Turkey’s internal political divisions and its role in the turbulent Middle East remain unexplained in the mainstream media. To begin with, Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan is a right-wing politician and Muslim fundamentalist. He founded the ruling capitalist party, Justice and Development. Economic austerities imposed on Turks by neoliberal privatization policies created mounting opposition, which was… Read more »
police state
Changes to NYC charter drafted to advance campaign for an elected police review board
While the election of magnate Donald Trump has put even more cops on New York City streets, an exciting campaign is growing to demand police accountability in the very same city. The diverse, multiracial Campaign for an Elected Civilian Review Board is made up of individual activists and grassroots organizations including Freedom Socialist Party, Radical… Read more »
Freedom Socialist Letters to the Editor — February 2017
ELECTION ANALYSIS Succinct and accurate As usual the Freedom Socialist hits the nail on the head with Andrea Bauer’s lead article in the December issue [Don’t mourn, organize! Donald J. Trump and the year of voting dangerously, Vol. 37, No. 6]. What makes her analysis so useful is not only is it right — no… Read more »
Fighting spirit shines at post-election forums
Activists and organizers from every social justice movement were stunned by the election of right-wing billionaire businessman Donald Trump. Angry demonstrations tens of thousands strong filled streets in cities and towns across the country and the world. In December the Freedom Socialist Party sponsored forums in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and… Read more »
New legislative push to criminalize protest
During a moment in history when thousands of people are cascading into the streets to oppose the system, 19 state legislatures want to make doing so a crime. Panicked lawmakers, who first witnessed the public outrage after Ferguson and Standing Rock and then the Trump machine, want to ban demonstrations. And keep “disrupters” far away… Read more »
Criminalization of Protest: Mexican Unionist Facing Prison Term
Serious federal charges and an arrest warrant have been issued against the socialist and teachers union leader, Heriberto Magariño, for his participation in last June’s election day labor and community mobilizations in Oaxaca against proposed neo-liberal educational reforms. He was jailed on June 7, 2015 with other union activists but freed the following day after… Read more »
Oppression and the State: How the courts, police and prisons keep big business safe
Thousands rallied at Melbourne’s Federation Square on 9 December 2006 to demand David Hicks be brought home. I recently heard ABC journalist, Leigh Sales, talking about her book, Detainee 002: The case of David Hicks. To Sales, the fundamental problem was that the Military Commission process meant Hicks was denied a proper trial. Like Sales,… Read more »
May Day Arrests Target National Liberation Movement
On May Day, two Australian citizens were arrested and charged with the vague, yet frightening, charge of supporting a terrorist organisation — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). This is despite the LTTE not being proscribed as a terrorist organisation in either Australia or Sri Lanka! The Melbourne men — Aruran Vinayagamoorthy and Sivarajah… Read more »
Terror laws: Mass action needed to defeat Howard’s police state
A few days ago I had a conversation with an activist from the Chilean community. At one point he said, “under Pinochet (the former dictator), we had these laws, but then it was a dictatorship.” Then, with only a slight hint of irony, he asked, “how can laws like these be passed in a democracy?”… Read more »
Get Big Brother out of the workplace
Three years ago an unlikely group rebelled over monitoring in their workplace. Federal judges working at the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco expressed their outrage about the loss of privacy resulting from the introduction of computer monitoring. They disabled the software installed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, arguing… Read more »