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Black Alliance For Peace And MANE Reflect On Ecuadorian Elections

April 15, 2025 Black Alliance for Peace and MANE, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
The Black Alliance for Peace and Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano (MANE) reported back on the Ecuadorian presidential elections held on Sunday, April 13, 2025. Despite the fact the current president, Daniel Noboa, issued a last-minute decree (Decree 597) that sealed the northern and southern borders, intending to deny entry to international observers, the election team for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) was able to enter and observe the elections on the ground. The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral) has declared Daniel Noboa the winner of the second round of elections, with over an 11-point lead. With this win, it is certain that Noboa’s declared “internal armed struggle” will continue to negatively and disproportionately impact Ecuador’s poor and AfroEcuadorian communities.

Ecuador: Leftist Luisa Gonzalez Rejects Election Results And Claims Fraud

April 14, 2025 Alejandra Garcia and Bill Hackwell, Resumen English. , , , ,
Today Ecuadorians were called to the polls for the runoff elections, which pitted leftist candidate Luisa Gonzalez against incumbent President and Trump-supported Daniel Noboa. The election day was marked by a series of setbacks, including complaints of irregularities, violations of democracy and the activation of a new state of emergency which allowed the most extreme militarization the country has ever experienced. In addition, the arrival of international observers was prohibited, which generated even more doubts about the transparency of the process. Despite this complicated context, at the end of the day, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced the victory of right-wing billionaire Daniel Noboa, which has raised questions about the veracity of the results.

Trump’s Rule By Fiat A Bipartisan Legacy

March 29, 2025 Vinnie Rotondaro, Consortium News. , , , , ,
U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest defiance of the courts — this time refusing to follow an appellate judge’s order to halt migrant deportations — has triggered another round of liberal outrage. Critics are calling it an authoritarian move, a blatant assault on the rule of law, and a warning sign that American democracy is on its last legs. But if this is the end of democracy, it’s been ending for a long time. And not just at Trump’s hands. The central truth we keep missing — especially on the left — is that Trump is not an aberration. He’s a grotesque continuation.

Will Trump Send US Citizens To El Salvador?

March 22, 2025 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Donald Trump is in a position to do almost anything he wants. He was the clear favorite of republican voters and won the popular vote and majorities in congress. Not content to be satisfied with what he says is a mandate, Trump has upped the ante and departed from the traditional definitions of power in Washington. He has legislative control, but he is making an end run around it with executive orders and defiance of the courts. At a moment of radical political change which includes firing thousands of federal workers and claiming that programs supported by most people are no longer needed, the democrats provide only the thinnest veneer of opposition when the public want them to step up.

Call For Permanent Mobilization In Support Of Social Reforms

March 21, 2025 Resumen English. , , ,
In the midst of tensions with Congress over the shelving of labor reform, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said in Bogotá that a referendum had been launched to decide on the future of the reforms and that the people must remain in permanent and growing mobilization so that the parliamentarians serve them and not the powerful. In front of tens of thousands of people who filled Plaza Bolívar, in the historic center of the capital, the head of state said that the proposal for a referendum is essential to decide the fate of the social reforms presented by the Government of Change.

Participatory Budgeting Includes Community Members In Public Funding

March 18, 2025 Damon Orion, Resilience. , , , ,
In 1989, one-third of the inhabitants of Porto Alegre, Brazil, lived in impoverished regions on the fringes of the city, cut off from sanitation, clean water, medical facilities, and other essential resources. In response, the Brazilian Workers’ Party created participatory budgeting (PB), a citizen engagement process that enables community members to decide how to use a portion of public funds. A 2007 report by the North American Congress on Latin America stated that this brought treated water to 99 percent of Porto Alegre’s population, expanded the sewer system’s reach from 46 percent in 1989 to 86 percent of the city, led to the construction of more than 50 schools from around 1997 to 2007, decreased truancy from 9 to less than 1 percent, and helped double the number of students attending university from 1989 to 1995.

Arizmendi: A Co-Op Of Co-Ops

March 15, 2025 Transition Bus, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , , ,
I like everything all together. I like the fact that it's a cooperative. I like working with my hands and I like physical labor. Everybody's paid the same wage no matter how long you've been working at the Cheeseboard. Even though I'm one of the newest people there - I've only been there two years - I still have all of the rights, responsibilities and privileges as somebody who's been there for 30 or 40 years. Everybody is valued equally and we operate by consensus, but we all make decisions collectively. We're always trying to work together to make the decision work for everybody. So we reach unanimity on almost every decision.

