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Trade Unions Take on the Extreme Right in Northern France

Grégoire Comhaire Equal Times
The concerns of Front National voters are, in fact, much the same as that of left-wing parties, but the solutions the far right proposes could not be further from the values of trade unionism. The challenge is to deconstruct the discourse of the FN. It’s easier to blame refugees than to call into question the role of capital in the economic crisis. Unions must explain that to workers and to organise the mobilisation.

An End To Right's Reign In Spain?

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
Whatever party ends on top in the Spanish election, it will have to form a coalition, thus ending the reign of the two-party system that has dominated the country since Franco. Late polls show the right-wing PP taking a beating, dropping from 44 percent that it won four years ago to 28%, but it will still win the largest number of votes of any one party. Followed by the Socialists, at 21%, the center-right Ciudadanos Party at 19%, and the left-wing Podemos Party at 15.7%

Bringing Socialism Back: How Bernie Sanders is Reviving an American Tradition

Joseph M. Schwartz In These Times
The Sanders campaign is resurrecting socialist electoral politics and paving the way for a more radical public discourse. Only the revival of a decimated labor movement and the rebirth of socialist political parties that can bring them all together could result in the major redistribution of wealth and power that would allow real movement on these individual issues.

Keynote Speech Stuart Hall Foundation Launch

Gary Younge Stuart Hall Foundation
At the launch of the Stuart Hall Foundation in London, journalist Gary Younge spoke of our present, stating, "If politics is the art of the possible then radical politics, the kind of politics that Stuart espoused, must at very least engage with, showcase and promote new possibilities. And right now we are in need of imagining and articulating new possibilities."

A Visit With Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera

Jan Susler Truthout
In a united voice, Puerto Rican society has called on President Obama to release López Rivera. Members of the Puerto Rican diaspora and others in the US have also joined this campaign. As part of this growing support, New York attorneys Juan Cartagena and Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan accompanied attorney and activist Jan Susler, who represents López Rivera, on a legal visit in November. The attorneys' last image of the political prisoner made a deep impression.

Trump Las Vegas Hotel Files Objections After Workers Vote to Join Union

Bethany Khan UNITEHERE!
UNITE HERE's Culinary Union Calls for Immediate Contract Negotiations. We voted yes to make our jobs good jobs with fair wages and job security, said Celia Vargas, a housekeeper at the property. We won that vote, so our voices and votes should be respected.

Counternarratives: The Power of Narrative

Eric McDowell Michigan Quarterly Review
One book that's making it onto lots of people's best-of-the-year lists is Counternarratives, a collection of stories and novellas by John Keene. It's an extraordinary collection that uses historical fiction to make visible the human beings that racism and imperialism have pretended were not there. Not only that, but, as McDowell shows us in his review, this is a set of awfully good stories, too.