For immigrants—documented or undocumented—the U.S. is becoming a police state. Next year, it could be for the rest of us. The real opposition can only come from citizens and non-citizens protesting and organizing, putting their minds and bodies against a growing fascist state.
A massive citizens’ revolt is taking place in Sri Lanka. It is focused against the authoritarian President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family members, who occupy many government posts. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have taken to the streets in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the President leave.
On June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, thousands of Chinese students protested a government plan to merge private colleges with vocational schools; rural youth in eSwatini demonstrated on June 19 for the right of the people to vote for their own prime minister; and several high school graduates spoke out at graduation for an end to anti-Asian racism, the right to give your speech, not the principal’s, and for pride at being the first in your family to graduate.
Our landlords run the biggest agroecological project in the zone. They sell organic food in a store in the capital city of Veracruz. It is astonishing to see that their great respect for nature is matched with their great disrespect for human life.
A second wave of COVID-19 is devastating India. Each day over 300,000 new cases are reported, and over 3,000 people die. In the midst of this, the farmers’ protests continue as thousands remain camped outside Delhi. The Modi government has accused the camps of being “super-spreader” events, while farmers say the government is using the pandemic to demobilize its opponents.
An estimated 250 million Indian farmers have been on strike since last September in opposition to a series of new laws, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Iran’s planned ecological self-destruction has brought poverty, displacement and mass unemployment and mass revolt to local populations as the regime reduces mighty rivers to trickles by diverting water to be used by the oil industry.
Venezuela is in ever-deepening crisis–including electricity shortages, outrageous inflation, food shortages–because of neoliberal politics. Colombia sees a cease-fire agreement signed between the government and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia/FARC while agricultural injustice, a major cause of increasing poverty, remains. Peru elects Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a right-wing neoliberal, as their new president, defeating Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, who committed many human rights abuses while in office.
A historical look at Hondurans struggle for their land.
From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Artemis
In Guatemala, the Mayan Women’s Movement (MWM), a part of the Council of K’itche People, works with trade unions and farmers to stop mining, hydroelectric dams, monoculture crops, mega-tourism, and infrastructure-building by corporations that destroy natural resources and push them [=>]
From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
Detroit—A mid-May fire killed 301 miners by carbon monoxide poisoning due to mine owners’ negligence in the worst coal mine disaster in Turkey’s history (see “Turkish miners killed,” July-August N&L). First reports indicated that the fire started when a transformer blew up. A subsequent investigation revealed that [=>]
“2020 is too late to wait!” rang out the words of Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old college student/activist from Vermont. She was interrupting U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern’s speech at the latest yearly UN climate summit, held this time in Durban, South Africa, Nov. 28 to Dec. 11. Her passionate intervention, drawing applause from many delegates, [=>]
As yet another UN conference on climate change dissolves into meaninglessness (no surprise there), a barrage of news underscores the urgency of the problems that are being given little more than lip service. Examples:
New perils seen to even modest warming
Hotter, drier, meaner: Trends point to a planet increasingly hostile to agriculture
Carbon dioxide emissions show record [=>]
