Class Struggle
What will happen to our Social Security benefits? This question is
being asked by the program’s 56 million recipients in response to the
Obama administration’s proposal to cut the annual cost-of-living raise
for all who receive these monthly checks, as part of his 2014 budget....
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One million Colombians marched in the capital city of Bogotá as well as
other cities and towns on April 9 to show their support of peace negotiations
between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples
Army (FARC-EP). Talks which began in Oslo, Norway, in 2012 are now continuing
in Havana, Cuba....
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The International Action Center joins the Alliance for Global Justice, Witness for Peace-SW, National Lawyers Guild, Boston Bolivarians, National Network on Cuba, and all the organizations in the United States who are mobilizing to defend the Venezuelan election of President Nicolás Maduro and against U.S. interference in that country....
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Fascist-like elements backed by U.S. imperialism are
attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. The Venezuelan
masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide are standing up and
saying “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that
country’s free and fair election April 14....
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Right-wing elements backed by U.S.
imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela.
Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt
against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care
there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide
have stood up and said "no" to this coup, which follows the rightist
defeat in that country's free and fair election April 15....
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Right-wing elements backed by U.S. imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide have stood up and said “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that country’s free and fair election April 15....
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Join young people, poor people, community and workers’ rights activists; occupy veterans and the families of police killing victims from across the region and the country that will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March for Freedom and Jobs led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by MARCHING 41 MILES FROM BALTIMORE, MD TO WASHINGTON, D.C., on Sat., May 11, 2013,
which is the 45th anniversary weekend of the Poor People’s March
Dr. King was to lead before he was assassinated....
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For a second month, tens of thousands of U.S. and south Korean troops are
carrying out simulated assaults on the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea — north Korea....
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The
International Action Center reprints below an official statement from the Korean
People’s Army on the dangerous situation created by U.S. military moves
close to the boundaries of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
— north Korea....
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By the time of his death, Martin Luther King had undergone
"a radical revolution of values." ...
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We will discuss the People’s Power Assembly Movement;
Worker Assemblies, Student & Youth Assemblies and the May 11th Baltimore to
Washington D.C. March to commemorate the 45th year since the 1968 Poor Peoples
Campaign and to ignite a new Poor People’s
Campaign....
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Chicago — The Rahm Emanuel administration and the Chicago Public
Schools, along with politically connected corporate interests, are making a
calculated move to turn the clock back for Black and Latino/a students to the
bad old days of Jim Crow apartheid “separate but equal”
schools....
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Neither rain, snow nor sleet kept postal workers from protesting to demand
“Save six day mail.”...
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Thousands of teachers, parents and community members rallied on March 27 in
the Chicago downtown area to protest Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close
54 public schools — in the predominately African-American and Latino/a
communities — to erase a $1 billion deficit. The rally began in
Chicago’s Daley Plaza and was followed by a march to City Hall that ended
at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters....
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Baltimore has become the capital of police killings! Since January, 2012, 16
people have been killed by the Baltimore City Police Department and not a
single officer has been indicted. The epidemic of police terror and abuse are
not confined to our city. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has documented that
every 36 hours a Black person is killed by police agencies in this country.
Police repression and racism go hand in hand with the mass incarceration of
young people, mostly of color, who are locked away in prisons across this
country. We march to bring national attention to these issues and to demand
community control of police and an end to mass incarceration. On May 11, 2013
we will link arms with the families of the victims of police killings to demand
that the Justice Department charge killer police....
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When European Union leaders gathered at their economic summit meeting
in Brussels, they were confronted by thousands of protesters who denounced them
and their austerity policies. Working people and labor union
representatives from all over Europe demonstrated at the European Commission
and Council headquarters on March 14....
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The July 26th Coalition, a solidarity group that supports the Cuban revolution, hosted a March 13 evening of information and open dialogue with two representatives of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in New York City. The women were here participating in events held at the United Nations and hosted by the Commission on the Status of Women during International Working Women’s Month....
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The National Association of Letter Carriers has called for 100 rallies and
other protests on Sunday, March 24, 2013, to save postal jobs and to keep six-day delivery. The NALC call for a National Day of Action invites unions, small business customers, civic organizations and faith groups, as well as all postal workers, families, friends and neighbors, to gather outside specified post offices in the major cities of each state. “We want to make this fight about the
cost of losing Saturday mail delivery and how it would affect people in each
and every state,” NALC President Fredric Rolando said. The American Postal Workers Union, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union and the Rural Letter Carriers Union have all endorsed the March 24 rallies....
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A coalition of community-based
women's organizations that has organized events for the past eight years
have announced plans for women's events in Manhattan, Harlem, Brooklyn and
the Bronx to celebrate women's struggles. The events include a rally and
march on March 9th, starting at the site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire in Manhattan, and tributes to Harriet Tubman on March 10 at
Harlem’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in Brooklyn at Boys and
Girls High on Sat. March 16 and in the Bronx at the Bronx Art Space Gallery on
Sunday, March 24. All events are open to the media and are free. There will
also be a special tribute March 9 to the late President Hugo Chávez of
Venezuela -- the leader of the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution that promotes the
rights of women especially those of African and Indigenous
descent....
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Using an obscure, impersonal term — “sequester” —
U.S. finance capital is trying to put over European-style, across-the-board
budget cuts at the federal level. Shielded by the fog of political gridlock,
the bankers and financiers are testing the waters to see how far they can
go....
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He came from humble beginnings from among the teeming millions in Venezuelan
poverty and joined the army as much to make a living as to serve the people.
He and a group of mid-level military officers staged an unsuccessful coup
in February, 1992 against the corrupt regime of President Carlos Andrés
Pérez. Within eight years, the man that led the coup would be elected
president and Hugo Chávez would proclaim Venezuela as home of the
revolutionary liberator, Simón Bolívar, who fought and prevailed
against Spanish colonialists for Latin American independence early in the 19th
century....
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It was with profound and searing grief that our people and the Revolutionary
Government learned about the decease of President Hugo Chávez Frías
and are therefore preparing to pay a heartfelt and patriotic tribute to him,
for he will go down in history as a Hero of Our America....
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The International Action Center urges you to attend these NYC events
in honor of President Hugo Chávez and in solidarity with the Venezuelan
people:...
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Just days before an inspection team was due to check that Greece’s new
austerity measures were in place, tens of thousands of workers took to the
streets on Feb. 20 and shut the country down. The strikers made it clear that
“reforms” that leave patients without health care and drugs,
students without education, taxpayers without money, families with no one
employed, workers without labor rights and 68 percent of the youth without jobs
are really attacks on the Greek people and their standard of living. (Greek
Reporter, Feb. 20)...
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It is not too late to RSVP for this important fundraiser
for the Mississippi Workers Center which fights for social justice in one of
the poorest states in the country. No one will be turned away for lack of funds
or for making a modest donation. There will also be a silent auction held
during the event....
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Alex Jones, the ultra-right-wing radio host, has made a name for himself in
recent weeks by rabidly denouncing proposed gun control legislation. He yelled
at CNN interviewer Piers Morgan, but in his tirade Jones stated many historical
inaccuracies....
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Millions of workers across the United States received a rude and unpleasant
jolt this January when they discovered that their take-home pay had just shrunk
by 2 percent. The Social Security payroll tax cut of 2009 was restored, costing
workers an average amount of $850 a year, a significant wage decrease for
workers on the edge of financial ruin....
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The 500,000 members of Tunisia’s union federation shut down this North
African country’s major cities on Feb 8 as tens of thousands joined the
funeral march in Tunis of Chokri Belaïd, slain leader of the Unified
Patriotic Democratic Movement, a Marxist and pan-Arabist organization.
According to reports, masked killers gunned down Belaïd in his car on the
morning of Feb. 6 outside his home in Tunis....
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La Coalición Primero de Mayo Por los Derechos de Los Trabajadores y Los
inmigrantes, invita a todas las organizaciones de la Ciudad de New
York, para discutir la planeación de la Marcha y Rally del
Primero de Mayo, celebrada desde el 2005. / The May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights invites everyone to the Citywide Meeting to discuss plans for the May 1st rally & march as well as for other events throughout the year. This event has been hosted by the Coalition annually since 2005 at Union Square
Park....
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As a Cuba solidarity network, we lift our voices to tell Washington and the
Venezuelan elite: NO to destabilization efforts in Venezuela, which we fully
recognize is also aimed at Cuba's sovereignty. We say: "Hands off the
Bolivarian Revolution."...
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New York — More than 8,000 school bus drivers who transport
152,000 pupils in this city every day, many of them children with special
needs, were forced to go on strike Jan. 16 to protect not only their jobs but
also the safety of the children they serve....
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Two settlements were announced Jan. 7 in ongoing legal actions against the
major banks for abuses in placing millions of homes into foreclosure throughout
the U.S. But both only help banks, not homeowners....
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Those in China who advocate bourgeois democracy, deepening capitalist
reforms and opening up further to imperialism staged a journalists’
rebellion the first week of January at the nationally circulated magazine
Southern Weekend, based in Guangzhou. Guangzhou, which is across the bay from Hong Kong, is the capital of Guangdong province, the stronghold of capitalism
in China....
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Three years after the earthquake that killed 300,000 people on Jan. 12,
2010, reconstruction has barely begun in Haiti. Debris has been removed from
the streets in Port-au-Prince, Léogane and Pétionville, but at least
500,000 people are still living in tents — ripped, torn and tattered by
the storms and hurricanes that have hit this country in the last three
years....
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Jan. 10 — The people of Venezuela poured into the streets by the
hundreds of thousands in the country’s four major cities today to defend
recently re-elected President Hugo Chávez and his government....
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On Jan. 3, as part of its regular condition updates of President Hugo
Chávez following his Dec. 11 surgery, the government of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela alerted “the Venezuelan public of a campaign of
psychological warfare unleashed by the international media regarding the health
of the head of state,” as the Jan. 10 date anticipated for the oath of
office for his new six-year presidential term nears....
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As assistant attorney general for the Lands Division, Ramsey Clark played a
key role in drafting the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting
Rights Act of 1965....
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On the morning of Sept. 12, 1973, Victor Jara, the internationally acclaimed
folk singer/writer, theater director, activist and musician, was taken along
with thousands of prisoners to the Chile Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where he
was repeatedly beaten and tortured. The bones in his hands were broken, as were
his ribs....
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There are times when an individual framed, beaten and jailed by the police
is just a victim. There are other times when that person becomes a symbol of
struggle for an entire movement....
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On the day that the country was supposed to fall over the “fiscal
cliff,” Congress finally voted for a bill on taxes and other measures
that kept the government solvent for another two months. The Obama
administration claimed victory over the Republican right wing....
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Violence and defense against violence are life-and-death social questions
for those who are oppressed and exploited....
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The passage of the union-busting “right-to-work” law in Michigan
is a severe legal setback for the labor movement and for the workers, the
oppressed and all the progressive masses in the state. If not turned around, it
will encourage right-wing, anti-labor forces across the country....
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Most people find it unconscionable that anyone would deliberately harm a
child. In fact, most would have the same reaction to callous disregard that
puts a young life in danger’s way....
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During the 1990's, in Venezuela and in Latin America in general, when the poor were getting poorer and everyone's standard of living was declining precipitously, when we felt that the lights were going out and that our reasons for happiness were evaporating, Hugo Chavez provided his radiant light, the light of the people, of the liberator Simon Bolivar....
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While this is not and legally cannot be an ILA- union initiated mobilization, it is supported by ILA rank-and-file leaders in solidarity with the Bangladeshi workers who lost their lives last month in the tragic fire, exploited with slave wages by Walmart and other corporate retail giants....
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In Colombia union organizers operate under the threat of violence, torture,
and even death. More union organizers are killed in Colombia than in any other
country in the world. Corporations like General Motors take advantage of the
anti-union climate....
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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder
wasted no time signing anti-labor, so-called “right-to-work” laws
passed today, disregarding the daylong protest of more than 12,000 workers and
community constituents. “The workers united will never be defeated”
echoed in the Capitol rotunda, while outside mounted Michigan State Police
pepper-sprayed laborers, many of them unemployed, and other workers to disperse
them. The rushed lame-duck enactment sought to make it a fait
accompli, but instead it is a declaration of war on the entire U.S.
working class and labor unions. A banner reading “General Strike to beat
back ‘right-to-work’ ’’ attracted much interest, as did
thousands of leaflets headlined: “Beat back ‘right-to-work’
Yes, WE CAN!” The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a one-day work stoppage
and march on Washington, D.C.
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For almost 500 days, Asotrecol, the Association of Injured Workers and
Ex-Workers of General Motors Colmotores, has been fighting for justice.
Colmotores, the GM assembly plant in Bogotá, Colombia, is a house of
horrors....
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Like a giant magnifying glass, a natural disaster reveals in startling
detail the dimensions of the social disaster that lie beneath....
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Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have been demonstrating on both sides
with regard to a draft constitution for the North African state. President
Mohamed Morsi, whose Nov. 22 edict increasing his political powers sparked mass protests, has now announced a Dec. 15 date for a national referendum to approve or reject the controversial document. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is behind Morsi’s political party, and the Salafist Muslim organizations form a majority in the government and have a broad political base, which means the referendum would likely approve the new
constitution....
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Oakland, Calif. — “Picket line means don’t
cross,” chanted striking Service Employees Local 1021 workers and their
community supporters as they picketed all seven terminals at the Port of
Oakland on Nov. 20. The workers had walked out in an unfair-labor-practices
dispute with the port....
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Millions of people struck Nov. 14, and hundreds of thousands more poured
into the streets in an unprecedented, coordinated general strike against the
austerity measures that tear at the very bodies of the poor and working people
of Europe. People in 23 countries protested, coordinated by the European Trade
Union Confederation....
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Under capitalism, especially here in the United States, so-called
“democracy” serves the wealthy. Whoever wins elections, the
Pentagon and weapons industry still get funding, imperialist wars and
occupations go on, the rich get tax breaks, while workers and the poor face
more layoffs, cutbacks and attacks....
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The distribution site was buzzing with activity. Carloads and even a small
U-Haul truck of aid were contributed by many volunteers. The area was so heavy
with activity that Occupy Sandy organizers had to assign traffic coordinators
to make sure donations were not blocking traffic....
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The people of Europe are angry, very angry — and they’re doing
something about it....
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Harsh austerity measures have created an economic and social disaster that
affects tens of millions across Europe. Greece, Portugal and Spain are
particularly hard-hit. A coalition of New York Greek-Americans, groups in
solidarity with Greece and working people across Europe have called for a rally
at the United Nations Missions of Greece and the European Union on Wednesday,
November 14, 2012....
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All activists fighting for real change need time, space and
discussion to grapple with the still unfolding crisis, total disarray and
infrastructure breakdown that has followed Hurricane Sandy. We need to prepare
for the corporate onslaught of the 'fiscal cliff' and evaluate months
of election saturation that dealt with none of the real issues facing the
planet....
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Nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy struck, as cold weather sets in and a new nor’easter storm threatens on Nov. 7, over a million households remain without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Some New Jersey communities are also without natural gas as a result of storm damage and may remain so for six to eight months....
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A crisis arising out of a major natural disaster tends to reveal a society’s strengths and weaknesses, values and priorities, and forms of organization....
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The storm that hit the U.S. East Coast Oct. 29 exposed the harm done by
capitalist priorities in the crucial areas of essential health care and
electric power for millions. Some 400 available industrial-scale generators sat unused while four major New York City hospitals located in flood zones and two New Jersey hospitals were forced to evacuate on an emergency basis. In the hospitals both the main energy source and emergency backup generators failed, providing the clearest possible example of bone- deep hospital and infrastructure maintenance cuts. Meanwhile, high-rise apartment houses and entire neighborhoods went for days without electric power. That meant days without drinking water, flush toilets, heat or functioning elevators. This creates life-threatening conditions, especially for seniors, the disabled and infants....
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The material aid gathered will be delivered to hard hit communities in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, Jersey City, Queens and elsewhere in coordination with groups who heroically came to the forefront and provided assistance such as CAAAV, Occupy Sandy, Peoples Power Movement, Anakbayan and others. These groups came together faster than FEMA or the Red Cross, organizations who have billions of the people's money but who are stymied by bureaucracy and a lack of genuine concern for the people....
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“I am the proud father of Alan Blueford, murdered by the
Oakland police,” stated Adam Blueford. His spouse, Jeralynn
Blueford, added, “Alan’s murder was arbitrary, unnecessary and
racist. It’s sad to say but he was shot down because of the color
of his skin. They profiled him by saying he looked suspicious.”...
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After ravaging much of the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy has hit the United
States. As of this writing, more than 8 million people here are without power,
38 are reported dead and still counting, and the damage is reckoned at many
tens of billions of dollars. No numbers have been put on personal losses of the
masses of people in terms of their homes, cars, household possessions, let
alone irreplaceable personal items of precious, sentimental value....
