https://znetwork.org/category/topic/vision-strategy/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Tue, 30 Dec 2025 11:04:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/vision-strategy/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/keeping-power-utilities-in-corporate-hands-doesnt-make-sense/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/keeping-power-utilities-in-corporate-hands-doesnt-make-sense/#respond Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292909 All over the country, Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills. In the Hudson Valley, the situation is particularly dire, with some ratepayers coping with surprise monthly bills of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t have to be that way, according to the region’s democratic socialists, who are leading a fight to lower prices. A [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/keeping-power-utilities-in-corporate-hands-doesnt-make-sense/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:27:28 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292894 ​To understand the historical blockage of the Left, one must first expose its internal contradictions. The Left claims to criticize the state but fails to interrogate the state’s ontology. It asserts a rejection of power, yet fails to realize that its own visions of authority reproduce the same hierarchical patterns. ​While the Left emphasizes its [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-obscenities-of-inequality-a-review-of-trading-game-by-gary-stevenson/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-obscenities-of-inequality-a-review-of-trading-game-by-gary-stevenson/#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:58:01 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292884 Gary Stevenson has risen to fame on the back of his 2024 Sunday Times bestseller, Trading Game; an edgy rags to riches tale. Boy grows up poor in the London suburb of Ilford, in view of the Canary Wharf skyline. He progresses from a paper round to DFS stores selling bedwear. He and his family [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-obscenities-of-inequality-a-review-of-trading-game-by-gary-stevenson/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tyranny-of-beer/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tyranny-of-beer/#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:47:48 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292878 I have written nine essays about why a collapse is coming, how it will play out and what comes after. As I pointed out at the onset, they were essays in its real and original meaning, trials (from French essayer). I don’t pretend to know. The only thing I really know is that this constant ever growing socio-economic system [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tyranny-of-beer/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-2025-must-be-the-end-of-the-inane-rule-of-climate-optimism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-2025-must-be-the-end-of-the-inane-rule-of-climate-optimism/#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:34:14 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292871 We were supposed to have gone net zero by now: that was XR’s central demand, when we formed it, seven years ago. Can we all please at last acknowledge and take seriously the utter failure to do so? Only such acknowledgement will prevent us from continuing collectively to basically ignore the increasingly pressing need to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-2025-must-be-the-end-of-the-inane-rule-of-climate-optimism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2025 15:33:47 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292861 According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of American adults say that if they could choose when to live, they would live sometime in the past. Another 40 percent have the good luck to be born exactly when they want to live. And only 14 percent would choose to live in the future. These [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-effective-are-protests-historians-say-very/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-effective-are-protests-historians-say-very/#respond Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:30:20 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292826 Trump’s first and second terms have been marked by huge protests, from the 2017 Women’s March to the protests for racial justice after George Floyd’s murder, to this year’s No Kings demonstrations. But how effective is this type of collective action? According to historians and political scientists who study protest: very. From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-effective-are-protests-historians-say-very/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-authoritarianism-in-todays-classrooms/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-authoritarianism-in-todays-classrooms/#respond Thu, 25 Dec 2025 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292748 Appeals to neutrality, civility and “balance” can easily become mechanisms for silencing critique and avoiding responsibility. ascism does not crash onto the stage of history — it slips in through habits, policies and the quiet erosion of conscience, often cloaked in the language of efficiency, order, fear and “commonsense.” Today, its most dangerous advances are pedagogical. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/resisting-authoritarianism-in-todays-classrooms/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-proof-is-in-the-pudding-a-few-comments-on-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-proof-is-in-the-pudding-a-few-comments-on-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics/#respond Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292712 Anyone interested in socialism in the twenty-first century must take into account what is happening in China seriously. It’s future economic supremacy will either shape global capitalism, which socialists worldwide will have to respond to or the future of socialism will be determined by China’s planned transformation toward a socialist economy. Jan Turowski1 China has [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-proof-is-in-the-pudding-a-few-comments-on-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/managing-water-differently-algeria-facing-hydrological-extremes/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/managing-water-differently-algeria-facing-hydrological-extremes/#respond Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:45:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292706 What if, in Algeria, water were no longer seen solely as a scarce resource to exploit or a threat to control, but as an ecological and economic capital to preserve and develop? Across the country, the same paradox is emerging: prolonged droughts and declining groundwater levels, punctuated by sudden, devastating floods. In a matter of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/managing-water-differently-algeria-facing-hydrological-extremes/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mutual-aid-in-motion-one-participants-story/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mutual-aid-in-motion-one-participants-story/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:09:30 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292648 I am a daughter of refugees, a Southeast Asian woman, and a mom raising two girls in an increasingly hostile world. When overwhelmed, I tend to look for action—some physical thing I can do to take back some semblance of balance or calm.  