In These Times

When something needs fixing at Amazon’s Riverside delivery station, workers approach managers as a group. They’ve also walked out three times since December. “We’ve taken back a lot of the power in the warehouse,” Kain Kazsuk told Alex Press.

Workers at nearby Amazon facilities have organized over conditions for years. More than 400 signed a safety petition in Eastvale during the pandemic; in San Bernardino, workers walked out over pay and extreme heat in 2022.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/amazon-workers-walk-out-riverside-california

UN experts have called the U.S. policy toward Cuba “energy starvation.” Fuel shortages are disrupting hospitals and access to crucial medicines and medical device components. Health workers have had to keep newborns breathing by hand during power outages.

Alberto Toscano describes a blockade that extends to countries seeking to help Cuba. His article examines how U.S. tariffs and financial pressure can restrict the fuel and assistance reaching the island.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/cuba-under-siege-blockade-trump-sanctions-marco-rubio

50 years. Zero billionaires.

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What a candidate supports and what a campaign leads with are different questions.

In a new essay, Mindy Isser argues that affordability, Social Security, Medicare, jobs and union rights offer common ground across the educational divide—and examines what that could mean for the Left.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/working-class-politics-left-election-midterms-college

For more than three years, John and Gail Bechtold say their landlord has overcharged them by $221.74 every month—even after Kingston approved a historic 15% rent reduction.

They aren’t alone.

Tenants across the city are now organizing to recover years of alleged overcharges. Lawsuits representing just a fraction of Kingston’s rent-stabilized apartments say tenants are owed nearly $1.5 million.

Thomas Birmingham reports the fight could help determine whether a historic rent reduction becomes something tenants can actually collect—or merely a victory on paper.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/kingston-rent-tenants-landlords-organizing-housing-dispatch

faced burnout, repression and the enormous power of the institutions it set out to confront. None of those obstacles, Neal Meyer argued in 2013, were unique to Occupy—or impossible to overcome.

“The successes of past movements prove that these obstacles are not insurmountable.”

On the movement’s 15th anniversary, Meyer’s essay offers a historical perspective on what Occupy accomplished, why it dissolved and what organizers might carry into the next fight.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/a-historical-perspective-on-occupy

Trump’s domestic terrorism memorandum, NSPM-7, links “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Christianity” to a propensity for violence.

Tina Al-khersan and Azadeh Shahshahani examine the post-9/11 roots of this approach, from programs targeting communities based on religion and national origin to recent federal surveillance of labor unions and other left-leaning groups in Minnesota.

“NSPM-7 cannot be separated from the War on Terror that has plagued our communities for over two decades,” they write.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/war-on-terror-9-11-trump-nspm-7

While Silicon Valley’s billionaires spend fortunes to consolidate power and eliminate oversight, democratic socialists and outspoken progressives keep winning primaries on a very different promise: use public power to materially improve working people’s lives.

Miles Kampf-Lassin examines the clash between these two futures—one built for a handful of tech oligarchs, the other around a working-class majority.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/tech-trump-vance-crypto-artificial-intelligence-silicon-valley

Big Tech companies and executives are spending heavily in the 2026 elections while communities push back against data center expansion. A Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose an AI data center in their area, with opposition crossing party lines.

Stephanie Jordan and Mary Armas examine the collision between corporate election spending and public concerns about energy, water, schools, jobs and surveillance.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/big-tech-artificial-intelligence-ai-data-center-protests

A rent freeze for more than 2 million tenants is a pretty good reason to keep winning elections.

Mamdani’s coalition secured that freeze in June. That’s millions of New Yorkers who can now say a democratic socialist materially improved their lives.

And more democratic socialists are on the ballot through November.

Thomas Birmingham makes the case for keeping this whole winning thing going: “So, why not win?”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/big-idea-winning-progressives-democratic-socialists-of-america-elections-midterms