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South Korean Protests Growing

SooKyung Nam Socialist Project
For the sixth straight weekend, hundreds of thousands of Koreans came out in Seoul (and with other Korean cities estimates approaching 2 million people on the streets) to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. The below essays were written just after the fourth demonstration weekend.

The Blind Spots of Liberalism

Adam Fisher Jacobin
What an impoverished small town tells us about the dangers of not taking class seriously.

Why Pat McCrory Lost and What It Means in Trump's America

Tom Jensen Public Policy Polling
But the Moral Monday movement pushed back hard. Its constant visibility forced all of these issues to stay in the headlines. Its efforts ensured that voters in the state were educated about what was going on in Raleigh, and as voters became aware of what was going on, they got mad.

Historic CEO Pay Tax Proposal Passes in Portland

Mike Zacchino The Oregonian
Under Novick's tax plan, a company with a CEO-to-worker ratio of at least 100-to-1 will pay a surcharge equal to 10 percent of the amount it pays for Portland's business tax. A company with a 250-to-1 ratio or greater would pay a 25 percent surcharge.

Snowstorm Slams Water Protectors; After the Standing Rock Victory, What Next for Water Protectors?

Theresa Braine; Andy Pearson Indian Country Today
This decision is everything we had asked for: a non-granting of the easement, initiating an Environmental Impact Study, and suggestive of a reroute, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II said. 'We got it! Energy Transfer Partners will face an uphill battle in trying to dismantle the process initiated by this decision.' And, if the camp stays where it is currently located, people are risking their lives. The current weather is severe, making travel impossible.

New House Labor Committee Chair Questions Need for Unions

Robert Iafolla Reuters
At the top of Representative Virginia Foxx's agenda is the U.S. Labor Department rule that would extend mandatory overtime pay to more than 4 million workers. A federal judge in Texas blocked the rule last month before it took effect, but the Labor Department has challenged that ruling in a federal appeals court.

The Struggle Against Racism and ‘Fortress-Europe’ and the Fight for Popular Sovereignty

Panagiotis Sotiris spectrezine
We must include migrants and refugees in the people, politically and institutionally in the sense of full social and political rights but also ideologically in the terms of how we define the “us vs. them” in our societies. We need to redefine the people –or even the “nation”– as the unity in struggle of all the subaltern classes. This is an answer to “identity politics” than chauvinism in the name of “secularism," and an answer to neo-liberal cosmopolitanism.

Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The New Yorker
A day after the election, I heard a journalist on the radio speak of the vitriol between Obama and Trump. No, the vitriol was Trump’s. Now is the time to burn false equivalencies forever. Pretending that both sides of an issue are equal when they are not is not “balanced” journalism; it is a fairy tale—and, unlike most fairy tales, a disingenuous one.

Putting the 2016 Election into Historical Context

Process Editors Process: a blog for american history
How can we understand the 2016 presidential election in a broad context of American history? This is a question that many Americans, pundits, and historians have been thinking through for the past month. To address it, we assembled a panel of experts.