November 11, 2019 |
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Between the fall of 1999 and April of 2000, hundreds of thousands of factory workers, peasants, retirees, students, professionals, and everyday people took to the streets in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to fight the privatization of their water. A foreign-led consortium of private corporations had taken control of the city’s water supply, increasing water prices by as much as 300 percent. With the skills and experience of organized movements such as the Federation of Factory Workers, working people were able to defeat a multibillion-dollar corporation around a shared interest: the right to water.
In the face of a well-organized global elite that has gutted the power of workplace organizing, Cochabamba shows us that organizing the working class around a common interest and moving beyond the confines of the workplace provides an opening to push for—and win—a future that centers people over profit.
The Geography of the Present
Capitalism began to take on a new form in the 1970s with the arrival of new technologies that facilitated the rapid transportation of goods and communication about the production process. Neoliberalism, a policy framework that enriches the wealthy (by cutting taxes) and that demeans workers (by cutting opportunities and access to social wages), came to define the global economy.
The world was now connected in a way that enabled global capitalists to break up the production process, making it even more difficult for organized masses of working people to halt the production process and garner real power over the ruling elite. Now that the manufacturing of parts of the production process was spread across the world, the shutdown of a factory that manufactures car engines in China could easily be offset by the production of car engines in Mexico or Taiwan.
Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, explains that “new technologies—such as satellite communications, computerization and container ships—provided firms with the ability to manage global, real-time databases and to move goods as fast as possible. Firms could break up factories and set them up in several countries at the same time—a process known as the disarticulation of production.” Advances in transportation further enabled this process so that “capital could move the parts of the commodity swiftly and relatively cheaply as well as shift commodities to markets with relative ease.”
This scenario is vastly different from the power generated—for example—by auto workers in Detroit in the mid-twentieth century, who were able to shut down the entire production process through strikes and slowdowns, and whose benefits and union contracts reflect the level of power they were able to exercise over their employers. Factories that were once the heart of the auto industry and the site of powerful worker organizing are now largely abandoned, their broken windows and crumbling walls a mirror of the changing landscape of production and the need for different strategies to organize around it.
The context for organizing today that faces working people across the world is one that must grapple with the challenges posed by a decentralized production process and a well-organized ruling class. We can see the current moment as a rupture of sorts—perhaps a way of understanding the global rise of fascism. Scapegoating in the form of xenophobia, racism, and religious fundamentalism—the well-worn tools of capitalism’s strategy to divide the working class—fills an ideological void and presents a solution to the anger stoked by the everyday realities of the working class who are faced with massive inequality and pauperization. It is to this anger that the left must respond; to provide an ideology that seeks to understand its origins and to shape cultural mechanisms and ideologies that allow us to imagine—and build—a different path forward.
Seeds of Resistance
The Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) presents one such path. In a recent interview, CITU president K. Hemalata discussed both the challenges that lie ahead of working-class movements as well as some of the strategies that are being used to combat them. Hemalata points to the same trend of the disarticulation of production, that “Workers do not produce the entire product; often they produce just a part of the commodity.” She explains that “This means that the workers are not concentrated in one factory, where they can get organized. Rather, they are working on just a part of the commodity, spatially separated from fellow workers, and have less power because of this.”
Another major problem, she explains, is the use of migrant labor to create “social fissures” between the workers and surrounding communities. Often, workers from one state are loaded onto a bus to a factory elsewhere, where they have no ties to the community and often do not speak the same language. This trend is mirrored in the forced migration of those fleeing violence in Central America in search of safety and economic opportunity in the United States. Migrants who succeed in their passage to the United States are often blamed for the woes of the broader working class for “stealing jobs,” deflecting the blame from the capitalist class for keeping all wages low and for having created the unstable conditions in their home countries through imperialist interventions.
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Despite the shared interest between the community and the workers and between divided sectors of the working class who are forced to accept low wages and often precarious conditions, these divisions often succeed in creating social fractures that reinforce the interests of the ruling class.
One strategy used by CITU to combat these social fractures is “to organize people in their residential areas and not just at the places of production,” says Hemalata. In the south Indian state of Kerala, for example, the Left Democratic Front offers Malayalam language classes for the migrant workers, which “allows them to develop closer ties with people who live beside their places of work and in their neighborhoods. If you provide workers with the means to enter the society where they work, then the divides cannot be so easily exploited by management.”
