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America’s Auto Workers: On Strike Against Inequality, Again

September 18, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , , , , ,
This past Thursday night, just hours before the expiration of the United Auto Workers contract with Detroit’s Big Three, UAW president Shawn Fain had plenty on his mind. Most of that plenty would be obvious and predictable. The impending expiration of his union’s auto industry contract, with no new pact in sight. The state of the union’s readiness for what could be the UAW’s most pivotal strike since 1937. But Fain had something else on his mind as well: the continuing and unforgivable maldistribution of America’s income and wealth. “Just as in the 1930s,” Fain reminded his fellow auto workers, “we’re living in a time of stunning inequality throughout our society.”

The Significance Of The Cuban Five, A Quarter Century Since Their Arrest

September 15, 2023 Liset García, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
The memory of the event that occurred 25 years ago today will forever remain in the Cuban people. On September 12, 1998, five Cuban men were targeted by the extreme hatred of those in Miami who have not ceased in attacking Cuba. That day, they were arrested, and their long battle for justice began. Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González were given brutal sentences, ranging from 15 years to two life sentences, without being proven to be a danger to US national security. They came to the US unarmed—except for the love of their homeland—to monitor the activities of heavily financed anti-Cuba terrorist groups, who were operating with impunity out of Southern Florida

The Importance Of Shining A Light On Hidden Toxic Histories

September 15, 2023 Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Scheer Post. , , ,
Indianapolis proudly claims Elvis’ last concert, Robert Kennedy’s speech in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the Indianapolis 500. There’s a 9/11 memorial, a Medal of Honor Memorial and a statue of former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. What few locals know, let alone tourists, is that the city also houses one of the largest dry cleaning Superfund sites in the U.S. From 1952 to 2008, Tuchman Cleaners laundered clothes using perchloroethylene, or PERC, a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen. Tuchman operated a chain of cleaners throughout the city, which sent clothes to a facility on Keystone Avenue for cleaning.

Teaching September 11

September 13, 2023 Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess, Consortium News. , , , , , , , , ,
The phrase “Never Forget” is often associated with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But what does this phrase mean for U.S. students who are too young to remember? What are they being asked to never forget? As education researchers in curriculum and instruction, we have studied since 2002 how the events of 9/11 and the global war on terror are integrated into secondary level U.S. classrooms and curricula. What we have found is a relatively consistent narrative that focuses on 9/11 as an unprecedented and shocking attack, the heroism of the firefighters and other first responders and a global community that stood behind the U.S. in its pursuit of terrorists.

What If There Had Been No Coup In Chile In 1973?

September 8, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
Imagine this scenario. On 11 September 1973, the reactionary sections of the Chilean army, led by General Augusto Pinochet and given a green light by the US government, did not leave their barracks. President Salvador Allende, who led the Popular Unity government, went to his office in La Moneda in Santiago to announce a plebiscite on his government and to ask for the resignation of several senior generals. Then, Allende continued his fight to bring down inflation and to realise his government’s programme to advance the socialist agenda in Chile. Until the moment when the Chilean Army descended upon La Moneda in 1973, Allende and the Popular Unity government were in a pitched fight to defend Chile’s sovereignty.

Waves Of Strikes Rippling Across The US Seem Big

September 5, 2023 Judith Stepan-Norris and Jasmine Kerrissey, Scheer Post. , , ,
More than 323,000 workers – including nurses, actors, screenwriters, hotel cleaners and restaurant servers – walked off their jobs during the first eight months of 2023. Hundreds of thousands of the employees of delivery giant UPS would have gone on strike, too, had they not reached a last-minute agreement. And nearly 150,000 autoworkers may go on a strike of historic proportions in mid-September if the United Autoworkers Union and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – the company that includes Chrysler – don’t agree on a new contract soon. This crescendo of labor actions follows a relative lull in U.S. strikes and a decline in union membership that began in the 1970s.

Movements, Intellectuals To Discuss Building Socialism In Latin America

September 2, 2023 Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Movement leaders and intellectuals from across Latin America and the Caribbean will meet in Santiago, Chile, from September 2-4 for the Regional Dilemmas of Humanity Conference. The conference seeks to provoke debate and discussion about building socialism and finding solutions to address the major crises generated by capitalism. The conference, organized by the regional social movement platform ALBA Movimientos and the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), will be held in the Open University of Recoleta. It will take place alongside a series of historical commemorations to be held in the Chilean capital to mark the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état against the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende and the 53rd anniversary of the victory of Popular Unity.

