Portside

Thanks to grassroots organizing, the CLC, for the first time, took a clear position of solidarity with a Palestinian-led human rights campaign. The convention also showed progress on Indigenous rights, racism, queer or trans rights, mental health, and environmental justice. The potential of that progress, however, is limited by a "business-as-usual" approach by too many union leaders. What matters now is how union members act on the progress made.

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The OAS has no positive role to play in resolving the political crisis in Venezuela, any more than would Senator Marco Rubio or other Florida politicians who seek regime change there. It should be clear that the organization is currently an instrument of those who simply want to use the current crisis to topple the Venezuelan government. People who want to avoid escalating violence or civil war in Venezuela should not pretend otherwise. Differing responses.

What I’m experiencing in this moment is a small example of how the occupation is used to take away agency from the Palestinian people on a daily basis. Each and every day, Palestinians are subjected to arbitrary checkpoints which delay their travel, restricted water which strips them of basic dignity, home demolitions which tear families apart, and constant surveillance that has seeped into every aspect of Palestinian society. I am broken but not finished.

Barghouti’s statement, posted to social media around noon EST in Arabic. The letter lauds gains from the strike, including increased family visits, more clothing, special unnamed services for female and child prisoners, expedited transfers and, most importantly, the establishment of a collective bargaining committee where Israeli prison authorities will 'dialogue with the prisoners’ representatives in the forthcoming few days to discuss all issues without exception.'*

The Trump administration today pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change. That pits the U.S. against the world and the scientific consensus on global warming. Trump's comments on climate change during his meeting with European leaders prompted German leader Angela Merkel to conclude that Europe must increasingly go it alone. The Obama administration could have done more, while the Trump administration couldn't have done less. (John Feffer, FPIF)

Returning to two of socialist Jack London's classics, The Iron Heel and The People of the Abyss--both available free at Project Gutenberg--the reviewer finds stark similarities between the deprivation of the early 20th century and the modern world of neoliberal capitalism, with its gig economy and the emergence of a precariat, valorizing London's injunction that class supremacy can rest only on class degradation.

Correísmo marked a turning point in Ecuador's history. Correa launched his administration with measures such as buying back the country’s debt, renegotiating oil contracts and better tax collection. As Lenin Moreno takes office he will seek to find ways to continue the progress made in reducing poverty while overcoming divisions in society. Moreno was Correa’s vice president between 2007 and 2013 where he was a strng advocate for people with disabilities.

As protests in Colombia rage on, President Trump’s meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos could point towards a deepening of militarized drug war policies over investing in Colombia's peace process.

What we find all too often in Coates’s narrative universe are bodies without life and a racism without people. To imbue race with an ontological meaning, to make it a reality all its own, is to drain it of its place in history and its indelible roots in discrete human action. To deny the role of life and people — of politics — is to also foreclose the possibility of liberation.