Left

As Latin America Moves Left It Successfully Confronts Hunger

June 3, 2015 Marianela Jarroud, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Caribbean, Hunger, Latin America, Left, Poverty, Social Change

By Marianela Jarroud in IPS News - The Latin American and Caribbean region is the first in the world to reach the two global targets for reducing hunger. Nevertheless, more than 34 million people still go hungry. “This is the region that best understood the problem of hunger, and it’s the region that has put the greatest emphasis on policies to assist vulnerable groups. The results achieved have been in accordance with that emphasis,” FAO regional representative Raúl Benítez told IPS. According to The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) 2015 report, released Wednesday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), hunger affects 5.5 percent of the population of Latin America – or 34.3 million people. That means the region has met the target of halving the proportion of hungry people from 1990 levels, established by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community in 2000, with a 2015 deadline.

Spanish Local Elections: Upstart Podemos, Ciudadanos Parties Shine

May 25, 2015 RT, www.rt.com Educate! Elections, Left, Podemos, Politics, Social Change, Spain

Preliminary results from Spain’s regional elections show big gains for upstart leftist and center-right parties and the Conservatives losing their majority. While receiving the most total votes, the ruling PP party may now face coalition politics. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted in Sunday’s elections, the ruling People’s Party (PP) appears to have secured most of the votes in many of Spain’s 8,122 municipalities. However, it also lost the majority in most of them. Notably in the Madrid city council, PP managed to win 21 of the 57 seats, while 20 seats went to The Madrid Now (Ahora Madrid) coalition backed by a number of left-wing movements, such as Podemos. The Socialist Party (PSOE) won 9 seats in the capital’s assembly.

A Winning Strategy For The Left

May 20, 2015 Michael Schwartz & Kevin Young, www.jacobinmag.com Strategize! Imperialism, Left, Patriarchy, Racial Justice, Revolution, Social Change, Worker Rights and Jobs

Finally, this movement strategy may be more conducive to the long-term goal of promoting systemic change, since it focuses our anger and analysis on the institutions at the heart of capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and war. Winning policy reforms, after all, is not enough: reforms are by definition tenuous since they leave intact the basic institutions and systems of society. As recent history makes painfully clear, labor protections and civil rights for black people have been subject to intense counter-attack by entrenched interests. Military withdrawals have not ended imperial violence. Ultimately, only by destroying the old institutions and building more civilized ones in their place can we hope to safeguard the reform victories we win. And directly confronting the oppressive institutions that shape policy seems to advance this goal better than focusing on politicians.

National Conference On Left Electoral Collaboration

April 24, 2015 Jonathan Nack, www.indybay.org Create! Elections, Left, Politics

“The upcoming conference in Chicago is an exciting opportunity for all of us who understand the importance of independent politics. There are various movements and efforts afoot nationwide. There are also left independent electoral models that work side by side with movements. That is in fact what we do in the RPA, but it's also important that our local efforts be interconnected with like-minded people across the nation. We hope this conference provides the groundwork for a larger interconnected movement for social and environmental change and strengthens us all in the battle against corporate control of our democracy.”

Quebec’s Long Struggle To Build A Democratic Left Party

April 6, 2015 Pierre Beaudet and Richard Fidler, www.rabble.ca Organize! Canada, Left, Party Politics, Quebec, Social Change

In 1971, I worked at the Montréal Central Council of the CSN, where my mentor Michel Chartrand was president. Maligned as an anarcho-syndicalist, he embodied the left opposition in the CSN. He enraged the right wing in the central, which split in 1972 to found the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques (CSD). Chartrand was even beaten up by some thugs during a meeting of the CSN Confederal Council. His relations with Pepin were not cordial. Pepin never indicated any support for him during his lengthy imprisonment under the War Measures Act. Chartrand criticized him above all for not really believing in the "second front." Notwithstanding his outspoken personality in public, the private Chartrand was a humanist, an assiduous reader with a great love of art and a fine taste for good food and wine.

What Europe’s Hopeful Left Can Learn From Latin America

March 9, 2015 Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, www.theconversation.com Strategize! Europe, Greece, Latin America, Left, Social Change, Spain

Hope is not just the ability to wish or fantasise. It is a tool for taking alternative realities seriously so that they might actually become possible. With hope, people can make mental space and concrete preparations for alternative ways of organising their societies – alternatives that are already lurking in the present, but which are simply not thought possible yet. Austerity is unrealistic because it demands that we abandon hope, which is an essential component of our humanity. Our inherent capacity to dream and aspire collectively is our only way to make a truly better world, and a political “reality” that does not accept the possibility of alternatives is not a reality at all, but a demented fiction. In Latin America, the eruption of hope in the face of austerity began with a real sense of injustice and frustration across different sectors of the population, quickly reaching beyond the dedicated activist to the ordinary citizen.

