Global Left Midweek – June 26, 2024
- Two Ecosocialist Meetings
- Indigenous Women in Latin America
- Migrant Workers and Strikes
- More Election Analyses
- Video: Tax Protests in Kenya
- Repression Reports
- Strikes in China
- France Election Set to Boil
- Turkish Unions Fight Gender-Based Violence
- In Praise of Laziness
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Two Ecosocialist Meetings
Maria Elena Saludas / Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (Liège, Belgium)
“It’s clear that we have differences on how socialism should be today. But we agree on the fact that we are breaking away and that we are anti-capitalist. There was agreement on the fact that the movements of struggle—the territorial movements—are the places of struggle. That’s where we can win.”
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Indigenous Women in Latin America
- Bolivia Linda Farthing and Thomas Grisaffi / NACLA Report (New York)
- Peru Juana Vera Delgado / Common Dreams (Portland ME)
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Migrant Workers and Strikes
Goran Lukic and Tibor T. Meszmann / LeftEast
Migrant workers embody multiple contradictions of social, political, and economic life that humanity faces in contemporary global hypermobile capitalism: they are structurally weak, occupy vulnerable and often outsourced positions under the controlling hands and influence of employers or more complex state structures.
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More Election Analyses
- UK Simon Pirani / Labour Hub (London)
- South Africa Fredson Guilengue and Britta Becker / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
- Ireland Diarmuid Flood and Paul Murphy / Rupture (Dublin)
- Austria Daniel Schukovits / transform!europe (Vienna)
- India Gilles Verniers / The Wire (New Delhi)
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Video: Tax Protests in Kenya
Firstpost (Noida)
Protests are escalating in Kenya over proposed new tax hikes in the Finance Bill that is being tabled in the parliament. Thousands of young protesters marched near President William Ruto's residence. Protesters clashed with police who fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. The bill is due to be debated and passed by June 30. [Update here]
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Repression Reports
- Arundhati Roy, India Nitasha Kaul / The Conversation (Waltham MA)
- Boris Kagarlisky, Russia Suzi Weissman / Green Left (Sydney)
- Christian Tein, New Caledonia / Al Jazeera (Doha)
- East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams
- Kempir-Abad, Kyrgyzstan Catherine Putz / The Diplomat (Arlington VA)
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Strikes in China
Simon Han and Jessica Song / Asian Labour Review (Hong Kong)
Since China’s market reform in the 1980s, the “world factory” has witnessed waves of strikes in the manufacturing sector, especially in the 2000s and early 2010s. However, factory strikes overall have declined in number and scale since 2016, and the centre of strikes has shifted from manufacturing to service sectors, particularly the platform economy, and from coastal cities to China’s inland.
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France Election Set to Boil
- Muslims Respond Ashifa Kassam / The Guardian (London)
- Unifying Ain’t Easy Harrison Stetler / Jacobin (Brooklyn)
- Left Parties and the Social Movement / Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (Paris)
- Macron Attacks Edwy Penel / Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
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Turkish Unions Fight Gender-Based Violence
Marga Zambrana / Equal Times (Brussels)
A network of social partners, trade unions and feminist associations promotes rights through information campaigns, training and audits, and by forcing their application as occupational risk prevention in collective bargaining agreements. The best strategy to curb violence, they argue, is to increase the number of women among union representatives and in leadership positions.
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In Praise of Laziness
Harrison Dressler and Daniel Tubb / Socialist Project (Toronto)
Today, not unlike the Keynesians, many leftists regard employment – accompanied with education, housing, and childcare – as tantamount to socialism itself. Even radical solutions to “social problems” like homelessness pinpoint full-time employment as a prerequisite for self-fulfillment. In labour, leftists mistake liberation; in work, they confuse freedom.