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With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people
have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in
social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January
to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to
different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food
sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control
of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore
other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and
direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips
to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....
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With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....
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As famine lurks throughout Haiti and cholera
daily kills the weak, the very young and the old, the response of the Haitian
people has been growing militancy. In massive numbers they have taken to the
streets to demand an end to the corrupt regime of President Michel
Martelly....
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On Oct. 15, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority announced the
fourth round of fare hikes in four years. During that time the MTA has also
been on a cutback frenzy. Dozens of station booths have been demolished. The
transit agency has made it harder for people with disabilities to qualify for
Access-A-Ride....
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Solidarity with the victims and their families...
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A step forward toward building people’s power was taken in
Philadelphia when activists met on Sept. 26 in the western part of the city.
The People’s Power Assembly had been preceded by a series of speakouts
during the summer where community residents addressed the issues that concerned
them....
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Money is the lifeblood of capitalism.More and more, the bankers have it
locked away in their vaults and don’t know what to do with it. They
already face that most irrational feature of capitalism,
“overproduction,” which to them means that corporations
aren’t expanding because there’s not much of a market for more
goods and services, so therefore companies aren’t borrowing money and the
bankers are stuck with cash that’s just sitting there, not drawing
interest....
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While staying aware of its destructive capacity, we can expand our view if
we also examine its weaknesses. The Pentagon’s Achilles’ heel lies
within the contradictions of the capitalist system that created this
monstrosity....
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Some 1 million of Portugal’s 11 million people held massive marches in
Lisbon, Oporto and 38 other cities and towns to condemn the austerity policies
of the troika — the European Union, the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund — and of the three parties backing austerity
in Parliament....
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Charlotte, N.C. — Over 300 Southern workers, trade unionists and
community allies gathered for the Southern Workers Assembly on Sept. 3, Labor
Day, the opening day of the Democratic National Convention. The Wedgewood
Baptist Church was packed and supporters had to stand beside the pews. There
was a feeling in the air that Southern labor was uniting to forge a historic
new direction, towards rank-and-file-led social justice trade unionism,
particularly to challenge right-to-work (for less) laws and combat racism....
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Charlotte, N.C. — Called “the March on Wall Street South,”
a demonstration confronting the banks and corporations headquartered here that
are wreaking havoc across the country filled the uptown streets of this
Southern financial center on Sept. 2....
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Charlotte, N.C. — Volunteer activists with the March on Wall Street South coalition are in high gear mobilizing for a week of protest actions Sept. 1-6 around the Democratic National Convention. These events include a Festivaliberacion on Sept. 1, a march and rally on Sept. 2, and a Southern Workers Assembly on Sept. 3....
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The people must prepare to defend ourselves against the life-threatening and ever-intensifying economic and social misery that Wall Street and its politicians are imposing on us, including endless war....
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Residents of Tampa Bay, Fla., are about to have their lives disrupted, not by a hurricane but by the heavily scripted exercise in political propaganda that is the Republican National Convention. Starting Aug. 27, roads and bridges will be closed, area businesses and schools shuttered, transportation services altered and heavily armed police will be everywhere. For four days, those who call Tampa Bay home will be excluded from the downtown convention area and subject to police search....
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The International Action Center will be marching and urges all progressives to join in with the Coalition to March on the RNC in Tampa, FLA on August 27 . And on September 2, we will join with the Coalition to March on Wall St South;in Charlotte, NC for a March for Jobs and Justice at the start of the DNC....
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Ed Childs, chief steward of UNITE HERE Local 26 in Boston, has been in Charlotte since Aug. 1, hitting the streets, meeting and talking with poor and working people throughout the city as part of organizing efforts for the March on Wall Street South on Sept. 2....
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Organizing is in high gear for protests outside the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa, Fla., respectively. In Charlotte, the Sept. 2 “March on Wall Street South” will target the big banks that are headquartered in that city as well as the Democrats’ role in keeping up the status quo of the wealthy 1% or ruling elite....
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Charlotte, N.C. — Members and supporters of the March on Wall Street South: Building People’s Power at the DNC Coalition held an all-day national organizing conference at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Aug. 11. With only three weeks left to mobilize for the coalition’s protest activities scheduled for Sept. 1-6 around the Democratic National Convention, organizers gave reportbacks, conducted workshops, made outreach plans, provided cultural presentations, developed relationships with other participants and much more. Events scheduled or supported by the coalition include the Festivaliberación Sept. 1, the major MOWSS march and rally Sept. 2, and the Southern Workers Assembly Sept. 3....
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Gu Kailai’s trial and conviction for the alleged murder of British businessperson Neil Heywood is a show trial staged by the top leadership of the Communist Party of China for purely political purposes....
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Can a dollar figure be put on the Olympics? The answer is yes, according to a July 25 CNN article entitled, “Is the Olympics worth more than Google?” The article dissects a report released by Brand Finance, a worldwide consultative firm, which reveals that the XXX Olympics in London are worth $47.5 billion, second only to Apple at $70.6 billion and just ahead of Google at $47.4 billion. This particular view is based on figures in the International Olympic Committee’s financial statements. The worth of the games is reportedly more than that of Coca-Cola, Samsung and General Electric....
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New York — Representatives from the New York metropolitan region met on Aug. 1 to forge plans to demonstrate at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions....
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Organizing for the March on Wall Street South is going full speed ahead in Charlotte and across North Carolina and beyond....
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China’s Olympic triumphs prove once again the transforming nature of revolutions.
The People’s Republic of China sent its first delegation of athletes to the 1952 Olympic summer games in Helsinki, Finland. Arriving late, they were able to participate in only one sporting event. Due to the imperialists refusing to recognize the Chinese communist government in Beijing, and instead declaring Taiwan the representative of China in the Olympics, the PRC boycotted the summer games for the next 32 years....
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Black Zimbabweans lost their land during the colonial era, beginning in the late 19th century. In 1998 it became clear that the Republic of Zimbabwe in southern Africa would take action regarding long-delayed promises to distribute land to African farmers...
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Mobilizing has begun around the country for the March on Wall Street South: protest actions between Sept. 1 and 6 around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Activities will include a Sept. 1 Festivaliberación!, focused on youth, students and immigrants; a Sept. 2 March on Wall Street South; and a Sept. 3 Southern Workers Assembly....
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U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America Labor Conference Aug 17 - 19...
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The most important question raised by the latest massacre in Colorado remains unasked by the corporate media: What is it about social conditions in the United States that promotes these terrible tragedies?...
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Hundreds of striking coal miners marched 285 miles from Asturias on Spain’s north coast to the capital city of Madrid, where thousands of other workers joined them as they entered the city. Hundreds of thousands of others came to show solidarity as the miners’ three-week trek ended with a massive demonstration on July 11....
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After a major victory last month that won permits to march, organizers with the Coalition to March on Wall Street South are moving forward with their plans for demonstrations before and during the Democratic National Convention. The convention will be held in Charlotte, N.C., during the first week of September....
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On June 23, activists from the International Action Center joined in solidarity with the Peoples Organization for Progress at a rally in Newark, N.J. Held in the heart of the city’s downtown shopping district, this rally was the 363nd consecutive daily protest. POP intends to continue until the number of days equals the number of days of the 1955 Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott that sparked the Civil Rights Movement....
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Another right-wing coup d’état has toppled a democratically elected president in Latin America. Three years after the coup in Honduras that deposed President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, the same forces have overthrown President Fernando Lugo in Paraguay....
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During the past three years, the Turkish state has imprisoned some 8000 citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism. In a wave of detentions known as the “KCK operations,” it has targeted activists, academics, journalists, lawyers, students, elected officials, translators and publishers on account of their democratic activities in support of the rights demanded by Kurdish citizens in Turkey....
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Cars, buses and vans of labor and community activists will form a Caravan to Washington, DC, in the early hours of Thursday, June 28, to join a mushrooming national hunger strike to save postal services and jobs....
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The world crisis in education and the attack on public workers is the theme for a special U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America/North America conference Aug. 17-19 in Tijuana, Mexico, which is next door to San Diego....
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Carlos wants to thank all the people, organizations, unions and community
people who worked and supported him in this struggle against police/political
repression....
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The Coalition to March on Wall Street South announced a major victory on May 29. The city of Charlotte granted conditional approval for permits for the Sept. 2 March on Wall Street South — after more than eight months of march and parks permit requests, a national petition campaign and threats of legal action. The march will take place one day prior to the Democratic National Convention....
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Cuban President Raul Castro’s daughter heard nothing but applause on May 23 as she made her first public appearance in San Francisco....
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he capitalist government and the big business media in the U.S. have firmly and vociferously taken sides against Bo Xilai and any manifestation of leftist policy in China. These same media and government have also demanded economic and political concessions from the Chinese government....
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Colombians launched a new movement in April that may challenge the oligarchy’s rule there. La Marcha Patriótica [Patriotic March or PM] is an outgrowth of the diverse social movements in Colombia....
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The Chinese government has responded to accusations by the U.S. government and media criticizing that rapidly developing country for purported violations of human rights. On May 25, it issued a very detailed report called “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011.”...
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Quebec’s university students have been waging a determined battle in the past four months to stop the provincial government from carrying through a 75 percent tuition hike....
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On May 9, President Obama held an interview with Robin Roberts [ABC-TV host], in which he expressed his “evolved” personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry....
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The Democratic National Convention is being held in Charlotte, North
Carolina during the first week in September. Charlotte has become
known as the "Wall Street of the South" because it
is home of Bank of America's world headquarters; Wells Fargo's
eastern regional headquarters; all kinds of other dirty corporations and banks, and has the second largest concentration of finance capital behind NYC. North Carolina is also the least unionized state in the
country....
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The Hunger Project reports that out of a global population of 6.8 billion, 925 million people do not have sufficient food for members of their households. Moreover, 98 percent of undernourished people live in the so-called developing countries — those states that are colonies or former colonies....
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Quebec students, who have been striking for three months for lower tuition and demonstrating each of the last 25 nights including May 18, have now targeted Law 78, adopted by the Quebec parliament a day earlier....
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The recent G8 summit did nothing to relieve the worldwide capitalist crisis that has cost up to 80 million jobs worldwide since 2008. Nor did it help feed the hungry, stop global warming or prevent wars....
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The capitalist media worldwide have given a resounding show of support for the cause of Chen Guangcheng, a sightless dissident activist and pawn of U.S. intelligence who was smuggled into the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on April 27....
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he following speech was given by the late Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, on Aug. 15, 1970, on gay and women’s rights. Shelley Ettinger, a lesbian activist, wrote on her blog, “Read Red,” about Newton’s speech: “I think it's important to remember this speech because the Black liberation movement and even the Black community as a whole are so often slandered as though they're somehow more sexist and/or homophobic than other movements or other sectors of society, and here we have a great revolutionary leader speaking out just one year after the Stonewall Rebellion, far earlier than almost anyone else.” In light of President Barack Obama’s recent announcement in support of same-sex marriage, we are reprinting in its entirety Newton’s historic speech that urged revolutionary class solidarity with these oppressed groupings. ...
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Larry Holmes and I have been visiting political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for 16 years. We started visiting him when he was on death row at State Correctional Institution-Greene in Waynesburg, Pa., which is near the West Virginia border. Our trips there by car from New York City would take at least seven hours, and even longer by bus....
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s Egyptians prepare for the first round of national presidential elections on May 23-24, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has enacted a series of repressive measures. Clashes between armed militias of supporters of the Islamist political parties killed up to 20 people on May 2 outside the Ministry of Defense in the Abbassiya District of Cairo. Many believe SCAF backs the militias....
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Thousands of activists plan to come to Chicago to protest the May 20 summit of the so-called North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But this U.S.-dominated gang of warmakers and enforcers for the banks will not be the only international organization meeting in Chicago that weekend....
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While the elections in Greece and France had a common thread — rejecting austerity — their impacts will be different....
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The capitalist media worldwide have given a resounding show of support for the cause of Chen Guangcheng, a sightless dissident activist and pawn of U.S. intelligence who was smuggled into the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on April 27....
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April 27 marked the 40th anniversary of the passing of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of modern-day Ghana and a leading theoretician of the post-World War II national liberation movement for unity and socialism. Nkrumah’s legacy is reflected in the ongoing efforts of the peoples of Africa and the world who seek genuine freedom from colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism....
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Over the last several months, a grouping within the Occupy Wall Street movement has met hundreds of times to discuss getting involved with May Day. The discussions and deliberations in these meetings exemplify how much the events that erupted on Wall Street last September signify that a movement has been born in this country....
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A broad array of immigrant rights groups, day laborers, grassroots unionists, street vendors, community organizations and some of the city’s most important labor unions have joined the youthful Occupy Wall Street movement in calling on everyone to be in Union Square on May Day....
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The Coalition to Protest at the Democratic National Convention held its national organizing conference April 14 in Charlotte to discuss action plans. Activists from throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Detroit, Atlanta, New York City and Philadelphia discussed and adopted action plans for the first week in September....
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The campaign in China to discredit Bo Xilai has reached a new crescendo. Every newspaper, television and radio station in the country has carried official statements and editorials attacking Bo and repeating the charge that he is under investigation for unspecified “serious disciplinary violations.” ...
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Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of independent Algeria, and one of the great revolutionary figures of Arab nationalism, died on April 11 at age of 96....
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The campaign of vilification to destroy Bo Xilai is an all-out attempt by the top leadership of the Communist Party of China to put up a smokescreen concealing a right-left political struggle over the deepening economic and political penetration of capitalism at the summits of Chinese society....
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From September 1-6, 2012, poor and working people from across the world will march on the Wall Street of the South in Charlotte, North Carolina....
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In 2006, immigrant workers and their supporters revived May Day as part of a
spring of actions against the Sensenbrenner bill which attempted to criminalize
immigrants, especially the undocumented....
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It is now world news that Bo Xilai, a high-ranking member of the 25-member Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, has been removed from his key post as Party Secretary of the important Chongqing branch of the CCP....
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On August 27, 2012, while the Republican National Convention selects a candidate for president, we will be marching in the streets of Tampa, Florida demanding jobs, healthcare, education, equality and peace. We will let the entire world know, "We have had enough of the endless attacks on the rights of working people and our standard of living!" We will defend Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. We will defend ourselves against union busting. We will defend our children's right to an affordable, quality education. We want money spent on human needs, not on wars overseas and corporate greed....
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The ouster of Bo Xilai as Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing comes at a juncture of intensifying contradictions, pressures and antagonisms in China. They reflect three decades of a steadily advancing encroachment of the capitalist mode of production and a dangerous erosion of the socialist framework established by the great Chinese Revolution of 1949....
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It is with great sadness that we announce that peace and justice activist Ed
Lewinson, passed away on April 10 at his home in South Orange, NJ. Sara
Flounders who visited Ed at St Barnabus Hospital several days before he died
said that Ed was alert, interested in the struggle and following the news....
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A 24-hour general strike, involving more than 80 percent of the workforce on a countrywide level, stopped large sections of the economy in Spain on March 29. The leaders of the two major union confederations that called the strike, the UGT and the CCOO, provided the numbers. ...
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Picture the Homeless was "informed" by the NY Post on Friday, March 30, that The Post had obtained a leaked letter from the New York City Council directing the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to freeze PTH funding in the wake of a misleading and racially-charged article the Post ran last Sunday. Picture the Homeless has not received any letter or other communication from the City Council regarding this matter, though HPD officials contacted PTH on Thursday and directed PTH to turn over certain business records....
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Monica Moorehead, a March 31st organizer, states, “Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, has told the world that her son is everybody's son. It is in this spirit that our coalition encourages all mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces, girlfriends and spouses of all ages, nationalities, gender expressions and sexual preferences to attend along with
men.”...
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As contradictions mount in the global capitalist economy, they are reflected
in China. The factional struggle in the Chinese leadership can only be
understood as a struggle over which way to go forward and how to contain and
resolve the mounting economic and social contradictions arising out of
capitalist development....
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The People’s Power tour was launched in New York on March 11. The tour
seeks to bring working, poor and oppressed people into a nationwide discussion
to help develop a unifying fightback program of action. Its literature points
to the life-and-death social issues that are intensified by the current global
capitalist economic crisis, such as “unemployment, low wages,
foreclosures, police and ICE terror, racist incarcerations, hunger and
homelessness.”...
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While the stock markets in the United States and Europe have recovered — a bit — and the Greek workers have not had a general strike and massive protests for a few weeks, the struggle is far from over....
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The Occupy Wall Street movement has made the inequality in capitalist society an issue that has put the rich on the defensive, at least in public. The growth of inequality in the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, has been talked about for years in many quarters by economic analysts and even some politicians. But before the Occupy Wall Street movement raised the slogan of the 1% versus the 99%, this condition went entirely unchallenged and was merely observed as an inevitable, undesirable (unless you were part of the 1%) fact of life....
