USA/Canada

A socialist President in the White House?

Sixty years ago, the Socialist Party ran its last presidential campaign in the United States. In its heyday, the party could capture upwards of a million votes, achieving this result in 1912, 1920 and again in 1932. The best result was the first one, when Eugene V. Debs led the party to six per cent of the national vote. But less than a quarter century after Norman Thomas won nearly 900,000 votes at the height of the Great Depression, the total number of votes the Socialist could muster nationwide was a mere 2,044. Its final Presidential candidate, the successor to the legendary Debs and...

Resistance in a year of fear

The horrors of the past months shouldn’t stop us from remembering that 2015 was a year of polarization in US society — with the increasing confidence of right-wing forces taking place at the same time as a less-remarked-upon growth in those looking for an alternative on the left. At a time when the airwaves are filled with ridiculous police theories about the “radicalization” of Muslims, we need to locate and encourage the genuine and healthy process of left-wing radicalisation wherever it’s taking place. In the days before the ISIS attacks in Paris, US headlines were dominated by the wave of...

Another day: the fight against segregation in the US army (1948)

American capitalism and its democratic pretensions have received a serious jolt from the Negro people in the United States. Following the Czechoslovakian events [The Stalinist Coup of February 1948] . President Truman gave the signal for a leap in war preparations under the banner of “democracy and freedom.’’ At this critical moment for US propaganda, A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds made a declaration to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs that unless segregation in the armed forces was ended, they would summon the Negroes to a civil disobedience campaign on the Gandhi model. They...

The Conquest of the Native American "Indians" (1949)

The capitalist rulers of the United States mounted to power through a series of violent struggles against precapitalist social forces. The first of these upheavals took place at the dawn of modern American history with the invasion of the Western hemisphere by the nations of Western Europe and the conquest of the aboriginal inhabitants. The uprooting of the Indians played a significant part in clearing the way for bourgeois supremacy on this continent. However, the pages of the most learned historians contain little recognition and less understanding of this connection between the overthrow of...

Trump: giving voice to increasing racism

Donald Trump has sparked outrage after he called for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the US. Trump is leading the poll, to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. He called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US, until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”. Trump has garnered a lot of criticism both from the public, and from some prominent Republicans, including his opponents Jeb Bush, who called Trump “unhinged”, and John Kasich, who said his statement was “just more of the outrageous divisiveness that...

Students: get ready to strike!

In early November, students from 110 college campuses across the United States rallied, protested and walked-out over rising student debt. They demanded free education, debt cancellation, and a $15 per hour minimum wage for workers on their campuses. They pointed to Obama’s recent comments, that the $80 billion bill for the US prison system, would more than cover eliminating tuition fees and student debt for all public colleges and universities. This month also marks five years since Millbank, when thousands of students marched on and occupied Conservative Party HQ, in protest of the tuition...

Sanders: welfare statism is not enough

Bernie Sanders has a very real chance of becoming the next president of the United States. He doesn’t exactly have the most stiff competition. The only legitimate candidate he has to beat for the Democratic Party nomination, Hillary Clinton, is a criminal whose inconsistency on policy and questionable moral compass is not unknown to anybody in the country. The other party in the bipartisan system, the Republican Party, still has a candidate pool the size of a small town to select from, the two most popular of which, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, aren’t even members of the Republican National...

Canada: why the NDP crashed

The Canadian federal election on 19 October sent the hardline right-wing government of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives packing. They suffered a crushing defeat. That was the good news. But the big winner was the traditionally ruling-class favourite Liberals, Justin Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister the late Pierre Trudeau, now leads a huge and unexpected majority government. The social democratic New Democrats (NDP), finished a distant third, losing 17% of the seats it formerly held in the previous parliament, where it was the official opposition. There were a number of factors that...

Mixed News in Canada’s Federal Election

The Canadian federal election campaign sent the mean-spirited, hardline right-wing government of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives packing, suffering a crushing defeat. That was the good news. But the big winner was the traditionally ruling-class favourite Liberals, with the 43 year-old son of former Prime Minister the later Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, leading a huge and unexpected majority government. The social democratic New Democrats (NDP), finished a distant third, losing 17% of the seats it formerly held in the previous parliament, where it was the official opposition. There were a...

“Bottom up not top down”

La Villita (Little Village), West Side Chicago, 2001. Parents demand that a school is built on vacant land. Nineteen go on hunger strike to achieve this goal. They pledge not to back down until there is justice on the south side of town. Many local people turn out to show solidarity with the hunger strikers. Not only do they win the demand for a school but also a role for teachers, parents and students in the design of the new building. So begins Banner Theatre’s musical account of the inspiring story of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and their supporters, in taking on and mostly defeating...

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