Poverty, crime and institutional racism
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Robin Sivapalan examines the educational and social background to gangster and gun culture and starts a discussion on how institutional racism still poisons British society.
Solidarity 3/107, 22 February 2007
When political hope ended
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Paul Cooper reviews Bobby
Bobby Kennedy met his end on 5 June,1968. He was shot in the head, point-blank, as he made his way through a crowded hotel kitchen.
Most of the people in the kitchen were black or Hispanic hotel workers. They had been servicing the Democratic Party convention that was celebrating Kennedy’s victory in the California Primary. Bobby Kennedy was the great hope of those workers, as he was of the civil rights movement.
Build a national campaign to save the NHS!
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By Mike Fenwick, Leeds Unison health
Saturday March 3rd sees the first nationally coordinated day of trade union action in defense of the NHS. Events ranging from lobbies of MPs to rallies and marches and, for the more adventurous, an ascent of Skiddaw in the Lake District aim to highlight the crisis in the health service.
Campaigns: anti-BNP, migrant workers
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Searchlight trade union conference
A Worker is a Worker - A Trade Union Friends of Searchlight conference on migrant workers. Organised by SearchLight 10 March 2007, 10.30 am-4pm, TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS.
John McDonnell: campaign grows
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The last few weeks have seen several boosts for John McDonnell MP's campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party. With growing support among the unions and MPs, and a packed schedule of large meetings around the country, McDonnell has welcomed the “heartening and motivating” progress of his campaign.
Dita Sari: why we are standing
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Dita Sari, the former trade union leader and political prisoner under the Suharto regime, is chair of the ‘ new, broader National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas). She will be its candidate for the 2009 presidential elections. Sari was interviewed by Green Left Weekly in January. Below are some extracts.
Uprising in Cochabamba
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By David Broder
The movement against the far-right in Bolivia stepped up last month with a mass uprising in the nationÕs third city, Cochabamba, which dislodged the right-wing governor Manfred Reyes Villa and put forward the demand for genuinely democratic representatives. This was twinned with a solidarity strike organised by residents’ association FEJUVE in the city of El Alto, also seeking to get rid of a governor who wants to see the country split up.
Venezuela: workers march for nationalisation under workers' control
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By Pablo Velasco
Around 6,000 workers marched through the streets of Caracas on Thursday 8 February demanding nationalisation of all strategic industries under workers’ control.
Workers welcomed the Chávez government’s nationalisations of EDC, Venezuela’s largest electric company and the Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) telecom company. But they called for others such as steel firm Sidor and bathroom firm Sanitarios Maracay to be nationalised - and for workersÕ control in all these industries.
Strike wave in Zimbabwe
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By Jack Staunton
On 5 February teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite general strike for pay and conditions, joining doctors and nurses already taking action against poverty pay.
With inflation now reported to be running at 1,593% (the worst in the world), dictator Robert Mugabe is keeping public sector workers’ wages down in order to have enough money to keep his regime afloat. Almost 200,000 public sector workers angry about pay now pose a threat to the regime’s stability.
Picketing, leafleting and dancing
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By Heather Shaw
The highlight of No Sweat and Students Against Sweatshop’s Week of Action (18-23 Feburary) was welcoming Andreas Aullet, a lawyer working with political prisoners and their families in Oaxaca, Mexico, and taking him on a tour of the UK.