Articles by Cole Stangler

Source: The Nation

Turkey’s crackdown on dissent extends to the country’s fractured labor movement.

Istanbul – If the presence of a two dozen riot cops blocking the entrance of the Gaziosmanpaşa Courthouse didn’t send the message, then the arrival of a water-cannon truck—slowly backing up from the Eski Edirne Motorway before fixing its aim at the civilians gathered 20 yards away—made things abundantly clear: The authorities did not want anyone here.

Eyüp Özer, an organizer and head of international relations at Turkey’s United Metalworkers Union, which is part of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK), shrugged off the police presence. “It’s not that unusual,” he said with a laugh. “For most of the really politicized cases, it’s actually pretty common.” read more

Source: The Nation

We remember the students, the generational conflict, the cultural explosion—but we forget that it was, at heart, a working-class rebellion.

On the morning of June 10, 1968—a couple of weeks after French labor unions signed an agreement with Prime Minister Georges Pompidou to put an end to a crippling general strike—workers at the Wonder battery factory in the northern Parisian suburb of St. Ouen voted to return to the job.

Later that afternoon, as union representatives conferred outside the factory gates with the rank and file, an amateur camera crew captured the scene. The group’s 10-minute film, Wonder, May ’68, focuses on a young woman who has drawn a crowd around her. read more

Source: The Nation

There is no denying it: The last few months have been disastrous for the French left. As the gospel of neoliberalism goes up in flames across the Channel, French voters have handed over the republic to one of its true believers. Not only did they elect Emmanuel Macron as president. But last Sunday, they delivered his newly formed party, La République en Marche (LREM), a parliamentary supermajority, granting him the tools to comfortably enact his business-friendly agenda.

These will be trying times for the French working class, and really anyone concerned with the country’s collective well-being. Macron wants to radically restructure labor law in favor of employers; he wants to enshrine parts of the nation’s ongoing state of emergency into common law; and he wants to lower corporate taxes. Recently distilling his vision in a frightening and cruel tweet—which he wrote in English so it could be shared worldwide—he claimed France should be a “nation that thinks and moves like a start-up.” read more

Source: In These Times

This Changes Everything argues that only grassroots movements, not politicians or the 1%, can prevent climate disaster.

It is fitting that Naomi Klein’s latest work, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, was released this week in September. On Sunday, tens of thousands will pour into the streets of midtown Manhattan for the People’s Climate March. On the eve of yet another United Nations summit aimed at slashing global greenhouse gas emissions, the action could well be the single largest environmental demonstration in history.    read more

Source: In These Times

A small city in Maine strikes a blow against Canadian tar sands extraction.

Opponents of tar sands—the massive bituminous oil deposits in Alberta, Canada with a greenhouse gas impact four times greater than that of standard crude—have inched one step closer to a major victory.

On Wednesday night, the City Council of South Portland, Maine voted 6-1 to pass an early version of an ordinance that would ban the loading of crude oil onto ships and related infrastructure within city limits. It’s a local land use issue with staggering global implications: The oil industry, activists worry, wants to reverse the flow of the Portland-Montreal Pipe Line, a series of pipelines first built in World War II that now ships imported crude from the coast of Maine to Montreal. Amid ongoing tar sands extraction in Canada—and a dearth of export routes there—it would make more economic sense for the pipelines to flow the other way. read more

Source: In These Times

Ranchers, tribal communities, allies and activists camp out in Washington to protect their land.

Cliven Bundy wasn’t the only rancher to air his grievances against the federal government last week.

In Washington, D.C., a more inclusive, environmentally conscious and politically progressive pack of ranchers and farmers joined up with tribal communities and activist allies to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. This disparate coalition set up an encampment on the National Mall.

Citizens living along the route of the proposed pipeline formed the “Cowboy Indian Alliance” to both strengthen their own ties and to build solidarity nationwide. Dubbed “Reject & Protect,” the protest culminated in a several-thousand-person march on Saturday, April 26, afternoon and interfaith prayer ceremony on  the following Sunday. read more