Noam Chomsky: Red Lines in Ukraine and Elsewhere
The current Ukraine crisis is serious and threatening, so much so that some commentators even compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
What To Make of Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Plan
Source: In These Times
If you’re a low-wage worker in Seattle good luck figuring out how much you will earn under Mayor Ed Murray’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. In a news conference on May 1, an international day of worker protest and celebration, Murray unveiled a “minimum wage plan so complicated reporters can’t understand it,” as described by The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly.
Kshama Sawant, a socialist elected to the Seattle City Council last fall on a platform of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, says the proposal is a step forward, but notes that it contains numerous loopholes and could take more than a decade to come into effect. “If we don’t remain unrelenting, we’re going to get very little,” she says.
Gender Equity for Rural Haitian Women: An Interview With Kettly Alexandre of the Peasant Moment of Papay
The Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) is one of the largest small-farmer associations in Haiti with 70,000 members, of whom close to half are women. Here, Kettly Alexandre of the MPP Women's Committee speaks to advances made over 40 years for women's rights, equity, and an end to violence.
Palestinian Unity: Hope and Gloom in the Beach Refugee Camp
For years, Palestinian factions have strived for unity, and for years unity has evaded them. But is it possible that following several failed attempts, Fatah and Hamas have finally found that elusive middle ground? And if they have done so, why, to what end, and at what cost?
Why getting arrested to resist the Keystone XL is legally justified
Source: Waging Nonviolence
Nearly 100,000 people have pledged to risk arrest if the Obama administration appears poised to give approval to the Keystone XL pipeline. While it would be difficult to prove, it seems likely that the specter of tens of thousands of Americans committing civil disobedience around the country may have influenced the Obama administration to further delay its decision on the pipeline last week. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell attributed news of the delay to the “weight” of “radical activists.” Still, with the pipeline not yet rejected, the KXL Pledge of Resistance will have to be kept trimmed and burning.
‘Cowboy Indian Alliance’ Takes a Stand Against Keystone XL
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.