Global Left Midweek – October 4, 2023
- The Energy Democracy Declaration
- Québec: Rumblings in the Public Sector
- Pakistani Left Leader: Choosing Between Powers
- Euro Parties and the Fight for Power
- West Papuan Leader Released by Indonesia
- The Persecution of Russian Anti-Fascists
- Sudan: Civil War and the Revolution
- A Worker-Led Climate Movement?
- Getting Creative in Fighting German Fascists
- Hard Look at Cuba’s Economic Plight
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The Energy Democracy Declaration
Our Future is Public conference / Transnational Institute (Amsterdam)
The aim of this declaration is to strengthen, expand and unify the many social movements committed to energy and environmental justice. The declaration has been drafted by a diverse group of participants ranging from Indigenous representatives, trade unions, ecofeminists, climate justice organisations, solidarity collectives and NGOs.
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Québec: Rumblings in the Public Sector
Lital Khaikin / Canadian Dimension (Winnipeg)
Fed up with the deterioration of public services under the Coalition Avenir Québec government, thousands took to the streets. A coalition of unions known as the “common front,” or front commun, represents over 420,000 workers in Québec’s public schools, health care and social services sectors.
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Pakistani Left Leader: Choosing Between Powers
Ammar Ali Jan and Federico Fuentes / Links (Sydney)
The left and social movements can have more autonomy. As leftists, we can maintain a more sovereign, non-aligned position when it comes to our political line, working out the principal contradiction we face in the world. There is a new pole — or maybe multiple poles — emerging, opening up space for progress. But many of the governments that have filled that space are not progressive.
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Euro Parties and the Fight for Power
- Scottish and Welsh Labour Gerry Hassan / Chartist (London)
- Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda Beatriz Gomes Dias and Anna Schröder / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
- Austrian CP: Governing a Major City Leon Maximilian Walter / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
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West Papuan Leader Released by Indonesia
Yamin Kogoya / Green Left (Sydney)
Prominent West Papuan independence activist Victor Yeimo was released from prison in Indonesia’s occupied capital of West Papua on September 23, sparking a massive celebration among thousands of Papuans. His release once again ignited a spirit of unity among Papuans in their fight against what they refer to as racism, colonialism and imperialism.
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The Persecution of Russian Anti-Fascists
Dan Storyev / Jacobin (New York)
As Russian authorities continue their persecution of Azat Miftakhov, an anarchist mathematician and anti-fascist activist, his case is illustrative of two currents in modern Russia: the brutal and humiliating treatment of political prisoners and the decades-long assault on leftist activists. While the Kremlin claims it is anti-fascist in its war on Ukraine, nothing could be further from the truth.
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A Worker-Led Climate Movement?
Joseph Evans / Tribune (London)
Without new green jobs, those in the gas and oil industry risk becoming the coal miners of this generation. We need a green transition that has worker power at its heart.
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Sudan: Civil War and the Revolution
Anna Simone Reumert / Africa is a Country (New York)
The consistency of protest can be a salvage against depression, but if everyone is out of fuel, how does a movement go on? Since the outbreak of war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF on April 15 this year, the neighborhood resistance committees have become a key organ of survival for civilians, who are relying on their distribution of food, water, medical aid, and safe passage.
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Getting Creative in Fighting German Fascists
Paula Reisdorf / Waging Nonviolence (Brooklyn)
As the influence of the anti-migrant AfD grows in eastern Germany, counter-demonstrators are organizing multiracial raves to bring back the joy of solidarity.
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Hard Look at Cuba’s Economic Plight
Dr C Juan Triana Cordoví / On Cuba (Miami)
It will be paradoxical, but perhaps in these last three years — in which more measures have been adopted to return the economic system to its dynamics, in which more openness has been achieved in the functioning of the economy if we compare it with previous periods, it has turned out that we have seen the worst results.