Global Left Midweek – November 23, 2022
- An Ecosocialist Strategy to Win the Future
- ITUC World Congress: Unions Building Peace
- Eastern Europe Focus
- Street and Workplace Action Everywhere
- Sexism in Kenya’s Justice Movement
- Labour Party Leaders Trying to Lose the Left
- Imprisoned Sandinistas
- Red Valkyries
- Is the ANC Doomed?
- Legacies
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An Ecosocialist Strategy to Win the Future
Sabrina Fernandes / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
The ecological transition needs to make sense for workers everywhere. A conversation around uneven and combined degrowth can actually improve demands for socially necessary, good green jobs and the kind of living arrangements that communities may desire — if, that is, we centre our strategy on alternative frameworks of sufficiency, solidarity, and justice.
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ITUC World Congress: Unions Building Peace
International Trade Union Confederation
International humanitarian trade union solidarity, such as the major efforts to support workers in Ukraine, Myanmar and elsewhere, is part of a broader framework of union efforts to build and sustain peace and to avoid conflicts and rebuild in their aftermath. This Freedom Report and its case studies remind us of the critical role unions play in opposing conflict, authoritarianism, and oppression.
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Eastern Europe Focus
- Transforming Slovenia, One Step at a Time Luka Mesec and Joseph Beswick / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
- Labor and the Left in Azerbaijan / LeftEast
- Hungarian Teachers / Hungary Today (Budapest)
- Students Occupy Prague Universities / Expats.cz (Prague)
- Balkan Women Protest Ana Curic / openDemocracy (London)
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Street and Workplace Action
- Spain: Healthcare Al Jazeera (Doha)
- South Korea: Vigil-protests Tessa Wong and Youmi Kim / BBC News (London)
- Iran: Bloody Friday Michael Georgy / Reuters (London)
- Italy: Antifascist Students Julia Conley / Common Dreams (Portland ME)
- Zimbabwe: Food Workers Tanupriya Singh / Peoples Dispatch (New Delhi)
- China: Foxconn Eli Friedman / Asian Labour Review
- Swaziland: Public Transport Strike Pavan Kulkarni / Peoples Dispatch
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Sexism in Kenya’s Justice Movement
Lena Anyuolo / African Arguments (London)
Despite calling for liberation and social justice, activist spaces are far from immune to aspects of patriarchy and its toxic effects. Female activists in Kenya frequently suffer from mental stress and burnout as their contributions are taken for granted, their work goes uncredited, and their voices go unheard.
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Labour Party Leaders Trying to Lose the Left
- Starmer’s Shameless Hilary Schan / Jacobin
- Union Leader Expelled Polly Smythe / Novara Media (London)
- To Stay or Not Mike Phipps / Labour Hub (London)
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Imprisoned Sandinistas
Dick Nichols / Green Left (Sydney)
Ortega and Murillo continue to scapegoat political prisoners as “agents of the Empire”, cracking down on any form of civic activity independent of their regime’s structures. This even includes Sandinista organisations such as the Association of Retired Fighters of the Sandinista People’s Army. Imprisoned former FSLN leader Dora María Téllez is on hunger strike.
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Red Valkyries
Rachel Collett / Red Pepper (London)
Accessibly written and extensively researched, Red Valkyries recovers the stories of five socialist women, offering a welcome alternative history of 20th-century feminism from the perspective of eastern European revolutionary politics.
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Is the ANC Doomed?
Raymond Suttner / Polity (Johannesburg)
The notion of who are criminals has been reconfigured under ANC leadership. Criminality is no longer an isolated activity of a criminal class, but is now part of being in the political class or leadership that grants opportunities to steal and commit a range of other crimes (and this is not restricted to the ANC, although other parties have had less access to the levers of power).
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Legacies
- Hebe de Bonafini (1928-2022) / Buenos Aires Times
- Pablo Milanés (1943-2022) Mauricio Vicent / El País (Madrid)
- Ela Bhatt (1933-2022) Kalpana Sharma / Frontline (Mumbai)