanders won all nine delegates. At the South Sudanese Center satellite caucus, with various ethnic groups from Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bhutan, Nepal, Eritrea and Liberia, Sanders won four-fifths of the delegates. At the Grand View Satellite Caucus, where caucusgoers of Lao, Hmong, Filipino, Vietnamese and Cambodian descent convened, he won all eight delegates. 

While on the stump for Sanders in Sioux City, Iowa, on January 26, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) explained how the satellite caucus organizing fit into Sanders' theory of change:

When we talk about fighting for someone we don’t know, it means fighting for the least of us. ... In talking about that commitment to the marginalized, do you know what this campaign has done behind the scenes? They have worked to add tons of caucusing sites in marginalized communities this year. Tons. Tons. This campaign and this movement has fought to put caucusing sites in mosques, in latino communities, in rural communities. Because what we’re here to do is dramatically expand the electorate. We’re not just here to win with the same tiny slice of people anymore. We’re going to win by expanding and growing that electorate and we know as organizers that we have the possibility and the capacity to do that.

The author served as a Sanders precinct caption at Iowa City 01, which was not one of the satellite caucuses.

“Let’s Get This Bread”: Bay Area Tartine Bakery Workers Move to Unionize

“What if a bakery kept its heart and soul, but always remained open to new ideas?” asks the website for Tartine, the world-renowned Bay Area bakery. Elsewhere on the site, the bakery boasts of “Production at a human scale.” Today, the humans who produce Tartine’s award-winning bread and pastries have a new idea of their own: a union.

The workers at the five Bay Area locations—four in San Francisco, one in Berkeley—have chosen to become members in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In doing so, they join their counterparts at another iconic Bay Area institution, Anchor Brewing, one year after Anchor workers went public with their union.

“We’re proud to work at Tartine and want Tartine to be the best it possibly can be,” opens a letter delivered to management Thursday morning by members of the union’s organizing committee. Of the estimated 215 workers at the four locations, 146 signed their name to the letter, a public declaration of their support for the union. The letter requests Tartine voluntarily recognize the union, but notes that should the company refuse, the union will file for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election. Agustin Ramirez, lead ILWU organizer for Northern California, says the union will file for the election on Friday morning, 24 hours after the letter’s delivery, should the company decline voluntary recognition.

Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt opened Tartine’s first location in 2002, and have expanded their operations in recent years. The company has opened two new locations in the Bay Area since 2016, and stores continue opening—and closing—in Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea. Workers say this rapid growth is a key reason to unionize.

“As the company expanded, we were seeing a certain amount of neglect toward the workers—and not only the people, but operations too: money to pay invoices, for example, wasn’t there,” says Pat Thomas, 30, a server at the Tartine Manufactory. “We weren’t getting the attention we felt like we deserved because they were opening all these new locations, and it started feeling more corporate.” Thomas hopes unionization can rescue what was once a positive company environment, “before it’s too late.”

Tartine was “expanding like crazy, opening multiple restaurants in a short period of time, and then telling us that they don't have the money to give us a $1 an hour raise,” says Emily Haddad, 31, a barista at the Manufactory. “It wasn’t really matching up,” she adds.

Indeed, workers feel management is “making it up as they go” when it comes to pay, says Mason Lopez, 36, a barista at the Berkeley location. Many spoke of their wages as nowhere near livable, with employees frequently having to take second and third jobs. Plus, back-of-the-house staff is largely excluded from the tip pool, say workers, an arrangement to which some object.

Tartine “can pay workers, the people who are making them the money—the cooks and the prep and the dishwashers and so on—a living wage,” says Hannah Gerard, 27, a server at the Manufactory.

In These Times was not able to reach any back-of-the-house employees for comment. Workers admit to the difficulties of coordinating the front of the house and the back of the house in the campaign, but describe support for the union as “widespread” across all positions and locations, with a worker at one location characterizing support as strongest among dishwashers and prep cooks.

“The dishwashers and prep cooks have been insanely proactive and have gotten a lot of people on board,” says Gerard.
“These are world-class bakers,” adds Lopez, listing off awards the bread has won over the years. “These bakers should be making at least $25 an hour, something that mirrors their experience and level of skill, and then you find out they're making minimum wage and barely in the tip pool. Why?”

Throughout history, bakers have a storied record of organizing. One of the first acts proposed by the Executive Committee of the Paris Commune in 1871 was a ban on night-work, a response to bakery workers’ longstanding demands. In the United States, too, bakers’ unions have a long history. The Journeymen Bakers’ Union, founded in 1880, merged into what is now the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM), which still represents some 140,000 members, mostly in the food processing industry.

