UK Nurses Strike Across the Pond
Nurses in the UK went on strike on January 18 and 19, and more strikes are expected in the coming months.
Rage in Peru, Protests in Lima
A protest movement in Peru opposes the lack of real democracy in the country’s government.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht: Revolutionary Socialists Martyred on This Day
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered on January 15, 1919.
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 […]
France: Force Prime Minister Borne, President Macron and the Bosses’ Organizations to Retreat!
January 10, 2023 editorial of the workplace newsletters of the Étincelle fraction of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), translated from French On Tuesday, French Prime Minister Borne put the finishing touches on the song that the government and employers have been singing for months about the future of our pensions, and that by now we’ve […]
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 […]
France, 2023: “Trust” Only the Struggles for Higher Wages and Against Pension Reform
January 2, 2023, Editorial of the Workplace Newsletters of the Etincelle fraction of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA). Translated from French. “Trust and unity”, French President Macron proclaimed on TV, while wishing us a happy new year! 2022 was the year of soaring prices (even before the war in Ukraine); and, just a week ago, […]
Petition to Save the Life of Amir Nasr-Azadani — Professional Iranian Soccer Player Sentenced to Death
Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26 years-old, is a professional soccer player in Iran who has been sentenced to death for participating in the recent protests sparked by the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, killed while in Iranian police custody. A petition has been created to try to save his life, which can be signed here. Nasr-Azadani is […]
Human Sacrifice — The Cost of Doing Business at the World Cup
Today, we often react in horror to the accounts of ancient societies that carried out human sacrifice, as if the modern world has moved far past these brutal practices. But today there are more contemporary forms of human sacrifice that many of us have become accustomed to. Recently, a chief executive of the Qatar World […]
Covid, Flu and RSV Highlight a System That Won’t Protect Us
Despite the fact that Covid remains the third leading cause of death, killing about 400 people in the U.S. a day, the vast majority of whom are over the age of 65, the Federal Government has ended the Covid emergency declaration which provided funds for vaccination, treatment, and testing. At the same time, the triple […]
France: Pension Reform – Life ahead of us Spent…Working!
December 12, 2022, Editorial of the Workplace Newsletters of the Etincelle fraction of the NPA, Translated from French. The destruction of the planet has made 2022 the warmest year ever recorded in France. But winter is here and the cold is setting in. For many of us, managing to keep warm will become a nagging […]
Keystone Pipeline Spills in Kansas …Again
TC Energy of Canada’s Keystone pipeline spilled more than 14,000 barrels of crude oil, or 588,000 gallons, into a river in Washington County, Kansas, making it one of the largest crude spills in the United States in nearly a decade. This is the biggest spill of several thousand barrels of crude on this pipeline since […]
Largest Ever Higher Education Strike in UK
In November, an estimated 70,000 researchers, academics and administrators went on strike at 150 different university campuses across the United Kingdom. These strikes are the largest in the history of higher public education in the UK. This struggle has been brewing for some time. Over the past four years, universities have been shut down several […]
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Rally Thurs. Dec. 15 at 5pm, San Francisco
5 PM on Thursday, December 15, 2022 Federal Building, San Francisco, 7th and Mission Streets Mumia Is innocent! But this innocent, framed-up man has been held for over four decades in prison. Mumia is an internationally known political prisoner. As a former Black Panther and MOVE supporter, Mumia was framed for a crime he did […]
Fare Evasion
The following article has been edited and reprinted from our workplace newsletter at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the San Francisco Bay Area. For context, station agents are agents that work in the booth at each station to help passengers. For some station agents, fare evasion presents real challenges. People who pay their way to ride […]
Staughton Lynd: Scholar and Defender of the Working Class
On Thursday, November 17, scholar of the people and lifelong activist Staughton Lynd died at the age of 92. Lynd was part of a generation of young scholars who came of age in the 1960s, perhaps best exemplified by himself and Howard Zinn, who sought to pursue knowledge and scholarship in the struggle to make […]
December 7, 1941: The Attack on Pearl Harbor and the Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans
