Month: January 2023

End The Police Murders!

Police in Memphis murdered another Black man, Tyre Nichols. We need to organize to end this violent, racist system.

BART – Ignoring Reality 

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now newsletter at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in California. The Covid pandemic has exposed a key problem in BART’s funding model – relying on fares for a large part of operating expenses. San Francisco is now one of the leading urban centers of office vacancies […]

France: After the January 19 Strike: We Will Persist to the End!

January 23, 2023 editorial of the workplace newsletters of the Etincelle fraction of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA). Translated from French. The January 19 strike was a success: the trade unions counted more than two million demonstrators, and even the police acknowledged that more than one million people marched. This is more than the strike […]

Tenants and Workers: Similar Issues

This article is from the Speak Out Now newsletter at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). Last week, the Oaklandside wrote an article about how the Coliseum Connections apartment building flooded during the storms on New Year’s Eve, forcing all residents to be evacuated. This apartment building was developed on BART’s land at Coliseum Station, and […]

Protesters Fight Back against Expanding German Coal Mines

Over 1,000 German police officers in riot gear used water cannons, batons, and brute force to remove at least 15,000 protestors from a coal mine in mid-January. This came after more than two-and-a-half years of activists working to prevent the destruction of another centuries-old village from being demolished for a coal mine. Protesters were removed and […]

Child Labor, Dangerous Work

Last summer, the federal Department of Labor opened an investigation into Packer Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) to determine if the Wisconsin-based company was using child labor to clean slaughterhouses. The company provides cleaning services for over 700 locations nationwide, including JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company. The Labor Department looked into company records from 50 […]

Oakland Schools Saved From Closure…For Now…

On Wednesday, January 11th, the School Board for the Oakland Unified School District voted to keep the five schools open that were originally under plans to be shut down at the end of this school year.

Roe at 50: The Anniversary that Wasn’t

January 22 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1973 landmark US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, in which the Court ruled that people had the right to choose an abortion. But in June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, upending five decades of legal precedent. Since then, Republican-controlled state legislatures […]

Climate Change Causes Major Floods in California

In the past few week’s, storms that hit California led to torrential rains and major flooding. The storms shut down power for hundreds of thousands of people and resulted in over 20 deaths. Images of people’s cars floating down inundated streets or residents using surf boards to get from one house to another filled the […]

Bloody Sunday 1905: The Spark of Revolution in Russia

On a cold Sunday, the 22nd of January, 1905, tens of thousands of workers in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia, marched to the Tsar’s splendorous Winter Palace to deliver a petition.   This simple action led to a massacre known as Bloody Sunday, and was the beginning of the 1905 Russian Revolution. It was on this […]

Online Town Hall: Sat. Feb. 4 at 12pm PST (3pm EST)

Workers in Britain Fight Back! Working-class people in the United Kingdom are facing the biggest attack on their standard of living since the 1950s. Housing and household expenses are climbing, averaging over 16%, with heating bills up 50%. The value of real wages has fallen over many years. Since the middle of 2022, hundreds of […]

Rich Get Richer During Crisis

According to a report published by Oxfam on January 16, the richest people have gotten even richer during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2020-2021, the richest one percent of the world’s population have received 63 percent – almost two-thirds – of all new wealth. The bottom 90 percent only gained 10 percent of […]

ExxonMobil Scientists Got It Right – 45 Years Ago!

A new report released last week in the journal Science reminded us that ExxonMobil scientists knew about the damage fossil fuels were doing to our planet and atmosphere at least as far back as 1977. From that moment on, the corporation began a well-funded campaign of outright denial that lasted until only recently. But since […]

Damar Hamlin — Players Draw The Line Against Powerful NFL Bosses 

On Jan. 2, 2023, many people watched in horror as Damar Hamlin, defensive back for the Buffalo Bills, collapsed from cardiac arrest after making a tackle in which he took a hard shoulder to his chest. After receiving CPR, he was taken off the field and hospitalized for over a week.   Fortunately, there have […]

France: Force the Government and the Bosses to Back Off!