In addition to higher wages, Tartine workers speak of a desire for paid-time off, as well as a say in decisions relating to employee health insurance. While Tartine offers health insurance to anyone who works 25 or more hours per week, the company recently switched workers’ health insurance provider, causing several to lose their doctors. Additionally, several workers say they hope unionizing will bring greater transparency across the company, particularly when it comes to where Tartine’s money is going.

“If the company's telling us that they're broke because their projects are going out of business, we have the right to see for ourselves instead of taking their word for it,” says Thomas. “We’re just asking for a say.”

“Money has been funneling into San Francisco by the bucketload over the last five years, but there's not a lot of follow-through when it comes to restaurant workers, or anyone in cafes, and those are the people that keep these cities running,” says Lopez. “Money changes hands, but we're only getting the minimum that an employer is supposed to pay a person to avoid getting into legal trouble. Put that way, it’s hurtful.”

By announcing their union campaign, Tartine workers follow the lead of those at Anchor Brewing, a craft brewery that unionized last year, also with ILWU.

“When Anchor Steam went public with their unionization, that's what motivated me to say, ‘Let's actually do this instead of just talking about it,’” says Thomas. Following the launch of Anchor’s campaign, he met with people who had helped Anchor Steam workers organize. From there, he says, the process began in earnest.

“We had read that Anchor Steam became public with their union and we thought that was awesome,” says Matthew Torres, 23, a barista at Tartine’s Berkeley location. “We'd talked about it playfully, like ‘Oh, that'd be so cool.’”

Soon enough, a small group began meeting with Anchor Steam workers, an ILWU representative—and, as was true in the Anchor Steam campaign, collaborating with the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who provided meeting space along with organizing support.

“The process of organizing can be very daunting, very scary, and kind of emotional at times,” says Torres, adding that having DSA present to facilitate space for Tartine workers to connect with other workers was “really, really helpful.” SF DSA plans to hold a rally with Tartine workers at 6pm at 24th Street Plaza Thursday. As with the Anchor campaign, workers hope to immediately build community support for their union.

Several workers stressed interest in working with the ILWU because of its radical history, and in particular, what Lopez describes as its “antiracist advocacy,” referring to ILWU’s willingness to shut down the Port of Oakland in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as its history of political boycotts on cargo.

Tartine workers will join the same ILWU local as Anchor Steam workers, Local 6, expanding the less-traditional shops represented in the local. San Francisco veterinary hospital workers have also organized as Local 6 members, a process that Anchor workers—and DSA San Francisco—have supported.

Local 6 has “pharmaceutical workers, workers at landfills, workers at recycling facilities, workers at chocolate manufactories, radiologist technicians at hospitals, warehouses, and now, workers in the beer industry,” says Ramirez, the ILWU organizer, adding “We believe that the workers have the right to choose their union. The ILWU will be with them until we reach the other side.”

As to how they expect management to respond to the union drive, workers are uncertain (In These Times reached out to Tartine’s Chief Operating Officer, Chris Jordan, for comment, and has yet to receive a response). “Tartine likes to be known as an inclusive and welcoming place,” says Gerard. “Hopefully they will take that reputation and do the right thing: Let us bargain a contract.”

Should unionization lead to an NLRB election, it’s possible the company will push for each Tartine location to hold a separate election, a possibility for which ILWU’s Ramirez says the union is prepared.

Tartine workers emphasize that just because the vast majority of food service work in the United States isn’t currently unionized, that doesn’t mean the industry can’t change its ways.

“I hope people can take inspiration from us, like we did from Anchor Steam,” says Torres. Food service workers “move through jobs every few months or year because these workplaces are bad or unaccountable and I really want to see other people be inspired by what we're doing and do it themselves, and aid them in doing that.”

“A lot of people think restaurant work is not a skill, or not a career,” agrees Lopez, “but you can have a service job be your career. There are plenty of really talented, amazing people working in the service industry; the problem is they aren’t taken care of.” Lopez spoke of how “exhausting” it is “to go from restaurant to restaurant, from bar to bar, and it’s always the same song.”

“Why not make a difference,” asks Lopez. “Why not set an example for other restaurant workers, and maybe inspire them to do the same?”