The Need To Protect Direct Democracy

March 12, 2025 Billy Corriher, Governing. , , ,
Direct democracy in America is under attack. That development has been underappreciated as we focus on the vibe shift represented by Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. Still, it tells us just as much about the strengths and weaknesses of America’s constitutional system. Direct democracy in some form — through citizen initiatives, popular referendums or both — is an option in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Citizens can petition to place statutes or constitutional amendments on the ballot or ask voters to approve or repeal actions of their legislatures.

REI Board Blocks Labor-Backed Candidates From Ballot

March 9, 2025 Nate Sanford, Cascade PBS. , , ,
Unionized REI employees are calling on members of the outdoor retail co-op to vote no in this year’s board of director elections after the company excluded two union-backed candidates from the ballot.  The two were Tefere Gebre, chief program officer at the international environmental advocacy group Greenpeace USA, and Shemona Moreno, a Seattle climate activist who leads the nonprofit 350 Seattle.  Anyone who has an active REI membership can vote in its board elections. Members can also nominate themselves to run for a board seat, but bylaw changes in the early 2000s gave the existing board final say over who gets on the ballot. 

Vermont Towns Vote To Cut Ties With Israeli Apartheid

March 7, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
On Tuesdays voters across the state of Vermont passed a number of non-binding resolutions declaring their towns and cities “apartheid-free communities.” The effort, organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), passed in Brattleboro, Winooski, Newfane, Plainfield, and Thetford. The question appeared on nine ballots on Town Meeting Day. Vermont is the first state in the country where municipalities have voted to cut economic ties with Israel. The pledge affirms a commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people, opposes all forms of bigotry, and pledges toward ending “support to Israel’s Apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.”

How Rank-And-File Democracy Transformed The Teamsters And UAW

March 3, 2025 Michael J. Goldberg, Power At Work. , , , , , , ,
It’s well known in labor circles that the 2020’s opened with a tremendous resurgence of rank-and-file activism in the workplace. Beginning with 2021’s “Striketober” and sparked initially by the hardships of the pandemic and emboldened by the labor shortages that followed, that upsurge targeted union and nonunion workplaces alike. Among the collective bargaining breakthroughs in already unionized workplaces, two of the most important involved the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). In 2023, the IBT won a historic contract with its largest employer, UPS, without having to follow through on its threat to strike.

How Movements Can Make Courts Play A Role In Defending Democracy

February 22, 2025 Doug Coltart, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Courts are often seen as a last line of defense for democracy. In the month since Donald Trump took office, over 60 legal challenges have been filed against his administration’s executive actions. Yet many Americans are concerned with how U.S. courts will fare in the new tests to their role as defenders of democracy. What if the courts are compromised or politicized? Do they still have a role and can they still be influenced? In my country, Zimbabwe, our parliament is gearing up to change the Constitution to extend the president’s term of office (and its own term) indefinitely, effectively abolishing the need for future elections.

Tech-Enhanced Deliberation For Cooperative Decision-Making

February 20, 2025 Arantzazulab. , , , ,
In 2025, we will be exploring ways to put this in practice in MONDRAGON’s cooperatives to learn how the principles behind citizens’ assemblies – sortition (randomly selecting decision makers), deliberation, and rotation – can be applied in the context of cooperative decision making and governance. The goals are to help lead to a more engaged workforce and membership, as well as to result in better, more informed, and legitimate decisions in times of complexity.  Furthermore, we will test how new technologies can enrich deliberation processes and facilitate new approaches to decision making in cooperatives.

The Mafia State

February 16, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
Kiss the ring. Grovel before the Godfather. Give him tribute, a cut of the spoils. If he and his family get rich you get rich. Enter his inner circle, his “made” men and women, and you do not have to follow rules or obey the law. You can disembowel the machinery of government. You can turn us and the natural world into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. You can commit crimes with impunity. You can make a mockery of democratic norms and social responsibility. Perfidy is very profitable at first. In the long term it is collective suicide.

A Cautionary Tale From The US Federation Of Worker Co-ops

February 15, 2025 Caleb Elliott, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
In this episode of Punchcard, we speak to Rebecca Kemble, an experienced cooperator from the US, who is a member of Union Cabs Worker Cooperative in Madison and co-founder of the Solidarity Economy Principles Project. From 2009-2016 Rebecca was a member of the board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and in late 2024, Rebecca penned an article pointing a finger at the Federation for having drifted away from its grassroots cooperative movement origins, by centralising power and becoming unaccountable to the cooperatives that it claims to represent.
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