Jennifer Davis, champion of majority rule in South Africa and leader in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, died last November at the age of 85. On Saturday, July 11 (11:00a.m. EDT), she will be remembered in a memorial sponsored by AllAfrica, a news aggregator of voices by, and about Africa. On July 6, Stephanie Urdang, Jennifer’s lifelong friend and author of a memoir, Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa, as well as several books on African independence struggles, talked with Walter Turner, host of Africa Today on radio station KPFA… | more…
U.S. labor is in bad shape. Unions have long been on the decline, and the Supreme Court rules against them regularly. So do lower courts. Much of the problem, writes Shaun Richman in his newly published Tell the Bosses We’re Coming, is that labor law is rooted in the Commerce Clause. … But, Richman argues, it has not succeeded. Employers love to have their grievances moved to the courts and this happens regularly. So now unions are stuck with decades of lousy court decisions and a playing field sharply tilted against them… | more…
Cal Winslow, labor activist, educator, and author of the recently released Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919, talks about the amazing popular takeover of of Seattle over a hundred years ago, when, on a grey winter morning in February 1919, 110 local unions shut down the entire city. Start listening, about 8 minutes into Letters and Politics, hosted by Mitch Jeserich, on Radio KPFA… | more…
Quiet as it’s kept inside the United States, the Cuban revolution has achieved some phenomenal goals, reclaiming Cuba’s agriculture, advancing its literacy rate to nearly 100 percent—and remaking its medical system. Cuba has transformed its health care to the extent that this “third-world” country has been able to maintain a first-world medical system, whose health indicators surpass those of the United States at a fraction of the cost. In Cuban Health Care, Don Fitz combines his broad knowledge of Cuban history with his decades of on-the-ground experience in Cuba to bring us the story of how Cuba’s health care system evolved and how Cuba is tackling the daunting challenges to its revolution in this century…. | more…
A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism is at once a primer on the world’s dominant economic structure and a broad analysis of the food system that it has created. Eric Holt-Giménez persuades his readers that fluency in capitalism is essential to anyone seeking to effect change within the food system… | more…
Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster’s excellent 2011 book, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, is essential reading for ecosocialists and environmentalists of any political tendency. At 160 pages, the book does an exceptional job of describing how capitalism is directly connected to ecological degradation and why its abolition is necessary in preventing ecological catastrophe. This review will attempt to summarize the fundamental arguments of the book and its case for ecosocialism. The book goes over more than discussed below, so make sure to read the whole thing for more useful information and details…. | more…
This is a law book written for a general audience. Tigar has been a law professor most of his life; in these pages one can learn much from his vast legal and historical knowledge. ¶ Multiple chapters are spread out over five “mythologies”: Racism, Criminal Justice, Free Expression, Worker Rights and International Human Rights. ¶ His discussion of these mythologies is not neutral; he has a point of view and it’s generally from the left…. | more…
Can the Working Class Change the World? is not written suddenly. Throughout the last decade, capitalism has been increasingly discussed and debated, both by the right and left wing. This is because many people are struggling with economic downturn, wide income gap, unemployment, poverty and environmental crisis. The Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, almost brought down the global financial system. Later in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began and spread to several countries to protest against the 1%. And in 2018, Ray Dalio, a multibillionaire who is also the founder of Bridgewater Associates, himself admits that capitalism does not function for most people. Today, the assets of the 26 richest individuals in the world is equivalent to the assets of half the world’s citizens (Elliott, 2019). But, if capitalism now has failed, the question is: who fix it? | more…
For five days in 1919, union members took control of the city of Seattle. They arguably ran it better, and certainly more justly, than it had ever been run before. ¶ Thousands of workers volunteered to keep Seattle’s essential services operating. People were fed at 21 different locations; on February 9, volunteers served more than 30,000 meals. Milk distribution was organized at 35 locations. Garbage was picked up. No crime was reported during these five days…. ¶ Contrast Seattle 1919 with today’s unfolding horror. We’re all witnessing what it looks like when a shutdown and the provision of essential services are administered by capital and a pro-corporate government. ¶ The Seattle General Strike was not just an event in labor history. It was a testament to what workers can achieve when they organize, and it has sharp lessons for today…. | more…
