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South Africa - COSATU, NUMSA - What's Going On?

Documents from COSATU, NUMSA and ANC
This past weekend, COSATU, South Africa's labor federation voted to expel NUMSA, the National Union of Metal Workers. To give readers a better understanding, Portside is posting many of the relevant documents (sorry for length of this post): Tyotyo James (COSATU deputy president) interview prior to expulsion; COSATU official statement; NUMSA response to the expulsion; ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe on Developments in COSATU.

Midterm Lesson - Elizabeth Warren Should Run

Joel Bleifuss; column by Elizabeth Warren
After the pity party's through, let's get organized. There was one exception to the dearth of Democratic leaders who championed populist proposals. Sen. Elizabeth Warren crisscrossed the country attempting to galvanize the electorate in key Senate races. One thing has not changed: "The stock market and gross domestic product keep going up, while families are getting squeezed hard by an economy that isn't working for them." Now is the time for Warren or Bernie Sanders.

What Democrats Can Learn From Republicans

By Ezra Klein Vox
Democrats still understand themselves as the majority party despite controlling nothing but the presidency. They have captured the high ground of American politics, but lost the crucial farmland.

A White Manifesto

By Bob Zellner Moore County NAACP
The left always talks a good game of workers unite black and white but the last thing most liberals do is actually talk to overtly racist white folks. Shirking this movement duty leaves our nation vulnerable to a neo-fascist future paid for by the Koch Brothers and their clone, Art Pope of North Carolina.

College Athletes of the World, Unite

By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jacobin
Life for student-athletes is no longer the quaint Americana fantasy of the homecoming bonfire and a celebration at the malt shop. It’s big business in which everyone is making money — everyone except the eighteen to twenty-one-year-old kids who every game risk permanent career-ending injuries.

South Africa: NUMSA's Expulsion from COSATU is 'an Attack on the Poor and an Attack on Workers'

National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
On Friday, November 7, COSATU (the Congress of South African Trade Unions), the country’s main federation of trade unions and organisations of the working class, has expelled one of its founders, the militantly socialist National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). This has major implications for political movements in South Africa.

Telling Their Own Stories Illuminates Life Under Israeli Occupation

Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout Book Review Truthout
Malek and Hoke spent four years, 2010 to the summer of 2014, conducting more than 250 hours of interviews in the West Bank and Gaza and ultimately culled the material into 16 chapters. The range is broad and includes a Jewish Israeli who moved to the West Bank in solidarity with her Palestinian friends and a middle-aged Palestinian professor who helped found the International Solidarity Movement.