- By Robert Reich
A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech, was pushing through the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It was the most important day of my life. I walked up to the Capitol building and sat on the steps with more than 400 people. When asked to move, we refused and were arrested. We committed nonviolent civil disobedience together to protest the power of money in politics and support the restoration of real democracy.
If you had the opportunity to vote for a politician you totally trusted, who you were sure had no hidden agendas and who would truly represent the electorate’s views, you would, right?
- By Robert Reich
“Bernie is doing well but he can’t possibly win the nomination,” a friend told me for what seemed like the thousandth time, attaching an article from one of the nation’s leading newspapers showing how far behind Bernie remains in delegates.
The kid was not your typical feminist. Granted, he did stand out for a 20-something living in central Maine. In these parts, his male peers’ uniform tends to be Carhartts, work boots, a beard, and a woolen cap. This fellow slinked up to the microphone in skinny suit pants and a hipster jacket.
Young Americans don’t care much for political parties. According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of millennials (ages 18-33) identify as independents. That’s almost as many as identify as Democrats (28 percent) and Republicans (18 percent) put together.
Talk of changing pensions connects with us at an emotional level – how secure do our futures look? And crucially, how much power do we have over this process? It is a tricky business for the Treasury, too, as its recent retraction of the pensions review, due to feature in the spring budget, shows.
As they continue to tear up their respective parties, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are tapping into rich veins of “anti-establishment” fury. And while they’ve managed to create movements of a force not seen at the ballot box in years, they clearly owe a debt to the US’s two biggest protest movements of recent years: on the right, the Tea Party, and on the left, Occupy.
The visit to Argentina by US president Barack Obama on the 40th anniversary of the coup in which the now-infamous military Junta seized power has opened up a lot of barely healed wounds.
- By Robert Reich
Third parties have rarely posed much of a threat to the dominant two parties in America. So how did the People’s Party win the U.S. presidency and a majority of both houses of Congress in 2020?
The founding fathers minced no words about their distrust of the masses. Jefferson insisted, "Democracy is nothing more than mob rule.”
The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections. From New York, London and Paris to Beijing, Moscow, and Sydney there is endless heated debate in the news media and across dinner tables about the factors fueling the remarkable success of Donald Trump
For the roughly 2.2 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails, daily life is often violent, degrading, and hopeless. In a 2010 study of inmates released from 30 prisons, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than three-quarters were arrested for a new crime within five years of being freed.
Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it rapidly rose up The New York Times’ best-seller list. In it, Perkins describes his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions. These policies helped to enrich tiny, local elite groups while padding the pockets of
Whatever slim chance Sanders had to capture the nomination ended when Hillary Clinton won convincing victories in the key March 15 primaries. Clinton finished the night with an insurmountable lead of more than
The Flint water crisis and the sad story of Freddie Gray’s lead poisoning have catalyzed a broader discussion about lead poisoning in the United States. What are the risks? Who is most vulnerable? Who is responsible?
A line snakes down the sidewalk at Western High School in Las Vegas during the Nevada Republican presidential caucus.During President Obama’s final State of the Union address, he called for reforms to the voting process, saying, “We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder. We need to modernize it for the way we live now.”
When any American enters the voting booth, he (or she) is free to cast his private ballot for any candidate he favors. On the surface, this seems rather obvious, and easy. We each privately vote for the candidate we wish to support. We choose based on our preferences, so we vote correctly, right?
On Super Tuesday, voters from more than a dozen U.S. states vote in presidential primaries with important consequences for the candidates. We asked three scholars in different parts of the world to comment on the results and what they mean for the presidential race going forward.
- By Robert Reich
Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred.
With the unexpected death of United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia this weekend, the political battle lines have been drawn. President Obama has made clear that he plans to nominate a successor. His opposition is equally adamant that he should not do
Bill Moyer was a street-wise, working class white boy from rowhouse Philadelphia, who — in the turbulence of the 1960s — went to Chicago to work for an anti-racist housing campaign.
- By Robert Reich
“I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that,’” Clinton said recently in response to Bernie Sanders’s proposals. "That ain’t the real world we’re living in.“