South Africa–The Marikana Massacre and the New Wave of Workers’ Struggle
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South Africa–The Marikana Massacre and the New Wave of Workers’ Struggle
[This article will be appearing in the summer 2013 issue of New Politics.]
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Timing of the Chicago School closings?
Rahm Emanuel has timed these school closings to frighten Chicago teachers, to punish them for their successful challenge to the rich and powerful who control Chicago’s schools, to make Chicago teachers doubt their strength — and to sway the upcoming union election.
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Rebutting David Greenberg's Hit Job on Howard Zinn
The March 25 issue of The New Republic offers a lengthy piece by Rutgers professor David Greenberg, “Agit-Prof: Howard Zinn’s Influential Mutilations of American History.” The essay presented as a review of Martin Duberman’s Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (2012) [read the review by Ron Briley, the book editor of History News Network (HNN),…
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Logos symposium on Labor
Logos, the online, on point and highly readable journal of modern society & culture features in its most recent issue a symposium on the future of US unions. In addition to a piece by me [“So Why Don’t We Have Better Unions?”] are contributions from Melvin Dubofsky, Bill Fletcher Jr., and Steve Early and Rand…
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The Last American Idealist
Christopher Dorner's brutal killings of multiple people vaguely associated with the Los Angeles police have caused debates over both the department's deployment of manhunt drones and the disastrous trigger-happiness that had them showering bullets on any hapless civilian with the misfortune to d
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Nicaragua: Hunger, Malnutrition, and the Fight to End Them
School began this week for children all over Nicaragua, but even before children entered the classroom the Nicaraguan government had begun supplying its School Feeding Program as the Ministry of Education transferred food from warehouses to 10,000 schools in 153 municipalities. For many Nicaraguan children, the School Feeding Program is essential to preventing hunger and…
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Nicaragua: Contentious Debate Over Social Security Reform
Nicaragua is in the midst of a contentious debate that could become a serious social struggle over the reform of the nation’s Social Security system. President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government has proposed to increase the retirement age, the number of years one has to work, and the number of required contributions.
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What Happened to the Nicaraguan Revolution?: A View from the Rank and File
When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) led the Nicaraguan people to victory over the dictatorship of Anastasio Samoza in 1979, Wilmer (not his real name) was only 14 years old. Having come from a family of modest means, he identified with the revolution that ended the long repressive rule of the Samoza family that…
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HP and the Occupation
In December 2009, the Israeli Knesset passed a law allowing for the creation of a biometric database of the inhabitants of Israel. As of January 2013, the program is in its initial testing stage.
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The Sandinista Government has Failed the Women of Nicaragua: Solis
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government have failed the country's women. That was the message delivered by Azahalea Solís, an attorney and a member of Nicaragua's Autonomous Women's Movement, speaking at the Ben Lindner Center in Managua on January 17 to an audience of Nicaraguans and American students from various universities.
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Free Russian Political Prisoners!
We the undersigned call for the liberation of the Russian political prisoners, both those already condemned, and sent to the new Gulag, like the two feminist activists of the Pussy Riot group, and those in jail awaiting trial – some 20 activists, socialists and anti-fascists, in connection with the demonstrations against…
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Aaron Swartz: What We Know So Far, What We Need to Know
The reaction to Aaron Swartz's suicide has quickly reached a level of intensity which may have surprised those who will eventually need to respond to it.
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Of the People, By the People
Robin Hahnel's Of the People, By the People: The case for a participatory economy (Soapbox Press, 2012, distributed by AK press, www.akpress.org) is the latest and most accessible presentation of his argument that a new economy—based on equality, participation, solidarity, and self-management—is both desirable and possible. Originally formulated by Hahnel and Michael Albert more than…
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Beyond "lean production" – Changing teaching to "contract labor"
Will Johnson has an interesting piece in The Jacobin about what’s happening to teachers’ work.
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An Ascending Trajectory?: Ten of the Most Important Social Conflicts in the United States in 2012
[This article was written for a foreign audience, so I have spelled out some things that might otherwise be taken for granted when writing for an American reading public.]
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Scrooge Accepts Nobel Peace Prize
Brussels, Chrismas Eve, 2012. (From our Special Correspondent). Reactions were sharply divided here in Euroland to Stockholm's award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union (EU) in recognition of its efforts to promote the moral values of fiscal discipline and responsibility through the Euro.
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Building a Better World
Forty-three years ago, I belonged to The Hawaii Resistance. It was an anti-draft group, believing in non-violent revolution. Then I saw a whole row of benches slammed into the ribcage of one of my friends, with whom I was blocking the path for the 29th Brigade of the Hawaii National Guard to get on the…
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Who Carries the Brief for Black America?
As an African American currently residing in one of the poorest counties in South Carolina, I have become increasingly troubled by the absence of our voice in an increasing number of conversations involving public policies which directly impact the health and future development of African American political, social and economic interests.
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Mexican Congress Approves Education "Reform"
The Mexican Congress has in near record time approved a new law on education called for by the new president Enrique Peña Nieto intended to reassert government control over the country's education system, break the power of the Mexican Teachers Union bureaucracy, and improve the quality of education. At the heart of the new law…
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Istanbul Mayor Bans Freedom and Solidarity Party Campaign
While in Istanbul last week I participated in a march and demonstration by the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) on Dec. 9 to launch a campaign to link grassroots community organizations to a broader program for social and political change in Turkey. The march of hundreds of ODP members of all ages, some of them…
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Teachers unions' response on teacher evaluation
What’s important for teacher unionists internationally to be considering? Mary Compton asks me some hard questions in this interview. One issue Mary and I didn’t discuss is teacher evaluation, which has emerged in the past year as the most dangerous issue many teachers unions navigate. But I think the response teachers unions should take flows…
