From the end of this month through early December, much of the world’s attention will be focused on Paris, the site of the upcoming round of UN climate negotiations. This is the twenty-first time diplomats and heads of state will gather under the umbrella of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Source: Pambazuka News
What started with rejection of the statue of a Dutch colonialist in Cape Town fast expanded to nationwide student protests against a racist, colonialist and classist education system that denies many South Africans the right to study. President Zuma finally respondend and turned an intended increase in tution into a 6 per cent cut for 2016, but this can only be a beginning.
An historic victory over South African neoliberalism was won on October 23, after the most intense three-week burst of activist mobilization here since liberation from apartheid in 1994. University students have been furious, as their cry “Fees must fall!” rang out on campuses and sites of political power across this society. But though there will be an effective 6% cut in tuition for 2016, the next stage of struggle looms, with demands for free tertiary education and university labor rights atop the agenda.
To almost everyone’s surprise, Justin Trudeau, leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, won the Canadian elections. The bottom line is a reasonably meaningful geopolitical disjunction of Canada from the United States. It is a further blow to the declining ability of the United States to impose its views on the global situation.
"The Black cooperative movement has been a silent partner to many significant moments in Black history in the US, from survival in economic depressions to the union movement to the civil rights movement." - Jessica Gordon Nembhard
Like most western democracies, for many decades the US government has been operating with some socialist programs – within an undeniably capitalist economic system. But what are we really talking about?
Source: In These Times
The statement revives the internationalism of the ’60s and ’70s, when black activists saw themselves as part of a global fight against Western colonialism
Long before the killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson cop coincided with the bombing of Gaza by Israeli forces, there were parallels between the Palestinian and African-American freedom struggles. On Nov. 1, 1970, black activists published an ad in the New York Times titled, “An Appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support of the Zionist Government of Israel.” Signed by more than 50 writers, educators, students and union leaders, the statement opened, “We, the black American signatories of this advertisement, are in complete solidarity with our Palestinian bothers and sisters, who, like us, are struggling for self-determination and an end to racist oppression.”
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