January 16, 2023 editorial of the workplace newsletters of the Etincelle fraction of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA). Translated from French. The government keeps repeating “we are living longer, so we have to work longer.” But only when we work less do we live longer! When you’re a worker, your life span is not the […]

Keith Davis Jr. is Free!

Baltimore residents fighting for justice are celebrating this week following the news that Keith Davis Jr. has had all charges against him dropped by the State’s Attorney’s office of Baltimore City. On January 13, Davis reunited with his wife, children, and friends when he was freed after more than seven years of incarceration. On June […]

Hawaii 1893: U.S. Imperialism Begins Its Overseas Expansion by Use of Military Force

The United States was an expansionist nation from its very beginning. Whether taking lands from indigenous Americans along the east coast, purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France, spreading into the southeast Gulf States with slaves and cotton, bringing slaves illegally into Mexico, or instigating wars with Mexico to create the slave state of Texas, settlers […]

2023: ¿Quién decidirá nuestro futuro?

Nuestro futuro puede sentirse inseguro y fuera de nuestro control durante estos tiempos. Pero, como todos sabemos, las cosas pueden cambiar rápidamente cuando las personas se animan a responder, como vimos después del asesinato de George Floyd. Nos enfrentamos a problemas graves. Tenemos un sistema de salud que en realidad es un sistema de cuidado […]

Two Months Since COP27: World Leaders Accelerate Extinction

It’s been two months since COP27 (the latest annual United Nations meeting on climate change) ended and our world is facing so-called “freak storms” and “once in a generation weather events” one after another. Since COP27, the United States has faced the bomb cyclone Elliott with blizzard conditions killing at least 69 people and grounding […]

Far-Right Republicans Gain a Foothold in Congress – What Next?

As the Republican Party regained control of the House of Representatives, disruption and uncertainty took hold in Washington and in the press. Although Kevin McCarthy is himself a right-wing politician who has enabled Trump and far-right radicals in the House, a group of at least twenty even further right-wing, Republicans refused to vote for him […]

2023: Who Will Decide Our Future?

Our future can feel insecure and out of our control during these times. But, as we all know, things can change rapidly when people are moved to respond, like we saw following the murder of George Floyd. We are confronting some serious problems. We have a healthcare system which is in reality a wealthcare system […]

Biden’s Mexico-Canada Meeting — More Promises that Change Nothing

President Biden met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico on January 9 and 10 in Mexico City, reportedly to discuss economic policies, climate change, and immigration. In reality, the U.S., Mexico, Canada summit was a bunch of headline-grabbing empty promises, including big pledges to bring down […]

Santos Caught Red Handed – Politicians Lie all the Time

George Santos, a newly elected Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, has been caught telling a series of lies about his personal and professional background. He appears to have lied about his family, his education, his work background, and more. There seems to not be a single truth to the background […]

UK Working Class is Fighting Back

The United Kingdom (UK) experienced a tumultuous 2022 that has hit workers hard. Last year saw three separate prime ministers in the UK, including Liz Truss who resigned after 46 days, and who was followed by Rishi Sunak, the wealthiest PM to set foot in 10 Downing Street. In September 2022, after former PM Liz […]

Southwest Airlines’ Cancellation Nightmare

It would be easy to blame the massive and deadly storm that blanketed the entire middle of the nation for the debacle that resulted at Southwest during the days before and after Christmas 2022. Certainly, it was the storm that prevented the first Southwest flights from taking off. But after that, we can place the […]

The Louisiana Slave Rebellion of 1811 – America’s First Freedom March

January 8-10 marks the anniversary of the Louisiana Rebellion of 1811, also known as the German Coast Uprising. At the time, it was the largest slave insurgency in the history of the United States, involving between 200-500 slaves fighting for their freedom. It is sometimes referred to as “America’s First Freedom March.” It didn’t matter […]

Online Town Hall: Sat. Jan. 21 at 4pm PST (7pm EST)

2023: A Coming Economic Crisis? Who Will Pay? With Richard Wolff We face the effects of global corporations’ competition and profit maximization which has led to economic warfare pitting the U.S. and the E.U. against Russia and China. The Covid pandemic and the effects of the war in Ukraine have impacted the lives of working […]