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Left Politics
NY Times Obituary for Michael Wreszin, New Politics contributor
| Joanne Landy September 17, 2012 |
In a surprisingly warm and positive obituary, the New York Times noted the death of Michael Wreszin in August of this year. The obit says of Wrezin's writings, "His subjects were cosmopolitan, humanist thinkers who saw a growing militarism in American political culture but whose scrupulous habits of mind could make them misfits in the ideological camps they joined.” Mike Wreszin was a frequent contributor to New Politics. We miss him already.
Mexico: The PRI is Back, the Left In Disarray
| Dan La Botz September 16, 2012 |
The PRI is back—and the left is in disarray.
Occupy Nigeria: ‘When the Cup is Full’
| Elizabeth Hassan August 31, 2012 |
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln
The Greek Grassroots Challenge to the Politics of Austerity
| Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy August 16, 2012 |
Harrison and Landy recently returned from a trip to Greece, where they met with activists and others to gain a better understanding of the popular upsurge against the Greek government’s austerity program.
Reply to Balderston: Longview Contract Was Not a Victory
| Jack Gerson August 8, 2012 |
[Reply to Bill Balderston's article, "Occupy Oakland and the Labor Movement."]
I am going to focus my remarks on section 2 of Bill Balderston's article, which he subtitled "The Battle of Longview". Bill and I have very different views of the outcome of this battle, and what that outcome is likely to mean.
Latin American Marxist: José Carlos Mariátegui
| by Dan La Botz | Summer 2012 |
While most English speakers don’t know him, the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui ranks as one of the great Marxists of the twentieth century. It was Mariátegui who originally asked the question which seems so relevant today: How does one make socialism in Latin America with Indians? He answered by turning the question around in the other direction: Indians in Latin America will be at the center of the fight for socialism in Latin America.
Seventy Years of Bolivian Radicalism
| by Michael Löwy | Summer 2012 |
This remarkable piece of militant history, based on interviews, as well as leaflets, letters, manifestos, dug out of public archives and private collections, from the heights of La Paz to the outskirts of Paris, deals with the Bolivian labor movement, the most persistent and combative in the Western Hemisphere. Bolivia is one of the very poorest countries of the Americas, and also the most Indian: 2/3 of the population describes itself as indigenous.
U.S. Economic Imperialism and Resistance from the Global South: A Prelude to OWS
| by Francis Shor | Summer 2012 |
It is generally agreed that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a response to decades of economic inequality in the United States. However, to focus only on the national dynamics of U.S. capitalism is to neglect the global role of U.S. economic imperialism since the 1970s and the resistance that developed in the global South to specific instances of that economic imperialism. This paper will consider how imperialist policies promoted by U.S. sponsored agencies and activities engaged in by U.S. corporations’ elicited acts of resistance.
Mexican Movement Fights “Imposition” of PRI’s Enrique Pena Nieto
| Dan La Botz July 29, 2012 |
The Mexican presidential election that took place on July 2 is over—but it is not done. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have been marching every week for almost a month in Mexico City and other cities throughout the country against what they call the “imposition” by Mexican election authorities of Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as president of Mexico.
Statement on Mexican Election from Group in Veracruz
| Dan La Botz July 10, 2012 |
[Introduction by Dan La Botz: As tens of thousands throughout the country protest the results of Mexico’s presidential elections, a group in the State of Veracruz has issued a statement calling upon Mexicans to both refuse to recognize the results of the election and to engage in a campaign of civil disobedience to make it impossible for the new government to rule. The statement was issued by the Network United for Human Rights of the Huasteca-Totonaca region in the State of Veracruz, a region with a high percentage of Totonaca peoples, one of Mexico’s many indigenous peoples.