The current protests in China signal one of the largest mass mobilizations in the country since the Tiananmen movement of 1989. The immediate trigger is a fire on the night of November 24 that killed at least 10 people, who were mostly Uyghurs, and injured many others in a residential building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region…
Rally for Michigan Prop 3 The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 triggered into effect a 1931 law against abortion in Michigan, as was the case for other old anti-abortion laws in many states. Many prosecutors in the state declared that they would not prosecute, There were also lawsuits brought by the Governor, Gretchen…
In the weeks since leaders of the two largest unions representing railroad workers signed a tentative agreement with the biggest employers of rail labor, they havenât persuaded their members. The White House is nervous. The tentative agreement (TA) brokered by Joe Biden and his Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, to keep freight moving on the rails and…
As the smoke clears â or more accurately, thickens â over the midterm election results, one outcome emerges clearly: the polarization and crisis of U.S. politics continues. And in the next two years at least, political gridlock means that any positive steps on fundamental issues facing the society are vanishingly unlikely â whether on access to…
From L to R: Roberto Naduris, Suzi Weissman and Mike Davis I have lost a dear friend of nearly 50 years, Mike Davis, and the world has lost a voice like no other. An avalanche of remembrances and articles are already appearing, a testament to Mikeâs powerful and distinctive influence, his many books and articles, his generosity, his tireless life…
An image circulating on social media showing Iranian students protesting a picture of the supreme leader. (Photo: Twitter via MERIP) Johanna Brenner (JB): As protests in Iran, sparked by the morality policeâs murder of Mahsa (Jhina) Amini, a Kurdish Iranian woman arrested for âimproper hijab,â enter their fourth week, many of us stand in awe of…
Russians fleeing in the aftermath of Putinâs draft (original image here) REPORTS OF THE reaction of the Russian populace to Putinâs âpartial mobilizationâ suggest that the regime crisis provoked by the invasion of Ukraine has substantially increased, bringing the war to the center of Russian social and political life. Battlefield defeats, the…
Washington, D.C. Dianne Feeley I was one of the several thousand who rallied at Folger Parkâs Capitol Hill district and marched to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 8 on a sunny but brisk fall day. Although the November elections were just one month away, the one-hour rally didnât feature politicians but rather representatives…
Breaking the Impasse Electoral Politics, Mass Action, and the New Socialist Movement in the United States By Kim Moody Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2022, 250 pages, $19.95 paperback. The past six years have seen the greatest expansion of the US socialist movement in almost eight decades. Surprisingly to many, the expansion has come through an organisation…
This is the third of a series of presentations to a February 22, 2022 Solidarity webinar on current struggles in higher education. See Current Struggles in Higher Education for the first article and Fighting Cuts and Rightwing Attacks on Education in Tennessee for the second article in the series. Original image available here. I am a member of the…
Posle on mobilization: what to expect and what is to be done On September 21, Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a âpartialâ mobilization. This step came as a clear sign of the complete failure of Putinâs âspecial operationâ: the army in its current state is unable to retain the occupied Ukrainian territory, and further offensive operations…
UIC GEO membership authorizes a strike by 97%. April, 1, 2022. This is the first of a series of presentations to a February 22, 2022 Solidarity webinar on current struggles in higher education. Iâm going to talk about three leadership groups whose organizing efforts I supported during the pandemic, either as union staff or as a volunteer with the…
On the night of September 11, 2001 I anxiously called a friend and comrade who, at the time, was a flight attendant working out of Bostonâs Logan Airport. I wanted of course to make sure he was okay, to find out what was going on, and what might happen next. The comrade responded with the best, most concise Marxist analysis of the U.S. and global…
On March 11, 2022, Gabriel Boric will be inaugurated as Chileâs president, barring an earthquake, military coup, or some other unexpected event. He will be the most left-wing president of Chile since Salvador Allende, who held the office from November 2, 1970 until his overthrow and murder in a military coup on September 11, 1973. The article excerpted…
Photo: Dominique Botte Every year, International Womenâs Day is a key moment to highlight feminist struggles against patriarchal capitalism, which looks ceaselessly for new ways to oppress and exploit us. With the health crisis provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, added to the economic crisis and the attacks by conservative governments on womenâs…
On the War in Ukraine and Global Crisis With regard to Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor power and Ukraine has the right to national sovereignty and self-defense.With regard to the larger confrontation, NATO and particularly U.S. imperialism are at least equally aggressive and as dangerous as Russian annexationism. NATO should not exist at all, and the…
Philippe Poutou campaign meeting, Rennes, Frence, December 2, 2021. (Photo: Copyright NPA) Philippe Poutouâs campaign, backed by the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA), in the 2017 French presidential election was a small success: in the televised debate of 5 April, we gained a certain notoriety in the confrontation with the right and the extreme…
Mike Parker, 1940-2022 (Photo: Alyssa Kang) On January 15, 2022 the rank and file labor struggle lost a wonderful, brilliant, selfless comrade, Mike Parker. Born into a socialist family, Mike joined the Young Peopleâs Socialist League at the University of Chicago, then as a grad student at Berkeley got active first in the student peace movement, then…
Mike Parker (Photo: Jim West) I was very saddened by the news that Mike Parker, a revolutionary socialist for more than six decades, passed away in Richmond, California on January 15, 2022. I had last seen and talked with Mike in June 2021 at a party attended by more than 100 mainly young radicals in the backyard of the house of my younger daughter…
St. Paul, Minnesota, high school students walk out and march to demand justice for Amir Locke. (Photo: Chad Davis, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons) Once again, protesters gathered in Minneapolis demanding justice for a young Black man killed by the police. The victim was sleeping on a couch. Amir Locke, the 22-year-old man, died on February 2 after…
Everything happening in the United States comes to Canada, only a little later and a tad more politely. The rage that erupted in a Presidential-endorsed riot in Washington on 6 January 2021 has now exploded to the north. Fueled by a confused swirl of resentment against the array of pandemic protocols that all advanced capitalist states have invoked…
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on the coast of California. Wikipedia SPEAKING AT THE Glasgow Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 26), U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases to at least half of 2005 levels by 2030. The ambitious goal is necessary to limit the…
Campaigning for Teamsters United: A coalition of forces brings down Hoffaâs old guard and opens the door to stronger bargaining and new organizing. BIG CHANGES ARE afoot in one of the largest labor unions in North America. Last November, following a three-year campaign, the Teamsters United (TU) slate led by Sean OâBrien defeated the Teamster Power…
In a context of increasing repression and against all odds, the Council of State yesterday, Thursday 20 January 2022, ordered the temporary suspension of our partyâs activities and the closure of our premises. This is a serious precedent against multipartyism and an intolerable additional attack on democratic freedoms in our country. It should be…
KimberlĂ© Crenshaw developed the legal concept of intersectionality in order to analyze how a person could face multiple oppressions. WHO WOULD EVER think that the issue of public education â aside from masks â in the time of a pandemic would be one of the central issues for voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and many other states? Commentators and…