The challenges posed by global capital require creativity in their solutions. We must rebuild the imagination of the working class and combat the capitalist narrative that has made it easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Before a new system can be born, its seeds must be planted and nurtured in the fissures of our current reality. We must build and popularize an ideology and culture that offer a solution other than hate and scapegoating to the woes experienced by the poor and dispossessed—and amplify the theories and strategies that exist among popular movements today. This requires confronting the consumer-driven culture and social isolation promoted by capitalism and building one that revives community and humanity, that centers the well-being of humanity over the accumulation of wealth at the hands of the few. The seeds of the future exist in the strategies of CITU in India; in the worker-cooperatives in Brazil; in the housing struggles in South Africa; and in countless other popular movements across the world. These are the wrenches that can halt the wheels of the well-oiled machine of capital.
Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Celina della Croce is a coordinator at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research as well as an organizer, activist, and advocate for social justice. Prior to joining Tricontinental Institute, she worked in the labor movement with the Service Employees Union and the Fight for 15, organizing for economic, racial and immigrant justice.
November 11, 2019 |
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So far it’s been the hottest summer ever recorded — June was the hottest June, and July was the hottest month ever. France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands had their hottest days of all time, joining countries from Cuba to Vietnam and Togo to the Reunion Islands.
This is dangerous for two reasons.
One, it’s destroying the planet.
And two, it’s becoming so common that people may lose hope or tune out — the news can be almost as sapping as the heat. But that apathy would come at just the wrong moment. The price of renewable energy hit a record low last month, when a Portuguese power auction produced the cheapest electricity in history. Given the political will, we could quickly make huge strides in combatting climate change.
The climate crisis represents an assault on justice (those who have done the least to cause it suffer the most) but also an assault on the future, a future that some have a larger share in simply because they’ll be alive longer.
That’s why we should be grateful to some of the youngest activists on the planet, people who refuse to become inured to business as usual, who won’t give up. The most famous of them, Greta Thunberg, is on a sailboat for a journey to the United States, where she’ll address the UN’s climate summit in September. But she’s far from alone. Thanks to the organization Fridays for Future, you can find Greta equivalents from Peru to Pensacola to Prague, from Ulan Bator to the gates of the UN.
Thunberg began her “school strike for the climate’’ a year ago, arguing that if the world’s adults weren’t willing to prepare the planet for her generation, they were forfeiting their right to demand that her generation spend their youth preparing for their future. Kids across the planet saw the logic — the biggest days of action have seen 1.4 million students out of the classroom and on the streets.
But after a year, they’ve done something new — they’ve asked adults to join them. On Sept. 20, there will be the first all-ages climate strike (it will be Sept. 27 in some countries). People will walk off their jobs at some point during the day — some will plant trees, others will join protests. The targets will be as diverse as the geography: In different parts of the planet, people will be sitting down in front of pipelines; demanding that their institutions divest fossil fuel stocks; urging UN nations to increase their carbon-cutting commitments; calling for carbon taxes; insisting on a Green New Deal. Athletes have pledged to join in, as have chefs and actors and politicians. Unions and even some businesses have said they’ll take part. It’s likely that the Global Climate Strike will mark the largest day of climate protest in the planet’s history.
Will a single strike solve the climate crisis? Of course not. The students have shown persistence, and the adults will need to do the same. But the September strike will demonstrate two invaluable principles.
The first is that solving the climate crisis will involve disrupting business as usual. Even amid the greatest physical crisis human civilization has ever faced, we mostly get up each morning and do the same things we did the day before. There’s nothing to indicate we’re in an emergency, an emergency that grows deeper as each month passes. Adults should consider joining this walkout as a statement that they’re committed to disruptive, transformative change.
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The second principle is that elders need to act like elders. On what kind of world do we expect 15-year-olds to tackle our biggest problems by themselves? The climate crisis represents an assault on justice (those who have done the least to cause it suffer the most) but also an assault on the future, a future that some have a larger share in simply because they’ll be alive longer. For the rest of us — those who will die before climate change reaches its burning zenith — the strike is a chance to show that our theoretical affection for our children and their children is sincere.
There’s no guarantee that we can still solve the climate problem. One can be excused for despairing, but not for walking away. Especially at the most desperate moments, human solidarity is required. If a kid says help, you help.
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org. His most recent book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.
