Anthony F. Greco. Chomsky’s Challenge to American Power. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. Hardcover $69.95, paper $29.95, e-book $14.99.

                         It’s hard for people who have never been on strike to understand how transformative the experience can be, especially if the job is one’s life work.  All of sudden, power relations are reversed. Workers are calling the shots about what they will and will not do.  Life in school is so routinized that anything new can cause shock waves, and a strike by teachers is a tsunami.

Nikki M. Taylor. America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. 308 pages. Photos. Hardback $40.00. Also available as an e-book.

I will never forget when I first met Ali Mustafa. It was September 2012, during my first year at York and just before I joined Students Against Israeli Apartheid (Ali was a former member), where he did a talk on his visit to Egypt. After he was done, he asked the audience for comments. Seeing no takers, I chimed in. Not knowing who I was, he was very impressed with my comments, and that was the beginning of our friendship.

The author's view of the strength of the right is not universally shared among UK progressives. – DL

I am Zakhar Popovych a member of the Left Opposition initiative, and I have been on the Maidan under my red flag from the very first day of its emergence. I don’t sleep there in tents but I have been visiting the square virtually every day during these months.

Euro-Maidan is mass popular and grassroots movement, not  a manufactured one

              We’re seeing social movement teacher unionism arise in the South, in NEA, in Organize2020, a hardy band of activists who intend to transform their NEA state affiliate, North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE).  I was invited to speak at their first state-wide conference but when we were iced

I view the recent events in the Ukraine rather simply – everything hangs on the answer to a central question: Were the events in Ukraine a revolution? If one agrees, as I do, that the overthrow of Yanukovych was the product of a genuine, popular uprising against a corrupt and thuggish regime, then progressive people of all stripes should be supportive of the events in Ukraine – even with reservations.

The workers of Punto Leather Factory, located at Kazliceşme in the district of Zeytinburnu in Istanbul, have been organized in their union, Deriteks, for a decent livelihood and decent working conditions. They stand against harsh working conditions, health and safety problems, denial of their constitutional right to unionize, disadvantageous health insurance plans, prohibitions against using their annual leave entitlements; in summary they stand against working in conditions of slavery.

The following article is reprinted from LeftEast. 

The socialist union “Left Opposition” offers its assessment of the Russian aggression in Crimea and the destructive role of Ukrainian nationalists. The intervention of Russian armies was made possible as a result of a split in Ukrainian society. Its unity is impossible with the oligarchs and chauvinists in power. Only solidarity will save Ukraine.

While there was social struggle and conflict over a variety of issues in the United States in 2013, including an ascending movement in one region, the overall picture was one of diverse and diffuse social movements that had plateaued at a low level. The exceptions were the growing Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, which gained in numbers of participants throughout the year, and the movements of fast food and Walmart workers.

The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one.  Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading.  To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it ca