Sarah Jaffe
Sarah Jaffe is a reporting fellow at the Type Media Center, covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. She is the author of the book, Necessary Trouble: America's New Radicals (Nation Books/2016). Follow her on Twitter: @sarahljaffe.
Articles by this author
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Views Friday, October 09, 2020 Despite Trump's 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs' Bluster, the Rust Belt Is Still Reeling from Plant Closures n 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign made much of the industrial decline in the Midwest. Central to his promise to “Make America Great Again” were his calls to keep factories churning in the United States, stop jobs from going overseas, and bring back a vision of the United States from the 1950s: dad in... Read more |
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Views Friday, July 24, 2020 U.S. Capitalism Is in Total Meltdown In 2005, when the federal, state, and local governments spectacularly failed the residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, there was a sense of shock from both inside and outside of the country. The triumphalist narrative that “There Is No Alternative”—that neoliberal capitalism was the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 14, 2020 Evictions Aren’t Inevitable When Tenants Fight Back n July 7, tenants in Brooklyn, New York, surrounded by their community, staged a dramatic face off with their landlord. The house was located at 1214 Dean Street, in a rapidly gentrifying part of Crown Heights. It was a nine-bedroom, apparently zoned as a single-family dwelling, but rented out room... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 08, 2020 After a String of Antisemitic Attacks, a Choice Confronts all Jews The reemergence of explicit antisemitism in recent years and the spate of violent antisemitic attacks in recent weeks have left Jews in the United States and across the world making the choice between two responses. The first is to focus on the uniqueness of Jews, to feel attacked from all sides,... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 18, 2019 Even in Defeat, Labour Mobilized the New Working Class Boris Johnson, despite dodging most debates, lacking any policy platform beyond “Get Brexit Done,” and having literally hidden in a refrigerator to avoid a journalist near the end of the campaign, will have a large majority in the U.K. Parliament after last Thursday’s election. The Labour Party’s... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 04, 2019 What the U.K. Election Tells Us About Universal Health Care There are a little under two weeks left before the United Kingdom’s general election, set for December 12, and the perhaps-unexpected star of many campaign trail arguments has been . . . Donald Trump. Trump features in story after story about the potential for post-Brexit trade deals—if Boris... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, November 20, 2019 Nonprofit Workers Join the Movement to Unionize The past few years have seen a rash of union victories in supposedly white-collar workplaces, from prestige publications to art museums to nonprofit think tanks and service organizations. Workers, particularly young workers, in these mission- and passion-driven fields are waking up to the fact that... Read more |
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Views Friday, August 30, 2019 As the World Burns Photographs of the Amazon rainforest on fire have made it hard to think about anything else. There’s a sense of existential horror in watching the trees burn, knowing that this particular stretch of green keeps us all breathing day in and day out as the world heats, and that the Brazilian president... Read more |
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Views Sunday, August 18, 2019 Bad Boss Trump, the Great Organizer There’s an old saying in the labor movement that “the boss is the best organizer.” That is, nothing will unite a workforce faster than a bad boss; nothing will create class consciousness faster than an abusive manager at the helm. And what is Donald Trump but the worst possible boss? After all, the... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 01, 2019 The Politics of Petulance, From Donald Trump to Boris Johnson onald Trump’s campaign is selling drinking straws. Plastic drinking straws, naturally. The campaign has raised nearly half a million from sales of packs of fifteen red straws with “TRUMP” branded on them, as an alternative to “liberal paper straws.” The premise, of course, is that liberals with... Read more |