Archive | Remembrance

He was recognized immediately for lifting a previously disreputable style of fiction into literary prominence.

For Samir Amin’s anniversary on Sept 4, Global University for Sustainability invited Samir’s friends to reminisce their interactions with Samir and celebrate the very rich life that Samir lived.

‘Once they are taken to be ideas about a historical world-system, whose development itself involves “underdevelopment,” indeed is based on it, [Marx’s theses] are not only valid, but they are revolutionary as well.’

Samir Amin’s works are not the only things he left behind. His legacy was a guide to those who want to change the world.

Samir Amin is, incontestably, the greatest intellectual—luckily, a Marxist!

‘In our era, when we consider the destructive (ecological and military) might at the disposal of the powers-that-be, the risk, denounced by Marx in his time, that war will end up destroying all the opposing camps, is real. The alternate path demands the lucid and organized intervention of the internationalist front of workers and peoples.’

I was dear friends with Dr. Alan Berkman and his physician wife and comrade Dr. Barbara Zeller. “They shared a deep moral commitment to make medical care available to all,” as Barbara Ehrenreich has written, “even if it took a revolution to achieve.”

30-year-old Sara Hagezy was in exile in Canada since her release from jail in 2018. She was arrested after she waved a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo

Jack Mundey, the leader of the NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation between 1968 and 1974 has passed away at the age of 90. An initiator of the “green bans”, Jack was a Marxist who rediscovered the ecological essence of Marxism.

Thomas Sankara’s passion was Africa’s advancement; his experimental field was Burkina Faso. What President Sankara wanted to see in Africa, he strategized, mobilized and implemented in Burkina Faso. He would then present his successes to African leaders, while encouraging them to surpass his achievements.

The death of Immanuel Wallerstein deprives us of an exceptional mind and an astute critic of capitalist society. This is a doubly lamentable loss at a moment as critical as the present, when the international system suffers under the combined pressures of the tensions provoked by the decline of U.S. imperialism and of the systemic crisis of capitalism.

Wallerstein was a renowned critic of capitalism whose work was aimed at fighting for justice and change.

The international left has lost one of its most lucid intellectual, pedagogical educators and determined activists with the passing of Marta Harnecker on June 14, aged 82.

We mourn the passing of our dear comrade, Marta Harnecker.

Samir Amin’s life resembled that of Karl Marx: a man without a homeland, but one whose home was a chosen commitment to a historical project.

You know you’ve lived well—well enough to rattle the establishment—when the New York Times smears you in the obituary it runs about you (FAIR.org, 6/20/13).

“Increased awareness will not happen through successive adaptations to the requirements of capitalist accumulation, but through awareness of the necessity of breaking with those requirements.” —Samir Amin

Four decades ago Ed Sadlowski was the elected leader of 130,000 blue-collar workers, part of a United Steelworkers (USW) membership then totaling 1.4 million, about twice what it is today.

Ashok Mitra who passed away on May1, 2018, was the doyen among Left intellectuals in the country, held in the highest esteem by one and all for his absolute integrity, his outstanding intellect and his commitment to the cause of the working people.

A short obituary for two dear comrades: Theotonio dos Santos (Carangola, 1936 – Rio de Janeiro, 2018) and Marielle Franco (Rio de Janeiro, 1979 – Rio de Janeiro 2018).