Skip to main content

Global Left Midweek – June 26, 2024

As the world churns... and burns

Around 10.000 people march to denounce fascism in Brussels, Belgium on June 16, 2024. Protest was organised by the Belgian Anti-Fascist Coordination (CAB) against the 'relentless rise of the far right'. Credit, Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu via Getty Images
  1. Two Ecosocialist Meetings
  2. Indigenous Women in Latin America
  3. Migrant Workers and Strikes
  4. More Election Analyses
  5. Video: Tax Protests in Kenya
  6. Repression Reports
  7. Strikes in China
  8. France Election Set to Boil
  9. Turkish Unions Fight Gender-Based Violence
  10. In Praise of Laziness

 

__________
Two Ecosocialist Meetings

Maria Elena Saludas / Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (Liège, Belgium)

“It’s clear that we have differences on how socialism should be today. But we agree on the fact that we are breaking away and that we are anti-capitalist. There was agreement on the fact that the movements of struggle—the territorial movements—are the places of struggle. That’s where we can win.” 

__________
Indigenous Women in Latin America

  • Bolivia   Linda Farthing and Thomas Grisaffi / NACLA Report (New York)
     
  • Peru   Juana Vera Delgado / Common Dreams (Portland ME)

__________
Migrant Workers and Strikes

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

Goran Lukic and Tibor T. Meszmann / LeftEast

Migrant workers embody multiple contradictions of social, political, and economic life that humanity faces in contemporary global hypermobile capitalism: they are structurally weak, occupy vulnerable and often outsourced positions under the controlling hands and influence of employers or more complex state structures. 

__________
More Election Analyses

  • UK   Simon Pirani / Labour Hub (London)
     
  • South Africa   Fredson Guilengue and Britta Becker / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
     
  • Ireland   Diarmuid Flood and Paul Murphy / Rupture (Dublin)
     
  • Austria   Daniel Schukovits / transform!europe (Vienna)
     
  • India   Gilles Verniers / The Wire (New Delhi)

__________
Video: Tax Protests in Kenya

Firstpost (Noida)

Protests are escalating in Kenya over proposed new tax hikes in the Finance Bill that is being tabled in the parliament. Thousands of young protesters marched near President William Ruto's residence. Protesters clashed with police who fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. The bill is due to be debated and passed by June 30. [Update here]

__________
Repression Reports

__________
Strikes in China

Simon Han and Jessica Song / Asian Labour Review (Hong Kong)

Since China’s market reform in the 1980s, the “world factory” has witnessed waves of strikes in the manufacturing sector, especially in the 2000s and early 2010s. However, factory strikes overall have declined in number and scale since 2016, and the centre of strikes has shifted from manufacturing to service sectors, particularly the platform economy, and from coastal cities to China’s inland. 

__________
France Election Set to Boil

__________
Turkish Unions Fight Gender-Based Violence

Marga Zambrana / Equal Times (Brussels)

A network of social partners, trade unions and feminist associations promotes rights through information campaigns, training and audits, and by forcing their application as occupational risk prevention in collective bargaining agreements. The best strategy to curb violence, they argue, is to increase the number of women among union representatives and in leadership positions.

__________
In Praise of Laziness

Harrison Dressler and Daniel Tubb / Socialist Project (Toronto)

Today, not unlike the Keynesians, many leftists regard employment – accompanied with education, housing, and childcare – as tantamount to socialism itself. Even radical solutions to “social problems” like homelessness pinpoint full-time employment as a prerequisite for self-fulfillment. In labour, leftists mistake liberation; in work, they confuse freedom.