Americas

“We Feel Abandoned and Disposable:” How Thousands of Mexico’s Seniors are Exploited in Unpaid Jobs

Tamara Pearson October 18, 2018 Tamara Pearson

In Mexico, over 30,000 people over the age of 60 are working long unpaid shifts as bag packers in supermarkets. These unpaid laborers are up to 89 years old. They have no work contract and receive no benefits. These workers frequently have to perform other duties such as cleaning and stocking, for no pay or tips. And although they aren't being physically or violently forced to do this work, they don't really have a lot of choice.

Indigenous Massacre Survivors Unite for Memory and Justice in Guatemala

Sandra Cuffe October 8, 2018 Sandra Cuffe

The October 4, 2012 massacre was the first and only massacre of indigenous people by soldiers following the 1996 Peace Accords. This year’s commemoration of the sixth anniversary of the massacre took place a week after a tribunal confirmed state armed forces committed genocide in the early 1980s. “The goal is to remember them and to leave a legacy for our future generations who will struggle for the defense of our rights,” said Eduardo Juan Yax, an indigenous community leader.

The Zapatistas’ Dignified Rage: Revolutionary Theories and Anticapitalist Dreams of Subcomandante Marcos

Benjamin Dangl September 24, 2018 Benjamin Dangl

“Sometimes, in the predawn hours when they find me wandering around without possibility for rest, I am able to climb up on a wisp of smoke and, from very high up, I look at us. Believe me that what can be seen is so beautiful that it’s painful to look at. I’m not saying that it’s perfect, nor that it’s finished, nor that it has no gaps, irregularities, wounds to close, injustices to remedy, spaces to liberate. Eppur si muove. And yet it moves. As if everything bad that we are and carry were mixed with the good that we can be, and the entire world redrew its geography and its time were remade with another calendar. Well, as if another world were possible.” - Zapatista Subcommandante Marcos

How Republican-Led Voter Suppression is Undermining Democracy in America

John Lasker September 20, 2018 John Lasker

This in-depth Toward Freedom investigation points to the likelihood of massive voter suppression in the mid-term elections, particularly targeting Democrat-leaning demographics. Republicans have passed laws across the country to deny voters their constitutional right to vote. “These laws are part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights,” says Bobby Hoffman of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.