sarah jaffe
Sarah Jaffe is a Type Media Center fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture.
Jaffe is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, which Robin D.G. Kelley called “The most compelling social and political portrait of our age.” Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and many others. She is the co-host, with Michelle Chen, of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, as well as a columnist at the New Republic and New Labor Forum. Her next book, Labor of Love (forthcoming from Bold Type Books in 2020), tells the story of how we all came to love our jobs—or at least pretend to—and why we shouldn’t.
Jaffe was formerly a staff writer at In These Times and the labor editor at AlterNet. She was a contributing editor on The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement is Changing America, from AlterNet books, as well as a contributor to the anthologies At the Tea Party and Tales of Two Cities, both from OR Books. She was also the web director at GRITtv with Laura Flanders.
Jaffe was one of the first reporters to cover Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15, and she has appeared on numerous radio and television programs to discuss topics ranging from electoral politics to Superstorm Sandy, and punk rock to public-sector unions.
She has a master’s degree in journalism from Temple University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Loyola University New Orleans. Sarah was born and raised in Massachusetts and has also lived in South Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado, and Pennsylvania—but currently calls New York home.
Recent Work
U.S. Capitalism Is in Total Meltdown
The COVID-19 pandemic is like Hurricane Katrina, but for the entire country. And things are only going to get worse.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
Evictions Aren’t Inevitable When Tenants Fight Back
As the housing crisis deepens, renters find strength in solidarity.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
“Injury to All” at Rutgers University
A coalition of unions representing 20,000 workers is organizing to reject the university’s austerity response to the pandemic.
By Sarah Jaffe in Dissent.
How the New York City School System Failed the Test of Covid-19
The city’s leaders bungled the closing of the schools when the coronavirus struck. Can they be trusted to reopen them safely?
By Sarah Jaffe in The Nation.
The Union Drive at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
“Amplifying our concerns about going back to work,” says museum educator Sarah Shaw, “is also a way of amplifying the concerns of other frontline workers.”
By Sarah Jaffe in Dissent.
Building Service Workers Strike
Workers at 75 Wall Street in New York are demanding management return to the bargaining table.
By Sarah Jaffe in Dissent.
The Growing Power of West Virginia’s Teachers
When the Mountain State’s teachers went on strike in 2018, they inspired a movement—now they’re showing us how to build a better union.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
What Happened to Kroger’s “Hero Pay”?
Workers at the grocery chain are being asked to return emergency pay, even as company revenue and stock prices climb upward.
By Sarah Jaffe in Dissent.
Paying Off Your Paid Leave
Many workers who need more sick time than they’ve accrued end up having to pay back their employers and go into ‘PTO debt.’
By Sarah Jaffe in The American Prospect.
Sephora Makes Plans to Reopen
“They have very unrealistic expectations of workers sacrificing their health so that people can buy makeup.”
By Sarah Jaffe in Dissent.
Necessary Trouble
Necessary Trouble is the definitive book on the movements that are poised to permanently remake American politics. We are witnessing a moment of unprecedented political turmoil and social activism. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the growth of the Tea Party, a twenty-first-century black freedom struggle with BlackLivesMatter, Occupy Wall Street, and the grassroots networks supporting presidential candidates in defiance of the traditional party elites.
Sarah Jaffe leads readers into the heart of these movements, explaining what has made ordinary Americans become activists. As Jaffe argues, the financial crisis in 2008 was the spark, the moment that crystallized that something was wrong. For years, Jaffe crisscrossed the country, asking people what they were angry about, and what they were doing to take power back. She attended a people’s assembly in a church gymnasium in Ferguson, Missouri; walked a picket line at an Atlanta Burger King; rode a bus from New York to Ohio with student organizers; and went door-to-door in Queens days after Hurricane Sandy.