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The Amazon Army And The 1919-1922 Kansas Coal Strikes

November 22, 2021 Robert Ovetz, Portside. , , ,
The struggle of the miners and the Amazon Army appears in no major labor history book. I decided to leave it out in my first book When Workers Shot Back (Ovetz, 2019) due to the lack of documentary evidence to write an entire chapter on it. This oversight is a mistake. The Amazon Army has much to teach us today about the interconnected struggle between waged and unwaged workers, immigrant and native labor, productive and reproductive labor, industrial unionism and organizing for power on the shopfloor, and the use of labor law and unions as a strategy for managing and suppressing class struggle.

Women Hold Up More Than Half The Sky

October 15, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
The farmers’ protests, which began in October 2020, are a sign of the clarity with which farmers have reacted to the agrarian crisis and to the three laws that will only deepen the crisis. No attempt by the government – including trying to incite farmers along religious lines – has succeeded in breaking the farmers’ unity. There is a new generation that has learned to resist, and they are prepared to take their fight across India.

Indigenous Woman Monument To Replace Columbus Statue

September 8, 2021 Indian Country Today. , , ,
Mexico City — Christopher Columbus is getting kicked off Mexico City's most iconic boulevard. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the Columbus statue on the Paseo de la Reforma, often a focal point for Indigenous rights protests, would be replaced by a statue honoring Indigenous women. “To them we owe ... the history of our country, of our fatherland,” she said. She made the announcement on Sunday, which was International Day of the Indigenous Woman. The Columbus statue, donated to the city many years ago, was a significant reference point on the 10-lane boulevard, and surrounding traffic circle is — so far — named for it. That made it a favorite target of spray-paint-wielding protesters denouncing the European suppression of Mexico's Indigenous civilizations.

The Draft Has Been Expanded To Women

September 3, 2021 Edward Hasbrouck, The Practical Nomad. , , ,
Today the House Armed Services Committee joined the Senate Armed Services Committee in voting 35-24 to expand registration for a possible military draft to include young women as well as young men. Following today’s House committee vote and an earlier Senate committee vote in July (before Congress’s summer vacation), the versions of the annual “must-pass” National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to be considered later this fall in both the House and Senate will include provisions requiring women to register for the draft within 30 days of their 18th birthday and report to the Selective Service System each time they change their address until their 26th birthday, as young men have been required to do since 1980. An alternative compromise amendment to suspend draft registration unless the President declared a national emergency and put the Selective Service System into standby was submitted before today’s committee session, but ruled out of order on the basis of arcane PAYGO procedural rules.

The Women Of The Warrior Met Strike

April 22, 2021 Madeleine Freeman and Luigi Morris, Left Voice. , , ,
Alabama - Just 40 miles to the west of where Amazon workers at the BHM1 facility in Bessemer, Alabama, were voting on whether to form a union, 1,100 mine workers at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood began a strike for a fair contract and better working conditions. The strike is now entering its third week, and already the workers have surmounted their first significant obstacle: they voted overwhelmingly to reject a wretched deal presented by the company, one that many workers called “a slap in the face.” The tentative agreement (TA) presented by UMWA union representatives and the company fails to address the workers’ most important concerns: wages, job security, and paid time off. In response, the miners tore up the TA and returned to the picket lines, determined to force the company to offer a better contract.

There Are So Many Lessons To Learn From Kerala

March 30, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
Indian farmers and agricultural workers have crossed the hundred-day mark of their protest against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They will not withdraw until the government repeals laws that deliver the advantages of agriculture to large corporate houses. This, the farmers and agricultural workers say, is an existential struggle. Surrender is equivalent to death: even before these laws were passed, more than 315,000 Indian farmers had committed suicide since 1995 because of the debt burden placed on them. Over the next one and a half months, assembly elections will take place in four Indian states (Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal) and in one union territory (Puducherry).

The Many Burdens Of Women’s Work

March 30, 2021 Chelsea Nash, Rabble.ca. , , ,
My younger sister, 18, is in her first year of college studying marine navigation. She sees herself travelling the world one day, the captain of a cruise ship or similarly large vessel. Already, she has faced overt and repeated sexism, from her male peers. Both my sister and her female roommate have found themselves subjected to sexist jokes and unwanted sexual advances from those who do not appear to understand the meaning of the word "no." They have been told by a female teacher that for the two per cent of women in the industry, sexual assault is an inevitability. My mother, an airline captain, has been counselling her on how to make it in an industry where women are not easily accepted. A great deal of her advice hinges on keeping the peace with male colleagues; knowing what to let slide, when to confront colleagues directly about their behaviour, and when to report them.

