September 2011
21 posts
5 tags
International Women's Day
March 8, 2011 marked the centennial celebration of International Women’s Day. Now observed as a public holiday in dozens of countries throughout the world, International Women’s Day was inspired by the struggles of women workers in New York City in the early 20th century. It is a sad irony that International Women’s Day, much like May 1, observed throughout most of the world as International...
7 tags
Nestor Makhno and the Revolutionary...
The official records of governments and nations often forget and distort history, abandoning heros and their struggles to obscurity. One such individual is Nestor Makhno, leader of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine during the Russian Revolution. Like millions of others in Czarist Russia, Nestor Makhno grew up the son of a poor peasant family. Disgusted by the conditions of life...
1 tag
The Need for a Multiple Voting System
The year 2000 was a bad year for the US electoral system. Al Gore gained about 550,000 more votes than his main opponent, George W. Bush, but lost the election by 5 electoral votes. While I understand the resentment of Gore’s supporters toward Bush’s victory, I am more frustrated with the fact that our system selected a president that 52.1% of our voters didn’t want. This sad fact is not even...
7 tags
GEO Battles Inaccurate Coverage
There might be a tendency in some to look at the recent attacks on organized labor in Wisconsin, Michigan, and elsewhere as products of a couple of right-wing crackpots who managed to get themselves elected, but a close look at recent history demonstrates that the environment for organized labor has been hostile for quite some time. Unions are, of course, one of the very few remaining...
6 tags
Egyptian Labor United with People
On January 25, 2011, a series of protests, strikes, and riots began that eventually resulted in the resignation of long-reigning Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. As these events unfolded, the Western news media struggled to explain the cause of this phenomenon. While journalists credited things such as twitter and speeches by Barack Obama for the sudden manifestation of pro-democracy sentiment...
9 tags
Stand With Wisconson
On March 10, 2011, Wisconsin lawmakers headed by Republican Governor, Scott Walker, and, by association, the Republican Party, made a direct assault upon the working class by voting to pass a union busting bill that strips workers of their collective bargaining rights. While they attempt to justify their actions with the balancing the state budget, the passing of this bill strikes a blow against...
7 tags
The End of the Status Quo
The warning signs have been in the news for years, for those who have been paying attention. We are passing, or have passed, peak fossil fuel production. We are at or near the tipping point after which global warming cannot be stopped. Combined with erosion, deforestation, soil contamination and other environmental damage, this will cause the earth to lose much of its viable cropland over the next...
6 tags
Rosa Luxemburg
Every January, the streets of Berlin are flooded with thousands of revolutionaries, marching to commemorate the life of a great martyr for international socialism, Rosa Luxemburg. 82 years after her assassination by the Freikorps, a proto-fascist paramilitary organization sponsored by the leadership of the newly formed Weimar Republic to eliminate threats to “democratic” order, Luxemburg’s name...
6 tags
COINTELPRO and the US Government's War on Dissent
On March 8, 1971, activists known as the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole thousands of secret files. Among these files were documents that proved the existence of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), an FBI initiative dedicated to suppressing dissent and preventing revolution in the United States.
One of the main...
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Leaks in the System
The past few months have seen the political world rocked by the most unlikely of individuals. The greatest threat to Amerika and “democracy” is no longer Iran, Korea, Somalia, or China, though each of these receive their prescribed amount of coverage. No, the critical threat to “open government” and “freedom” has suddenly become a small team of hackers led by a middle aged Australian.
Wikileaks,...
7 tags
Ireland and the IMF's Hostile takeover
On September 29th, 2010 a Dublin cement truck driver drove his truck to the gates of the Irish government. He had repainted the truck to read “Anglo Toxic Bank,” a clear reference to the bailout of the Irish banking sector, and the selling out of the Irish people. Without aggression or violence, the driver simply left the truck running, doors locked, and symbolically laid the toxic assets of the...
3 tags
Dan Labotz: A Socialist's Campaign
In the wake of the election scandals of 2000 and 2004, the state of Ohio was faced with a series of lawsuits leading to the scrapping of current ballot access provisions. Subsequently, new regulations were passed allowing any party to get on the ballot with as few as 500 petition signatures. Seeing an opportunity to advance the struggle for socialism through the electoral arena, Dan La Botz, a...
1 tag
New Student Group Takes On the Immigration System
ugust 25th, Detroit – “Is it illegal to love your kids?” the sign reads. I wrote it in the 20 rushed minutes we had before the press conference. We arrived at 11 AM on the dot, in what seemed to me a desperate, scrambled attempt to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from breaking apart another family. After having interned with the Alliance for Immigrant Rights (AIR) for almost two...
5 tags
Local Struggles: School Bus Drivers Fight Union...
In April, Ann Arbor School District bus drivers voted overwhelmingly to reject a plan by the district to privatize school bus services. After the news broke that district administrators were looking at outsourcing of transportation and custodial services to private corporations, a handful of bus driver activists began asking questions. The school district made spurious claims that privatization...
9 tags
The Cuban Revolution
On December 2, 1956 a boat carrying 82 men landed on the coast of eastern Cuba. By the time they made their way to safety in the Sierra Maestra mountains their number had been reduced to 20. They called themselves the 26th of July Movement and they declared their goal to be the overthrow of the Cuban government. Two years later this had been achieved, as the U.S. backed dictator Fulgencio Batista...
7 tags
Anarchists Against the Wall
On November 3rd Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) brought Gal Lugasi, a member of the Israeli organization Anarchists Against the Wall, to campus. Gal spoke about her organization and its activities, which consist mainly of participating in protests and direct action against the separation wall being constructed by Israel in the West Bank. Anarchists Against the Wall does not...
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Introducing the Harbinger
Overextended Credit, Collapsing banks, Massive unemployment: the world of finance struggling to explain why an economy suddenly collapses. Are we talking about the 2008 financial crisis, or 1988? 1929? 1907? 1893? 1873? The financial meltdown of today is not the isolated failure of a few greedy men and a lack of proper regulation, or rather it is not only this. As we look at the history of...
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Fred Hampton 1948-1969
At 4:45 am on December 4th 1969, Chicago Police stormed into a Black Panther Party (BBP) apartment at 2337 Monroe St. They came in guns drawn and, killing the single man on guard duty, charged into the bedroom where Fred Hampton and his pregnant girlfriend were sleeping. He was found asleep, unable to wake due to a dose of secobarbitol administered by an FBI infiltrator earlier in the evening, and...
4 tags
South Africa 2010: A People’s Scorecard
For 30 days in June and July the world was thrilled by the greatest collective spectacle on earth held in a part of the world that the global media generally prefers to ignore. The 2010 Soccer World Cup was widely acclaimed as an unprecedented success and a sign of hope for Africa’s future. The perennial afro-pessimism that usually attends all reporting of the continent was for 1 month suspended...
“We’re not the first, I hope we’re not the last.”
