World in View: Defeat of French Far-Right Is Incomplete

July 10, 2024

The mass of French voters in the latest parliamentary elections allowed the Left-wing coalition of parties—the New Popular Front—to gain the largest number of seats in Parliament, though far short of a majority. The far-right National Front has hardly been defeated.

read the rest!

Editorial: Democracy under dire threat

January 25, 2024

Trump and his allies are aiming at a second term. The means: taking power at all costs, even with a minority of votes. The ends: complete evisceration of human rights, democracy, and human solidarity.

read the rest!

Readers’ Views: November-December 2022, Part One

November 11, 2022

Readers’ Views on: Iran: Woman, Life, Freedom; Election Threats and Battles; Women’s Marches and Enemies; Sexist Supreme Court; Ukrainians Fight for Freedom; Para-Transit Disservice; Mike Davis; Labor Struggles, from Amazon…to the Bank.

read the rest!

CTU strike frames vote

March 8, 2015

Election Day in Chicago, Feb. 24, made the historic nine-day Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012 a pivotal issue again as the candidate supported by the CTU forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff.

read the rest!

World in View: Rousseff wins Brazil’s runoff election

November 30, 2014

Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, barely won a runoff election against the conservative free-marketeer Aécio Neves. With her election to a second term, the Workers’ Party, first under Lula Da Silva and now under Rousseff, has won its fourth consecutive presidential election. While Lula’s first election was greeted with great hope for a sweeping change in Brazil’s developmentalist trajectory, Rousseff’s cliffhanger illustrated the grave disappointment that much of Brazil’s masses felt recently….

read the rest!

Racist election deepens reactionary direction of U.S.

November 20, 2014

The U.S. government took an ominous, reactionary political turn in the 2014 midterm elections, with Republicans taking control of the Senate. Extreme pro-war Senators like Joni Ernst in Iowa and Tom Cotton in Arkansas join veterans like Senator “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” John McCain, who will now control the Armed Services Committee and is hell-bent for new “boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq. The whole Republican campaign—including these pro-war, pro-fossil-fuel, pro-“fetus is a person” candidates—ran on a cynically deceptive anti-Obama mantra….

read the rest!

South Africans: don’t vote for messiahs!

May 18, 2014

From UPM: The formation of the Black Consciousness Movement in this country was a realization by Black people that we could no longer stand and be spectators of the game we are supposed to be playing. This election season continues to demonstrate the relevance of Biko’s teachings.

read the rest!

Undoing Michigan election

February 6, 2013

Editorial

With lightning swiftness a super-majority of Michigan lame-duck Republicans passed a series of oppressive bills at the end of December. Defying voters’ expressed views, they passed an anti-union “right-to-work” law, an anti-abortion bill and a dictatorial emergency manager act. This was accomplished despite a record number–over 12,500–of protestors who stormed and occupied the legislative chamber [=>]

read the rest!

Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 1

October 15, 2012

CAPITALIST CRISIS AND REVOLT

I appreciated Franklin Dmitryev’s Lead article in the July-August N&L, on “Spain, Greece, Europe: Capitalist crisis and revolt,” for showing how the so-called “radical Left” is not really so radical. They think they can solve things through managing the economy and redistributing wealth, and channel energy into politics.

The boldfaced paragraph in the [=>]

read the rest!

Tensions over race in Occupy Chicago

October 12, 2012

Chicago—Tensions over race came to a boiling point within Occupy Chicago (OC) in August. A working group making plans for four days of protests at President Obama’s campaign headquarters here, to coincide with the Democratic Party convention in North Carolina, included in the plans the burning of voter registration cards. This was opposed by a [=>]

read the rest!

One billionaire, one vote

July 14, 2012

Editorial

“For Sale” signs for public offices will be popping up all over the country following Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s stunning victory this month over the effort to recall him from office. Walker’s revoking the right of public unions to negotiate contracts created national and statewide protests that rocked the nation for months.

The recall campaign pitted [=>]

read the rest!

July-August 2012 issue of News & Letters is on the web

July 8, 2012

News & Letters, Vol. 57, No. 4
July-August 2012

Lead: Spain, Greece, Europe: capitalist crisis and revolt

When the bailout of banks in Spain was announced on June 9, the immediate reactions revealed the two worlds that exist in every country. The Spanish masses intensified their protests, marching directly on both banks and government, while Greek and Spanish [=>]

read the rest!

Switzerland’s racism

December 6, 2011

by Gerry Emmett

Last year, Switzerland was disgraced by an election campaign that demonized its Muslim inhabitants. Ironically, most Swiss Muslims have been refugees from genocide and persecution in Bosnia and Kosova.

Now the Federal Commission Against Racism has accused some Swiss communes (municipalities) of introducing forms of apartheid against asylum seekers, many from Nigeria, Eritrea [=>]

read the rest!

Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2010

November 29, 2010

Readers’ Views

FBI RAIDS–AN ATTACK ON ALL OF US

On Sept. 24, teams of FBI agents from the “Joint Terrorism Task Force” served search warrants and grand jury subpoenas on anti-war and solidarity activists in Illinois and Minne-sota. This attack on the First Amend-ment rights of peaceful activists must be opposed and we should stand with them [=>]

read the rest!

Workshop Talks: Who lost to SEIU?

November 23, 2010

From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:

Workshop Talks: Who lost to SEIU?
by Htun Lin

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced the results of the recent union election at Kaiser Permanente in California. The media declared that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had won a “decisive victory” to continue to represent some 45,000 [=>]

read the rest!

End Afghan War! (Editorial from Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters)

November 7, 2010

Here’s a link to the editorial from the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:

President Obama rolled to victory in 2008 in part from voters disenchanted with permanent war….Yet two years later, Obama is continuing Bush’s foreign wars. In the 2010 elections, it is astounding that wars abroad were not a factor.

End Afghan war!

 

read the rest!

Campaigns intensify counter-revolutionary onslaught

November 6, 2010

Here’s a link to the Lead article from the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
It is sadly ironic that at this moment, when the crisis of capitalism has shown itself as both deep and intractable, some of the most reactionary impulses from U.S. history have moved to take center stage. The bankruptcy of bourgeois [=>]

read the rest!