USA/Canada

The White House has announced plans to spend $3.7 billion deporting 52,000 children to Central America. The majority of these children come over the southern border into Texas from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries which are rife with drug wars and have been devastated by decades of US intervention. Money is going to be spent on care for the children whilst they await detention and electronic tracking devices (in the form of ankle bracelets), enhanced border control and transport. Obama has even proposed changing current laws to make deportations quicker and easier, by removing...

An indispensable contribution to the understanding of the role of the Negro in American history is a study of the period between 1830 and 1865. In this article we treat the subject up to 1860. The basic economic and social antagonisms of the period embraced the whole life of the country and were fairly clear then, far less today. The system of chattel slavery needed territorial expansion because of the soil exhaustion caused by the crude method of slave production. But as the North developed industrially and in population, the South found it ever more difficult to maintain its political...

My Dear Brewer:— Have just read the majority report of the [Socialist Party] Committee on Immigration. It is utterly un-socialistic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous, and I hope you will oppose with all your power. The plea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency would be entirely consistent in a bourgeois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletariat gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of all the world to unite for their emancipation.... Away with the “tactics”...

On 3 April, students in Montreal held a 10,000-strong “national protest against austerity measures and for a more egalitarian budget.” Students are concerned about the ruling Parti Quebecois's cuts to public services, education and health while hiking the cost of hydro electricity. The demonstration was called by the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), the militant student organisation which organised widespread student strikes in Quebec in 2012. Six minutes before it was due to begin, Montreal police declared the march illegal under the city's controversial municipal...

On 29 March 2014, Workers’ Liberty, the University of London branch of the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB), Ruskin College UCU, PCS Independent Left, and Lambeth Activists will host the “New Unionism 2014” conference at the University of London Union. The conference aims to look at historical and contemporary struggles to transform the labour movement to make it capable of fighting for working-class power. Sessions will include a talk on “the fate of the organising model” by US labour movement activist Kim Moody. Kim was a founder of the rank-and-file journal Labor Notes...

In a terrible setback for the US union movement, car workers at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee have voted against being represented by a union. The New York Times reported (14 February 2014): "In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United Automobile Workers. "The loss is an especially stinging blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization drive. The union’s defeat - in what was one of the most closely watched unionization votes in decades - is expected to slow, perhaps stymie, the...

This obituary was originally published on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) website, here . Teamsters mourn the passing of brother Pete Camarata, one of the founders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, who died at his home in Chicago on February 9th. Pete was the real deal—a Teamster who stood for principle at a time when few others would dare to. Camarata attended a meeting of Teamsters for a Decent Contract in 1975, and quickly became a leader and inspiration to many Teamsters. He went home from that meeting to his own Detroit Local 299, where the young man was a steward who had...

This review was originally published by the Labor and Working-Class History Association, and appears on their website here . To orders copies of the book, click here . This new book of political cartoons, In an Era of Wars and Revolutions: American Socialist Cartoons of the Mid-Twentieth Century , edited by Sean Matgamma, should be of interest to labour historians and those interested in mid-20th century Left politics. The title page of this unique volume of reprints indicates the art is “By Carlo and others.” Jesse Cohen, the artist who called himself “Carlo” was, along with Laura Gray, the...

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...