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Demonstrators chanted, “Tear down Jailhouses! Build up School Houses!” outside Heery International Inc.’s Philadelphia office as part of a national call from Occupy Oakland to Occupy for Prisoners on Feb. 20....
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One of the speakers at the opening meeting of the People’s Power Tour at Judson Memorial Church here on March 11 was retired postal worker and union organizer Eleanor Bailey, who has been putting in her time and enthusiasm organizing for a demonstration on March 17 to stop Post Office closings. Bailey began working at the P.O. just when both African Americans and women were flooding into the system, and her trade union activism represented the shift in the demographics of P.O. workers. Her talk, which we paraphrase here, gives a special perspective to the current struggle....
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Can postal workers and the communities that depend on postal jobs and services stop Congress from privatizing the highest rated government agency — the U.S. Postal Service?...
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Displaying the mighty power of workers and the poor in Wisconsin and beyond, more than 60,000 protesters flooded the State Capitol grounds for a people’s march and rally on March 10. Refusing to be beaten down by union busting and austerity imposed by Gov. Scott Walker and his 1% bosses, the rainbow of protesters made clear that the people’s uprising in Wisconsin is in full fightback motion. March 10 was the one-year anniversary of when the state Legislature illegally rammed through, and Walker signed, the union-busting bill attacking public sector workers....
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Outraged by cuts in funding and the tripling of tuition at community colleges and state universities, students, faculty and other educators held protests throughout California on March 1. The local actions culminated four days later in a statewide demonstration in Sacramento and a brief sit-in, led by Occupy for Education forces, in the Capitol rotunda....
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On Dec. 5, 2008, workers at a Chicago factory made history. When the Republic Windows and Doors management told them, with no advance notice, that they were out of a job and had lost their health benefits, 260 members of United Electrical Workers Local 1110 occupied the plant....
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Poet, essayist, editor, teacher, radio host, political activist and union
organizer, Louis Reyes Rivera willingly served as a bridge between African- and
Latino/a-American communities. No wonder his unexpected death on March 2 in
Brooklyn, N.Y., initiated a crescendo of accolades and reminiscences from those
communities as well as many cultural and activist groups....
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On that day we will say that we are all Mumia, we are all immigrants, we are all prisoners, we are all Bradley Manning, we are all poor, we are all Palestinian, we are all Troy Davis, we are all political prisoners, we are all occupiers!!! ...
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Encourage a nationwide discussion on developing a PEOPLES POWER program demanding jobs, housing and education, an end to all social inequalities including racism, sexism and LGBTQ oppression, the massive deportations and imperialist war. Let's target the root of these ills—the capitalist system—and the need to end this brutal system of exploitation;...
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Under capitalism — a system that puts profits before human needs — genuine support needed for developing one’s talent is generally not made available, much less encouraged. Luck, along with having influential connections, plays a central role in many instances on whether the individuals become famous or not. What usually happens is that many talented people are left to figure out on their own how best to display their creativity to others as opposed to hoping to be “discovered.”...
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Workers in some factories and students in the universities in Egypt held strikes on Feb. 11, one year after the revolution that forced President Hosni Mubarak out of office and shook the world. A week earlier massive protests held the Egyptian regime and the police responsible for the deaths of more than 70 people at a soccer match....
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A settlement has been trumpeted between the federal government and 49 state
attorneys general with Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo
and Ally Financial “to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure
abuses.” (Department of Justice, Feb. 9) While acknowledging the massive
fraud perpetrated by these institutions in carrying out foreclosures, the
agreement provides minimal compensation for the hundreds of thousands of
families who have lost their homes....
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A fire that began late in the evening on Feb. 14 burned 382 prisoners to death at the Comayagua Prison Farm in Honduras. Some clutched the bars of their cells while others drowned in the water tanks in an attempt to escape the flames. According to Berta Oliva of the prisoner relative organization Cofadeh (Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras), some were shot to death before they burned. ...
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...
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For the big-business media like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and CNN television, the big news from Greece involves what is going to happen to Greek bonds, the euro, the European economy and the world economy. For these media and their owners, the hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars at stake explain this emphasis....
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When the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece stating that Honduras is
“descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss” and adds
that this is “in good part the State Department’s making,”
something is changing. (Jan. 26)...
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Dr. Huey Percy Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense, was born in Monroe, La., on Feb. 17, 1942, the youngest of seven
children born to Walter Newton and Armelia Johnson....
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...
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As January ended, so did several meetings where representatives of the global 1% gather to decide the fate of hundreds of millions — the 99%....
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The following are three important anti-imperialist events scheduled for the coming months. The International Action Center is supporting and participating in each of them....
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Some 2,000-plus Occupy Oakland participants were met with heavy police
violence and hundreds of arrests on Jan. 28 as they marched on the long-vacant
Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. The group had been planning the building
occupation for several months....
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Long-time Tunisian ruler President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled his country
on Jan 14, 2011, for the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, where he has been granted
political refuge. The uprising that began in Tunisia 14 months ago was the
first in a series of events that have reshaped the debate and struggle in much
of Africa and the Middle East....
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The Occupy movement has made it very clear that hundreds of thousands of
people across the United States, from big cities on both coasts to smaller ones
in the midlands and hundreds of towns and rural areas in between, are
distressed and angry enough at the present situation to march in the rain and
snow, occupy banks, sleep on the ground, attend countless meetings, defy hordes
of cops before getting arrested, and above all make their voices heard....
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n response to brutal police repression in Oakland this evening (including tear-gas, "flash" grenades, projectiles, mass arrests, and a pregnant woman hit in the belly by a policeman's baton) direct action working groups from at least Occupy Wall St, Occupy Boston, and Occupy Philly, have stayed up late to craft a massive coordinated response. Here are the initial results:...
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On August 27, 2012, while the Republican National Convention selects a
candidate for president, we will be marching in the streets of Tampa, Florida
demanding jobs, healthcare, education, equality and peace. We will let the
entire world know, “We have had enough of the endless attacks on the
rights of working people and our standard of living!” We will defend
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. We will defend ourselves against union
busting. We will defend our children's right to an affordable, quality
education. We want money spent on human needs, not on wars overseas and
corporate greed....
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When the Democratic National Convention meets in Charlotte, N.C., in
September, there will be thousands of people from across the country in the
streets to raise demands for jobs and justice on the world stage....
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Thousands of demonstrators came out Jan. 20 to “Occupy Wall Street
West” to mark the second anniversary of the Supreme Court Citizens United
decision. This ruling called anonymous campaign contributions “free
speech” and claimed corporations were “people,” thus
increasing the already overwhelming power of the rich over politicians....
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Feb 11th, 2011, the whole world witnessed millions of Egyptian protesters marching in the streets of Egypt and protesting in Tahrir Square, demanding their basic human rights: dignity, freedom, and social justice. After decades of patience and suffering, Egyptians finally spoke out loudly and peacefully demanding the fall of a police-based authoritarian regime, the end of Mubarak’s dictatorship, and the establishment of a civilian, democratic state. Under the maximal pressure exerted by Egyptians, Mubarak was toppled. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) took charge in leading the country through the transitional stage. At that time, SCAF members and military personnel were regarded as heroes...
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As many people as possible should go to 100 Centre St. tomorrow starting at 11 a.m. in solidarity with Larry Holmes, Caleb Maupin, Tony Murphy, Gavrielle Gemma, Toni Arenstein and Tim Barker following their arrests during the Occupy 4 Jobs protest today. The Court Clerk's office, located on the 1st floor, will have a docket list of cases. Please look for these names on the list. We are still unaware of the charges as of tonight. Take the #4, 5 or 6 trains to City Hall...
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The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 83 years old on Jan. 15.
In honor of this iconic civil rights, anti-war and social justice activist, the
federal government and other public agencies close every year on the Monday
following his birthday. King was martyred in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4,
1968....
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The San Francisco Labor Council on Jan. 9 unanimously condemned military
escort for the union-busting international grain and food cartel EGT,
headed by Bunge Ltd. at the Port of Longview, Wash. ...
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In the spirit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on Monday, Jan. 16, at 1
p.m., hundreds of people -- including those who have exhausted unemployment
benefits, as well as students, labor and community activists -- will gather in
Union Square NYC to commence an Occupation for Jobs....
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The pitiful December jobs and employment numbers are a bitter reminder, four
years after the present crisis officially began in December 2007, that
capitalism is at a dead end....
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In their quest for dignity, Freedom, Justice, and
Democracy, Egyptian Americans & Egyptian Solidarity
Groups are calling upon people from all nations, races, colors, and
religions as well as human rights and peace groups and organizations to join
Egyptians abroad in their rallies to support the Egyptian revolution....
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Some 10,000 women of all classes and walks of life took to the streets of
Cairo on Dec. 20 to protest the military’s misogynistic, violent assaults
on Egyptian women. Many demanded that the military step down immediately....
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The “libertarian” movement has never been friendly to the 99%.
Its members are not apologetic about wanting to abolish all social programs
that aid the people, from Medicaid to food stamps. They want to shut down every
government department that in any way limits the excesses of the 1%. These
include the Departments of Labor, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services,
among others....
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International Longshore and Warehouse Union rank-and-file
members and the Occupy movements in Longview, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle;
Oakland, Calif.; Los Angeles and other West Coast cities are organizing to
blockade a grain ship arriving in Longview sometime in January. This ship is
supposed to be loaded by a non-ILWU crew with cargo from the new EGT export
terminal. The date won’t be known until three to four days in
advance....
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ILWU rank and file, Occupies in Longview, Portland, Seattle, Oakland, LA and
other West Coast Occupies are organizing to blockade a grain ship coming to
Longview. This ship is intended to load scab cargo from the EGT terminal. The
date won't be known until 3-4 days in advance, but is anticipated to be
sometime in January....
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A call has been put out by Occupy Wall Street to let our government know the people will not tolerate any more attacks on our rights!...
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The number of people in the U.S. who are officially poor or “near
poor” has become a matter of controversy....
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The Labor Outreach Committee (LOC) of Occupy Wall Street is appealing
for your support for the nurses. Their struggle embodies many of the
core issues motivating the Occupy movement. They are up against
hospital CEOs who make millions in salaries, yet demand givebacks in
healthcare at a time when, like the rest of the 99%, nurses are
struggling with soaring living expenses....
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Dangerous provisions inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (NDAA-2012) have created great alarm among civil liberties organizations, Muslim organizations, groups that defend anti-war activists and many activists of the Occupy Wall Street movement who have recently been targeted across the country....
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The Occupy 4 Jobs network is celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day in New
York City with a direct action to demand jobs. The Jan. 16 event will begin at
1 p.m. at Union Square. “The MLK holiday is the perfect day to do this,” said Larry Holmes, a leading organizer of the Bail Out the People Movement, one of the founders of Occupy 4 Jobs. “What most people don’t know is that in the last months of his life, King was devoted to opening a struggle for everyone to have a decent-paying job.” In early 1968, before his April 4th assassination, King announced the Poor
People’s Campaign, which was to culminate in a March on Washington
demanding a $12 billion Economic Bill of Rights. The demands of the campaign
were jobs, income and housing. The Economic Bill of Rights guaranteed
employment to all and an annual income to those unable to work....
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The police campaign to wipe out the Occupy Wall Street movement across the
country should drive home a truth that has long been experienced by oppressed
communities, workers on strike, fighters for civil rights, immigrant workers
and many others. The regime of capitalist democracy in the United States has a
violently repressive character — side-by-side with its controlled
“democratic” institutions....
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Today, Occupy activists from Vancouver, Canada, to San
Diego, Calif., disrupted and shut down West Coast ports in solidarity with port
workers. Specifically, they embraced the port truckers’ struggle for
union recognition and efforts by the International Longshore Workers Union to
fight union-busting in Longview, Wash. They were also responding to federally
coordinated attacks on the Occupy movement across the country. Once again, the largest protests were in Oakland, Calif. Despite continuous and well-publicized attempts by Oakland city officials and the Port of Oakland to discredit the port shutdown campaign, the all-day protest was massive. It started at 5 a.m. at the West Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit station, in the shadow of the Port of Oakland....
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Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the Occupy movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, CA (central coast); Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and by Occupy movements inland locations, as well....
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More than 2 million workers walked out for 24 hours on Nov. 30 in England, Scotland and Wales in an action the union leadership called the largest in at least 30 years. Some say it was the biggest since the 1926 general strike. The strikers closed two-thirds of the schools, picked up no garbage, forced the postponement of 6,000 nonessential operations in the hospitals and did this defying weeks of anti-strike propaganda....
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It is more than four years since the housing bubble burst and the world capitalist economic crisis came down upon the heads of the working class and the oppressed in August 2007. Despite all the talk of economic recovery, the plague of unemployment, underemployment, rising poverty, lower wages and general insecurity is still growing....
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Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the pro-Occupy Wall Street movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, Calif. (central coast); Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and inland locations, as well....
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"Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life"yet another form of death sentence. Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released. I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served."...
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We woke up this morning to the news that the cops had finally shut down Occupy Philly. The eviction deadline had been announced for Sunday, Nov. 25, at 5 p.m., but nothing happened until around 1 a.m. Wednesday. By then the 322 tents had dwindled to less than 100, with maybe 75 people at the General Assembly Tuesday night. The homeless population had been moved to another location Sunday afternoon....
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When New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, effectively ended the Occupy
Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15, many wondered if the
movement had been weakened. Just two days later, several actions took place on the “Historic Day of Action for the 99 Percent.” Thousands of New Yorkers rallied at the Stock Exchange. Later that day, thousands more occupied a building near the New School. That afternoon, more than 32,000 people marched from Foley Square across the Brooklyn Bridge. It is clear that regardless of location, the Occupy movement is alive and well. OWS has not only survived, it has given birth to a new movement and is encouraging more people to get out on the streets....
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Organizing is under way for a coordinated mass blockade of West Coast ports
on Monday, Dec. 12, targeting “Wall Street on the waterfront”
— the major companies owned and controlled by “the 1 percent”
ruling elite....
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Some 1,400 cops attacked the Occupation Los Angeles people and their
supporters late on the evening of Nov. 29, eventually clearing the area and
arresting as many as 250 that night....
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Friends do not beat up on other friends. Friends do not open cans of pepper
spray into the faces and throats of their friends. Friends do not trample each
other purposely on horseback. Friends do not stab one another. Friends do not
arrest one another. Friends do not bring one another to court — or
threaten to imprison one another. Friends do not purposely injure each other so
severely that it leads to hospitalization....
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More than 3 million workers in Portugal walked off the job on Nov. 24 to
protest austerity measures and the takeover of their country’s economy by
the “Troika” — the European Union, the European Central Bank
and the International Monetary Fund. This has been done with the collusion of
the big Portuguese capitalists and their political parties....
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Dec. 17 marks the anniversary of a year of uprisings, strikes, government
resignations and regime change on the African continent. A resource-rich and
strategically located geopolitical region, Africa has experienced numerous mass
demonstrations, general strikes, rebellions and full-scale military assaults as
part of a heightening global class struggle for control of the
continent’s economic and political future....
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“A social movement strong enough to force change.” That
statement could describe the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it refers to the
struggle of Mexican electrical workers and Mexican miners in Cananea, Sonora.
Leaders from these struggles will open the 8th U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America
Labor Conference on Dec. 2 in Tijuana, Mexico....
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The Western-orchestrated military effort to defeat the Islamic resistance
group Al-Shabaab in Somalia is bogged down, despite the deployment of the most
modern weapons against this people’s movement....
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If the mayor of New York City thought that he, his judge and his shock
troops could put a halt to the Occupy Wall Street movement by raiding Zuccotti
Park in the early hours of Nov. 15, he was wrong....
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The masses have opened a new chapter in the Egyptian
revolution. They have stood strong in Tahrir Square for nearly four days
against bullets and gas demanding that the military regime, which succeeded
President Hosni Mubarak last Feb. 12, step down....
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The Occupy Wall Street movement at Zuccotti Park in New York City heard the
powerful voices of women activists, the majority of them immigrants from Latin
America, at a rally organized Nov. 20 by a broad coalition led by Women Workers
for Peace and La Peña del Bronx....
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The eyes of the world were on the city of Oakland and the massive people’s march to the nation’s fifth-largest container port on Nov. 2 for the General Strike and Day of Mass Action called by Occupy Oakland. Not only has the Occupy movement gone global, Occupy Oakland has become the focal point of the movement. In fact, on Oct. 28, Egyptian pro-democracy protesters marched from Tahrir Square to the U.S. Embassy in support of Occupy Oakland and against police brutality witnessed in Oakland on Oct. 25, and commonly experienced in Egypt....
