Portside

Unlike Spanish evangelism, US colonial machinery was geared to using the Philippines for thorough exploitation of the newly acquired territory, envisaging the eventual expansion of multinational corporations and ultimate global hegemony. This brief historical outline provides a background for global context and working class analysis of the Philippines and Filipino mass movements.

Protesters are levying a broad range of concerns about public policies that devastate Colombia's workers, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities. The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement has forced small farmers to compete with subsidized US products, made them more vulnerable to market fluctuations, and eroded their protections and social safety nets through the implementation of neoliberal policies domestically.

Efforts to achieve such unity is possible if we maintain an atmosphere of tolerance and eschew subjective responses to past encounters and disputes. This effort should involve not only members of existing socialist groups and publications but the many unorganized left activists in the struggle for economic and social justice, democracy and peace.