In 1991, a researcher named Tim Berners-Lee created and released for free an application that made the internet (a global computer network used by academic and government researchers since the 1970s) easy for anyone anywhere in the world to use via the medium of the web page. It was the birth of the World Wide Web, and its impact was rapid and profound. Companies quickly developed and marketed web browsers, web-based email services, and dial-up services using telephone lines to access the internet. In 1991, 1.1 percent of North Americans used the internet; by 2000, that number had ballooned to nearly 44 percent. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, these digital technologies had transformed virtually every aspect of social, political, and economic life. For blue-collar and white-collar workers alike, digital technology fragmented the nature of work and the relationship between workers and employers but also provided new opportunities for organization and resistance.

While the 1990s were seen at the time as boom years for the economy—with low inflation,  steady job creation, and a surging stock market (thanks in no small part to the rise of the commercial internet)—in fact the nation was on the path to steadily widening income inequality. Politically, the influence of Reaganite Republicanism proved deep and durable. The Democratic Party itself became much more conservative, embracing the neoliberal policies of the Reagan administration. And even with the end of the Cold War and the improved economy under the two-term presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, efforts to expand the welfare state and legitimize a socially activist government proved largely unsuccessful. Labor unions struggled to maintain their size and strength as free-trade agreements, deregulation, and outsourcing put companies using labor at a competitive disadvantage. Some unions responded by organizing international campaigns to bring consumer pressure and labor protections to offshore workers producing brand-name products.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, issues of international security, increasing economic inequality, and cultural divisions defined the election and subsequent presidency of George W. Bush in 2000. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, generated a wave of patriotic nationalism that the Bush administration leveraged to declare a virtually unfettered “war on terror.” In addition to a military invasion of Afghanistan, which destroyed much of the organizational infrastructure of al-Qaeda (the multistate militant Islamist organization behind the attacks), President Bush inaugurated a far-reaching expansion of the federal government’s authority to investigate and detain suspected terrorists, both at home and abroad. In the spring of 2003, the Bush administration launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq that easily toppled dictator Saddam Hussein but then led to a protracted and increasingly unpopular war against a well-armed and highly motivated insurgency.

When Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 presidential election, it was a moment of both triumph and uncertainty. As the first African American to reach the nation’s highest elected office, he and his family represented a jubilant and hard-fought breakthrough in the fight against the nation’s long and tortured history of white supremacy. Yet the country was entering a deep economic recession, precipitated by a crash in the subprime mortgage market two months earlier. The morning after the election, the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the moment with the front-page headline: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” Faced from the outset by deep-seated Republican opposition to his policy agenda, the Obama administration’s chief legislative accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act, a major health-care reform bill passed after a bruising battle in Congress. In global politics, growing alarm about the world’s unmistakably and rapidly rising atmospheric temperatures spurred increased climate activism and pressure on governments to make significant cuts to carbon emissions.

During the Obama years, the total penetration of digital technology into economic life and concurrent rise of social media reshaped work and activism. Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon grew in size and influence, while corporations in all sectors continued the trend of eliminating traditional employee benefits such as health-insurance coverage, pensions, and paid time off. The introduction of smartphones in 2009 accelerated the growth of the so-called gig economy. Entrepreneurs raised millions of dollars of investment capital on the promise that they would “disrupt” existing industries (such as taxis, food delivery, and entertainment) and make them more profitable. These gig-economy companies offered customers the promise of flexibility and convenience, yet workers had to relinquish predictable schedules, wages, and benefits in exchange. Amid these labor market transformations, fast-food workers powered a labor movement resurgence, organizing grass-roots campaigns to raise minimum wage rates at the state and local levels. Social media services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram became essential new tools for social change activists, most notably in the case of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 shocked the American political system and indeed the world. The Republican Party became increasingly extreme and uncompromising in its social and economic positions, pursuing harsh immigration restriction and deportation policies, substantial tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals, and aggressive restrictions on gender identity and expression and abortion rights. Across Europe, right-wing political parties with similar positions also grew in strength. Trump’s chaotic approach to governing and distinct disregard for rules and laws lasted through his four-year term. His impact extended into communities across the country as he emboldened conservative activists to rally in support of white supremacy, vigilantes to patrol the southern border, and parents to censor classroom instruction on African American history. When he lost the presidential election of 2020 to Joseph Biden, he was unwilling to concede his loss and pressured state officials to change official vote counts. Thousands of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a violent attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s election by Congress.

When the novel coronavirus began sweeping the world in December 2019 (reaching the United States in February 2020), governments quickly moved to shut down public gatherings of all kinds, drastically limiting in-person contact in an attempt to slow the spread of the highly contagious and frequently deadly virus. Few families were unaffected by its swift and devastating impact. Within three years, approximately seven million people were reported dead worldwide, more than one million of them in the United States (according to the World Health Organization). For Americans, the losses largely affected the elderly, those living in congregated settings like nursing homes and prisons, and those who continued to work in person. White-collar office workers, aided by videoconference technologies like Zoom, began working from their homes, and schools similarly pivoted to remote teaching and learning. But many workers—in hospitals and nursing homes, grocery stores, pharmacies, food production, warehouses, and delivery services—lacked that option and found themselves reporting to workplaces that had suddenly become very hazardous to their health. Though deemed “essential workers,” they were often left without the necessary masks, gloves, and other equipment that could have protected them against the virus. It was a crisis for working people that, once the worst of the pandemic had passed, spurred renewed activism around workplace safety and a surge of worker-led union organizing campaigns.