I am in Switzerland to attend the Spring University of Swiss Solidarity, a radical socialist group most active in the French speaking region, for whose newspaper solidarities I write regularly. I’ve been talking to some of the group’s activists about the situation here, and they have given me some impressions of the situation of the left here. So these are my impressions, just impressions.

In Madrid to give a talk on American politics and the Bernie Sanders campaign at , I took time to meet and converse with some young organizers of Anticapitalistas and one longtime leader of the left who had to go into exile toward the end of the years of the Franco dictatorship.

I spent a few days in Barcelona, meeting with older and younger activists, some of them former members of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), others younger activists in the group Anticapitalistas or in Procés Constituent. I also joined two protest demonstrations and gave a talk at the Ateneu Rebel for the journal Viento Sur for which I write. Here are my impressions, just impressions.

While in Paris in mid-April, I had conversations with a number of mostly older, leftist intellectuals: professors, publishers, editors and writers. These are men and women who historically have had close ties and involvement in the labor and social movements. I also went to political protests and attended a socialist meeting. Here are my impressions, just impressions of a few days in Paris.

The vote on impeachment, which is in a decisive week, makes clear the interests of the ruling classes and their inclination to reverse the losses from the global economic crisis. It is the class struggle carried out in government offices.

On February 27^th of this year, an article appeared by scholar and journalist Idrees Ahmad titled “Aleppo is our Guernica — and some are cheering on the Luftwaffe,” a timely analogy with the Spanish Civil War.

On March 11, 2016, a Turkish prosecutor dropped a complaint against officials for failing to take adequate security measures both before and after the bombing of a peace rally in Ankara that killed more than 100 on October 10, 2015. Two days later, suicide bombers struck in Turkey’s capital city for the third time in five months. A car bomb was exploded in the downtown neighborhood of Kızılay, killing 36 and injuring many more. As with other recent attacks, the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) quickly suggested the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was responsible for the attack.

TNS: First question, why were you chosen to be Mimi Soltysik’s running mate?

Mimi reached out to me about the campaign following my run for County Sheriff in Milwaukee. He said that he’d followed my campaign and really liked the fact that we took a very grassroots, people-centered approach. He felt that I would make a good running mate based on work I was involved in in Milwaukee, and the fact that I ran for sheriff unapologetically as a socialist.

This is the third and last of three book reviews that look at what Mexican intellectuals on the left have written in an attempt to understand Ayotzinapa and what it symbolizes and signifies for their country and its future. The first review appeared here and the second here.

Adolfo Gilly and Rhina Roux. El tiempo del despojo: Siete ensayos sobre un cambio de época. Mexico: Editoria Ithaca, 2015. 191pp. Bibliography. Available only in Spanish.

The case of Kumar Gunaratnam (KG) is a typical example of justice turning into its opposite. The Kegalle magistrate gave his verdict on March 31 imposing one year imprisonment and Rs. 50,000 fine on Kumar Gunaratnam for violation of immigration law, i.e., overstaying visa.

It appears to be a simple technical issue. Mr. Noel Mudalige, an Australian citizen, was granted visitor visa to enter Sri Lanka. After a month, he refused to go back and expressed his willingness to stay in Sri Lanka even requesting dual visa status as a first step. He was arrested and the police filed a case against him for defying immigration law of Sri Lanka. Hence, one may argue that the verdict given by the Magistrate is absolutely valid and legal. However, the real story behind this case has revealed time and again the true nature of the Sri Lankan democracy in its neoliberal phase.

“We’re going all the way to the convention,” said Larry Cohen, former President of the Communications Workers of America and Senior Advisor to the Sanders campaign. “We’re working to see that Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination, but that’s not all we’re doing. We’re going beyond to build a democracy movement in this country.”

Cohen was speaking, just before the opening of the Labor Notes Conference, to some 125 union activists and local leaders who gathered for four hours at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago on Friday, April 1 at the Labor for Bernie and Beyond meeting. They met to discuss the next stages and of the Sanders campaign as well as the future prospects for the movement of union activists who support him. The meeting was convened by Cohen and 23 other national or local union offices.