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Nov. 15 — As the political character of Occupy Wall Street has grown sharper, with its movement increasingly targeting foreclosures and union-busting, the ruling class made a decision: Cut off the movement at the head. After Occupy encampments in Portland, Denver, and Oakland were shut down, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the New York Police Department to clear out Zuccotti Park — the site of Occupy Wall Street, which since Sept. 17 has spawned a worldwide movement against the ravages of capitalism. Police in riot gear went into Zuccotti Park at 1 a.m. on Nov. 15 and violently evicted protesters, with about 70 arrested at last count. The goal of Billionaire Bloomberg and his cohorts on Wall Street remains the same: to decapitate the movement. As protesters reentered the square, they did so under heavy police presence, with onerous rules such as no tents, sleeping bags, backpacks and so on. People with medical equipment were denied access....
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On Tuesday, November 15 thousands of people were in the streets again to
respond to the brutal, coordinated police attack on the center of the Occupy
Wall Street movement - Zuccotti Park – at 1 am Tuesday morning. The mass
arrests and destruction came without warning or any provocation. When word went out of the police attack immediately supporters descended on the Wall Street
area of Manhattan. At Zuccotti Park, activists resisted the police destruction and theft of their personal belongings. There were beatings and 200 mass arrests.The media was illegally barred from the area during the police assault. Refusing to be intimidated, the movement quickly regrouped and mobilized on
Tuesday. Activist lawyers rushed into court for a temporary restraining order.
The city immediately appealed the order and not surprisingly the courts sided
with billionaire Bloomberg. The police and courts, just like the Pentagon,
defend the interests of the 1%. ...
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Alfonso Cano, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) was killed in combat on Nov. 4 by the
Colombian Army in that country’s southwest region of Cauca. For several
hours that day, dozens of helicopters and planes surrounded this rural area,
the home of peasant families, and then they started bombing, hitting the place
where the FARC leader was....
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...
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Calling all people of conscience: Following numerous Associated Press
reports about NYPD programs that profile, investigate and entrap American
Muslims not even suspected of committing a crime ...
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A People’s Assembly held Nov. 5 at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx launched an exciting fightback program for jobs, against racism and for the rights of workers and poor people to unions, food, healthcare, and public education....
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From capitalist media pundits to the Occupy Wall Street encampments
struggling to hold public space in countless cities and towns across the U.S.,
this question is bubbling underneath the daily actions and police
repression....
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A public memorial and cultural tribute was held for Consuela Lee — an
African-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and teacher — at the
historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in New York City on Oct. 29. Lee
passed away from a long illness associated with Alzheimer’s disease at
the age of 83 on Dec. 26, 2009, in Atlanta....
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People’s Assembly Sat. Nov. 5 to be Live-Streamed from Hostos College,
12noon – ...
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The scene was a perfect storm of organized chaos. Here
were the young and old, students and workers, immigrants and oppressed, all
addressing the failures of capitalism’s current worldwide crisis,
outlining the destructive forces of global banking systems and highlighting the
lack of communal values in a place that loves to cry patriotism....
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On Tuesday, Oct. 25, a pre-dawn police raid tore up and destroyed the Occupy
Oakland camp. It was a war zone. More than 500 police from at least 12
jurisdictions took part in the paramilitary operation, arresting more than 130
by day’s end, beating many and sending one Iraqi war vet to the hospital
in critical condition....
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Nov. 1 — Like a force of nature that astonishes everyone with its
power, Occupy Oakland has inspired bold actions by youth and workers across the
United States, electrifying the political climate and forcing city officials
and police authorities to constantly revise their plans for dealing with this
broad-based people’s movement....
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Early Tuesday morning 900 police from a dozen police
agencies in the Bay Area, along with Homeland Security, brutally cracked
down on demonstrators who marched in support of Occupy Oakland....
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On the day Verizon announced that its third-quarter profits had jumped to $1.38 billion, more than 2,000 members of the Communication Workers union, together with contingents from unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union, District Council 37; the United Auto Workers; the Teamsters union; and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York held a vibrant, militant picket line in front of Verizon’s headquarters on Water Street on Oct. 21....
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The chain reaction of protest occupations that has swept the United States
has already reinvigorated the struggle for equality and for participation in
decisions that affect the lives of the 300 million people the demonstrators
call the 99 percent....
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The People’s Assembly at Hostos College in the Bronx, N.Y., scheduled
for Saturday, Nov. 5, has the ingredients for a unifying moment, bringing
workers’ and communities’ struggles together with the mushrooming Occupy Wall Street movement. Outreach in the Bronx has focused on postal workers’ unions, parents’ associations and tenants’ groups. People are excited to know they will be encouraged to speak up for themselves as well as hear from others with the same problems....
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Early Tuesday morning 900 police from a dozen police agencies in the Bay Area, along with Homeland Security, brutally cracked down on demonstrators who marched in support of Occupy Oakland. The demonstrators were marching to reestablish the Oakland occupation, which was shut down earlier in the day....
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Despite all the nice words by U.S. officials in world forums about their support for “peaceful” protests, despite all the sympathy expressed by politicians, from President Barack Obama on down, regarding the dire conditions that have sparked the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, despite all the efforts by many demonstrators to show good will to the authorities, the riot police have now been called out in many cities and the crackdown has begun....
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Will it develop a strong and
independent, working class-centered orientation with an understanding that
inequality based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and class are
realities that must be confronted as part of the process of forging real
solidarity amongst the 99%?...
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The prisoner hunger strikers at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison
called off their protest action on Oct. 13. Two days later, prisoners at
Calipatria State Prison decided to “temporarily” end their hunger
strike....
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Almost every major national labor union — except in the construction
trades — and the AFL-CIO have endorsed Occupy Wall Street. But more
important is that in major cities they have offered significant organizational,
financial and political support to this movement....
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The first confrontation between the Occupation Wall Street demonstrators and
billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York cops ended in victory for...
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Occupy Boston and the United National Antiwar Committee
rocked the city’s business district as 5,000 protesters marched on Oct.
15 with cries of “Whose streets? Our streets!” A contingent from
Steelworkers Local 8751 representing Boston school bus drivers led the march
from a union sound truck festooned with placards declaring “Wall Street =
War Street.” The truck was ringed by a steadfast security contingent from
Vets for Peace/Smedley Butler Brigade....
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It was called as a global Day of Rage that also focused on the 10th
anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. This
convergence of events on Oct. 15 put tens of thousands of people in motion here
in New York and in other cities across the country, reinforcing their anger at
imperialist wars....
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This Friday evening, Oct. 21, together with Occupy Wall Street, Verizon and Verizon Wireless workers will march to protest Verizon corporate greed. Please join us.
We will assemble at 140 West Street between 4 and 5 p.m., march east on Barclay Street and then down Broadway. We should arrive at Liberty Plaza around 5:30 p.m. and move on towards the Verizon Wireless store at about 6 p.m....
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These are hard times. There doesn’t appear to be any respite coming soon. The political atmosphere has shifted in response to the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. This crisis, because of how the changes in technology, communication and production have made the world smaller, is global in its impact....
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Just the very name — Occupy Wall Street! — has struck a chord with millions of people across the United States who are suffering from the often capricious devastation wreaked by the capitalist crisis, which has meant a job destroyed here, a family evicted there, until whole communities are left in tatters....
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In international financial centers, big cities and small towns, protests swept through Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada and the U.S. Demonstrators in the hundreds of thousands protested corporate avarice, growing poverty, joblessness and austerity cutbacks....
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ost news published in the corporate media here about the problems in the
“eurozone” involve the threat of Greece declaring bankruptcy and
this spreading to Portugal and maybe even Spain and Italy....
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Statement by the Bail Out the People Movement in support of students and
activists in Denver Colorado who are embarking on an occupation of the largest
university campus in the state....
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The International Women’s Alliance (IWA) supports the ‘Occupy Wall Street’
actions and calls on women’s organizations, networks, and alliances
worldwide to join and express their solidarity especially on the Global Day
of Action on October 15....
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Billionaire Bloomberg has announced that tomorrow he wants to
“clean” Zucotti Park, the site of Occupy Wall Street....
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ABRACADABRA is not a play. It is an act of Justice and Life, written mainly by children who share the dream of freedom . A teacher invites her students to walk the road to the essences, through five very true stories of
heroism and virtue....
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...
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The people are rising up. The anti-corporation sentiments that galvanized the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City are spreading across the U.S. and the world. The list of cities either staging or planning occupations increases by the hour....
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On Oct. 7 a Haitian community group will march from Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge and join the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Liberty Plaza in downtown Manhattan’s financial district. On Oct. 5 Columbia University students plan to walk out of classes and join a giant union march to the same site. A People of Color working group is now part of the encampment and meets regularly....
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Oct. 15 is a day of nationally coordinated
antiwar actions in cities across the U.S., the 10th anniversary of the
massively destructive and criminal U.S. war on Afghanistan....
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We will meet at 4 PM at the North corner (or back end) of Foley Square –
at Worth and Lafayette Streets, underneath a yellow banner like the one
above....
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The arrest of over 700 people on Saturday, Oct 1 on the Brooklyn Bridge by the New York City Police Department is an outrage and an injustice. Numerous videos clearly show top NYPD police officials actually leading the demonstration on to the roadway of the bridge, not the pedestrian walkway. Then they blocked further movement and started arresting hundreds of activists. This is entrapment....
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Sept. 26 — The outrage over the state of Georgia’s execution of
Troy Davis at 11:08 p.m. on Sept. 21 has not abated. Rather, his name has
become a code word for resistance and struggle....
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During an interview with WOR radio on Sept. 16, New York City’s
billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, stated that the conditions of high
employment in the U.S. could lead to social unrest on a par with what has
occurred throughout parts of North Africa, the Middle East, Britain, Spain,
Greece and elsewhere. His specific comment was, “You have a lot of kids
graduating college can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo.
That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”...
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Stop-and-frisk, harassment, marijuana busts – all directed
disproportionately at African American and Latino youth – is a constant
feature in neighborhoods where unemployment is the highest. And when people come out to demand jobs and justice, or to protest the racist execution of Troy Davis, they get kicked, tripped, punched and pepper-sprayed....
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...
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In the wake of the outrageous murder of Troy Davis, on Saturday the NYPD
violently attacked the Occupy Wall Street protesters for doing nothing but
taking to the streets against racism, unemployment and bank bailouts. The
latest word is they will not be released until tomorrow....
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“Occupy Wall Street” was a demonstration rooted in tweets,
Facebook messages, and email exchanges. There was no call to kick it off, no
list of endorsers, and no office with a director and staff. There were lists of
Web pages, some of which had links to files to make leaflets, and certainly
meetings occurred where issues and tactics were considered....
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The vast majority of the people in the U.S. depend on wages to get by. Only
7 percent of those who work full-time are self-employed. Farmers, for example,
who a century ago made up almost half the population, now account for less than
1 percent. Vastly more people work for large corporations or retail chains than
have their own businesses....
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President Barack Obama, facing formidable challenges to his re-election bid in 2012 as well as the potential further erosion of the Democratic Party base in the Senate and House of Representatives, unveiled the American Jobs Act during a special address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 8. On Sept. 12 he announced the submission of a $447 billion proposal to Congress that is purportedly designed to create jobs amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s....
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Some 15,000 children and thousands more adults will be cut off cash
assistance in Michigan on Oct. 1 due to draconian legislation adopted in the
state in recent months. These cuts were passed by the conservative state
Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder....
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After nearly seven months of war against the North African state of Libya,
the combined forces of NATO and its National Transitional Council
“rebel” units are tightening their noose around the areas of the
country where armed resistance has prevented the counterrevolution from taking
over. Those millions of Libyans who remain loyal to the government and are
opposing the efforts to loot the national wealth of this oil-producing nation
are being pressured to lay down their arms and surrender....
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“Food is a right” is not just a slogan. In 1999 the United
Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights determined that food
is actually a human right. But the price of food has doubled worldwide since
2000, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization....
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Dozens of demonstrators gathered in front of the Jacob K. Javits Federal
Office Building here on Aug. 5 to protest cuts of $127 billion to food stamps
and the Women, Infants and Children program. Congress mandated the cuts in
April, to extend from 2012 to 2021....
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Extreme right-wing, racist forces — who last year whipped up a climate of racism against the Islamic Prayer Center at 51 Park Place — are planning to use the tenth anniversary of September 11 for another anti-Muslim hatefest....
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New York City Mayor Bloomberg has announced that in the event of a hurricane, that he will not evacuate prisoners at Rikers’ Island, claiming instead to have a “contingency plan” in place. The experience of prisoners in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina shows that city authorities will abandon the basic rights of prisoners in the face of disaster....
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On August 20, the African community of the world will register our condemnation of and resistance to the wars being made against our people and our freedom everywhere.We will oppose the heinous bombing of Libya and the violent attempt to overthrow that government....
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We are writing to you on an urgent matter. As you know, the streets of
London and other British cities erupted in rebellion earlier this week,
following the police killing of a young Black man and father of three, Mark
Duggan, in the Tottenham area on August 4....
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Wednesday's (Aug. 10) first Planning Meeting of the Emergency Mobilization Against
Racism, War and Anti-Muslem Bigotry to counter the racist, right-wing forces on
Sunday, September 11 was a tremendous step forward. We discussed plans for a
Rally, March and Cultural Exhibition....
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In the largest U.S. strike in four years, 45,000 union members took to the picket lines from Massachusetts to Virginia on Aug. 7 after their contract with Verizon Communications expired. The courageous strikers, who belong to the Communication Workers union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, refuse to go back to work until they have a decent contract....
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In the past year the British government has announced and implemented huge cuts in education and social service programs in the face of growing unemployment and poverty. Now Black and working-class youth are responding with direct action and mass rebellion.<...
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Extreme right-wing, racist forces, who last year whipped up a climate of hate against the Islamic Prayer Center at 51 Park Place, have announced ugly new plans for this year -- the 10th anniversary of 9/11 -- at the same location near the World Trade Center site. This is a very dangerous threat. Anders Breivik, the racist, right-wing Norwegian responsible for the recent mass murder of 77 mostly young people in Norway, has quoted extensively from the writings of Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. These are the two organizations opposing the Islamic Prayer Space at 51 Park Place....
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RALLY for UNITY & SOLIDARITY
MANIFESTACIÓN POR LA UNIDAD Y LA SOLIDARIDAD
Sun • SEPT 11, 2011
NY City Hall • 1 pm
RALLY Broadway & Park Pl.
Dom • 11 de sept • 1 pm
La MANIFESTACIÓN
el lado oeste de la ALCALDÍA
Broadway y Park Pl.
Be there!
Volunteers & Activists needed...
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For 18 days the people of Egypt gathered in the streets in the millions and brought down the 30-year reign of U.S. client Hosni Mubarak. This January 25 Revolution, named for its first day of protest, was led by youth and students....
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June 18 — The Egyptian Socialist Party was founded here today before a packed auditorium of more than 400 Egyptians and international guests. What made such an assembly possible was the enormous mass revolution of last Jan. 25 that removed the U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and made the name “Tahrir Square” an inspiration for popular revolt worldwide....
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...
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More than 85 percent of Egypt’s poor live in rural areas. Like all
Egyptians, they are participating in the protests held throughout the country,
and are expecting that a new Egyptian government will meet their urgent
needs....
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In addition to the mass protests in Egypt, another arena for demanding
rights and fighting corruption has been Egypt’s independent trade union
movement. This movement expressed its solidarity with the demonstrators, and
added its clout to the struggle to bring down Hosni Mubarak five months
ago....
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Thousands of angry Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria at
the end of June, battling the Central Security forces for hours before
successfully pushing the riot police back. These were the most intense clashes
in five months, since Egypt’s 18-day revolution in January that ousted
U.S.-client Hosni Mubarak....
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The desperate situation of the Haitian people has given rise to political
tensions in the country’s Parliament and anger among the people against
the U.S.-backed regime. The only effective aid for combating the cholera
epidemic has come from socialist Cuba....
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The resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis shows the growing strength of the
right wing in capitalist politics and the bankruptcy of President Barack Obama
and the Democratic Party leadership. It also guarantees that the economic
crisis of the workers and the people in general will get worse at a time when
capitalism is sliding toward a new crisis....
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The scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World won’t make the giant media monopolies any less mouthpieces for the billionaire ruling class....
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The debt ceiling battle is being fought by representatives of the rich
with no input whatsoever by the people. We're being asked to sit on the
sidelines while the Democrats and Republicans duke it out. Possibly we can root
for one side or another....
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The International Women’s Assembly successfully held its First General
Assembly on July 5 and 6 in Quezon City, Philippines, under the theme
“Advance the Global Anti-imperialist Women’s Movement! Strengthen
the International Women’s Alliance!”...
|
Leaders of the hunger strike in the Security Housing Unit at
California’s Pelican Bay State Prison accepted an offer July 20 from the
California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation and have ended their
weeks-long action. Members of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition
confirmed reports of the hunger strike’s end after speaking with some of
the prisoners involved. ...
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Whether or not a deal is reached in Washington on how to raise the debt
ceiling and avoid a government default, the workers and the oppressed have no
independent voice in the debate. The process gives them no choice but to accept
the result of venomous political warfare in the capitalist establishment....