Steroids could do more harm than good in treating coronavirus

Steroids should be avoided in the treatment of the current novel coronavirus, experts have advised. A commentary article published in The Lancet concludes that, based on evidence from previous outbreaks of similar types of infection such as SARS, steroids provide little benefit to patients and could do more harm than good. They say that clinicians should still administer the treatment for conditions such as asthma and other inflammatory diseases.

A Rank-and-File Teachers’ Movement Takes On Philadelphia’s Toxic Schools

A militant caucus within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is showing how, with rank-and-file leadership, unions can be a powerful force for fighting deep-rooted environmental injustice.

Donald Trump Flat Out Lied About the Economy In His State of the Union

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump extolled the “blue-collar boom” in the economy along with his purported “great American comeback.” He made this claim based in part on two recent signature trade deals—the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and a “phase one” deal with China. Unfortunately, both agreements will likely to lead to more outsourcing and job loss for U.S. workers, and the facts just don’t support Trump’s claims about the broader economy.

Trump comes from a world that has ardently championed globalization, like many of his predecessors. However, that approach has decimated U.S. manufacturing over the past 20 years, eliminating nearly 5 million good factory jobs as shown in Figure A, below. Nearly 90,000 U.S. factories have been lost as well.

 

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Trump has not brought these jobs back, nor will his present policies change the status quo. Globalization, and China trade in particular, have also hurt countless communities throughout the country, especially in the upper Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and Northeast regions. The nation has lost a generation of skilled manufacturing workers, many of whom have dropped out of the labor force and never returned. All of this globalized trade has reduced the wages of roughly 100 million Americans, all non-college educated workers, by roughly $2,000 per year.

In addition, more than half of the U.S. manufacturing jobs lost in the past two decades were due to the growing trade deficit with China, which eliminated 3.7 million U.S. jobs, including 2.8 million manufacturing jobs, between 2001 and 2018. In fact, the United States lost 700,000 jobs to China in the first two years of the Trump administration, as shown in our recent report. The phase one trade deal will not bring those jobs back, either.

In the State of the Union, Trump claimed that he’s created a “great American comeback” and generated a “blue-collar boom” with strong wage gains for lower-income workers. As shown in Figure B, below, globalization has generated huge wage gains for those in the top 20% and especially those in the top 10%, top 1%, and top 0.1% of the income distribution. Average wages for the top 20% increased $15 per hour (33.4%) over the past two decades. Wage gains for the bottom 80% ranged from $1.39 to $2.46 per hour (13.5% to 16.4%).

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Donald Trump has failed to reverse these trends, and in many ways, has made them worse. In the past three years, the vast majority of wage gains have gone to workers in the top 20%, continuing the inequality that has been well-established in the era of globalization as shown in Figure C, below. Over the past three years, workers in the top 20% enjoyed average real wage gains of $2.61 per hour, five times the gains of workers in the bottom quintile and nearly 3.5 times the gains enjoyed in the middle 60%.

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Wage gains were significantly larger for workers in the bottom 20% than they were for middle-class workers, due largely to measures such as higher minimum wages that took effect in 13 states and the District of Columbia in 2018 and 19 states in January 2019. These are policies that were implemented by state legislatures and local governments around the country to help offset the effects of a decline in the real value of the federal minimum wage. They also helped offset the negative effects of dozens of efforts by the Trump Labor Department to weaken labor standards, attack worker rights, and roll back wages.

Globalization has reduced wages for working Americans by putting non-college educated workers into a competitive race to the bottom in wages, benefits, and working conditions with low-wage workers in Mexico, China, and other low-pay, rapidly industrializing countries. The Trump administration’s two trade deals don’t change that reality. Workers counting on Trump to deliver a “great American comeback” have been left waiting at the station.

This piece was first published at theEconomic Policy Institute.

Bernie Sanders’ Feat in Iowa Shows Democratic Socialism Can Win

In October 2019, less than three weeks after suffering a heart attack that pundits and opponents seized upon to declare his presidential campaign dead in the water, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held the largest rally of the 2020 cycle in Queens, New York alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Following his declaration of “I am back,” Sanders channeled Nelson Mandela in enjoining the crowd of 26,000 that everything, “always seems impossible…until it’s done.”

Sanders’ performance in the Iowa caucuses on Monday—where he maintains the popular vote lead with 71% of precincts reporting—affirms this adage. Throughout the primary campaign, commentators, rivals and establishment politicos across the spectrum have written off Sanders’ candidacy, treating it as an afterthought—or, more recently, as an annoyance to swat away. Despite the Iowa Democratic Party’s bungled reporting of caucus results, which show Pete Buttigieg narrowly leading in state delegate equivalents, Sanders is currently on top by over 1,300 votes. By leading with the most votes in the first contest of 2020, Sanders has proven the commentariat wrong.  