November 11, 2019 |
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It’s a shame the classic USA-Canada gold medal women’s hockey game had to end in a shootout, but at least Jocelyne Lamoureux’s game-winning goal was a beauty.
The shootout was tied after five rounds so each team got to choose any shooter to send out next. Lamoureux got the the nod and proceeded to shake Canadian goalie Shannon Szabados almost out of her skates with a truly incredible deke.
Jean Catuffe/Getty
Down on the other end of the ice, 20-year-old American goaltender Maddie Rooney stopped Meghan Agosta and the gold was America’s.
It was the Americans’ first gold medal in hockey since 1998, the first year women’s hockey was featured in the Olympics.
November 11, 2019 |
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The island nation of Fiji on Wednesday slammed world powers for their “grossly irresponsible and selfish” failure to act on the planetary emergency and unveiled a bold plan to bring the country’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fiji’s economy and climate change minister, said in a speech to parliament Wednesday morning that the fight against the climate crisis is “a fight for our lives and our livelihoods.”
“As the impacts of climate change accelerate and attempts are made to weaken global ambitions,” said Sayed-Khaiyum, “we must listen more than ever to the scientists, not the climate deniers or those motivated by self-interest or political interests.”
Sayed-Khaiyum continued:
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Here in the vast Pacific sits our beloved Fiji. Small and increasingly vulnerable as we scan the horizon anxiously year by year for the kind of extreme weather event that three years ago, took the lives of 44 of our loved ones and inflicted damage equal to one-third of our GDP.
That is the grave situation in which we find ourselves through no fault of our own and why this government puts such a strong emphasis on the climate issue.
The Guardian described Fiji’s plan as “one of the world’s most ambitious legislative programs to tackle the climate crisis.”
“The act will include tighter restrictions on the use of plastics, a framework for Fiji to reduce its emissions to net-zero by 2050, the introduction of a carbon credits scheme, and the establishment of procedures for the relocation of communities at risk from the adverse effects of the climate crisis,” The Guardian reported.
Sayed-Khaiyum said he hopes the climate legislation will pass parliament with “unanimous support.”
“There is no room for cynicism, no room for complacency,” Sayed-Khaiyum added. “We cannot afford climate change fatigue to set in Fiji because if anything the outlook is worsening.”
The climate plan, which was unveiled ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Tuvalu next week, comes after Fiji joined a group of Pacific island nations in declaring a climate emergency and urging “governments of high emitting countries that are hindering progress in climate change efforts to heed the climate science and urgently change direction for the benefit of all, including the people in their own countries.”
Fenton Lutunatabua, regional managing director of 350.org in the Pacific, celebrated the declaration as “visionary.”
“The collective futures of Pacific peoples depends on us being able to push back against the fossil fuel industry fueling this climate crisis, and towards equitable and just solutions centered on people,” Lutunatabua said. “This is what is at the heart of this important international statement.”
November 11, 2019 |
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“We could not be more excited to give Mila Kunis our Woman of the Year award! We have been watching her on both the big and small screen since we were young and can’t wait to celebrate her achievements in a truly unique and memorable way,” Hasty Pudding theatricals co-producer Annie McCreery said in a statement.
RELATED: Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher Look Like Newlyweds on the Red Carpet
To accept the honor, Kunis will lead a parade through Cambridge, Mass. on Jan. 25 before she takes the seat of the house in a public celebratory roast. After she survives the ridicule, Kunis will receive the honor at Farkas Hall in the heart of Harvard Square at 4 p.m. Following the presentation, Kunis will host a press conference that will be live-streamed on social media.
Congratulations, Mila!
November 8, 2019 |
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Israel is auctioning off classrooms it seized from the occupied West Bank last year, a move that one Palestinian advocate called “truly appalling.”
The Guardian reported Friday on the auction, expected to be held in the next two weeks.
“This is so shockingly cruel and brazenly defiant in the face of international law,” said James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute. “Profiting off of the theft of classrooms and denying Palestinian children a roof over their heads.”
The Israeli Civil Administration, the governmental body in charge of policy in the occupied territories, dismantled the schools in October. The classrooms were set to be used to educate 49 schoolchildren in the West Bank and were a donation from the European Union Representative to the Palestinian Territories.
“The E.U. missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah call on the Israeli authorities to rebuild the school structures in the same place without delay,” the representative said in a statement at the time.
Critics saw that call to action as relatively toothless and indicative of the mission’s broader empty morality, a point stressed by Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah in February.