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On June 2 hotel housekeepers who are members of UNITE HERE launched a
coordinated eight-city speak-out “to break the silence on the dangers of
their jobs.” The workers stated that they were “inspired by the
courageous stand taken by the housekeepers in New York against some of the most
powerful men in the world.” ...
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Even the most rabid budget cutters on Wall Street are now pushing for an increase in the debt ceiling. The bankers and bosses were happy to see the Republican extreme right wing play chicken with default in order to get cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They have already gotten President Barack Obama to agree to put cutting Social Security and other entitlements on the bargaining table....
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Facundo Cabral, the well-known Argentinean songwriter, died July 9, the
victim of a horrendous shooting in Guatemala on his way to the airport. He was
74 years old and had just finished a concert in that country’s capital
before heading to Nicaragua where he was planning to end his concert tour. He
was suffering from cancer and was about to go for treatment....
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Urgent bulletin: On July 13 it is reported by the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition that 200 of the Pelican Bay hunger strikers are experiencing life-threatening health conditions according to an urgent update received by the coalition from medical personnel at the prison. The California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation continues to refuse to negotiate. It is urged that phone calls be made to the following authorities immediately, demanding they enter into negotiations before they have (more) deaths on their hands:...
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Just as the right of public sector workers to collective bargaining has been attacked this year in state legislatures from New Hampshire to California, so too have there been widespread legislative attacks on women’s right to legal, safe, accessible abortion....
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The hotel housekeeper who accused then-head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn of raping her is fighting back after a media barrage meant to defame her character and undermine her credibility. This brave woman has filed a libel suit against the New York Post for a series of articles in which the paper, in vulgar and demeaning terms, openly claimed she was a prostitute....
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At first glance it would seem that Athens, Ohio, and Athens, Greece, are worlds apart. Not only does language separate them, but more than 5,100 miles of land and ocean stand between them. The only thing they seem to have in common is a name....
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On June 28, as the New York City Council was scheduled to vote on a pro-banker, anti-people budget deal, more than 100 residents of the “Bloombergville” encampment marched around City Hall. They had been sleeping on the sidewalk nearby for 16 days trying to stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s impending cuts....
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The U.S. Supreme Court recently dealt a brutal blow to women workers employed by Wal-Mart. On June 20 the justices dismissed the Dukes v. Wal-Mart lawsuit, decreeing that these workers cannot sue their employers as a class for sex discrimination....
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These cuts have nothing to do with any kind of “deficit.”
Billionaire Bloomberg made that clear Friday night when he said, “We
always have the money. They question is, do we need to spend it on this or
that? Or spend it now or later?”...
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June 19 — Launched on the heels of a massive public workers’
rally on June 14, and inspired by gigantic occupations of public squares in
Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Wisconsin, the Bloombergville encampment near
New York’s City Hall has withstood police intimidation and inclement
weather to mount a spirited and sustained protest against the current onslaught
of anti-people budget cuts in New York City and state....
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Greece’s left-wing labor confederation PAME held the third general
strike of 2011 on June 15, protesting the government’s newest plans to
cut another 6.4 billion euros from the already existing austerity budget. PAME,
which marched in 67 cities, represents about half the organized workers and has
led the workers’ struggle against the Troika....
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Films of Struggle, Fundraiser for Peoples Video Network and
FIST...
|
The spirit of resistance is alive across the state of Wisconsin. From the
first eruption of struggle here in February, when Gov. Scott Walker introduced
a union-busting bill, and as attacks on working and oppressed people have
broadened and sharpened, youth and students have played a decisive role,
helping to advance and build the fightback....
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Some 80,000 people marched down the streets to Syntagma Square in Athens,
Greece, on June 5 on the 12th straight day of protests emulating the uprising
of youth in Spain. In Greece organized struggles over the past 18 months have
also included general strikes led by the PAME labor confederation....
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Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing
high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles,
launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank
missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and
financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look
at the full implications of this ominous development. ...
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This new book provides the bankground and analysis key to
understanding today’s fast-breaking Middle East
events....
|
They couldn’t break Geronimo ji Jaga. The FBI and Los Angeles district attorney framed the Black Panther Party leader for murder and jailed him for 27 years....
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The steering committees of the two large coalitions that mobilized on March 24 and May 12 against the massive cuts proposed in Mayor Bloomberg’s executive budget announced plans for a unified and protracted resistance and camp-in beginning Tuesday June 14....
|
Hundreds of thousands of people, predominantly youth, took to the streets
throughout Yemen on May 28 to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh leave.
Earlier, there had been heavy fighting between government forces and tribally
based militias, joined by dissident factions of the army. (Miami Herald, May
28)...
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May 30 — Demonstrations and occupations against the capitalist crisis, austerity and mass unemployment continued into their third week across Spain, sending ripples across the rest of the continent as other young people and workers organized protests and encampments in solidarity with the revolt that ignited on May 15. It’s now called 15-M....
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As a result of the ongoing people’s struggle in Wisconsin and worldwide support for it, a permanent injunction was issued by a Dane County judge May 26 that struck down the union-busting bill signed by Gov. Scott Walker on March 11....
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Manuel Zelaya is going home. After nearly two years in forced exile, after
two years of protests and marches, after strikes in the streets of Honduras,
after the martyrdom of hundreds of members of a huge nationwide resistance,
Hondurans have won the right to bring back “Mel,” their
“Máximo Líder,” the elected General Coordinator of the
Front for the National Popular Resistance of Honduras (FNRP)....
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Consider these horrific facts provided by the National Organization for
Women: Every year approximately 132,000 women report they have been violently
violated by rape or attempted rape. More than half of that number knew their
attackers. It’s estimated that two to six times that many women are
raped, but do not report it. Every year 1.2 million women are raped by their
current or former male partners, some more than once....
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The sun had not dawned yet on the cold, crisp morning of May 17 in Alhambra,
a neighborhood east of Los Angeles. It was hard to believe spring had arrived
that morning when at 5 a.m. the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
SWAT team assembled in front of Carlos Montes’ driveway and front yard.
The silence was shattered along with Montes’ door as the officers rammed
it down and then sprang into his home bearing automatic rifles....
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Drawing inspiration from the fighting spirit and determination of Tahrir
Square and the peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and the Middle East, the peoples of
Spain took the struggle against capitalist austerity, mass unemployment and the
conditions of the economic crisis to a new level this past week....
|
People in the U.S. and around the world have broad sympathy for the popular
demonstrations taking place in the Middle East. All the uprisings, however, are
not necessarily the same....
|
Since the beginning of the people’s upsurge in Wisconsin in early
February, the students and workers have resisted in numerous mass actions. One
of the most courageous of these was a student occupation at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which ended in the early morning hours of May 7 after the
students were evicted from their occupied space by the administration and
charged with “trespassing.”...
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All out on May 12 in New York City! Join in a mass march on Wall Street to
say ‘Enough!’ to service cuts, job cuts, wage cuts and other
anti-worker, anti-union, anti-poor, anti-youth attacks. Wall Street has the
money. It’s time to stop budget cuts and make the bosses and bankers pay
up! March with New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts, CUNY Mobilization Network,
Transport Workers Union, students, youth and many others. Gather at 4 p.m. at
the Bowling Green subway stop, across from 2 Broadway....
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International Workers’ Day — May Day — was honored throughout the U.S. on May 1 with marches demanding legalization for immigrants and an end to union busting and attacks on workers, including vicious anti-immigrant and anti-worker legislation enacted or under consideration in several states....
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In one of the biggest marches and rallies in Wisconsin history, more than 100,000 people participated in this year’s May Day in Milwaukee....
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The workers’ movement in the United States took a significant step forward this May Day when labor and immigrant organizations in New York City came together after a march and closed the day by exchanging speakers under the banner “May Day Is Workers’ Day.”...
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Students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are protesting the
administration’s planned eviction of their occupation by midnight Friday,
May 6....
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Union leaders from the center of the struggles in Wisconsin and California
spoke at a news conference April 29 in New York’s Union Square to help
build for what they hope will be a massive May Day march this year....
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...
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STAND with the North Carolina Association of Educators and the North
Carolina Defend Education Coalition who will be demonstrating on May 3 at the
North Carolina General Assembly for FULL FUNDING NOW!...
|
In a
show of unity, May 1st Coalition members joined with union members from LIUNA,
SEIU Local 1199, 32BJ, LACLAA and others at City Hall to announce that speakers
from the Foley Square Coalition & May 1st would be sharing speakers and
supporting each others activities. The Union Square organizers will be leaving
14th St. earlier than usual to join the Foley Square rally in a closing unity
rally....
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he increased attacks on both immigrant and non-immigrant workers show the
need for the most united, militant action possible on May Day in the U.S.
May Day originated in the U.S. from the struggle of immigrants and other
workers who fought and died for the eight-hour workday in 1886 – for the
right of all workers to a decent life....
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Beloved around the world to this day, Fidel stated in 1961: “This is what they cannot forgive us ... that we have made a Socialist Revolution right under the nose of the United States. ... Comrades, workers and farmers, this is the Socialist and democratic Revolution of the people, by the people and for the people. And for this Revolution ... we are willing to give our lives.”...
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Mobilize! That is the way the San Francisco Labor Council is answering the Pacific Maritime Association’s attack on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10. In a unanimous resolution, the SFLC called for mass action at the PMA’s San Francisco headquarters on April 25 and established a broad defense committee for the union and its members....
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...
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The antiwar movement is back on the streets. Thousands marched on April 9 in
New York and April 10 in San Francisco. These demonstrations represented an important step forward for the United National Antiwar Committee and the antiwar movement as a whole. The new antiwar movement needs to oppose the US foreign wars but also defend the domestic victims of the "war on terror," the Muslims who are being attacked. It must connect the dots between the money spent on war and the attacks on unions and cuts to education and needed programs. This is what these demonstrations on April 9 and 10 did....
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In the early morning of March 31, the state Legislature of New York passed
an austerity budget that cuts more than $1 billion from education. Cuts to
state spending on Medicaid will lead to a loss of federal matching funds that
will total $5 billion. Hundreds of millions more were cut from other vital
social services....
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The ongoing people’s struggle in Wisconsin won a victory in the April 5
elections when independent Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg won
a seat in the Wisconsin Supreme Court over Justice David Prosser, a Republican
conservative. It was announced on April 5 that Kloppenburg had won the election
by a few hundred votes....
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Three thousand activists demonstrated against U.S. wars abroad on April 10 in San Francisco. Protesters rallied in Dolores Park in the city’s Mission district both before and after a march through the community. The United National Antiwar Committee sponsored the actions. Those who attended were buoyed by what they described as “the renewal of the anti-war movement....
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Thousands of people from virtually all sectors of U.S. workers, the oppressed and youths gathered in Union Square in New York City April 9 and marched, shouted and drummed their anti-war slogans for two miles to Foley Square in downtown Manhattan. As this largest anti-war march in New York in years stretched for 20 blocks down Broadway, it passed by thousands of New Yorkers busy shopping, who smiled, cheered and waved at what can only be described as the new face of a vibrant movement to confront the war-makers....
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And the beat goes on. Right-wing, pro-corporate politicians continue their
attacks on working and poor people across the country. At the same time, they
are escalating their war on women’s rights and health care, but not
without resistance....
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On April 4th longshore workers joined tens of thousands of workers in more
than 1000 cities and towns across the country. They heeded the call of the
AFL-CIO for 'no business as usual' to show support for embattled
Wisconsin workers on the anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s assassination as he supported Memphis, Tenn. sanitation workers'
strike for collective bargaining and dignity forty-three years ago....
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WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healthy planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all....
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Poor and working people in Japan, the U.S. and around the world are the ones
paying for these nuclear plants, paying the costs of disaster and also
guaranteeing the profits of the relatively small handful of people who own
them. The workers at the plant, the community around them and the people in
general should be the ones to make the decisions to shut down plants at
immediate risk and demand protection from GE and other nuclear power giants, as
well as accountability and reparations for the damages these corporations have
already caused....
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Now is a good time to watch, either again or for the first time, the
powerful 1981 film “Lion of the Desert.” It tells the story of Omar
Mukhtar, a legendary leader of the armed resistance to Italy’s colonial
conquest of Libya....
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he Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has drawn an important
conclusion from the unprovoked bombing of Libya by U.S. and NATO forces:
Developing countries should never let down their guard and believe promises
made by the imperialists....
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The right-wing, imperialist Italian government headed by Silvio Berlusconi
has joined France, Qatar and Kuwait in recognizing the so-called
“rebel” Libyan National Transitional Council. The recognition comes after chief executive officer Paolo Scaroni of
Italy’s giant oil monopoly, Eni, met with council members to discuss
reviving the company’s access to oil production now in
“rebel” territory. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, referring to Scaroni, said:
“He had important meetings on restarting cooperation about energy....
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The union movement has called for “We Are
One” actions across the country to mark this important
anniversary and to call for solidarity with Wisconsin workers and the struggle
for justice every where. Thousands of actions both big and small are
being called not only by the unions but by community and student groups who are
joining on this day....
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The Latin America-Caribbean Solidarity Committee of the
International Action Center & HondurasUSAResistencia urges everyone to read
the following statement in solidarity with the people of Honduras. A wave of
repression is sweeping the country and the movement in the US must say no. We
urge everyone to organize an contingent in solidarity with Latin America &
the Caribbean and the historic April 9 anti-war actions in NYC and San
Francisco. Si se puede!...
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The hearts of workers and the oppressed of the world go out to the Japanese
people who have been hit by an earthquake and tsunami and are now threatened
with nuclear disaster. We can never forget that more than 200,000 people,
almost all civilians, were murdered by U.S. nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in
1945, while millions suffered from radiation poisoning, cancer and birth
defects in the following decades....
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he major national Antiwar Rallies in NYC
at Union Square, on Saturday, April 9 and in San Francisco on Sunday, April 10
are just 2 weeks away. Momentum is building based on the urgency of
responding to the new attacks in Libya, no end to the U.S. wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, more attacks and threats to Gaza, ugly attacks on
Muslims, new attacks on unions and collective bargaining and a new rounds of
cutbacks of every possible social program, particularly hitting the Black and
immigrant communities and the unemployed....
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The ferocious storm of uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East continues to stymie the efforts of the U.S. and other Western powers to suppress or contain them. There are ongoing significant protests in Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq, all places with a substantial U.S. military presence....
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The passage of right-wing Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill
should not be the end of the story in Wisconsin. It should be the beginning of
a new phase of escalated struggle by the unions, the community and students to
overturn this illegal denial of workers’ rights. Walker and the right-wing Republican state legislative group are outright tools of the banks, the bondholders and corporations that are rolling in money
and still putting their profits before union rights and people’s
needs. There are many grounds on which to base a mass fightback to overturn this bill: It is illegal under international law; it was passed illegally; it denies
fundamental rights of unions and all workers, and it attacks communities and
students....
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At a meeting at Hostos College on Saturday, March 5, some 200 labor, student
and community activists gave a ringing endorsement for a large-scale
mobilization to rally at City Hall and march to Wall Street on March 24. The
coalition includes numerous public sector unions, the CUNY Mobilization
Network, the South Bronx Community Congress, the Freedom Party, the Coalition
for Public Education, and the Bail Out the People Movement....
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...
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With the corporate media’s attention concentrated on Libya, its oil
reserves and the real danger of U.S. and NATO’s military intervention,
one could almost forget that enormous popular revolts are percolating
throughout North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula....
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Senate Republicans in Wisconsin attempted the nuclear option! In a
final show of disregard for the sentiments of the majority of the people they
severed the union-busting provisions from the budgetary bill. This move allowed them to vote without a quorum on the union busting part alone. Last night they rammed this through the Senate. Thursday it will come before the Assembly. But not without resistance, thousands of people have already refilled the Capitol bringing with them sleeping bags, drums and making plans to stay.
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO and many others have put out an emergency call to come to Madison this morning. Protests are schedule this whole week and weekend. On Saturday, farmers are planning to drive their tractors to Madison to join union members. Milwaukee high school students are marching 80 miles to the Capitol....
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The great struggle of the Wisconsin public workers has galvanized union
solidarity on a national level not seen since 1981. That was when the AFL-CIO
organized the Solidarity Day demonstration of half a million workers in
Washington, D.C., after President Ronald Reagan had fired 18,000 air traffic
controllers, members of the PATCO union, and banned them from federal
employment for life....
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The movement to stop Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget
repair bill” continues to draw mass support nationally and
internationally. The resistance has blossomed into a statewide people’s
rebellion with rallies, demonstrations, candlelight vigils and other protest
actions all focused on “kill the bill.”...
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Following is the statement of Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Geneva, March
1 [2011]....
