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Popular Democracy: the Participation Paradox

Christopher Wilson Methodical Snark
Participatory mechanisms, argue the authors, are not powerful only because of what they may or may not achieve, but because of what happens in the very interactions that cause them to fail.

Trading Rules for Workers

Leo Gerard OurFuture.org
These workers know from bitter experience that CEOs don’t have their best interests in mind. They know the problem with the TPP and NAFTA is that they were drafted by CEOs for the benefit of CEOs and 1 percenter shareholders. Workers never got an equal seat at the negotiating tables.They know that Donald Trump listened to 24 CEOs on Thursday but not one manufacturing worker.

What the Women's Strike Means

Cinzia Arruzza & Tithi Bhattacharya Jacobin
The International Women’s Strike is about taking on the degradations of capitalism in all spheres of life.

Berta Cáceres Court Papers Show Murder Suspects' Links to US-trained Elite Troops

Nina Lakhani The Guardian
Honduran environmental activist’Berta Cáceres' killing a year ago bears the hallmarks of an operation designed by military intelligence. E’xtrajudicial killings by the security forces and widespread impunity are among the most serious human rights violations in Honduras, according to the US state department. Nevertheless, the US is the main provider of military and police support to Honduras, and last year approved $18m of aid.

Amid GOP Attacks on Health Care, the Movement for Single Payer Is Growing

MIchelle Chen Truthout
The Trump-induced health crisis could become an unforeseen opportunity for single-payer advocates: it just might spur a mass movement for a comprehensive government-run plan liberated from insurance markets and providing free, equal access, regardless of health or economic status.

Teamsters Go After Drug Wholesaler AmerisourceBergen After Opioid Crisis Hits Their Homes

By Don Sapatkin The Philadelphia Inquirer
Newly focused on an issue that is ravaging its members, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Thursday plans to challenge one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical wholesalers, demanding that AmerisourceBergen Corp. investigate its own sales practices and potential supply chain diversions, and factor compliance into its executives’ pay.

Why A French Socialist’s Case for Taxing Robots Is Better Than Bill Gates’ Idea

Kate Aronoff In These Times
It isn’t necessarily automation itself that should be feared—just Puzder and other executives’ version of it, where jobs and unions and social services are dismantled. Like Hamon, authors such as Paul Mason and Peter Frase argue that job-killing automation should go hand-in-hand with a universal basic income. “A low-work society,” Mason writes, “is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing reward via work.”