Manifesto: Draft Proposal For The Founding Of The International Working Peoples Association, 1979

March 28, 2021 Editors, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Lorenzo Kom’boa  Ervin is probably best known for Anarchism and the Black Revolution, a fifty-six page manifesto that was arguably the first work to systematically apply the principles and theories of anarchism to the history of Black struggle and the question of Black liberation. First published in 1979, Anarchism and the Black Revolution  was written while the Chattanooga-born Irvin was incarcerated in the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois serving a life sentence for hijacking . Ervin was first introduced to anarchism during an interim stint in the Federal Detention Center in...

Venezuelan Women Endure The ‘Sanctions’ With Their Bodies

March 25, 2021 Carmen Navas Reyes and Laura Franco, Internationalist 360. , , ,
On February 20, the New York Times published an article titled “Venezuelan Women Lose Access to Contraception, and Control of Their Lives.” This article attempts to distort reality, as it completely ignores the siege and aggressions the Venezuelan people currently subjected to. For greater context, we should note that in 2012, Venezuela granted completely free access to safe and quality contraceptives, reaching a coverage of 22.16% in the national public health system. Access was nearly universal both due to the purchasing power of Venezuelans at the time and because both private and public health networks were subsidized up to 70% by the government, with funds guaranteed by the country’s foreign income.

Testimonies From The Gloria Quintanilla Women’s Cooperative Of Nicaragua

November 2, 2020 Friends of the ATC. , , ,
When a group of campesinas in the community of Santa Julia, Nicaragua founded the Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative in 2008 with the Rural Workers’ Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo – ATC), one of their basic rules was that men were not allowed to hurt women. With much struggle, they have rid their rural community of machismo and established a high value on women’s work. In collaboration with the ATC and the Sandinista government, the women have fought for and won land titles in their names, their own homes, access to education, improved roads, and most recently, a community water well. 

Train A Woman To Farm, And The Community Will Eat

September 26, 2020 Rita Otu, Organic Without Boundaries. , , ,
There is no shame in farming, there is only shame in biting the hand that feeds you. Farmers for a long time have been looked down upon and yet they are an essential group. Constantly working hard to provide food to sustain life on earth. Women farmers especially in my community have been ignored and their concerns dismissed. I did not like this attitude and wanted to change it. It was not until I ventured more into organic farming that I became more respectful of nature, but also myself and those around me.

World Misses 2020 Biodiversity Goals

September 16, 2020 By Chloé Farand, Climate Change News. , , ,
A draft version of the fifth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook, seen by Climate Home News, reported that none of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets set in Japan in 2010 have been fully met. It identified failure to account for the role of women as a significant barrier to progress, along with funding shortfalls and harmful subsidies. Prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the report provides a summary of the state of nature and biodiversity worldwide. The final report is due to be released next Tuesday after being reviewed by negotiators, with reflections on the way forward and how Covid-19 recovery packages could help achieve biodiversity goals. It comes as governments are preparing to adopt a new set of biodiversity targets beyond 2020 i

Is Movement Journalism Needed During Reckoning Over Race And Inequality?

August 27, 2020 Tina Vasquez, Nieman Reports. , , , ,
Last summer I found myself at the M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge in Jackson, Mississippi. Considered “the epicenter of the civil rights movement,” the well-worn building was once the training site for the Freedom Riders and home to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It seemed a fitting place to launch Freedomways, a journalism fellowship prioritizing women of color and LGBTQ+ people rooted in the American South and committed to doing reporting that advances justice.

Family Of Murdered Army Specialist Accuses The Army Of A Cover-up

July 6, 2020 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Violence against women in the military and at Fort Hood has been going on for a very long time. Twelve years ago, in 2008, I wrote an article “Is There an Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?” that detailed violence against women assigned to units from Fort Hood that were then located in Iraq.   Now, twelve years later, the Army’s handling of the investigation into SPC Guillen’s disappearance was an affront to Guillen’s family and to military women on Fort Hood.  For three months the perpetrator of the murder of SPC Guillen roamed free on Fort Hood, capable of murdering other young women and showing such impunity that according to SPC Guillen’s sister Mayra who had met him during one of her visits to Fort Hood, that “he laughed in my face.  I had a very uneasy feeling about him.”

Three Populists And Three Women

June 18, 2020 Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell, Counterpunch. , , ,
Looking at the total Covid-19/Coronavirus global death statistics on Saturday, 13 June 2020, three things become noticeable. The first remarkable issue is that Donald Trump’s USA has just exceeded the total number of fatalities it suffered during World War I. In that war, the USA lost 116,516. On Saturday morning, the USA had lost 116,795 to the Coronavirus, continuing on an approximately daily death rate of between 800 to 1,000 since the last few weeks. It happened on Donald Trump’s watch and no blame shifting can change the fact that the USA did rather badly compared to all other countries on earth. Secondly, in terms of total deaths caused by the Coronavirus, the top three positions are held by “America First” USA (1), the UK (2), and Brazil (3).
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