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On Sunday, Feb. 27, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannochi resigned; he was replaced
by the elderly Beji Caïd Essebsi. On Monday the ministers of Industry and
Finance, the last remnants of the old regime also resigned. In the evening so
did Nejib Chebbi and Ahmed Brahmi, representatives respectively of the
Tajdid movement and the PDP, the two legal parties under Ben Ali. On
Tuesday they were followed by two other ministers. We have lived without a
government for four days in which terror has been circling like a bird of prey
around the Qasbah: youth beaten, threatened, persecuted by police and hired
criminals who have taken over the streets of the Medina and the surrounding
April 9th Avenue. At the same time the space has been restructured and the
class divide has drawn new geographical lines: while still Qasbah snugly in its
sacred area, with its illustrious barbarians and hardened militants, the silent
majority, silent for 23 years, decided to speak for about two hours a
day, between 5 and 7 p.m., at a daily assembly convened at the Dome in the
pompous Olympic Village, to support Ghannouchi, demand an end to the
demonstrations and defend the "revolution" from those who want to
make one...
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A new cabinet was sworn in on Feb. 22 in the aftermath of Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak’s resignation and the suspension of parliament and the
previous government. This was precipitated by the Feb. 11 Supreme Military
Council’s coup. The new cabinet’s appointment and publication of
the first set of political reforms on Feb. 26 is an attempt to address the
Egyptian people’s demands for a rapid return to civilian rule....
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STOP THE ATTACKS ON WORKING FAMILIES, THE ORGANIZED & UNORGANIZED, AND ALL WORKING PEOPLE AROUND THE GLOBE!...
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The White House is meeting with its allies among the European imperialist NATO countries to discuss imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, jamming all communications of President Moammar Gadhafi inside Libya, and carving military corridors into Libya from Egypt and Tunisia, supposedly to “assist refugees.” (New York Times, Feb. 27)...
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The Al-Mahalla strike is part of the spate of industrial unrest that has rocked the country in the midst and aftermath of the 25 January revolution. Policemen, bank employees, workers at the Helwan Coke Company, in military production, cement, iron and steel and at the Suez Canal all struck for higher wages and improved working conditions, demanding an end to corruption in the workplace....
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Venezuelan president calls for mediation to end crisis while the US and other powers weigh military options....
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For 12 straight days peaceful protesters: high school and college students,
families with children, workers from all of the unions including teachers,
state workers, nurses and firefighters have continued a 24 hour presence at the
Capitol....
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Anti-government protesters in Bahrain swarmed back into a symbolic square on
Feb. 19, putting riot police to flight in a striking victory for their
cause....
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Protests continued throughout the country of Yemen on Feb. 21 to demand the
ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The demonstrations, which began during
the time of the uprising in Tunisia and gained traction with recent events in
Egypt, have increased in scope and intensity in the past 12 days....
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The International Action Center urges solidarity with the resistance
struggles shaking dictatorships throughout the Arab World....
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Anti-government demonstrations have spread to the Horn of Africa nation of
Djibouti, where 30,000 people marched on Feb. 18 demanding the resignation of
President Ismael Omar Guelleh. Two people were killed when police attacked
protesters in this country’s capital, which is also called Djibouti....
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The heroic occupation of the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison has electrified the entire U.S. labor movement, which has suffered decades-long attacks in the form of devastating layoffs; plant closings; loss of wages, health care benefits, pensions and much more.Now right-wing, Tea Party-supported governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin – on behalf of big business and Wall Street – are attempting to decimate the right of all workers to unionize with reactionary legislation like the “budget repair bill” that would deny workers the basic right to collective bargaining....
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On Jan. 28, Mumia Abu-Jamal retained the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. to represent him in the ongoing appeal of his capital murder conviction and death sentence. LDF will serve as co-counsel in the case with Judy Ritter, Esq., of Widener Law School in Wilmington, Del., who has represented Mr. Abu-Jamal since 2003....
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Inside the state Capitol building in Madison, Wis., the halls normally filled with politicians and corporate lobbyists are now occupied by thousands of people. Banners and posters with messages of solidarity and slogans denouncing Gov. Walker's attack on the public sector hang from every wall....
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“Now is the time. We can't let this die because we are at ground
zero and what happens here affects the rest of the world. We have to be strong.
A united front,” said Mahlon Mitchell of the Professional Firefighters of
Wisconsin at the massive afternoon rally at the state Capitol Feb. 19. Mitchell
became the first African-American president of the PFW on Jan. 12. On Feb. 19 the biggest demonstration yet, with an estimated crowd of
100,000, filled the grounds outside the state Capitol and continued the sit-in.
A massive roving picket line with all sectors of the working class -- union and
non-union workers, the unemployed, students, people of color, immigrants, and
the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer community -- marched on the
streets for the entire day accompanied by drumming, chanting, dancing and
singing....
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Since Feb. 14, tens of thousands of students, workers and other community members have liberated the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison in response to Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair” bill, which would eliminate collective bargaining rights for 175,000 public sector union workers statewide. Gilbert Johnson, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 82 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told this reporter: “We’re repulsed by the efforts of the current administration to strip us of our rights and dignity. The increasing protests statewide, and especially at the state Capitol, are exactly what’s needed to kill Gov. Walker’s bill, which is a union-busting and anti-worker attack. The resistance by the people of Wisconsin is inspiring and instilling hope in poor and working people all over the country. We need a constant stream of people going to the Capitol to stop this bill and for all to come out to the emergency rally Thursday.”...
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The Bail Out the People Movement is calling for nationally coordinated actions on Friday, February 18 and Saturday, February 19 in support of Wisconsin workers and students who have been occupying the state Capitol for the past four days. Activists involved in the occupation are enormously excited about the idea of coordinated national actions of support....
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Thousands of Wisconsin public workers, students and teachers have been occupying the state Capitol for four days. In Capitol Square 50,000 workers have protested Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to enact legislation ("Budget Repair Bill") that would wipe out the right of public workers to have a union, and would make collective bargaining illegal. Across Wisconsin schools and universities have been shut down by teachers, students and communities defending their right to education. Wisconsin workers and students are standing up for the rights of workers everywhere....
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The Egyptian military would like to put the genie of the
Egyptian Revolution back in the bottle. But it won’t go back. The
so-called “orderly transition” — backed by the Obama
administration, NATO and the Egyptian ruling class — has the immediate
tactical goal of pushing the masses of people off the streets and off the stage
of history....
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On behalf of the banks, the corporations and the Pentagon, Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker has declared all-out war on unions and their allies.
Walker’s “budget repair bill” proposal, which he unveiled at
a state Capitol press conference on Feb. 11, proposes to virtually eliminate
collective bargaining for approximately 175,000 public-sector union members.
Walker has submitted his proposal to the Wisconsin Legislature with the
directive that he wants his bill passed in the Assembly and the Senate by Feb.
17. In a swift response, unions and their allies across the state are mobilizing
to descend upon the Capitol in Madison this week with two major rallies planned
for Feb. 15 and 16. Numerous other protest actions by labor-community-student
organizations are ongoing across the state, including two major actions on Feb.
14: a march and rally to the Capitol building led by the Teaching Assistants
Association-AFT and a rally at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee led by the
Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association-AFT Local 2169 and AFSCME....
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Ghazala, a courageous woman, founder of the Committee of Unemployed
Graduates of Gafsa that so actively participated in the protests of 2008, has
given us a contact in Qasserine. We meet him halfway there, in Mejel Bel Abbes.
Boubaker, 33 year old, master's in engineering, also a member of the
Committee of Unemployed Graduates, is surviving by doing some odd jobs as an
electrician. He is tall, a bit prim, neatly dressed in the dignified severity
that attempts to preserve a modest sovereignty of his appearance in the midst
of difficulties. Like many educated young people in similar circumstances in a
situation where he is forced to remain single, he has wound up developing,
without wanting to, an air of a preacher or priest: there is something, how can
we put it, excessively clean in their dress and mannerisms. He speaks little
French, but has an almost scholarly knowledge of the history of the area, whose
natural wealth, well known by Romans, Vandals and Berbers, has been
misappropriated and wasted by postcolonial Tunisia....
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The
greatest analysts of human society described real revolutions
as “festivals of the masses.” We see then that the 18 days
that overturned the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship is one of the
greatest revolutions in the history of humanity. Never before
have so many in such a condensed period of time become the
actors and writers of their own history. We congratulate the
people of Egypt for their tremendous victory over a tyrant who
for 30 years had the support of the “great powers” of the
European Union and especially of the United States until the
final moments of his reign....
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These reports from Cairo are from Faiza Rady, formerly a resident of
Philadelphia, who has returned to Egypt...
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The International Action Center joins with the people of Egypt and the world in
celebrating the stunning triumph of people's power and mass action in
Egypt. The greatest analysts of human society described real revolutions as
“festivals of the masses.” We see then that the 18 days that
overturned the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship is one of the greatest revolutions in
the history of humanity. Never before have so many in such a condensed period
of time become the actors and writers of their own history. We congratulate the
people of Egypt for their tremendous victory over a tyrant who for 30 years had
the support of the “great powers” of the European Union and
especially of the United States until the final moments of his reign....
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From Gafsa to Redeyef you travel towards striped mountains that mark the
border with Algeria, under a pure blue sky, through a hard, dry terrain, a
planetary extension, which is about to succumb once more to the temptation of
being landscape: small towns with camels browsing between the houses, shepherds
with colorful headdresses, massive women sitting in the sun, wrapped in white
cloth, sharing tasks and conversation. Everything seems fresh, clean,
motionless, eternal and clear. But in reality there are few places in Tunisia
as ground down by its history as this square of adverse and ancient
land....
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The Egyptian revolt against the U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak regime has inspired many workers and oppressed people throughout the world. Mass solidarity demonstrations have taken place to show support for Egypt’s popular uprising. Here are brief reports on just a few notable actions, most of them on Feb. 5 or 6....
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With the popular uprising that is rocking cities across Egypt now heading into its third week, solidarity rallies are building across the U.S. in response. Many of these protests are calling on the U.S. government to end its funding for the repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak....
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Feb. 9 reports from Cairo say there are growing numbers of Egyptian workers who have gone out on strike all over the country, as the struggle to oust the despised, U.S.-backed Mubarak regime intensifies....
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Feb. 8 — Hosni Mubarak’s military-police regime and its creators in Washington are waging a war of attrition to wear down the newly emerging Egyptian revolution. But the people show no signs of backing down. More than a million anti-government demonstrators today once again filled Liberation Square. Despite police-agent attacks, gradual escalation of pressure from the military and slanderous campaigns against the protesters on Egyptian state television, all reports are that masses of people have flooded into central Cairo to demand the immediate ouster of Mubarak....
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"France is Paris, the rest is scenery," 19th century French
centralism said with contempt. Many times before we had been in central and
southern Tunisia, but we had never seen anything but flocks of sheep and
clouds, striated mountains and clean deserts, and people who seemed to
passively accept, in the villages and cafes along the highway, their condition
as a watermark or wrinkle in the tapestry. Our short and intense journey,
parallel to the turbulence that has shaken the country for more than a month,
reflects the decisive transformation, mental and material, of a landscape into
a territory....
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March in Solidarity with millions of Egyptian People in their struggle for
democracy and human rights as they demand the immediate DEPARTURE of the
repressive U.S. backed Mubarak regime....
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Bloomberg and Cuomo are leading attacks on unionized workers, especially in the public sector. They want to cut pension and lay off teachers and other civil servants. These attacks hurt all workers...
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This interview was conducted in bits and parts, in the middle of a protest
demonstration, stopping to talk once you recovered your breath after running
through the streets near Bourghiba Avenue. These are crucial days for the
revolution, but the glare of the mainstream media is now directed towards
Egypt. "Tunisia is not an international issue but a local one," the
Al Jazeera employees told us when we tried to inform them that Benali militia
had returned to their old ways in Sfax. Boukadous disagrees. "The
revolution began in the provinces and remains very active there."...
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Nationalists, liberals, Islamists and leftists: A National Assembly should choose new transitional leadership in Egypt. There must be strong representation of youth....
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The masses in Tahrir (Liberation) Square - now known among the fighters as
Martyrs’ Square — gave the counterrevolutionary thugs of a dying
regime blow for blow, pushed them back and held the square, thus achieving both
a military and political victory. They were fully aware of the crucial
political importance of holding the square for the people. This was a victory
for the masses of Egyptian people, the people of the Middle East as a whole,
and the workers and oppressed of the world....
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...
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“You can only talk of revolution if there is a time when the whole
people go out to the streets to take part in a big festival. The victories are
celebrated and if we are not celebrating it's because there is victory. We
have not been able to celebrate anything in the street, not even the expulsion
of Ben Ali. And that means we have not yet won.”...
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Don’t be confused by the deceptive and false statements uttered by
President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Roddam Clinton suggesting that
they have sympathy for Egyptians fighting for liberation and jobs in Tahrir
Square. <...
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Since the early hours of the morning loud music from large speakers in front
of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry on the Corniche Al Nile in downtown Cairo has
been booming. Shortly past 8 a.m., at the end of the curfew, as the first cars
and pedestrians crossed over from the Nile Zamalik in the direction of the city
center, an additional person reports to the loudspeaker to speak. He promises
that the government understands the concerns of the people and resolves to keep
the country in peace and prosperity. A man holds a T-shirt in the air, on which
President Hosni Mubarak is caught looking down and smiling. A good three dozen
men wave the Egyptian flag and look around uncertainly, and some melancholy men
behind them run swiftly past them along the promenade towards Tahrir Square,
Liberation Square. While some — probably for fear of losing their jobs
— cheer the Mubarak regime — the others will demand this day the
resignation of the man who ruled Egypt for 30 years. Only rarely is there even
a short battle of words between the two camps, that is then quickly ended by
soldiers, who have been blocking for days now bank of the Nile between the
State Department and Tahrir Square....
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We returned this morning to Qasba, closed on all four sides by barbed wire.
The police only let in the employees who work in the district. But from the
outside we were able to see and photograph, the new lime painted on the walls
looking like a facelift, revealing a hidden history, a strangled antiquity.
There is no doubt they have done a good job. Not a trace of a slogan or a comma
of graffiti or stroke of black ink. Not even on the prime minister's stone
palace can you find the slightest trace of the noisy discussions that for five
days fused politics and life in a pure present without future....
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The revolutionary upheaval in Egypt has brought millions of workers, youth
and professionals into the streets to demand the removal of the U.S.-backed
regime of Hosni Mubarak. The potential looms for a total collapse of
Washington’s foreign policy in the region....
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Jan. 30 — Massive protests continue throughout Egypt to demand an end to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, a 30-year dictatorship that has served as an anchor for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. In the streets protesters have fraternized with members of the military, while police forces have largely retreated. Meanwhile, youth direct traffic, as self-defense committees have been organized to defend neighborhoods from violence at the hands of “thugs,” who many suspect to be plainclothes police and members of the ruling National Democratic Party. After three days of demonstrations in which tens of thousands of people faced brutal repression at the hands of the Egyptian state apparatus, hundreds of thousands came out on Jan. 28 to protest the police brutality, poverty, unemployment and corruption they have endured under the Mubarak regime. Defying a curfew imposed by Mubarak the day before, protesters hit the streets not only in the capital city, Cairo, but in cities throughout the country....
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Hamida Ben Romdhane, director of La Press on January 13, still director of La Press on January 30, writes an article today entitled "I am guilty,” in which he lashes out against "the smoothies, sycophants, calculators and manipulators" that for years have been lackeys in the service of the dictator's personality cult. "Today," he says, "Tunisia breathes freely and so does our newspaper. ...
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IAPSCC salutes the people of Egypt for their determined struggle to end the
30-year long tyrannical rule of Mubarak having a tacit understanding with
Israel and who was backed by the imperialist powers, esp. the USA, all these
years. Inspired by the example of Tunisian people’s struggle and victory
over dictatorial rulers, people in Egypt have taken to the streets for over one
week defying curfew and planning still more powerful movement....
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After two weeks of restraint, in fact, the police have returned to take
charge of the situation. Yesterday they broke hands and legs in the Qasbah and
throughout the day lists have circulated of unconfirmed dead and missing. At
least 20 people were arrested this afternoon at the station. And on the Qasbah
square where yesterday there were still blankets, tents and cooking pots, some
dozens of mobile phones were scattered about. Of many of the people the police scattered yesterday nothing is known.Meanwhile this morning, 12 hours later, the walls of the building that for five
days was the ministry of the people were being painted over, the Press
published a front-page photograph of the crushed concentration under the
headline: "in the Qasbah the freedom caravan follows the protests."
The revolution is already a brand-name, the spark of life of a government that
weaves in the darkness and a press that uses new names to name the same
things....
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At 9:30 a.m. a taxi driver answered our question about Mohamed Ghannouchi
with impeccable reasoning:“Do you know why I want him to go? Because he doesn't want to go.
If he doesn't want to go, it's because he is hiding something. If he is
hiding something, it can't be something good. And if he is hiding something
bad, he has to go.”...