The outcome reshapes the primary race, where Joe Biden—long assumed the most “electable” candidate among Democrats—is now coming in a measly fourth. Sanders, meanwhile, is on track to take New Hampshire next week, where a win would establish him as the clear frontrunner. But the results also realize an axiom that many on the American Left have long believed, but has now been demonstrated: Democratic socialism can, in fact, win.

Countless hands have been wrung by paid consultants and strategists over the false fear that the mantle of socialism will sink any candidate seeking the highest office in the land. Just last week, New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait warned that nominating Sanders would be “an act of insanity,” in large part because of the senator’s identification as a democratic socialist. Aside from the fact that Chait has been wrong about nearly everything in recent political history, including his archetypal 2016 take “Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination,” this liberal panic is simply unfounded.

By claiming the most votes in Iowa—a rural, Midwestern state—Sanders has shown that fears over a Scarlet S have been largely overblown. In reality, the democratic socialist agenda that undergirds Sanders’ political philosophy—free and universal healthcare, taxing the rich, canceling debt, ending wars, expanding workplace democracy and investing in a livable future for the planet—is incredibly popular.     

The pundits are already waving their arms, warning that Sanders is uniquely vulnerable to a Red Scare-style takedown because of his political beliefs. On Monday morning, MSNBC host Chris Matthews compared Sanders’ campaign to George McGovern’s failed 1972 presidential bid, saying the Democratic frontrunner reminds him of “some old guy with some old literature from this socialist party or that,” as if Sanders was more akin to a leafleter for the Revolutionary Communist Party than a U.S. senator first elected to Congress 30 years ago. 

Meanwhile, at the Atlantic, neocon David Frum proclaims that “Bernie can’t win,” referring to him as “a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot.” And Matt Bennett and Lanae Erickson, hucksters for the Wall Street-funded, Democratic centrist think tank Third Way, write in USA Today that Sanders’ socialist ideas are “toxic,” cautioning that “Democrats must not be fooled by him now.”   

Even Biden himself, reeling from a disastrous finish in Iowa, is joining in on the swipes. On Wednesday, Biden said: "If Sen. Sanders is the nominee for the party… every Democrat will have to carry the label Sen. Sanders has chosen for himself. He calls him—and I don’t criticize him—he calls himself a democratic socialist. Well, we're already seeing what Donald Trump is going to do with that.”

Such admonition is understandable coming from a political and media establishment that views Sanders’ redistributive platform with scorn: Their concern over “electability” really just masks their ideological opposition to Bernie Sanders’ political project. But that doesn’t make their claims correct.

Majorities of young people, women and Democrats all now say they prefer socialism over capitalism. And survey results from Data for Progress show that in a general election matchup, Sanders’ identification as a socialist would not be a liability against Trump. Interestingly, the results indicate that Sanders performs better against Trump when he’s identified as a “socialist” and the president as a “billionaire,” versus Democrat and Republican, respectively. As Vox concludes from the study, “tagging Sanders as a socialist did not seem to undermine his campaign.”  

University of California political scientist Gabriel Lenz’s research has shown that, in general, voters “adopt their preferred party’s or candidate’s position as their own.” As a result, voters are less likely to be turned off by a candidate identifying as “socialist” if they generally agree with or approve of that candidate.

Sanders is the most popular hopeful in the race and is the most trusted on the issues most important to Democratic voters. And Sanders is reliably beating Trump in polls both nationally and in battleground states across the country. 

Rather than serving as a hindrance, Sanders’ political philosophy could actually benefit him in the country’s heartland. Chicago City Council member Carlos-Ramirez-Rosa, himself an outspoken democratic socialist, writes in NBC News that “Far from being allergic to socialism and class struggle... the Midwest has always been a region steeped in it—even leading the way.”

By positioning himself as a candidate of and for the working class, Sanders has won the backing of low-wage workers and young people of color—constituencies that will be key to winning the White House in November. In many ways, Trump’s perfect foil is Bernie Sanders: the son of an immigrant family who grew up poor, has been consistent in his political beliefs his entire life and has made workers the center of his campaign—and billionaires like Trump the enemy.       

