Adolph Reed Jr.

Adolph Reed Jr.

Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and an Organizer for Medicare for All-South Carolina.

Articles by this author

The policy agenda of presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is, in my view, the best racial justice agenda for 2020. (Photo: Adolph Reed Jr) Views
Monday, March 09, 2020
Push for Racial Justice Beyond Race Alone
nswering that question, and rising to meet this challenge, requires examining what we mean by “racial justice.” Most people who consider themselves progressives no doubt have general ideas of what would constitute a racially just society. Yet two basic norms of racial justice have coexisted—...
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Charles Brave, president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, speaks during an "I'm a Medicare for All Voter" campaign press conference in Charleston, South Carolina on February 24, 2020. (Photo: Medicare for All — South Carolina/Twitter) Views
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
South Carolina, Neoliberalism's Stranglehold, and the Mystique of the 'Black Vote'
Many progressives hoped that South Carolina black voters, who have consistently expressed strong support for Medicare for All and other components of Bernie Sanders' political program, would counter the conventional wisdom that the "black vote" is tightly aligned with the Democratic party's...
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Democratic presidential candidates former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and former Vice President Joe Biden greet each other prior to the start of the Democratic presidential primary debate in the Sullivan Arena at St. Anselm College on February 07, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Seven candidates qualified for the second Democratic presidential primary debate of 2020 which comes just days before the New Hampshire primary on February 11. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Ima Views
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Here They Come Again: The Kind of Neoliberal Democrats Who Prefer Trump to Sanders
Twenty-four years ago, I published an essay titled “Liberals, I Do Despise” in the Village Voice , which Common Dreams reprinted as an enduring oldie in 2009. The title was a play on an old doggerel, in this case rendering it: Liberals and flies, I do despise The more I see liberals, the more I...
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Saturday, March 30, 2019
Vietnam to Venezuela: US Interventionism and the Failure of the Left
Vietnam came to my attention when I was maybe eleven or twelve, during the last years of the Eisenhower administration. There must have been some uptick that prompted public anticommunist saber-rattling about what really was already the U.S. war there. My father explained to me what was going on,...
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"As we approached the 2018 mid-term elections and since, it has become ever clearer that a major struggle between now and 2020 will be over how we define the 'progressive' electoral agenda," writes Reed, "whether it should be weighted toward advancing candidates who are nonwhite, female, and gender-nonconforming or those who support such policy initiatives as Medicare For All. Of course, those goals are not necessarily in conflict. The question, though, is which should take priority when they are. We must Views
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Which Side Are You On?
Miguel Salazar in a recent essay purporting to address the question " Do America’s Socialists Have a Race Problem?" ( The New Republic , December 20, 2018), seconds a perspective on current debates within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that answers his question in the affirmative. DSA,...
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security
Many Americans remain deeply concerned about reports of Russian interference with the 2016 election. Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest and most dangerous point in several decades. For the sake of democracy at home and true national security, we must reach...
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Sunday, June 25, 2017
Monumental Rubbish: With the Statues Torn Down, What Next for New Orleans?
I’ve been in New Orleans since May 1. I came to visit my mother, who died on May 4, five months shy of her 95th birthday and was buried on May 10. That means I’ve been here through much of this latest round of public cavil over the city’s decision to remove the four most conspicuous monuments to...
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Thursday, August 18, 2016
Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important
In 1991, former Klansman and American Nazi Party functionary David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and made the runoff election against Democrat Edwin Edwards, the popular but scandal-plagued three-term former governor. Duke had made the runoff between the two top vote-getters since no one...
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Thursday, August 11, 2016
The Battle Over Trump's Taj Mahal Is a Battle for Us All
In Atlantic City right now workers at the Trump Taj Mahal casino hotel, members of UNITE HERE Local 54 , are waging a struggle that should make it one of those crystallizing flashpoints that garner national attention and mobilize support from the entire labor movement, progressives, and working...
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Sanders Challenges Neoliberal Stranglehold with Call for Free Higher Education
The recent New York Times op-ed by N. Gregory Mankiw, " Three Reasons for Those Hefty College Tuition Bills ," is pure ideological huffing and puffing of the sort we'd expect from a former chair of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. It's just a bushel of the same old free-market...
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