Author: Dan La Botz

A GI Rebellion: When Soldiers Said No to War

Fifty years ago this fall, a campus upsurge turned opposition to the Vietnam War into a genuine mass movement.
On October 15, 1969, several million students, along with community-based activists, participated in anti-war events under the banner of the “Vietnam Moratorium.” . . .

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Moving Targets: DSA’s 2019 Convention

Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) held its 2019 National Convention. I wrote a piece for Jacobin giving an overview of the major decisions that came out of the convention, but there’s a larger conversation to be . . .

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DSA Convention 2019—Overcoming Divisions—Votes to Maintain Strong National Organization, Takes up Ambitious Organizing Agenda

Some 1,056 delegates to the Democratic Socialists of America convention, representing some 55,000 DSA members, met in Atlanta over the weekend and voted to adopt a series of resolutions that will continue to build a strong national organization capable of . . .

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Fortieth Anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution; Twenty-Ninth Anniversary of the Counter-Revolution in Power

I can only outline here the complex history of the Nicaraguan revolution and counter-revolution, but cannot do them justice in a short article. I have given a more detailed account in my article “Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s Nov. 6 Election, and . . .

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Against the GrayZone Slanders

A recent article in the GrayZone viciously slanders the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine, and Haymarket books, accusing these sponsors of the Socialism conference in Chicago last weekend of hosting paid government agents engaged in attempts at regime change in several countries. . . .

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The Socialist Manifesto of Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin: Socialism without Revolution  

Bhaskar Sunkara, the young, left, entrepreneurial genius who founded and publishes Jacobin, has written a book, The Socialist Manifesto, in which he puts himself forward as the spokesperson for his generation’s socialist movement in America. He is certainly in a . . .

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To Whoever Is Still Willing to Listen

President André Manuel López Obador has deployed several thousand troops of the newly created National Guard to the state of Chiapas to deter Central American immigrants from entering Mexico from Guatemala and in that way to please U.S. President Donald . . .

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Mexico’s President Knuckles Under to Trump, Woos Mexico’s Business Class

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), a left-of-center populist in office for only six months, finds himself under enormous pressure from the United States—and he is yielding. U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that AMLO’s government do more to . . .

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The Road to Prison Abolition: A Practical Solution

Seemingly overnight, politicians are tripping over themselves as they clamor for prison reform in a climate where cases of police murder and prison abuses have drawn thousands in protests onto the streets. Today, few would doubt that America’s criminal justice . . .

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At the Trotsky Conference in Beleaguered Cuba

Trotsky Conference in Cuba Poster
Last week I was in Cuba to attend an academic conference on Trotsky. The night before the conference began I had arrived very late at the government-regulated air B&B where I was staying. First there had . . .

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For Nicaraguans April Never Ended

This awakening was not about ideologies, but for the country and against a common adversary: the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. Nobody prepared us or financed us.
By Lesther Aleman*  (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – We all asked for changes, but never thought of demanding, living and writing . . .

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Yet Another Turkish Election

In February of 2019, districts in the Turkish cities of Ankara and Istanbul began selling produce directly to consumers at local markets in an effort to bypass retailers, who had been characterized by President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan as “terrorizing” society . . .

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Solidarity with the Algerian People

Solidarity with the Algerian people in their struggle for popular sovereignty
Renaissance of the Algerian revolution
Statement of Fourth International Bureau
Algeria is experiencing a popular uprising that is unprecedented since the proclamation of national independence. Since 22 February 2019, following calls launched . . .

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Notes on DSA Pre-Convention

We publish here an account of the discussions taking place in the Democratic Socialists of America, now the largest left organization in the United States with over 50,000 members , as it prepares for its national convention to take place . . .

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Venezuela on the Brink

The troops gathering on the borders between Venezuela and Brazil and Colombia are no less threatening to Venezuela because they claim to be protecting a ‘humanitarian convoy’. And Richard Branson’s concert simply provides another cover to conceal the real purposes . . .

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Trump Takes Another Step Toward Authoritarian Government

Socialists must organize a national movement against Trump’s national . . .

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DSA Two Years Later: Where Are We At? Where Are We Headed?

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It has been two years since the explosive surge of the Democratic Socialists of America, now the largest socialist organization in the United States and the largest since the 1940s. And DSA has had some remarkable successes. Today as the country turns its attention to the presidential election of 2020, we ask: How DSA is doing? What is it accomplishing? And where is it going? What do the various caucuses and political tendencies within DSA propose as a future direction for the group? Is there a genuine left wing of DSA, and if not, what is the alternative?

Trump’s “Withdrawal” — What Next?

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Militarist hawks and liberal pundits alike are up in arms (figuratively speaking, of course) over Donald Trump’s “victory” proclamation and announcement of U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Syria. Howls of Republican outrage may signal a further deterioration of the big twit’s shrinking political support on the home front. The Trump gang’s crisis of legitimacy deepens by the day. But what does it actually mean for the cascading disasters in the Middle East?

Nicaragua Update: Escalation of Ortega’s War on NGOs and Independent Media

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Nicaragua’s eight-month long political crisis is escalating. In the past two weeks, the government of Daniel Ortega has intensified its crackdown on opposition media and on NGOs while facing the US administration’s passage of the Magnitsky-Nica Act legislation. 

The government rescinded the legal status of nine NGOs in one week, at once seizing their assets, freezing their bank accounts, and sending into exile and hiding a new cluster of oppositional leaders. The crackdown began with CISAS, a renowned health promotion NGO led by a vocal feminist opponent to the regime, then CENIDH, the national human rights organization, and then a host of other organizations – from environmental and community development NGOs to economic think tanks that the government itself has relied upon for data and analysis.

Urgent Communiqué about Nicarauga: Government Attack on Human Rights Groups, NGOs, Media

ImageThe following statement is from the Articulación de Movimientos Sociales, the coalition of social movements in Nicaragua.

Alert and Request for International Condemnation: Nicaraguan Government Raids the offices of the principal human rights, non-governmental and media organizations.

URGENT COMUNIQUE December 14, 2018. 2PM (CST) Alert and Request for International Condemnation: Nicaraguan Government Raids the offices of the principal human rights, non-governmental and media organizations.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Promises the “Rebirth of Mexico”

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador took the presidential oath on December 1 and then gave an hour and a half oration to the legislators as well as another lengthy speech to the people of Mexico City gathered in the zócalo, in which he reiterated his campaign promises to end corruption, to bring about economic prosperity, and to lead Mexico into a new historic fourth period of Mexican history, a period of "rebirth." The speech made clear that AMLO, as he is called by his initials in the press, is a reformer, but not a radical and certainly not a revolutionary as his opponents have claimed. His call for an end to neoliberalism and to corruption are accompanied by invitations to Mexican and foreign capitalists to invest and make a profit.

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