The threat Sanders poses to Trump has been raised by none other than Trump himself. Leaked audio from a 2018 phone call showed Trump expressing relief that Hillary Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) rather than Sanders for her vice presidential nominee in 2016. "Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would've been tougher. He's the only one I didn't want her to pick," Trump said. "Because [Sanders'] a big trade guy. You know he basically says we're getting screwed on trade. And he's right.

So, if Sanders does indeed have a real shot at beating Trump, why are so many in the Democratic brass sounding alarms over his rise? It could have something to do with the fact that Sanders has made the corporate wing of the Democratic Party his foe ever since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. In June 2019, Third Way president Jon Cowan called Sanders an “existential threat to the future of the Democratic Party.” More recently, centrist guru Rahm Emanuel said on ABC’s This Week, “The fact is one of the threats to the party right now is a rupture in the core.”

A rupture in the core of the corporate-centric Democratic Party establishment that Emanuel represents is exactly what a Sanders presidency promises. Which is the reason moderates like John Kerry are opening the door to jumping in the race to stop Sanders if his momentum continues to grow. Such gambits give the lie to the idea that party insiders are interested in representing the democratic will of the people. Instead, they want to protect the neoliberal consensus that’s dominated the party for the past 40 years—and which Sanders’ campaign threatens.

Donald Trump has already laid out his strategy for the coming general election. “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” Trump said at a rally in June 2019. And in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump proclaimed: “socialism destroys nations, but always remember, freedom unifies the soul.”

Trump is running against socialism, that much is clear. That game plan won’t change whether or not Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee.

But Sanders boasts an asset that no other Democrat running can claim: He knows how to explain—and defend—democratic socialism in a way voters can understand. 

At January’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Sanders if his description of himself as a democratic socialist would serve as a handicap. Sanders responded: “My democratic socialism says healthcare is a human right. We’re going to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to have a Green New Deal. That is what democratic socialism is about, and that will win this election.”

In a widely-touted speech last summer, Sanders explained that in contrast to demagogues like Trump who “meld corporatist economics with xenophobia and authoritarianism,” his democratic socialist vision seeks “a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.”

Achieving that higher path means rejecting the kind of market fundamentalism that has dominated U.S. politics for decades, pitting working people against each other to fight over scraps while oligarchs grow their fortunes and fortify their political influence. Sanders’ socialism seeks to redistribute not just the wealth of the billionaire class but also its power, injecting more democracy—and, as a result, freedom—into American society.

As political science professor, Corey Robin explains at the New York Times, “The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.”

Establishing such a system and curtailing the role of unfettered capitalism in governing our lives may seem a Herculean task, even impossible. But after Sanders’ performance in Iowa, it’s possible that this more egalitarian future is firmly within our grasp.

Disclosure: The author of this piece has volunteered for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. Views expressed are those of the writer. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, In These Times does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.

Why males pack a powerful punch

Elk have antlers. Rams have horns. In the animal kingdom, males develop specialized weapons for competition when winning a fight is critical. Humans do too, according to new research. Fighting may have long been a part of our evolutionary history.

Scientists unravel mystery of photosynthesis

Scientists solved a critical part of the mystery of photosynthesis, focusing on the initial, ultrafast events through which photosynthetic proteins capture light and use it to initiate a series of electron transfer reactions.

Scientists document collapse of key Central American forest engineer

White-lipped peccaries have declined by as much as 87% to 90% from their historical range in Central America, signaling a population collapse of a key species in the region. The pig-like animal is an important food source for large animal predators and humans alike and plays a critical ecological role by dispersing seeds and creating water holes that benefit other animals.

Massachusetts: a right to repair would make it easier for people to fix their broken devices, help independent businesses, and help the environment. Tell your lawmakers to support your right to repair. https://act.eff.org/action/massachusetts-speak-up-for-your-right-to-repair

Why Is Elizabeth Warren Hiring so Many Right Wing Foreign Policy Hacks?

Elizabeth Warren has positioned herself as the progressive alternative to Bernie Sanders. But a list of her foreign policy advisers reads no differently than it would if she were Hillary Clinton.

Less methane released from Arctic Ocean than previously believed

A new study demonstrates that the amount of methane presently leaking to the atmosphere from the Arctic Ocean is much lower than previously claimed in recent studies.

Anthem Grief (Punk) releases new video for “Game, Set, Match, Gas”

Philly punk act Anthem Grief have released a new video for their song “Game, Set, Match, Gas” off of their début album Defense Mechanisms. The video was shot in Brazil and the band had this to say about it: “The lyrics for this particular song are pretty self-explanatory in regards to having issues with drinking. However, a big part […]