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If everything was following a plan, if 120 people were killed to rejuvenate
the old country and better locate it in an Arab world submissive to
Washington's plans, if it were aimed at better ensuring continuity by
introducing some cosmetic changes, then now it would have to sweep away the
embers that the wind -- always unpredictable -- has blown together at the
Qasbah. The past returns with unsettling speed....
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A seemingly all-powerful military, police and media apparatus, that has had the
support of the U.S. superpower for decades, is crumbling before the even
greater strength of a united people who have first conquered fear and may now
push the dictator’s regime into the dustbin of history....
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Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across Egypt
demanding the ouster of U.S. ally President Hosni Mubarak. These are the
largest anti-regime protests in Mubarak’s 30-year rule of this North
African country of 85 million people. Though the White House has declared the
Mubarak regime “stable,” even greater protests are expected on Jan.
28 following Friday services at mosques throughout the country. Egyptian
opposition forces were inspired by the uprising in nearby Tunisia, which on
Jan. 14 forced that country’s dictator, Zine El Abadine Ben Ali, to flee
to Saudi Arabia. The uprising in Tunisia surprised not only its own rulers but
their imperialist overlords in Paris and Washington....
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To affirm and ensure our participation in the revolution of our people, who fought for their right to freedom and national dignity, this people who sacrificed dozens of martyrs and thousands of wounded and arrested, and in order to complete and secure the victory against both domestic and foreign enemies and against those who are attempting to hijack the sacrifices of the people, have constituted "The January 14th Front” as a political structure to promote and ensure the revolution to achieve its goals and fight and stop the forces of counterrevolution; this front is a structure that brings together national, progressive and democratic parties, forces and organizations....
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After a festive and liberating week with unanimous participation, Tunisian society is beginning to split along class lines. It is a territorial division, which is beginning to separate Bourguiba Avenue from the Qasbah, and is also a cyber division, in which the same people who used facebook to fuel the revolution are today calling for calm and the restoration of order against the insurgent proletariat. You can perceive a disturbing contraction. Hamida Ben Romdhane, director of La Press, which on Jan. 13 dutifully praised the last steps Ben Ali took to try to calm the masses, on Jan. 20 exhibited on its front cover jewels allegedly confiscated from the Trabelsi family and praised the revolution of the worthy people of Tunisia....
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The unknown country, which has made the revolution, which has sacrificed 120 lives in the protests, is found not on Bourguiba Avenue, where intellectuals celebrate a revolution that they can gain from and then withdraw, but in the Qasbah in front of the prime minister's headquarters. Yesterday hundreds of people slept here, and now, at 12 a.m. (on Jan. 24), thousands of them are still shouting: "nidal nidal hata iusqut el nitham", "Al yaum al-yaum tusqut el-hukuma" ("Struggle, struggle until we end the regime","today, today we overthrow the government.") ...
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A revolution, can it so easily become a habit? Is it compatible with the customary normal duties of government, the production and reproduction of everyday life, the natural decline of forces? The government hopes and protesters fear the same thing: fatigue will set in. But this Sunday [Jan. 23] of transition to "the first day of normality," which will once again put to the test the people's ability to break out, Bourguiba Avenue remains vibrant under a light so pure, so sharp, that its buildings and the trees look bare, even skinless....
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In some sense these days I feel very Tunisian: because, like other Tunisians, I realize that up to now I understood nothing about Tunisia. And because what is now clear to me, like to all other Tunisians, is mostly a great confusion. The situation, eight days after the collapse of the tyrant, it stretches and stretches without breaking. As in all revolutions, everything is decided in the first few weeks and today one everything feels a little uncomfortable -- like amorphous, painful, formless freedom -- a great uncertainty....
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The following is a day-by-day chronicle of developments in Tunisia, which are written in Spanish and which the IAC is translating to English:...
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Jan. 24 — Tunisia’s workers and youth have continued mass demonstrations and strikes aimed at removing the neocolonial regime and replacing it with a representative government of national unity....
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The Pima County Tea Party Patriots are holding a rally Jan. 28 in Tucson, Ariz., to launch a campaign to oust County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. The Tea Party and right-wingers all over the country have opened a campaign of vilification against Dupnik because he pointed the finger at the ultraright in his press conference on the day of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an attack that claimed six lives....
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Brother Bomani is one of three prisoners who went on hunger strike at
Ohio State Penitentiary to protest the conditions of their confinement and were
supported by a nationwide and international movement. OSP Warden David
Bobby brought the hunger strike to an end by offering the prisoners more than
they had asked for on 1/14/11....
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Haiti has endured a year of unimaginable and profound suffering, under a
government dedicated to greed and serving the interests of the imperialists.
More than 1.5 million people are living in huts or under sheets and tarps
throughout Port-au-Prince, still homeless since last January’s
earthquake. There is an unemployment rate of 80 percent. More than 3,600 people
have died and another 171,000 are infected from the cholera epidemic, imported
by Minustah, the U.N.’s occupation force....
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Jan. 18 — A popular uprising in the North African state of Tunisia since mid-December has driven President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled the Western-allied government for 23 years, into exile. Ben Ali fled on Jan. 14 after tens of thousands of workers and youths attacked the Ministry of the Interior and other government buildings in the capital of Tunis and in the city of Carthage. When a street vendor who was attacked by police committed suicide by self-immolation on Dec. 17, it unleashed this enormous struggle. Defying tear gas and even live fire from the security forces that killed between 50 and 100 people, thousands also demonstrated in dozens of Tunisia’s provincial cities until they brought down a repressive head of state....
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The Martin Luther King Day protest focuses on
Woodlawn management’s announced plans to outsource 23 of the remaining 38
union jobs at Woodlawn, as an act of vengeance against the workers for choosing
a fighting union to represent them. Woodlawn management told the union it has
contracted with the Brickman group, a Westchester-based firm that exploits
immigrant labor, underpaying them and then abandoning them when they stand up
and ask questions....
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The Jan. 8 shooting of Arizona Congressperson Gabrielle Giffords should
rightfully be termed a political assassination attempt. The planned murder
attempt, which took the lives of six people, including a 9-year-old child,
takes place in a political climate of extreme racism, anti-immigrant terror,
and fear-mongering that the right-wing, their politicians and pundits have been
stoking for more than a decade.It is part of the calculation of the ruling elite in this country to fan the flames of division, racism, and reactionary thinking in order to divert
people’s attention from the economic crisis. The attempt on the life of a
member of Congress is a direct by-product of the economic crisis....
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A powerful storm system dumped heavy snow from the Carolinas to Canada on the U.S. East Coast during 36 hours starting Dec. 26. New York and the rest of the Northeast took the brunt of the blizzard, with snowfall totals measuring from 20 to 32 inches. The follow-up to this storm has raised the stakes as Wall Street and the banks are on the attack against unionized public service workers and insist on eliminating jobs....
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Four death-sentenced prisoners, wrongfully convicted of crimes following the 1993 prison rebellion in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, started a “rolling” hunger strike Jan. 3. The strike is to protest the highly restrictive solitary confinement where they have been placed in the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary, located in Youngstown, since 1998. These prisoners are starting to run out of appeals. They say they would rather die, if they must, on their own terms, rather than on a gurney by lethal injection. They intend the hunger strike to help strike a blow against confinement conditions so inhumane that they amount to torture....
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Before I speak my piece, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I don’t want to die. I want to live and breathe and strive to do something righteous with my life. Truly. For the past 16 years, however, I’ve been in solitary confinement, confined to a cell 23 hours a day for something I didn’t do and, speaking honestly, I have gone as far as I’m willing to go. Am I giving up? No....
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On Jan. 3, four prisoners held in Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax prison started a hunger strike to protest the highly restrictive conditions they have been subjected to since they were moved to the prison in 1998. These prisoners are Bomani Shakur aka Keith LaMar, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen aka James Were, all received death sentences as the result of wrongful convictions on charges related to the 1993 prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio. Hasan and Robb helped negotiate the settlement of the Lucasville uprising, preventing a massacre such as the one in Attica in 1971 which resulted in more than forty deaths....
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The Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners’ Rights learned that on
or about December 16, Terrance Bryant Dean was severely beaten by guards at
Macon State Prison where he was incarcerated. The Coalition asserts this brutal
beating was not isolated and was a retaliatory act carried out by the
Department of Corrections (DOC) against non-violent striking inmates. The
Coalition was formed to support the interests and agenda of thousands of
Georgia prisoners who staged a peaceful protest and work strike initiated in
early December....
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The Bail Out the People Movement took to the streets
yesterday in the wake of the storm crisis that paralyzed the city....
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The Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) in Youngstown, Ohio, holds 539 people
behind its brick walls, multiple barbed wire fences and iron bars. It is within
this dungeon that four of the men known as the Lucasville Five are
incarcerated: Bomani Shakur, Adbullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen.
These men are held in a special section of OSP’s death row, awaiting
lethal injection for the crime of participating in a rebellion....
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How does the struggle behind the walls tie in with
the overall struggle of the anti-war, anti-racist, women’s, labor, gay
rights and general progressive movement?...
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Following is a message from political prisoner Bomani Shakur, one of the
Lucasville Five, read at the 9th annual March to Stop Executions in Houston....
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Following is a commentary from political prisoner Bomani Shakur, one of
the Lucasville Five, now on death row in Ohio on false charges from a 1993
prison uprising. Shakur was convicted as Keith LaMar....
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Tens of thousands of workers in Greece took to the streets Dec. 15 to
protest the drastic austerity measures the Greek government has imposed on
them, under pressure from the banks that loaned money to cover its financial
crisis....
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Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir
Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday Jan. 3 to protest
their 23-hour a day lock down for nearly 18 years. These four death-sentenced
prisoners have been single-celled (in solitary) in conditions of confinement
significantly more severe than the coniditions experienced by the approximately
125 other death-sentenced prisoners at the supermax prison, Ohio State
Penitentiary in Youngstown....
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THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that
wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic
rights and liberties....
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What conclusions or lessons can be drawn from the historic Georgia
prisoners’ strike that lasted close to a week and involved as many as 10
institutions across the state?...
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For over week, since December 9, thousands of Georgia prisoners have refused
to work, stopped all activities and locked down in their cells in a peaceful
protest for their human rights. It is urgent to support this heroic act of
resistance to inhuman prison conditions and racism....
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According to reports from family members and prisoner rights advocates,
thousands of incarcerated men throughout Georgia engaged in a coordinated
strike starting Dec. 9. They refused to go to work or participate in other
assignments or activities, but stayed in their cells, calling it a
“lockdown for liberty.” Using unauthorized cell phones, the prisoners have been able to organize among themselves and to communicate with news media and supporters. What is so extraordinary about this action besides its statewide character
is its unity among the prisoners — Black, Latino, white, Muslims,
Christians, Rastafarians — to achieve their central demand to be treated
as human beings, not slaves or animals.
...
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Students and faculty at the City University of New York, in opposition to
another tuition increase, held two disruptions at meetings of the Board of
Trustees in November. The board had proposed a 5 percent tuition increase,
which would amount to $125 more per semester, to begin in the spring of 2011.
On top of that, the BOT proposed an additional increase of $500 per semester
for the Hunter College School of Social Work. CUNY tuition had already been
raised by 15 percent in 2009. Since 2003, tuition has increased 44 percent....
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The New York chapter of the Women’s Fightback Network hosted a
reportback meeting Dec. 4 on the Montreal International Women’s
Conference that took place Aug. 13-16 in Canada. The meeting, held at the
Solidarity Center in Manhattan, was standing room only as women activists of
many nationalities, ages and political backgrounds saw video footage and a
power point presentation about the conference....
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For the seventh consecutive year, union leaders, social movement activists
and socialists from many countries in the Western Hemisphere came together in
this dynamic border city on the first weekend in December for intense
discussions. They focused on the global crisis of the imperialist system, its
increasing belligerence and its devastating attacks on the living conditions of
the international working class....
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This past August, activists attended a historic Women’s Anti-Imperialist Conference in Montreal Attend a Special Forum to hear reports ...
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A United Nations Human Rights Council gathering in Switzerland heard testimony from oppressed groups inside the United States who exposed Washington’s official state policy of gross violations against peoples of color and workers in general....
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Another huge fraud is being perpetrated so the rich can get their way. Their weapon is fear. The corporate media are full of pundits explaining the government must cut the national budget or everything will collapse...
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“I voted for Obama because I felt his message and wanted to be a part of a change in America. This year it’s different. All the confusion with the Tea Party, all the negativity against the president and the Republicans who want to take back their country, all my hope is gone,” said Brian Henderson, a 22-year-old Washington, D.C., resident. “But I’m still going to vote and encourage others to do so also. It’s hard to get excited when you don’t feel like the options are any better than the devil and Satan in some places.” (finalcall.com, Nov. 1)...
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Many participants believed the real choice humanity faces is between increased misery and wars on one side and the struggle for a socialist future on the other. The capitalist collapse and persistent decline for the working class make this choice ever more urgent....
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A recent decision by the Federal Reserve to provide the bankers another $600
billion in bailout funds demonstrates the government’s continuing
failure, even under Democratic Party leadership, to provide any relief for
working people and the oppressed....
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From Dec. 3 to 5 in Tijuana, Mexico — just minutes from the San Diego,
Calif., airport — a cross-section of workers from Latin America who are
confronting the global crisis will meet with U.S. workers grappling with
devastating challenges. Building on six previous conferences, the
meeting’s aim is to grow the unity of the working class in the Americas
and increase its influence — from the tip of Chile to Alaska — by
sharing problems but also examining strategies to fight and win....
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Nectalí Rodezno, Attorney and Coordinator
of the National Lawyers Front
Against the Military Coup in Honduras, Is leading an extensive tour in the United States during the
month November,exposing the truth of what really happened in Honduras, during
the military coup in June 28th, 2009....
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he way ahead is uncharted. But all of history tells us that material conditions determine consciousness. It was the wretched conditions for labor in the 1800s that led to the development of Marxism, scientific socialism, the first unions and the first international organizations of the working class. It was the whip of racist reaction that led to the movements for civil rights and Black liberation. It was the oppression built into capitalism that led to the struggles for women’s rights and LGBTQ liberation....
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Most political pundits and leading corporate-oriented publications are
predicting significant gains by right-wing Republican candidates across the
United States in the midterm elections taking place Nov. 2. This possible shift
in power within ruling-class politics is attributed to two main factors: the
so-called conservative backlash as represented by the Tea Party and the lack of
enthusiasm among key constituents within the African-American and Latino/a
communities, as well as among working women, who voted overwhelming for the
Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008....
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The anniversary of the birth of a cherished freedom fighter occurred
recently. On Oct. 6, 1917, Fannie Lou Townsend was born and grew up on a
Mississippi plantation in a sharecropper family. She began picking cotton at
the age of 6. She was the youngest of 20 children and the granddaughter of an
enslaved African. After marrying, she became Fannie Lou Hamer....
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Bail Out the People is mobilizing 110% to get out the vote for the Freedom Party citywide. We could use a hand....
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The Black and Latino/a-led Freedom Party is attempting to get a minimum of
50,000 votes in the Nov. 2 midterm elections in New York State in order to
secure ballot status. One of the FP’s main goals is to challenge the
decades-long, oppressive stranglehold that the big business, pro-war Republican
and Democratic parties have had, a hold that keeps workers and oppressed
peoples economically and politically powerless....
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Koch Oil Industries, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, ExxonMobil and the super
rich are all telling us to hate Muslims, hate immigrants and blame them for
everything. They don’t like speaking in their own names so they get the
Tea Party to do it for them....
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With the close of the most recent round of climate talks in Tianjin, China,
which took place during the first week of October, the world is gearing up for
the next major talks in Cancún, Mexico, to begin in late November. The
Tianjin talks, with delegates from more than 150 countries, produced very
little progress, as the fundamental divide between the desires of rich
countries and the needs of poor ones was not resolved....
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he recent revelations of massive fraud in the processing of foreclosures by
major banks demonstrate the urgent necessity for activists to press the demand
for an immediate declaration of a two-year moratorium to halt all foreclosures
and evictions in the U.S....
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In Mexico, from Nov. 3-11, Migrants & their supporters will
declare:...
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The 16-year struggle to free Jamie and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi
prison has caught the significant attention of a progressive African-American
journalist. Bob Herbert, who writes for the New York Times on a regular basis,
penned two op-ed pieces within three days of each other exposing the injustice
that the African-American sisters have suffered and calling for their immediate
release....
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There's a great opportunity this Monday [Oct. 18, 2010] to gather friends together and support the Freedom Party's NY State campaign....
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Nearly 80 demonstrations in 25 states were organized on Oct. 7, the second
National Day of Action to Defend Education, as thousands of students and
workers took to the streets to fight back against the attacks on education
being leveled across the country in the form of devastating budget cuts,
tuition hikes and the growing threat of privatization....
