Class Struggle

“Asking Union Workers to Fund Their Own Disenfranchisement”

By cutting jobs, wages, pensions and benefits governments in the US, UK and across Europe are deliberately causing the living standards of the poor and middle class to plummet while at the same time, mercilessly removing the social safety net by slashing public services when people need them most. With a diminishing and in many cases negative disposable income, households can barely afford the necessities of life; consumer demand is floundering and this is having a predictable knock-on effect on businesses with the net result being less tax receipts for the treasury. This is not a plan for deficit reduction as we’re being told. This is class war!

Continue Reading →

McDonald’s Employee Confronts Executive: I Can’t Afford Shoes For My Children

Nancy Salgado is 26 years old and is a cashier at McDonald’s. She has been at her current McDonald’s for ten months. She is a single mother with seven- and two-year old children. The family currently lives in Logan Square, a community on Chicago’s northwest Side. Nancy earns $8.25 an hour, works thirty to forty hours per week and is struggling to raise her two kids. Nancy has worked for McDonald’s since she was 16 and has never had a raise.

Continue Reading →

Radio New Zealand Interviews Will Potter on Spying, Ag-Gag Laws, and the Global War of Information

One of New Zealand’s most popular radio programs, Sunday Ideas, aired an in-depth interview with me about my work, and how elements of the “Green Scare” are appearing internationally. When I visited New Zealand on my lecture tour, surveillance issues were becoming a national controversy; now, New Zealand has passed a law allowing the kiwi equivalent of the NSA to spy on citizens, and Kim Dotcom is moving forward with his lawsuit related to illegal spying

Continue Reading →

Rocinha Cries “Where is Amarildo!?”

According to the civil police, Amarildo was taken to the police station by officers of the Rocinha UPP on Sunday for cross-questioning and, as there was nothing against him, was released shortly thereafter. On Tuesday July 16th, the family reported his disappearance.

Continue Reading →

Council tenants: defending ‘secure tenancies’ and opposing means tested Council housing

Although Housing Benefit is means tested, Council Housing, as such, has never been. The coalition government is treating it like it is charity, giving Councils the right to evict tenants who have done nothing wrong. But Council housing was built on a mass scale because private builders were not interested in building homes for poor working people. Today’s housing crisis will not be tackled unless there is a return to building Council housing on a sufficiently large scale such that the numbers of households on the waiting list, 1.8 million, begins to decline rather than continuing to rise.

Continue Reading →

Swiss to Vote on Guaranteed $2800 Monthly Income for All Adults

Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of growing public activism over pay inequality since the financial crisis.

A grassroots committee is calling for all adults in Switzerland to receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs — about $2,800 — per month from the state, with the aim of providing a financial safety net for the population.

Organizers submitted more than the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on Friday and tipped a truckload of 8 million five-cent coins outside the parliament building in Bern, one for each person living in Switzerland.

Continue Reading →

The Party Game is Over. Stand and Fight

The BA workers, the firefighters, the council workers, the post office workers, the NHS workers, the London Underground staff, the teachers, the lecturers, the students can more than match the French if they are resolute and imaginative, forging, with the wider social justice movement, potentially the greatest popular resistance ever. Look at the web; listen to the public’s support at fire stations. There is no other way now. Direct action. Civil disobedience. Unerring. Read Shelley and do it.

Continue Reading →

At the Escuelita Zapatista, Students Learn Community Organizing and Civil Resistance as a Way of Life

From August 11-17, the Zapatistas brought more than 1,500 people into their communities to attend the Escuelita Zapatista, the Little Zapatista School. According to a February comunicado by the EZLN, in a class entitled Liberty According to the Zapatistas: Autonomous Government I, “our compas from the Zapatista bases of support are going to share the little we have learned about the struggle for freedom, and the [the students] can see what is useful or not for their own struggles.”

Continue Reading →

The Dangers of Journalism 101

In a country like Peru there are endless opportunities for journalists who keep their ears to the ground: There are new medicines being found, water and mineral rights being sold out from under the people to whom they belong, archaeological sites being discovered monthly. If you’re a journalist and you find yourself there—or in Bolivia or Colombia or Venezuela or Brazil or almost anywhere in South America—you almost can’t help but run into good stories on a regular basis.

Continue Reading →

New Squatted Social Centre in Hackney Needs Your Help

A new squatted social space has been created in Hackney – 195 Mare St. The space aims to be an active and inspiring hub for local individuals and community groups.

The current projects we are working on are a language school, bicycle workshop, library, free shop, screenings, hack lab and a vegan cafe. There will also be workshops and info nights. Everything will be either free or for donations.

Continue Reading →

More Tory stripping of the welfare tree

Autumn can be so lovely. The turn to crisp, sunny mornings, goldening leaves and wrap-up nights. One gets used to the familiarity of seasonal sights and sounds, pleasing and not so, like the autumnfest of party conferences with their turgid speeches and ritual pledges. And no October would be complete without another Tory rallying call to purge the poor.

Continue Reading →
1 … 45 46 47 48 49 … 53