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The Neglected History of the May ’68 Uprising in France

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

Innu activists descend the Grand River (Churchill) after the Lower Churchill project is announced, 1998. Photo credit: Alexis Lathem

Damming Muskrat Falls: Land and River Protectors in Canada Recharge the Debate on Mega-Dams

Almost twenty years ago I made an eleven-day canoe journey down one of North America’s grandest rivers, the Grand River in Labrador, Canada. Our guides were four indigenous elders who had grown up traveling the river. We listened to their stories. We ate porcupine and goose and salmon. The trip ended at Muskrat Falls, where we hauled our canoes up a trail that had been used for generations by the region’s indigenous people. Today, Muskrat Falls is the site of a 12-billion-dollar mega hydroelectric project; the falls no longer exist.