“Here’s how it works,” tweeted Abunimah. “@EUinIsrael and other #EuroHypocrites governments pay for the schools. Israel demolishes them. EU rewards Israel for its crimes. Repeat as nauseum.”
The Civil Administration did not follow the E.U. mission’s advice and rebuild the classrooms. Rather, the agency saw the opportunity to sell the materials confiscated from Palestinian children.
Per The Guardian:
A list of auction items, seen by the Guardian, showed dates, item numbers, locations and descriptions that matched the confiscated classroom structures. The sale also appeared to include material confiscated from Palestinians and Israeli settlers who built without authorization.
Criticism from observers on social media pointed to the latest assault on Palestinians as refelctive of the immorality of the occupation.
“Less the action of a Government that has lost its moral compass,” said British barrister Jo Maugham. “More of one that has dashed that compass to the ground and is now grinding it underfoot.”
The auction is “truly appalling,” said U.K. group the Muslim Council’s Miqdaad Versi.
“The EU condemnation is utterly meaningless while they continue to single #apartheid #Israel out for special treatment with trade deals,” tweeted the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign. “Support the #Palestinian boycott.”
November 8, 2019 |
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In a speech upon receiving Amnesty International’s top human rights award Monday night, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg credited the work of thousands of her fellow youth climate campaigners for heightening global awareness of the existential threat posed by the ecological crisis and the need for bold action.
“I think there is an awakening going on,” Thunberg said during an award ceremony in Washington D.C. “Even though it is slow, the pace is picking up and the debate is shifting. This is thanks to a lot of different reasons, but it is a lot because of countless activists, especially young activists.”
“We are fighting for our lives. But not only that, we are also fighting for our future children and grandchildren, for future generations, for every single living being on earth, whose biosphere we share, whose biosphere we are stealing, whose biosphere we are ruining.”
—Greta Thunberg
Thunberg and the youth-led Fridays for Future climate movement she inspired were honored with Amnesty’s 2019 Ambassador of Conscience Award for their efforts to bring the planetary emergency to the forefront of global attention and force world leaders to act.
The event came days before millions of people are expected to take part in climate strikes in over 130 countries across the globe on Friday.
“We, who together are the movement Fridays for Future, we are fighting for our lives,” said Thunberg. “But not only that, we are also fighting for our future children and grandchildren, for future generations, for every single living being on earth, whose biosphere we share, whose biosphere we are stealing, whose biosphere we are ruining. We are fighting for everyone.”
“Activism works,” Thunberg added. “So, what I’m telling you to do now is to act. Because no one is too small to make a difference. I’m urging all of you to take part in the global climate strikes on September 20th and September 27th.”
Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty’s secretary general, said in a statement Tuesday that Thunberg and youth climate leaders around the world have “laid down the challenge” for the rest of humanity.
“In an apathetic world drifting towards calamity, they have stood up as our collective conscience and said, ‘enough is enough,'” said Naidoo. “They have demanded that we stop ignoring the magnitude of the crisis and stop making excuses, and instead start mobilizing.”
“Now it’s time for every single one of us to follow them,” Naidoo said. “A mass movement is needed if we want to force governments and corporations into long-overdue action.”
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November 8, 2019 |
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Halle Berry’s no-fail cure for the winter blues is something we can definitely ship.
As the country gathered to celebrate friends, family, and turkey decadence on Thanksgiving, the actress jetted off to Bora Bora with recent flame, Alex Da Kid, to get away from the “bulls—t.”
The Catwoman beauty took to Instagram during the holiday weekend to share some envy-inducing snaps from her romantic getaway, as she basked in the crystal-clear waters of the French Polynesian island.
Halle Berry / Instagram
Halle Berry / Instagram
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“Mornings are amazing,” the ageless star remarked, feeling thankful for her time jet-skiing, swimming, and enjoying local culture with her British music producer boyfriend.
But she revealed that the incentive for the trip was less than idyllic. “What I call distancing myself from the bulls—t!” the Oscar winner captioned a picture of herself with her back to the camera while gazing out to sea.
“Living my best life,” she captioned another snap of her sunbathing by the water in a white sundress. The 51-year-old then took to the social media platform to post cheeky pictures of her island-inspired drinks and new Polynesian head wrap, as well as a video that shows the bikini-clad actress going for a refreshing swim.
