USA/Canada

UAW: a fight for the working class

Let me thank the UAW for standing up not only for your own members, but for the working class of this country. The fight you are waging here is not just about decent wages and working conditions and pensions in the automobile industry. It is a fight to take on corporate greed, and tell the people on top this country belongs to all of us, not just a few. There is a reason why a recent Gallup poll had 75% of Americans supporting the UAW. They are sick and tired of an economy in which the rich get richer while working families struggle and the most desperate sleep out on the streets. What this...

Biden, Trump, Starmer, and strikes

The next US Presidential Election is thirteen months away, and the winner will be either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, unless unforeseen circumstances cause one or the other or even both to drop out. This “choice” is deeply unpopular, with approval ratings for both candidates currently stuck at the low 40% mark. Far more popular than either Trump or Biden in America today are trade unions. They are said to enjoy 67% approval ratings among the public at large, and 90% among under-30s. There’s also high support for unions striking, whether it be film and television writers or United Auto Workers...

Black soldiers in the Civil War

It is something like160 years since the citizens of Boston watched the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment march through the town on their way to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. There was something very special about the event: the six hundred strong 54th was one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union army. Glory (directed by Edwar Zwick, 1989) follows the 54th through its training period, its first combat experience at the battle of Antietam to the bloody assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold at the mouth of Charleston harbour. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw...

On the retirement of Megan Rapinoe

Megan Rapinoe, prominent US women’s football player, widely regarded as the best woman footballer ever, has announced her retirement at 38. With her striking flash of short purple (or green) hair she had a dynamic presence on the field. She was a member of the US team which won the 2012 Olympics in London, and she played in the winning US team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019. She is one of the very few women (or men) to have ever scored twice direct from corner kicks. Off the field, Rapinoe was often in the limelight as a strong and vocal advocate of lesbian and trans rights and...

Standing up against corporate greed

Today, in my view, is an historic day. For the first time in American history we have seen a president of the United States of America stand on a picket line and make it clear that he is supporting the working class of our country. And that is a very big deal. A week ago Friday, as some of you may know, I was also in Detroit, with the United Automobile Workers. I was there to stand up to the extraordinary level of corporate greed that we are seeing in the automobile industry today. In the first half of 2023, the Big Three automakers made a combined $21 billion in profits, up 80% from the same...

Autoworkers stand up strikes at the big three

United Auto Workers union members at three production plants in the USA walked out on Friday 15 September following the expiration of a national contract with General Motors (GM), Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), and Ford (collectively, the Big Three). This is the first time the union has ever struck at all three companies simultaneously. Strikes in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio saw just 13,000 of the unions near-150,000 members at the Big Three walk out at midnight. The union leadership strategy is one of escalating action, that threatens to bring more shops out one-by-one for as long as it...

Trump's White House: not yet lined up

A dismaying factor for Donald Trump in 2017-2020, a mitigating factor for the USA, was his inability to cohere a team to push through what he wanted

Letter: Rustin, protest, and politics

Eric Lee’s article in Solidarity 683 is rather misty eyed about the shift in Bayard Rustin’s politics after the March in Washington in 1963. Rustin’s piece for Commentary came just before the start of another mass protest movement against the war in Vietnam which would bring millions into the streets. And Rustin would eventually find himself on the wrong side of that movement. One of Rustin’s first manoeuvres as a political operator rather than as an organiser was to support the compromise of Johnson and Humphrey to seat only two of the Mississippi Freedom Democrat delegates at the 1964...

Kim Moody's "Breaking The Impasse": Review

Introduction Kim Moody argues in his book, Breaking the Impasse , written in 2020, that American politics is in a political cul de sac. This “impasse” is characterised by the Republican Party lurching further right and the Democratic Party taking a more centrist political and neoliberal economic positions. He argues against left-wing and socialist ventures into the Democratic Party and instead for building a mass working-class based party which “should seek to be a central piece in building the organized power of the working class” independent of positions this party may hold or seek to hold...

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