On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack on Pearl Harbor did not come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of growing economic competition, including sanctions, over which of these two empires would control the resources and markets of the Asian Pacific. The attack brought the […]
Amazon Workers Around The World Stand Up On Black Friday
Another annual ritual of capitalism has came and gone — Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving which marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season. For working people in retail, transportation, and logistics, this day and the following month can be extremely chaotic and stressful on top of all of the normal pressures that people […]
800 Longshore Workers Walk Out In Mobile, Alabama
On November 22nd, 800 longshore workers in Mobile, Alabama in the union International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1410 began a strike against the CSA Equipment Company at what is said to be the 11th largest seaport in the United States. The workers have been working without a contract for over four years since October 2018. Since […]
The Railway Workers’ Fight Is Our Fight
Last Friday, President Biden signed a Congressional resolution to impose a contract on railway workers. He and Congress took this action in spite of the fact that the majority of railway workers had voted to reject that very same contract. Despite the exceptional profits that the railway companies are making, Congress didn’t direct the companies […]
Anti-Government Protests Rock China
Online and on social media, Chinese families blamed authorities for the death of a four-month-old girl after access to medical care was delayed because of the government’s harsh, so-called zero-Covid policies. In southern China, protesters broke out of buildings locked down because of those same zero-Covid policies, confronting health care workers and ransacking stores to […]
Netflix Movie “Moxie” Provides Example of Youth Organizing against Sexism
Moxie is a movie on Netflix about a group of high school women who stand up to sexism at their school. The main character, Vivian, is inspired by a new student at her school whose response to a discussion in class on the novel The Great Gatsby is to question why they are reading a […]
A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts
Surprise, surprise… Over the past three decades almost all the gains from economic growth in the United States went to the wealthiest in society. The Congressional Budget Office recently released a report that looked at the trends in family wealth distribution from 1989 to 2019. In a wide variety of ways, data was measured and […]
Soccer Without Borders, But Not Without Profits
November 28, 2022, Editorial of the Workplace Newsletters of the Etincelle fraction of the NPA, Translated from French The World Cup has had a turbulent start, not only because of the defeat of the Argentinian national team against Saudi Arabia, or the injury of the “golden ball” winner, Karim Benzema, but also because of the […]
A Horrific Mass Shooting in an LGBTQ+ Nightclub in Colorado Springs
On Saturday night, a gunman walked into the Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, and opened fire with a semi-automatic long rifle, shooting at least seventeen and killing five people. The shooting started as patrons were drinking and dancing after a drag queen show earlier that night. The gunman was stopped and wrestled […]
A Railroad Strike is Back on the Table as Workers Reject the Tentative Agreement
Conductors and yard workers represented by the Transportation Division of International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) have voted down their tentative agreement. Together these workers make up about 30% of all unionized rail workers. Now, just over half of all railroad workers have voted against their tentative agreements, while the […]
Biden and Xi — A Meeting to Manage an Insane Conflict
Biden and Xi met to manage the conflict between the U.S. and China, but they can do nothing about the system of capitalist competition that created this conflict.
Insulin Is Now Free?
A parody Twitter account of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly drew attention to the exorbitant price of insulin.
Qatar World Cup: A Lavish Spectacle Built on Immense Suffering
On Sunday, Nov. 20, the World Cup kicked off to great fanfare. The World Cup is undoubtedly the largest sporting event in the world, and this year’s tournament is being held in the nation of Qatar. Qatar is a small nation located on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East. It […]
Tech Layoffs Aren’t Unique – They’re a Normal Part of Capitalism
Many tech enthusiasts, tech cheerleaders and even many so-called analysts treat the giant tech and internet companies that have come to dominate our world as if they are unique, or perhaps an exceptional economic sector that can somehow erase all the old rules of economics and keep growing endlessly, helping to magically make the world […]