Halle Berry / Instagram
Halle Berry / Instagram
Bora Bora, bikinis, and bae—sounds like Berry knows her way around an ideal getaway!
November 8, 2019 |
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November 8, 2019 |
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As youth with the Fridays for Future movement took to the streets Friday, two weeks ahead of the global #ClimateStrike planned for Sept. 20, environmental activists continued to raise awareness about the upcoming protests being organized in more than 100 countries.
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Climate campaigners already have registered over 2,500 strikes worldwide, with more than 450 actions planned for the United States, the advocacy group 350.org announced in a statement Friday.
To register for an event or find one near you, visit globalclimatestrike.net. For U.S. strikes, visit strikewithus.org.
The demonstrations on Sept. 20 will kick off a week of action that coincides with a United Nations climate summit in New York City. Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, 350.org’s North America director, said Friday that the global strike “is an intergenerational and multiracial moment to make our stand for our right to transformative climate action that preserves a sustainable, healthy, and livable future for all.”
Some of those youth activists—including Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg—gathered outside the U.N. headquarters in New York Friday, chanting: “No more coal! No more oil! Keep the carbon in the soil!”
Friday was the second consecutive week that Thunberg joined youth protests for urgent climate action outside the U.N. headquarters following her two-week journey across the Atlantic on a carbon emissions-free sailboat. Thunberg tweeted Friday, “Even though I’ve taken a sabbatical year from school, I will still demonstrate every Friday wherever I am.”
Xiye Bastida of Fridays For Future NYC explained that the global strike on Sept. 20 “isn’t a goal, it’s a catalyst for future action.”
“It’s a catalyst for the engagement of humanity in the protection of Earth,” Bastida continued. “It’s a catalyst for realizing the intersectionality that the climate crisis has with every other issue. It’s a catalyst for the culmination of hundreds of climate activists who won’t stop fighting until the climate emergency is over.”
A campaign by U.K. Student Climate Network shared a video promoting the actions Friday that caught the attention of author and activist Naomi Klein—one of the high-profile adult climate leaders who have spoken out in support of the global strike.
In addition to NYC, activists are organizing strikes in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Seattle, Washington D.C., and other major U.S. cities.
Jesus Villalba Gastelum, a 16-year-old Earth Uprising L.A. city coordinator and Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles organizer, noted that L.A. is “a diverse city of many roots, including Indigenous, Mexican, Spanish, American, and Tongva.”
“We are organizing the L.A. Youth Climate Strike from a place of love, hope, and resolve,” said Villalba Gastelum. “Our march is calling out inaction on the climate crisis, and stands in support of refugee rights, human rights, and dignity for all.”
Villalba Gastelum added that “while this mobilization is youth led, we welcome people of all generations to join us.”
Looking ahead to the upcoming actions around the world, Future Coalition executive director Katie Eder said Friday that “our message will be clear—we must act now to avoid the worst effects of climate change because all of our lives depend upon it. We are the new face of the climate revolution and we demand just and equitable climate action.”
The Future Coalition, which is coordinating the U.S. youth-led strikes, has released a list of demands for the actions. Fast Company detailed those demands in a report earlier this week:
- A Green New Deal: Building on “the” Green New Deal resolution in Congress, this calls for transforming the economy to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, while creating jobs and ending leases and permits for fossil fuel projects.
- Respect for indigenous land and sovereignty: Honoring treaties protecting indigenous land by ending resource extraction in and affecting those areas.
- Environmental justice: Investing in the communities affected most by poverty and pollution.
- Protecting biodiversity: Protecting and restoring 50 percent of the world’s lands and oceans and stopping all deforestation by 2030.
- Sustainable agriculture: Investing in regenerative agriculture and ending subsidies for industrial agriculture.
“Too often, we think about solutions in a very small-minded way, inside the box,” 19-year-old Eder told Fast Company. “We don’t have time to stay in the box. We really need to be more innovative with our solutions and ask for what we need, not what we think could be possible or has been possible in the past.”
350.org executive director May Boeve, in the group’s statement Friday, outlined the emergency the world currently faces and what needs to be done to address it.
“Climate breakdown is one of the greatest human rights issues we face. Fighting climate breakdown is about much more than emissions and scientific metrics—it’s about fighting for a just and sustainable world that works for all of us,” she said. “We need to start by phasing out fossil fuels, building real and long lasting solutions, and prioritizing the communities at the frontline of the climate crisis.”