In 2017, when Donald Trump took office as president, I felt unmoored [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mutual-aid-in-motion-one-participants-story/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-resistance-moves-left/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-resistance-moves-left/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:03:24 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292646 “Welcome to the Resistance.” During the first Trump administration, socialists loved to invoke this as a joke. The liberal resistance, socialists charged, was interested only in performative displays of opposition, blaming Russia for everything, and naively hoping Democratic Party adults in the room would take charge and turn back the clock to pre-2016 business as [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-resistance-moves-left/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/for-a-peace-from-below-in-ukraine/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/for-a-peace-from-below-in-ukraine/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:41:36 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292640 The Trump administration now looks closer than ever to stopping the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Until now, the US president had failed to fulfill his promise, but American diplomacy has gained two new advantages: the Russian army has achieved certain successes, and Ukraine has been engulfed in a political crisis that made President Volodymyr [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/for-a-peace-from-below-in-ukraine/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-housing-crisis-is-solvable/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-housing-crisis-is-solvable/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:07:38 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292625 The magnitude of the housing shortage is huge and the problems chronic, but the housing crisis is solvable. Throughout British Columbia (BC) and Canada, the housing crisis is marked by high rents and prices, a scarcity of homes, displacement, homelessness, and the quiet exclusion of people from entire neighborhoods. While a boon to some, high [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-housing-crisis-is-solvable/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-challenge-of-food-ecomodernism-a-puzzle-outlined/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-challenge-of-food-ecomodernism-a-puzzle-outlined/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:04:03 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292623 Given the unfriendly nature of my debate with him – if ‘debate’ is the right word – I’ve tried to avoid further engagement with the writing of George Monbiot. But a recent Guardian article of his is such a perfect microcosm of the difficulties and dangers of ecomodernism (more on that term below) as applied to the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-challenge-of-food-ecomodernism-a-puzzle-outlined/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/post-modern-colonialism-the-scandalous-barter-of-the-sdf-and-hamas/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/post-modern-colonialism-the-scandalous-barter-of-the-sdf-and-hamas/#respond Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292651 On the blood-soaked map of the Middle East today, behind visible diplomatic crises and high-pitched rhetorical wars, one of the most pragmatic and shocking negotiations in history is being conducted. This bargain is a clandestine bridge built between the founding reflex of the Republic of Turkey, characterized by anti-Kurdish animosity, and the existential security doctrine [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/post-modern-colonialism-the-scandalous-barter-of-the-sdf-and-hamas/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-position-of-the-serbian-people-in-a-multipolar-world-breaking-with-idols-rebuilding-dignity/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-position-of-the-serbian-people-in-a-multipolar-world-breaking-with-idols-rebuilding-dignity/#respond Sat, 20 Dec 2025 17:07:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292570 If we take a bird’s-eye view of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro—where the largest share of the Serbian people lives today—we see a strikingly similar structure: three small economies neatly integrated into a semi-peripheral role—stable enough to service debt and function as markets, yet insufficiently developed for people to live off their own work [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-position-of-the-serbian-people-in-a-multipolar-world-breaking-with-idols-rebuilding-dignity/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/in-conversation-with-ilan-pappe-and-mariam-barghouti/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/in-conversation-with-ilan-pappe-and-mariam-barghouti/#respond Sat, 20 Dec 2025 16:25:46 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1292563 Israeli historian Ilan Pappé (1954), author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and other prominent works, has played a crucial role in challenging the dominant Western narrative that presents Israel as a liberal democracy born in innocence. His work exposed the foundational violence and displacement at the heart of the Israeli state project. Palestinian journalist [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/in-conversation-with-ilan-pappe-and-mariam-barghouti/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mapuche-resistance-a-beacon-of-hope-in-chile/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mapuche-resistance-a-beacon-of-hope-in-chile/#respond Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:03:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292542 When Chile’s social uprising erupted in October 2019, we had no idea that six years later, we’d find ourselves where we are today. The December 14 presidential elections saw 7.2 million people (58 percent of voters) vote for José Antonio Kast, the favoured, far-right candidate who is now president elect. The days of the 2019 uprising are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mapuche-resistance-a-beacon-of-hope-in-chile/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/2025-in-review-stark-battle-lines-big-potential/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/2025-in-review-stark-battle-lines-big-potential/#respond Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292523 Already before Donald Trump was inaugurated in January, there were dire omens. Poultry workers reported that their supervisors were using Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to divide workers up—allowing white workers bathroom breaks but denying them to Hispanic workers. “The more people are afraid to organize, the more the bosses will take advantage to create worse working [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/2025-in-review-stark-battle-lines-big-potential/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-american-peace-movement-we-need-today/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-american-peace-movement-we-need-today/#respond Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292513 To counter the march toward militarism at home and abroad, we need a movement with a winning message and broad coalition engaged in institutional politics. Throughout U.S. history, broad citizen-led peace movements have played influential roles in generating political pressure, changing war-promoting policies and constraining militarism. These movements have helped elevate new solutions to security [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-american-peace-movement-we-need-today/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-iraqi-left-at-a-crossroads-renewal-unity-and-the-recovery-of-mass-action/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-iraqi-left-at-a-crossroads-renewal-unity-and-the-recovery-of-mass-action/#respond Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:57:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292499 1. The Iraqi Left Between Participation and Boycott in the 2025 Elections This article comes at a critical political and organizational moment for the Iraqi left. Recent setbacks can no longer be explained by external factors alone. What we are experiencing is a real test of our will and our ability to invent new tools [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-iraqi-left-at-a-crossroads-renewal-unity-and-the-recovery-of-mass-action/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-bloody-price-of-the-moderate-jihadism-and-controlled-chaos-strategies-palmyra/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-bloody-price-of-the-moderate-jihadism-and-controlled-chaos-strategies-palmyra/#respond Mon, 15 Dec 2025 18:09:59 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292374 Modern Western strategic thinking still likes to present itself as the child of the Enlightenment: Rationality, progress, order, and law.  However, the practice operating in the Middle East for the past 30 years has repeatedly shown that these concepts are nothing more than a normative mask, an ideological camouflage. What is being marketed today as [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-bloody-price-of-the-moderate-jihadism-and-controlled-chaos-strategies-palmyra/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/#respond Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:33:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292407 One crucial factor in Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election last month was a huge shift in the Black vote. According to The City, Mamdani won 64 percent of the vote in neighborhoods with a plurality of Black residents — a 25 percentage point jump from the June primary. In our feature “Will Zohran Mamdani [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/american-socialists-arent-tired-of-winning/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/american-socialists-arent-tired-of-winning/#respond Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292357 Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York forced many political observers to think, for the first time, of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a serious and potentially formidable force in American political life. For the more than one hundred DSA members who assembled in New Orleans for the third How We Win conference last [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/american-socialists-arent-tired-of-winning/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-peoples-budgets-advance-local-democracy-a-conversation-with-celina-su/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-peoples-budgets-advance-local-democracy-a-conversation-with-celina-su/#respond Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:59:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292293 Steve Dubb: What led you to write Budget Justice—and how would you define the term? Celina Su: I define budget justice as giving everyday residents, especially those from historically marginalized communities, the resources and power to address their needs. What led me to write Budget Justice was seeing this very term on so many placards [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-peoples-budgets-advance-local-democracy-a-conversation-with-celina-su/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-the-left-criticize-zohran/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-the-left-criticize-zohran/#respond Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292285 In late November, I argued that “way too much leftist discourse is polarized into denunciations vs. defenses of Zohran. A more useful & important debate is how to organize enough New Yorkers to win Zohran’s agenda — and to counteract the inevitable pressures on him from capital and the political establishment.” Others disagreed. A few days later, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-the-left-criticize-zohran/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-national-network-of-activists-pursuing-peoples-budgets-gains-prominence/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-national-network-of-activists-pursuing-peoples-budgets-gains-prominence/#respond Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292295 While no perfect model PB [participatory budgeting] exists, it remains imperative to examine whether a specific PB process has mobilizing or delimiting effects. The national Black Lives Matter protests led to a new wave of PB around the country—one that centers power analyses and racial justice in newly explicit ways. In several cities—such as Nashville, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-national-network-of-activists-pursuing-peoples-budgets-gains-prominence/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/being-an-artist-in-an-age-of-blacklists-and-boycotts/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/being-an-artist-in-an-age-of-blacklists-and-boycotts/#respond Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292298 If you don’t find my music on a music streaming platform, it’s not because I boycotted it, it’s because I was blacklisted. Particularly in the era of social media and the conflict-promoting algorithms most of it is designed to thrive on, one must at least make a good effort at developing some thick skin.  Everyone’s [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/being-an-artist-in-an-age-of-blacklists-and-boycotts/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-get-on-offense-offer-workers-many-ways-in/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-get-on-offense-offer-workers-many-ways-in/#respond Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:54:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292257 To fight back against authoritarianism and the billionaire takeover, the labor movement must get on offense. We must have our own agenda, set by rank-and-file members, rooted in the issues that members care most about—issues that unite us and build power. Maybe our agenda includes a starting wage of no less than $30 an hour, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-get-on-offense-offer-workers-many-ways-in/feed/ 0