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n exciting event launched the Freedom Party campaign on Oct. 3 at the
Church of the Resurrection, which also serves as home to the South Bronx
Community Congress. Charles Barron and Ramon Jimenez, candidates for governor
and attorney general, respectively, both spoke eloquently about the emerging
Black and Latino/a alliance that sees well beyond the Nov. 2 elections to a new
“people’s power bloc” that can genuinely fight for and
protect the interests of working people in the city and state of New York....
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The Ecuadorean people came into the streets by the thousands to confront the
national police and prevent a coup and possible assassination of President
Rafael Correa on Sept. 30. A section of about 800 of these police had kept the
president captive for 14 hours at the Police Hospital in Quito before military
units brought him back to the presidential palace....
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The plans in New York are connected to the October 7th
National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, the
continuation of the national movement that began on March
4th 2010....
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The nearly 29-year struggle to free political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal faces
a critical juncture with the announcement that the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit will review Abu-Jamal’s death sentence on Nov. 9. It is
imperative that all who stand for justice and against racism and state
repression pack the courtroom in Philadelphia....
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At the rally on Saturday, Oct. 2, for jobs,peace and equality, many critical issues will be raised by the International Action Center and Bail Out the People Movement and other organizations, such as the need for a real WPA jobs program. However in the wake of the FBI raids and Grand Jury subpoenas against activists last week, the IAC and BOPM want to make sure that there is very visible opposition to FBI repression, with the understanding that the attack on these activists is an attack on all who are fighting against war, racism and for economic and social justice....
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On Oct. 7 there will be a citywide rally including students, educators,
workers and community activists to defend public education at 4 p.m. at the
Harlem State Office Building, followed by a march across Harlem, ending at the
City College of New York....
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If you are a WBAI member, please vote for all of the Justice & Unity
candidates AND in the following rank order....
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A series of 85 fires struck several Detroit neighborhoods on Sept. 7. High
winds of up to 50 miles per hour hit the city that day and blew down power
lines, sparking fires that spread rapidly....
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The official unemployment rate, which was 9.5 percent in July, has no
credibility. It is classic “political spin” intended to fill
workers’ heads with hope that a recovery is right around the corner....
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On the ninth anniversary of September 11, thousands of people marched against racism in a diverse show of solidarity that far outnumbered the Tea Party-led hate rallies.“We had at least 10,000 people,” said Sara Flounders, one of the coordinators of the Unity and Solidarity Rally. “And the rally program – with speakers from the labor movement, immigrants' rights coalitions, and clergy from synagogues, churches and mosques – featured the dynamic diversity of almost every community in New York.” Once the opponents of Park51 had made September 11 into a racist attack on Muslims, the question was whether progressive forces were going to allow this poisonous hate campaign to go unchallenged.Today that question was resoundingly answered in a dynamic anti-racist rally that attracted over fifty speakers and featured noted personalities such as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, former Congressperson Cynthia McKinney, and former U.S. Attorney Ramsey Clark....
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The Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry is
organizing a rally for civil rights and religious freedom on Saturday,
September 11th. This rally is a response to the ugly and violent attacks, both
verbal and physical, which are happening more and more frequently around the
country. It is also a specific response to the hate-filled protest being called
by a coalition of racist and anti-Islamic organizations on September 11th....
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Uniting under the theme, “Moving forward the militant global women’s movement in the 21st century,” more than 350 women from 32 countries participated in the Montreal International Women’s Conference, held Aug. 13-16. The conference resulted in the formation of an International Women’s Alliance. The IWA will hold its first assembly in 2011 to adopt a constitution of principles of unity and an action proposal....
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Activists here and around the country have begun mobilizing to stop cold those who promote racism and hatred of Muslims. They plan to confront a vicious demonstration and rally scheduled for the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11. A rally and counterprotest near the WTC site on Aug. 22 showed that the confrontation is gaining momentum....
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Workers across Europe — specifically in Greece, Portugal, France,
Spain and Italy in the West and Romania in the East — have begun to
resist the capitalists’ relentless assault on their wages, benefits,
social services and secure existence....
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Thirty thousand people convened at the World People’s Conference on
Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The
conference, which took place from April 19-22, hosted people from more than 135
countries and 90 official state representatives. Climate activists, community
organizers, artists, musicians, scholars and workers from around the world
joined forces over the common goal of finding an effective and practical
solution to the climate crisis — a task that the rich, ruling countries
of the world proved, at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, that they are incapable
of accomplishing....
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Renee Washington DeFreitas, a 51 year old state employee and mother of five
did everything she was supposed to: she worked hard long hours, volunteered for
overtime when it existed, saved her money, and bought a home with the hope that
she would have something as she grew older, both for herself and her children
and grandchildren....
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The Bail Out the People Movement, meeting in New York on Feb. 24, voted to endorse and help to mobilize for the March 20 National March on Washington. The demonstration, called by the Answer Coalition, raises the slogans: U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq, Free Palestine, Reparations for Haiti, and Money for Healthcare, Jobs and Education. The endorsement, proposed by the International Action Center, had unanimous support and was followed by a concrete discussion of outreach, transportation and material to take to Washington....
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Demand a Two-Year Moratorium on Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility
Shutoffs in Michigan and a State of Emergency in Detroit....
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In the wake of the tragic events in Haiti,the organizers of the Martin Luther King Birthday Bail Out the People Not the Banks Protest on Wall St., scheduled for Friday, January 15, at Wall St. and Broad St. from 3:30 to 6:00 p.m., have decided to make Friday's protest a solidarity event with the Haitian people....
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The failure of capitalist methods of production and distribution is clearly
illustrated by the way the collapse of the financial and industrial centers in
Western Europe and the United States has devastated former colonial countries.
Since late 2007 tens of millions of workers and farmers in several regions of
the African continent have been severely affected by unemployment, rising
commodities prices, food deficits and the decline in material aid from the
industrialized states....
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What distinguishes the contemporary economic crisis within global capitalism
from other downturns over the last three decades is that the rapid
deterioration of the social conditions of working people and the oppressed is
taking place simultaneously all over the planet....
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In an early sign of what promises to be a growing movement, 1,000 people defied
a torrential downpour to rally on Wall Street on Friday, April 3 in response to
a national call from the Bail Out the People Movement. The central demands of the demonstration were: 1) a real jobs program; and 2) an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Participants included unions,
community groups, youth and students from Detroit, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Buffalo and dozens of organizing centers throughout the
country....
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At the Bank of America Plaza spirited demonstrators echoed chants off the towering Bank of America corporate
building calling for an end to bank bailouts and foreclosures and evictions. A
picket line of dozens of protesters rallied around a large tent set up to dramatize the epidemic of "Hoovervilles" or tent cities in California due to the housing and job crisis. ...
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BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE now has VERY exciting Friday and Saturday plans. We have just confirmed BOTH Friday and Saturday Rally Permits for Wall Street....
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Rally Friday, April 3:
Gather at 1:00 pm on Wall Street at Broadway. Rally on Broadway from Wall Street south to Exchange and block further South on
Broadway to the 'Bull'. There will be contingents of youth, women, worker and
immigrant rights, and more. ...
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On Friday, April 3, the Bail Out the People Movement, a growing coalition of
hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists, will march on Wall Street
and AIG. Protesters on April 3 will bring demands for a real jobs program, a
moratorium on foreclosures, and other necessary programs for bailing out the
people, not banks and Wall Street financial institutions....
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On Friday, April 3, the Bail Out the People Movement, a growing coalition of
hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists, will march on Wall Street
and AIG. Protesters on April 3 will bring demands for a real jobs program, a
moratorium on foreclosures, and other necessary programs for bailing out the
people, not banks and Wall Street financial institutions....
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This year, on April 3 and April 4, we honor the legacy of Dr. King with our
urgent call for a new direction by marching on the financial capital of the
country, Wall Street....
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No event is so tragic that U.S. financiers and brokers won't look for
a way to make money from it. It's a relief when someone exposes them for
the vultures they are....
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Dorotea Manuela saluted working women warriors, including those who carried
through the Flint sit-down strike to victory in 1937. Sandra McIntosh of Work
for Quality, Fight for Equity spoke of the struggle for access to quality
education, which is under attack in Boston. Palestinian activist Layla Hijab
Cable gave an inspiring historical overview of Palestinian women resisting
Zionist occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide...
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The People's Summit will occur simultaneously with the National
Business Summit, sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club, taking place at Ford
Field in downtown Detroit....
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In just over 48 hours, more than 30,000 messages have been
sent to NYC Mayor Bloomberg, the NYC City Council, the
Jacob Javits Center, and the Real Estate Disposition
Corporation (REDC)demanding the cancellation of a
foreclosure auction planned for this Sunday....
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Please join us on Sunday morning at 10:00 am sharp at a demonstration against the biggest auction of foreclosed homes ever in New York
City....
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It is becoming clear that the stimulus packages and bail out proposals coming from Wall Street and Washington won't even make a dent in the growing number of layoffs and foreclosures. Working people must organize independently to demand a bail out for the people, not the banks.It's time to march on Wall Street!...
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The Treasury Secretary will soon announce plans for the federal government to essentially take over the failed mortgage industry. The announcement is expected to include a dramatic expansion of the Troubled Asset Recovery
Program, under which the U.S. Treasury will either directly control or have a significant interest in most mortgages, either through the creation of a special federal bank for failing loans or with enhanced federal guarantees to back up failing loans....
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Activists fighting to stop home foreclosures and community devastation
gathered in the bitter cold outside the state Capitol here on Feb. 3 as Gov.
Jennifer Granholm delivered her annual State of the State address. The action was called by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions....
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Activists with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
are stepping up their struggle for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions,
utility shutoffs and plant closings. At a Jan. 10 coalition meeting, organizers
announced plans for a demonstration at the State Capitol in Lansing on Feb. 3
when Gov. Jennifer Granholm delivers her annual State of the State address....
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The stock markets are crashing, the world economy is headed into a deep recession or even depression, and the U.S. government and its top bankers, along with their counterparts around the world, are giving what's going to amount to trillions of dollars to bailout the richest 1
percent of the people ...
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In the week since Bush announced plans to use $700 billion in public funds
to rescue Wall Street banks, nearly 200 demonstrations have been organized throughout the U.S. to oppose the bailout and express the righteous anger of workers and poor. Many were organized by grassroots groups taking advantage of the Internet to get the word out....
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President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy Geithner and
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have been huddled in round-the-clock meetings,
hammering out deals. It has been done in secrecy, behind the backs of the
workers and the middle class, who will get stuck with the bill. They have been
working out these deals with the same loan sharks of high finance whose orgies
of speculation, gambling and deception in pursuit of profit led to the crisis
in the first place....
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The Senate has just voted to pass a US$700-billion financial bailout for corrupt financial institutions, while ignoring the real needs of working people. In addition to an unprecedented giveaway to Wall Street, the bill also includes $100 billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations - but no relief for working people who are facing foreclosure and who need health care, jobs, and education....
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Anti-war activists need to address the latest phase of the war - the war against working people here!...
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Foreclosures and evictions are devastating working families around the country. One in nine homeowners nationwide is either behind in their mortgage payments or their family homes are in foreclosure. Over 72,000 homeowners have lost their homes in the Detroit area alone. The vacant home rate in Detroit is 18 percent, second only to New Orleans.
...
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Organizers with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions have been on the go in Michigan. Activists have been fanning out and spreading the message that a ray of hope exists in the midst of the economic depression and home foreclosure epidemic devastating families in cities, rural areas and communities throughout the state. They have been publicizing SB 1306,
a law recently introduced in the Michigan legislature that would put a two-year moratorium or halt on foreclosures and evictions....
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On June 9, the San Francisco Labor Council passed a resolution "For a
Moratorium on Foreclosures, Utility Shutoffs, Evictions & Public Housing
Demolitions."...
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A delegation of Detroit activists traveled to Washington, D.C., on April 16 to participate in the national demonstration called by the Ad Hoc Network to Stop
Foreclosures and Evictions. The action took place outside the Mortgage Bankers
Association Annual Policy Summit held in a hotel just two blocks away from Capitol Hill....
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The International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), known for its militant and democratic traditions as well as its economic and social justice activism, has written a new chapter in its glorious labor history by shutting down all 29 ports on the West Coast for eight hours on May Day....
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The Ad Hoc National Network to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions brought people, many facing foreclosure, from as far away as Boston, Raleigh and Miami. Sharon Black, a Baltimore organizer who chaired the rally, pointed out that the billionaire bankers were in D.C. to lobby for more tax breaks and concessions
from Congress....
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I urge you to join me and many others at 3:00 pm on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 in a
national protest at the Mortgage Bankers Association Conference in Washington
D.C. at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue, N.W....
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When the Mortgage Bankers Association meets in Washington, D.C., on April
16-17 at the swanky Washington Court Hotel, their gathering will draw
protesters. The MBA is a national lobbying group that represents the interests
of the banks, including lending firms that are directly responsible for the
evictions of tens of thousands of people, including both buyers and renters, from their foreclosed homes....
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The Coalition to Save Harlem Announces an Online Petition Against the 125th Street Rezoning Plan....
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Attention antiwar activists--dust off your protest signs and bring them to a national demonstration against home foreclosures and evictions in Washington DC, on Wednesday, April 16. Join the Ad Hoc National Network Against Home Foreclosures and Evictions in front of the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Conference, the biggest assembly of mortgage bankers in the country, to demand a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions. Almost everyone hates the war in Iraq, but until now many have seemed resigned to leaving it up to politicians to end it. That's because most people have felt that the war didn't affect them personally. That mindset is coming to an end. ...
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THE MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION (MBA) -- the biggest national lobby of all the banks -- including the criminal predatory lenders, that are busy evicting your neighbors, relatives, friends
and maybe you from your home -- is holding it's annual policy conference in Washington D.C., on April 16 and 17. Their main goal is to make sure that bankers continue to get bailed out while families get tossed out! ...
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In this time of economic crisis, thousands of homes are being foreclosed, workers are being laid off in record numbers, and our education system and social programs are severely underfunded. Meanwhile, the raging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing human lives on both sides as well as U.S. tax dollars. The population of the U.S. has proven that we are against these imperialist wars; and yet our tax dollars are going to these occupations, as opposed to our needs....
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Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, delivered a
30-minute assembly program on Feb. 8 to the 1,000-person student body of Phillips Exeter Academy, a prominent private high school in New Hampshire. Her talk was divided into four sections: why capitalism requires war and inequality; why capitalism requires racism; the basics of socialism; and the choices that we make that impact society....
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A small clique of WBAI board members and their friends, led by multimillionaire marketing huckster Steve Brown and variously called "ACE" and "independents," have escalated their illegitimate efforts to take control of the station. In November, they sued Pacifica and got a judge to stop the board elections that were almost complete....
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Jan. 22 marks the 35th anniversary of the legalization of the right to
abortion in the United States. The Supreme Court's landmark 1973 ruling
in the case of Roe v. Wade finally guaranteed women the right to obtain safe, legal abortions in every state in hospitals, clinics and doctors'offices....
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Fighters for reproductive justice for poor women are stepping up their campaign to overturn the Hyde Amendment, a reactionary law enacted by Congress in 1976 and signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1977. The Hyde
Amendment denies women on Medicaid the right to funding for abortions. It is named for its archreactionary sponsor, Henry Hyde, a former long-term Republican congressman from Illinois. ...
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On Dec. 20th, just five days before the Christmas holiday, residents and supporters of New Orleans public housing were denied their right to speak regarding the demolition of 4,700 public housing units. The housing is to be
replaced by :mixed income housing," which really means upscale and expensive housing....
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The Coalition to Stop the Demolitions is calling for National Days of Action
on Jan. 25 and 26. The call is to rally activists around the country to show
solidarity with public-housing residents in New Orleans and to save four
public-housing developments from being demolished by private developers in
favor of more expensive luxurious developments....
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Resolution calls for federally-funded public works program (like WPA of the 1930s) with prevailing wages and the right to organize...the Right of Return of evacuees...and an end to state repression, racial profiling and police brutality in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast....
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The Venezuelan National Electoral Commission (CNE) early on Dec. 3 announced the results of the previous day's referendum on proposed major changes to 69 articles of the Venezuelan Constitution. The "No" vote opposing the reforms had won by a margin of less than 2 percent over the "Yes" option, which would have deepened progressive changes and ratified the reconstruction of society on a socialist basis....
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Some 10,000 grassroots organizers, anti-racist fighters, farm workers, domestic workers, anti-war veterans, former prisoners and their families, spokespeople for lesbian/gay/bi/trans rights, women's rights and environmental organizations, and activists in virtually every progressive struggle underway in the U.S. today came together in Atlanta from June 27 to July 1 for the U.S. Social Forum....
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Low-income women are often forced to use money they need for food and rent to cover the cost of an abortion. Many women cannot raise enough money and must continue the pregnancy and stay trapped in poverty. ...
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