- Taking on the Right
- Behind the Left’s Victory in Sri Lanka
- Russian Thinkers Examine Today’s Imperialisms
- Iran: Mine Disaster Sparks Worker Solidarity
- Left Think Tanks on Venezuela
- Nasrallah’s Death Changed Everything
- Amilcar Cabral at 100
- Armenian Feminists Challenge Sexual Violence
- Making Good Trouble in Gambia
- Claudia Sheinbaum Takes Over in Mexico
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Taking on the Right
Amandla! Collective / Amandla! (Cape Town)
The brutal truth is that, with very few exceptions, the right is capturing the mood of dissatisfaction much more effectively than the Left. In South Africa, we have two major problems. Firstly, the key social force, organised labour, is largely absent from the scene. The second problem is that the space vacated by labour has been occupied by a motley collection of political forces.
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Behind the Left’s Victory in Sri Lanka
Janaka Biyanwila / Green Left (Sydney)
A working-class party, the People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, JVP), gained power for the first time, under the coalition National People’s Power (Jathika Jana Balawegaya, NPP). One of the NPP’s key themes was the fight against corruption, nepotism, economic waste and mismanagement. This echoed the slogan of the 2022 uprising, “system change”.
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Russian Thinkers Examine Today’s Imperialisms
• Boris Kagarlitsky / Links (Sydney)
• Ilya Matveev and Federico Fuentes / Links
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Iran: Mine Disaster Sparks Worker Solidarity
Free Them Now
The tragedy of the Tabas Madanjoo coal mine that exploded on September 21st and led to the catastrophic death of more than 50 miners has attracted the attention of the entire society, and the solidarity with the miners and the expression of sympathy with their families take on more social and popular dimensions.
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Making Good Trouble in Gambia
Phil Wilmot and Alieu Bah / Waging Nonviolence (Brooklyn)
Alieu Bah, an organizer who helped bring an end to coup leader Yahya Jammeh’s 22-year rule in Gambia, explains the importance of agreeing on a common purpose and demystifying despots. “Although Gambian organizers still have a long journey to traverse, we can learn how they protected the vote and put a definitive end to one man’s grip on power.”
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Armenian Feminists Challenge Sexual Violence
Teresa Di Mauro / Meduza (Riga)
The Women’s Support Center (WSC) in Yerevan, an advocacy and support group for domestic violence victims, was established in 2010 with funding from the Armenian diaspora and international organizations. Together with other anti-violence groups, the WSC also co-founded the Coalition to Stop Violence against Women to promote systemic change.
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Left Think Tanks on Venezuela and Democracy
• Edgardo Lander / Transnational Institute (Amsterdam)
• Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South / Institute for Policy Studies (Washington DC)
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Nasrallah’s Death Changed Everything
Pasquale Porciello / il manifesto Global (Rome)
Throughout Friday night, the Israeli Air Force continued to bomb Dahieh, the Beirut neighborhood where Nasrallah was killed. People fear a repeat of what happened in Gaza, and there are serious grounds for that fear. Last year, not long after the war began, Israeli Defense Minister Gallant had made this exact threat: “What we can do in Gaza, we can do in Beirut.”
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Amilcar Cabral at 100
Balasingham Skanthakumar / Against the Current (Detroit)
Anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, party organizer and guerilla warfare strategist, diplomat and publicist, revolutionary theorist and internationalist, Amílcar Cabral was among the most original Marxists of the 20th century. Cabral and five others including his half-brother Luís founded what became the African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1956.
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Claudia Sheinbaum Takes Over in Mexico
Miguel A. Vázquez de la Rosa / El MuroMX (Oaxaca)
[Translated by xxxxxx. Read the original Spanish text here.]
A legitimate daughter of 1968, educated in the tradition of the Latin American left, Claudia Sheinbaum has more than enough certificates to prove her activism in various social causes in the country. From her participation in the movement of politically disappeared people led by Rosario Ibarra, to her famous foray into the University Student Council (CEU 1986) of the UNAM. The first female president of Mexico boasts of her political origins: “We come from a social movement, I am part of a historical movement.”
In Claudia, the documentary made by her son Rodrigo Ímaz, two influences are noticeable in the early formation of her character: academic preparation and the fight for social demands. In the first images of this documentary video, the girl Claudia appears in the frame, plays a jarana and interprets the llanera music of the Venezuelan Juan Vicente Torrealba: “Get up, peasant, the light of day is coming, the guacharaca bird has already sung on the banks of the river.”
Latin American music in the 1970s belonged to the protest movements, or to the so-called “socially conscious” sectors of the population; they were not melodies that the middle classes would sit down and listen to with their families on any given Sunday.
Unlike those who make up the top brass of her Morena party, Claudia does not come from the PRI, nor from the PAN, nor from Foxism, like Monreal, Marcelo, Durazo or López Obrador himself. Nor is she the product of pacts between business mafias to put a brand in place. Sheinbaum has a career forged in social movements and academia; that is her badge of pride, as the leader of her party often boasts, “being on the right side of history.”
Paradoxically, the movement now led by the future president maintains an open confrontation with the social movements in the country. There are countless testimonies of rejection that the Morena government has expressed towards organizations that fight for social change: environmentalists, organizations defending human rights, the Zapatistas, the mothers of the disappeared, feminists, the peace movement, the relatives of disappeared Ayotzinapa students, the progressive church, people defending the territory, among others.
Social movements are inconvenient to AMLO’s Fourth Transformation and this government has criminalized them.
At the beginning of the six-year term, the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water of the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala (FPDTA-MPT) openly opposed the Morelos Comprehensive Plan, a project consisting of the creation of a gas pipeline and two thermoelectric plants in Huexca. President López Obrador disqualified the protests, calling the opposition “left-wing radicals” and “pseudo-environmentalists.”
Activists took note of the inconsistency. The president opposed the thermoelectric plant during his campaign, and as president he became its main promoter. We already know the story: a week before the consultation, promoted by the government to legitimize its project, social leader Samir Flores was shot dead outside his home. This was the first crime committed against a defender of the territory during his six-year term. It was only February 2019.
From then on, the country became an even more hostile place for defenders, activists and social movements. Opponents of the Mayan Train, the Interoceanic Corridor and extractive projects received a barrage of criticism from the Treasury Hall, on the president’s morning TV conference “La Mañanera”. The mothers and fathers of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa went from being heroes of this government to being viewed with suspicion for their insistent accusations against the Armed Forces, for the concealment of information. At the same time, antibodies were injected [into the body politic] through an editorial line designed to incriminate social criticism while indulging the work of the government.
In this scenario, Claudia Sheinbaum will come to power on October 1, 2024. The election results have given her a strong social support. President López Obrador’s popularity is on the rise and critical media outlets can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
History does not have a “right side,” but if it did, it would be the side of the “people without history,” to paraphrase the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, “long beaches are formed grain by grain”; the side of the people who fight, who march against the current; the side of the victims who have suffered the oppression of the powerful; in short, the side of the social movements. Obradorism is a movement that comes from that tree, which has deep roots, but it is only a branch, it is not the whole tree.
If Claudia Sheinbaum is on the “right side of history,” as her supporters boast, a good start for her government would be to recognize that they have made mistakes in their relationship with social movements, to recognize that they have lacked the humility to listen to the complaints and to feel the wounds from which the country bleeds. It would be more consistent with her history and family roots, the deep connection with her past.
Listening, just listening, would be a good start, sending the right signal for the new government.