Hannes Gerhardt: From Capital To Commons

September 1, 2023 David Bollier. , , , ,
Gerhardt has a firm grasp of the extensive literature on Internet culture over the past fifty years – the critiques, histories, and technical controversies. What distinguishes his book from many others about the Internet is his political acuity in assessing the challenges. He offers chapters on “democratizing infrastructure” such as the electric grid and the Internet itself, as well as on how to support “design global, manufacture local” production. Unlike many techies, Gerhardt is also mindful of the limits of the natural world, so he devotes space to localism, urban waste, and agriculture as a renewable resource.

Driving Economic Justice: The Public Option

August 29, 2023 Udayan Tandon, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , , ,
Taxi workers in the late 1960s and through the 1970s struggled against the transformation of their industry from regulated and unionized jobs to deregulated independent contracting work. This meant the loss of collective bargaining rights for taxi workers and a sharp rise in precarious working conditions as employers were able to shift business risk onto workers, cut expenses on benefits, and increase profits in-turn. In a spirited response, taxi workers self-organized and sustained union-like alt labor groups, for example the New York Taxi Workers Alliance in New York and United Taxicab Workers  in San Francisco, that fought for better working conditions for taxi workers through municipal and city regulations.

Ukraine Providing A Testing Ground For Space-Based Weapons

August 26, 2023 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. , , , ,
In his 1988 book War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination, H. Bruce Franklin traces a deep-rooted cultural belief in the magic of futuristic weapon systems that would enable the U.S. to defeat any foreign adversary. . Franklin dates the infatuation to the era of the revolutionary war with the development of the combat submarine by Robert H. Fulton to pulverize the British Navy. He in turn shows a direct line through World War I and World War II and the development of air power and the atomic bomb, through the Vietnam War where sophisticated U.S. war machines could not defeat the guerrilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong.

Venezuela’s Experience Of Building Democracy Under Siege

August 25, 2023 Blanca Eekhout, Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
From the moment of their initiation, progressive and anti-imperialist projects face constant and enormous challenges. There is the urgent need to resolve the socio-economic problems of the people: hunger, unemployment, and access to health and education. But how can that be achieved without advancing the forces of production and development in the economy? At the same time, how can the economy be developed in a capitalist world without reproducing the exploitation of workers? And furthermore, how can this be accomplished in the face of resistance from a resentful local oligarchy and a determined imperialism, which together coordinate actions of destabilization, siege, sabotage, media campaigns, and even coup and assassination attempts?

Taking Lessons From Black Political Prisoners During Black August

August 25, 2023 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
From local police outfitted with military-grade equipment, to nonviolent protesters jailed on terrorism charges, the spectacle of state repression has become an increasingly visible part of the Black liberation struggle in U.S. cities. Police and prisons have long served as a conduit for stamping out Black-led protest movements, especially when those movements openly challenge capitalism and state power. Between the 1960s and 1980s, for example, local, state and federal law enforcement coordinated massive campaigns to dismantle radical groups like the Black Panthers, Republic of New Afrika and Black Liberation Army, using long prison sentences to take their members off the map.

Hollywood Is A Union Town, But The History Is Complicated

August 25, 2023 Steven Wishnia, The Indypendent. , , , ,
The American movie industry has been one of the most consistently unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but to achieve that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the moguls” and organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne, author of Class Struggle in Hollywood 1930-1950. Craft workers — painters, plumbers, carpenters — were the first to organize, joining the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), founded in New York in 1893. Five hundred of them went on strike in 1918. The Screen Writers Guild, ancestor of the Writers Guild of America, was founded at a meeting of 10 writers in February 1933, and the Screen Actors Guild, a few months later.

We Did Not Evolve To Be Selfish; We Can Choose How Our Cultures Evolve

August 24, 2023 April M. Short, ZNet. , , , ,
Ours is a critical time in the cultural evolution of humanity that is likely to shape our long-term future, or lack thereof. As a species, we have been on a self-destructive trajectory that has led us to our current polycrisis of unlivable economic conditions, worsening climate disasters, and the potential of an unspeakably devastating war, as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 puts it. The changes we all need to make, if we want subsequent generations to enjoy life, will most likely require big shifts toward improving connections with each other and the planet, and away from extraction and individualism.

The Imperialist History Behind The Maui Fires

August 22, 2023 Emma Lee, Left Voice. , , , , , , ,
On August 8, a wildfire began in Lahaina, Maui, that spread to affect over 3,200 acres of the island. As the former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom, Lahaina is a significant historical and cultural site for Native Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli). So far, over 110 people have been killed by the wildfires, at least 20 people have been injured, and over a thousand people are still missing. At the center of this disaster is the long and ongoing struggle for water and land rights for Native Hawaiians.
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