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Meagan Day

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American left-wing activist and writer

This biographical article is written like a résumé. Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (January 2025)
Meagan Day
BornSan Antonio, Texas, U.S.
EducationOberlin College (BA)
Goldsmiths, University of London (MA)
EmployerJacobin
OrganizationDemocratic Socialists of America

Meagan Day is an American writer and editor focusing on class, labor issues, economic inequality, and American politics. She is an editor at Jacobin, where she was previously a staff writer. The author of Maximum Sunlight (2016) and co-author of Bigger than Bernie (2020), her articles have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Republic. Her work has been cited in articles in The New Yorker, The Hill, The New York Times, and Politico. In 2022, she addressed the Oxford Union on the topic of the American Dream in a global context.

Early life and education

Day was born in Austin, Texas, and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She received her bachelor's degree at Oberlin College, graduating in 2012. After working for The Believer and at McSweeney's as a personal assistant to writer Dave Eggers, she received her master's degree from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2013, and in the years following contributed to Full Stop, n+1, and The New Inquiry. Around that time, Day began to read the magazine Jacobin, and found an interest in journalism and class politics growing.

Career

After working briefly at Mother Jones, Day was hired at Jacobin in 2017 as the magazine's first full-time staff writer. She wrote several articles per week for Jacobin from 2017 to 2021, including regular coverage of the 2020 United States presidential election. She first received media attention for her writing in Jacobin when she was invited in 2018 to be interviewed on The Michael Brooks Show, which she would later say became the start of a friendship with the host Michael Brooks. Day began to appear on Brooks's show regularly, along with other podcasts and YouTube shows, to provide left-wing commentary on American politics. She would later be invited to speak alongside Brooks at Harvard about the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.

In 2018, Day and Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara were invited to stand in for the New York Times opinion columnist David Leonhardt for one week. This resulted in the publication of five op-eds. The topics included the need for Medicare for All, the importance of labor unions, the need to end cash bail, how to combat the rise of the far right, and the need to overhaul the United States Constitution. In 2020, along with co-author Micah Uetricht, Day published the book Bigger than Bernie: How We Can Win Democratic Socialism in Our Time (Verso), which union organizer and political commentator Jane McAlevey called "an indispensable guide to twenty-first-century socialism from the viewpoint of clear-eyed, sharp-witted, smart, funny authors."

In an interview with The Washington Post, co-author Uetricht said they had written the book to speak to a combination of people who liked Bernie Sanders but did not consider themselves activists and those "who want to understand what at least one wing of this newly reborn socialist movement in the United States thinks". Day also mentioned in that interview that the way they approached the book was to ensure it would be useful no matter how the then-ongoing Democratic Party primary turned out, and so when writing about their ideas had "tried to boil it down to basics". Elsewhere, Day has also said that her motivation for writing the book was because "forces were amassing on the left that had great potential, but that there was not really a roadmap for what to do with that potential after the Bernie moment was over."

Rick Perlstein, when talking to The Boston Globe, mentioned the book as one of many "popularly oriented books on socialism", also mentioning The Socialist Manifesto by Sunkara, How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Erik Olin Wright, and The Sinking Middle Class by David Roediger.

Conservative reactions

Day's work was cited in the Trump White House's report on the dangers of the growing American socialist movement. The conservative commentator Glenn Beck read from and condemned an article written by Day at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference. Citing Day's work, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh argued that "the left is doing everything it can to destroy the perceived integrity, the honesty, the trustworthiness of our electoral system". Former Republican Senator Newt Gingrich mentioned Day by name in a Fox News op-ed titled "Democrats have no idea what demons they are unleashing", which argued that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have unleashed political forces that will undermine American capitalism.

References

  1. Day, Meagan. "The Myth of the Socially Conscious Corporation". The New Republic. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  2. "Meagan Day". Meagan Day. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  3. "LA's teachers can teach the working class about the power of labor strikes". The Guardian. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  4. Nwanevu, Osita (June 18, 2019). "Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Two Paths for the American Left". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  5. Arrieta-Kenna, Ruairí (February 19, 2020). "Could Higher Turnout Actually Help Trump?". Politico. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  6. Bokat-Lindell, Spencer (February 11, 2020). "President Bernie Sanders?". The New York Times. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  7. "Video emerges of Sanders saying in 1988 a woman could be elected president". The Hill. January 14, 2020. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  8. "Meagan Day | The American Dream Has Become a Global Nightmare - 5/8 | Oxford Union". January 9, 2023. Retrieved January 7, 2025 – via YouTube.
  9. ^ Jones, Mother (December 29, 2016). "When Powerful Players Clash, We Need the Free Press More Than Ever". Medium. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  10. Baird, Robert P. (January 2, 2019). "The ABCs of Jacobin". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  11. "Author: Meagan Day". Jacobin. July 8, 2024.
  12. "I Owe a Lot to Michael Brooks". jacobinmag.com. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  13. Brooks, Michael (March 20, 2018). "TMBS – 32 – 15 Years Of Iraq & Peterson's Ongoing Meltdown ft. Meghan Day & Matt Binder" – via YouTube.
  14. "Meagan Day on Solidarity | Harvard". February 2, 2020. Retrieved January 7, 2025 – via YouTube.
  15. Day, Meagan; Sunkara, Bhaskar (August 10, 2018). "Why America Needs Medicare for All". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  16. Day, Meagan; Sunkara, Bhaskar (August 8, 2018). "Why You Should Care About Unions". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  17. Day, Meagan; Sunkara, Bhaskar (August 6, 2018). "'Modern Day Debtors' Prisons'". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  18. Day, Meagan; Sunkara, Bhaskar (August 7, 2018). "Fighting Bannonism at Home and Abroad". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  19. Day, Meagan; Sunkara, Bhaskar (August 9, 2018). "Think the Constitution Will Save Us? Think Again". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  20. "Bigger Than Bernie: How We Can Win Democratic Socialism in Our Time". Verso.
  21. Weigel, David. "Analysis | The Trailer: Is the president on protesters' side? They're on his". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
  22. Scheer, Robert; Day, Meagan (June 29, 2020). "For Many Young People, Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie". CityWatch Los Angeles. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  23. Sutherland, Amy. "Rick Perlstein on reading, rereading, and writing history". Boston Globe. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
  24. "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism" (PDF). Council of Economic Advisors. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  25. Uetricht, Micah (March 19, 2019). "thinking about how Glenn Beck read from an essay by @jacobinmag's Meagan Day about democratic socialism for like two mins at CPAC a couple weeks ago https://youtube.com/watch?v=353epG-0ZTI" (Tweet). Retrieved October 27, 2022 – via Twitter.
  26. "Evidence of the Left's March Toward Ending Elections". RushLimbaugh.com. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  27. "Newt Gingrich: Democrats have no idea what demons they are unleashing". Fox News. August 17, 2018. Retrieved January 7, 2025.

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