Podemos Poses Major Threat To Spanish Political Establishment

February 5, 2015 Vicente Navarro, www.socialeurope.eu Educate! Europe, Greece, Left, Spain, Syriza

Something is happening in Spain. A party that was only founded a year ago, Podemos, with a clear left-wing programme, could well gain a majority in the Spanish Parliament if an election were held today. Following the victory of Syriza in the Greek elections on 25 January, speculation has been raised as to whether Podemos could achieve a similar feat in Spain’s parliamentary elections later this year, but what is driving the party’s success? Support for Podemos is intricately linked to the policies pursued by the conservative People’s Party government, led by Mariano Rajoy. These policies have included the largest cuts in public social expenditures (dismantling the underfunded Spanish welfare state) since democracy was established in Spain in 1978, and the toughest labour reforms pursued in the same period, which have substantially deteriorated labour market conditions.

Is A European Spring Coming?

February 3, 2015 Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mameli, www.truth-out.org Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Left, Spain, Youth

In the wake of the victory of the progressive party Syriza at the Greek general election on January 25, 2015, some have started talking about the coming of a European Spring, a democratic uprising against the political status quo in Europe. This status quo has imposed brutal austerity policies on countries like Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. These policies have protected and advanced the interests of banks, and more generally, of those holding large financial assets. They have protected and advanced the interests of large corporations. They have generated unbelievably high unemployment rates, a huge squeeze on workers' wages and an astonishing number of bankruptcies among small businesses. They have resulted in dramatic cuts to social security and public health systems. These are economic issues, but they are also moral issues. Robbing a whole generation of European youth of the possibility of finding a decent job is stripping them of their hopes and dignity.

Germans Are In Shock As New Greek Leader Starts With A Bang

January 29, 2015 Noah Barkin, www.businessinsider.com Organize! Austerity, European Union (EU), Germany, Greece, Left, Russia

In his first act as prime minister on Monday, Alexis Tsipras visited the war memorial in Kaisariani where 200 Greek resistance fighters were slaughtered by the Nazis in 1944. The move did not go unnoticed in Berlin. Nor did Tsipras's decision hours later to receive the Russian ambassador before meeting any other foreign official. Then came the announcement that radical academic Yanis Varoufakis, who once likened German austerity policies to "fiscal waterboarding," would be taking over as Greek finance minister. A short while later, Tsipras delivered another blow, criticizing an EU statement that warned Moscow of new sanctions.

The Greek Left, A Call For Pan-European Change

January 27, 2015 Antonis Broumas, www.roarmag.org Educate! Elections, Europe, Greece, Left, Syriza

This is the first time since the Spanish revolution of 1936 that a left party wins general elections in Europe. In this weekend’s national elections in Greece the leftist SYRIZA took 149 out of 300 seats and will now form a coalition government with a small right-wing anti-austerity party to run the country. After seven years of neoliberal overkill the Greek people overthrew the two-party regime that has been governing the country for the past 40 years with socially catastrophic results. The populist-right New Democracy (ND) party took 27,8% and the ex-socialist (now turned neoliberal) PASOK received a petty 4,6% of the votes. SYRIZA has increased its electoral base by 10% since the 2012 elections, by amassing the votes of the underclasses and the violently proletarianized lower middle class.

Syriza’s Historic Win Puts Greece On Collision Course With Europe

January 27, 2015 Ian Traynor and Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Educate! Elections, Greece, Left, Politics, Syriza

Voters handed power to Alexis Tsipras, the charismatic 40-year-old former communist who leads the umbrella coalition of assorted leftists known as Syriza. He cruised to an eight-point victory over the incumbent centre-right New Democracy party, according to exit polls and projections after 99% of votes had been counted. The result surpassed pollster predictions and marginalised the two mainstream parties that have run the country since the military junta’s fall in 1974. It appeared, however, that Syriza would win 149 seats – just short of securing the 151 of 300 seats that would enable Tsipras to govern without coalition partners. “The sovereign Greek people today have given a clear, strong, indisputable mandate,” Tsipras told a crowd of rapturous flag-waving party supporters.

Syriza Wins, Declares End To ‘Vicious Cycle Of Austerity’

January 26, 2015 The Guardian, www.theguardian.com Organize! Elections, Europe, Greece, Left, Syriza

The anti-austerity far left party Syriza has won the Greek election by a decisive margin, but just short of an outright majority. With more than three-quarters of the results in Syriza is projected to win 149 seats in the 300 seat parliament. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said his party’s victory marked an end to the “viscious cycle of austerity”. Referring to the neoliberal conditions set by the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, he said: “ The verdict of the Greek people renders the troika a thing of the past for our common European framework.”

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