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Israeli soldiers killed an 11-year-old Palestinian boy. Then, during his funeral, they killed someone else
On Wednesday afternoon, Israeli forces shot and killed 11-year-old Mohammed al-Alami in his father’s car, as the family were on their way home from grocery shopping. The next day at Mohammed’s funeral, Israeli soldiers attacked the procession, killing 20-year-old Shawkat Awad.
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Repressing radical protest, tolerating reactionary violence: The U.S. double standard in historical context
The following essay examines the different reactions to radical and reactionary protest, and situates them in a broader historical context. In doing so, we find that the capitalist state will tolerate reactionary violence to a large extent since it represents no threat to capitalist property relations. In contrast, when faced with radical (and particularly socialist) movements capitalist states engage in much more severe repression.
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The Visionary Marxist
Is fundamental, revolutionary change possible from within a social and economic system so shaken that questions of dual power are not likely to be raised?
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U.S. State Department lectures Cuba about human rights and living conditions
Today with the height of imperial arrogance and hubris, the U.S. State Department issued a joint statement to further its plans to destroy Cuba and all the gains it has made in health, education and welfare.
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Glen Ford, veteran journalist and founder of Black Agenda Report, dies at 71
Glen Ford spent more than four decades delivering the news from a Black perspective on a national scale.
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Daniel Hale sentenced to 45 months for exposing U.S. drones program and kill list
Hale released a total of 17 documents, of which 11 were marked secret and top-secret. One exposed that during one five-month period of the operation, civilian casualties constituted over 90% of the victims of drone strikes.
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The great contest of our time is between humanity and imperialism: The Thirtieth Newsletter (2021)
On 23 July 2021, a full-page appeal appeared in the New York Times calling on United States President Joe Biden to withdraw the vindictive U.S. blockade against Cuba.
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Transatlantic slave trade: Legacy of entangled affair between imperialism, racism, slavery
To legitimize slavery and its atrocities, western imperialism birthed racism, idea of superiority of whites over Black people.
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Genocide and Colonialism: Challenging the Canadian State
Public opinion has been shaken by the ‘discovery’ of unmarked graves of children who died in residential schools. The word ‘discovery’ has to be placed in quotation marks because Indigenous communities have been saying for many years that terrible things happened at these places. The time has come to call this what it is–a genocide.
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Beware UN Food Systems Summit trojan horse
In the last dozen years after the 2008 world food price spike, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has become an inclusive forum for civil society and corporate interests to debate how best to advance food security. Unsurprisingly, CFS has long addressed food systems.
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Here is why we are boycotting the UN Food Systems Summit
Social movements and scientists are staying out of the UN summit because it represents big agribusiness interests.
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People working a minimum wage job can’t afford rent anywhere in the U.S.
Over 40% of Black and Latinx households pay more than 30% of their income on rent, compared with 25% of white households.
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Nicaragua’s Sandinistas battle ‘diabolical’ U.S. empire and poverty on 42nd anniversary of revolution
The Grayzone reports from Nicaragua on the 42nd anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. Nicaraguans discuss their improved quality of life, President Ortega condemns the dictatorial U.S. “empire that wants to dominate all countries,” and Vice President Murillo declares poverty an imperialist “crime against humanity.”
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What’s actually going on in Cuba?
Don’t believe everything you read on social media.
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People’s lawyer P. A. Sebastian and the Socialist Project
Sebastian, in his writings in The Fight to Win Rights, is direct, and honest, unafraid to state unpalatable facts. Blunt and matter-of-fact, his words seem to be deliberately chosen to appeal to the conscience of people, his mode of expression reflecting his commitment to justice and the truth.
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Michael Ratner’s inspiring activist life culminated with dramatic change on Israel
Michael Ratner personally changed human rights law, and in doing so he let go childhood views of Israel. “I thought of [Israel] as the home of my people. I had my bedroom ceiling painted with the seven wonders of the world and a huge map of Israel. I had no idea how my view of Israel would change later in life.”
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Freedom Rider: Standing with the Cuban people
The current Black-centered Cuban protest operation is very well orchestrated and if Black people in this country are not careful, they will end up amplifying the dictates of U.S. imperialism.
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Cuba: hell, purgatory and paradise
The United States was never satisfied with having lost the Cuba subjected to its ambitions. Therefore, shortly after the victory of the guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra, they tried to invade the island with mercenary troops. They were defeated in April 1961. The following year, President Kennedy decreed the blockade of Cuba, which continues to this day.
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#BetitaTaughtUs: Chicanisma and El Movimiento
With deep sadness and respect, Organizing Upgrade is sharing a few more tributes to movement elder Betita Martinez, who died June 29. In her 95 years she lived many lifetimes, and brought her commitment, wit and political clarity to several of the most significant social movements of our day.
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Behold: the fallacy of “techo-inevitabilism”
Director Werner Herzog’s documentary ‘Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World’ (2016) begins with “Internet pioneer” Leonard Kleinrock, who welcomes us into the, yes, actual laboratory where it was “born”! To Wagnerian strains in the soundtrack, Kleinrock complacently calls the place “a holy shrine”–quite a revealing phrase for this acolyte of possibly the last of the false religions.