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
Labour Activists Canvass in the Cold in Britain
The December 12 parliamentary election has brought out Labour’s secret weapon: organizers who have been working for years to end austerity and bring a new politics to the U.K.
By Sarah Jaffe in The American Prospect.
What the U.K. Election Tells Us About Universal Health Care
Across the political spectrum, the British are clear: American-style health care is a terrible idea.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
Nonprofit Workers Join the Movement to Unionize
Increasing numbers of people in mission- and passion-driven fields are waking up to the fact that they are, despite the trappings of middle-class-ness, still workers doing a job.
By Sarah Jaffe in Common Dreams.
The Chicago Teachers Strike Was a Lesson in 21st-Century Organizing
Despite the Janus decision and years of labor losses, the Chicago Teachers Union has figured out how to organize—and win.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Nation.
All Organizing Is Magic
In this contribution to Verso’s Caliban and the Witch Roundtable, Sarah Jaffe finds echoes of witchcraft in contemporary anti-capitalism.
By Sarah Jaffe in the Verso blog.
How Chicago Teachers Built Power Between Strikes
It’s easy to glamorize the seeming spontaneity of a “strike wave” and miss the long processes of union organizing.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
The Return of the Strike
The picketing GM workers and impending Chicago Teachers Union action suggest a dramatic revival of striking as a tactic.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
Labour Conference Endorses Radical Policies Ahead of U.K. Elections
Labour’s best hope for victory in a general election, just as it was in 2017, is to get people talking about something besides Brexit.
By Sarah Jaffe in The American Prospect.
The Four-Day Work Week—Not Just a Daydream
The lessons of the shorter-hours movements of decades past are still deeply relevant, and are being revived for a gig-economy era of diminished opportunities for working people.
By Sarah Jaffe in The Progressive.
As the World Burns
Catastrophes in the Amazon and elsewhere are flash points for the larger, ongoing crisis that claims lives in less spectacular fashion.
By Sarah Jaffe in the Progressive.
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.
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