Subjects Archives: Movements

Do federal courts have the legitimate power to block Presidential orders concerning immigration and border control? Yes. Article 3 of the constitution gives them that power. In the current controversy, we should remind ourselves of this fragile and endangered separation of powers, on which we now rely as a bulwark against racism, bigotry and xenophobia.

I wanted to share a short update from Standing Rock regarding a multitude of travesties that have occurred there this week…. Trump was elected and sworn in. Nuff said. He signed an Executive Order pushing the climate denial greed and financial gain of his friends in the oil and gas industry, specifically pushing the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL Pipeline—both climate travesties hurt communities, will not increase jobs, and endanger water and the environment.

Every January, for the past 13 or so years, my cuter half, Laura Whitehorn, our very good friend Tynan Jarrett from Montreal, and i visit Herman Bell, who’s been held in various prisons since 1974.…the following is about our latest visit with Herman, Friday, January 27.

Since 2011, the torrent of ill-informed, inaccurate and often entirely dishonest analysis of events in Syria has been unremitting. I have written previously about the dangers of using simplistic explanations to make sense of the conflict, a problem that has surfaced repeatedly over the past five years. However, there is a greater problem at large.

This dream.  Something is in the house, something’s breaking, the things I love are going away.  I reach for Laura, she becomes translucent, evaporates.  I wake up, telling myself this dream means I’m worried about how tired and worn Laura has grown from years of activist work trying to get people out of prison.  I’ve […]

We lost Fidel.  We gained a history of examples and wisdom. The story of Fidel is beyond words — we cannot describe it with words alone.  So I would like to just give a testimony. He used all his wisdom, knowledge, leadership, and dedication to build, over 60 years, a united and organized people, who […]

Today’s post discusses the way that neoliberal policies embraced by the Democratic Party resulted in job loss in key states.  Bear with me: there are facts and figures here that make the case.  Tomorrow, I will continue to discuss these issues in the context of “domestic” job displacement.  The third post will discuss a progressive […]

Donald Trump and his allies have announced their agenda.  It includes torture, denial of basic human rights, military action that violates the laws of war, racial injustice, misogyny, and xenophobia.  What role and responsibility do we have?  I am a lawyer, teacher, and writer.  So I speak to those in my profession and those preparing […]

The following is an excerpt from Bernie Sanders’ speech at a meeting of the National Committee for Independent Political Action in New York City on June 22, 1989, published under the title “Reflections from Vermont” in the December 1989 issue of Monthly Review. [wc_highlight color=”red”] —Ed.[/wc_highlight] It seems obvious to me that there is no […]

In part II of our interview with Steve Ellner, the Universidad de Oriente professor discusses a range of contentious issues in Venezuela, including the efficacy of state social programs such as the CLAPs, rentierism, and the Maduro government’s controversial Mining Arc, as well as the role of international solidarity.  Part I of the conversation can […]

The fact that a large number of refugees, especially from countries which have been subjected of late to the ravages of imperialist aggression and wars, are desperately trying to enter Europe is seen almost exclusively in humanitarian terms.  While this perception no doubt has validity, there is another aspect of the issue which has escaped […]

The Protest Encampment at the entrance of the Federal Courthouse in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico against the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (cynically called “PROMESA”), as well as the Wall Street Junta that said law imposes, constitutes an important act of popular resistance. In addition to the dictatorial Wall Street Junta, PROMESA sets up a legal framework to impose a $4.25-an-hour wage on young workers ages 20-24, curtail and even eliminate public sector pensions, cancel collective bargaining agreements, and ram through a host of other austerity measures upon the Puerto Rican people.

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is a social movement founded in 1984.  For more information, contact Cassia Bechara at [email protected]>.

The March 9 debate in Miami between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was the first chance the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination had to discuss immigration and its connections to trade and U.S. policy in Latin America.  Unfortunately, neither candidate took advantage of the opportunity. The mainstream “immigration debate” generally avoids mentioning the […]

[G]iven the many ways in which crime has been understood through race and racist stereotypes, the stock characterizations in true crime stories have ever more damaging implications. Such distortions are more than bad history. They are toxic justifications for continued police brutality, mass incarceration, and the surveillance state in the name of “fighting crime.”… This is what makes Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage not just disappointing but ultimately dangerous. Its genre is history as “true crime.” Burrough chronicles six revolutionary underground organizations from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s: the Weather Underground (WU), which emerged out of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an offshoot of the Black Panther Party; the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), whose best known act was kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst; the New World Liberation Front, a curious sequel of sorts to the SLA; the Puerto Rican independence group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional; and a New England group of working-class white radicals that ultimately called itself the United Freedom Front.

Who says us white leftists have no feeling for High Art?  Hundreds of thousands of capitalist imperialist museum-going, opera-loving, overly literate fuck-faces, that’s who. To smash this top-down bourgeois conspiracy, I am taking a couple of months off from writing this column to start a highly classy — yet class-conscious — literary journal, to be […]

  There are more powerful things than the Troika Solidarity needed more than before Συλλαλητήριο ενάντια στο νέο μνημόνιο Δευτέρα 13.7.15 και ώρα 7:00μμ http://t.co/RtYvlT17wT — Α.Δ.Ε.Δ.Υ. (@adedygr) July 13, 2015 Civil servant union ADEDY also calls public sector workers for anti-bailout demonstration outside Parliament at 7pm local time. #Greece — Elena Becatoros (@ElenaBec) July […]

The May 7th UK general election, which saw the Conservatives win a slim majority, witnessed a democratic revolution of unprecedented scale in Scotland.  England backed continued austerity, neo-liberal economics and £12 billion welfare spending cuts; the Scots overwhelmingly rejected that approach. In the UK parliament Scotland is represented by 59 MPs, of whom, before May, […]

The 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War will be commemorated the day after tomorrow, May 9. Given the time difference, while I write these lines, the soldiers and officials of the Army of the Russian Federation, full of pride, will be parading through Moscow’s Red Square with their characteristic quick, military steps.… Lenin was a brilliant revolutionary strategist who did not hesitate in assuming the ideas of Marx and implementing them in an immense and only partly industrialized country, whose proletariat party became the most radical and courageous on the planet in the wake of the greatest slaughter that capitalism had caused in the world, where for the first time tanks, automatic weapons, aviation and poison gases made an appearance in wars, and even a legendary cannon capable of launching a heavy projectile more than 100 kilometers made its presence felt in the bloody conflict.

  Gomtipur (Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India) was once called the Manchester of Gujarat.  Did the decline of the mills contribute to the rise of the rightwing? Gujarat/ Malegaon films’ update: April 14. 2015 ([email protected]) #Crowdfunding #FinalSolutionRevisited… Posted by Rakesh Sharma on Tuesday, April 14, 2015 Rakesh Sharma is an internationally-acclaimed Indian documentary filmmaker.  Follow Sharma on […]