By JEFF MACKLER — Jeff Mackler is the 2016 presidential candidate of Socialist Action. — Five hundred and seventy one and counting have been killed by U.S. cops this past year, an all-time high in recent decades, according to figures posted in the U.S. edition of the British-based Guardian newspaper.* The majority murdered were Black,…
On the fortieth anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Rebellion in South Africa, we reprint two articles from International Viewpoint, the English-language on-line journal of the Fourth International. The author of the first article, Noor Nieftagodien, is the head of the History Workshop at Wits University. The second author, Leigh-Ann Naidoo, is currently a PHD student…
In tribute to Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3, we are reprinting this biographical film review, “‘Ali’ is good … but not the greatest,” from our January 2002 issue. By JOE AUCIELLO “Ali,” directed by Michael Mann, starring Will Smith, Mario Van Peebles, Jon Voight. A Columbia Pictures release, 2001 (rated R, 158…
By MARK UGOLINI Chicago State University (CSU) announced the layoff of more than 300 employees, effective on April 29. Widely considered only the first round of layoffs, it impacts about one-third of the university’s workforce. CSU and other Illinois state universities have been denied funds for nearly the entire academic year, resulting in layoffs, furloughs,…
By KAREN and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL — MINNEAPOLIS — On the morning of Wednesday, March 30, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced there would be no charges brought against the Minneapolis police who murdered Jamar Clark on Nov. 15 of last year.
By BRUCE LESNICK I wholeheartedly support the populist programs that Bernie Sanders advocates—from single-payer health care, to free college tuition, to taxing the rich and more. But borrowing from Malcolm X [see excerpt below], Bernie is a house socialist and I’m a field socialist. Bernie doesn’t want to replace or overthrow capitalism. Like all house socialists, he thinks capitalism can be fixed or tamed…
By MARTY GOODMAN Weeks of massive protests against election fraud in Haiti and calling for the ouster of the pro-U.S. Haitian President Michel Martelly forced the dictator to finally step down on Feb. 7. The Haitian constitution prohibits a succeeding five-year term, and Feb. 7 was the date for his term to end. Feb. 7,…
By BRUCE LESNICK It [is] too much the way of [mainstream politicians] to talk of this terrible [crisis] as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the…
By JOE AUCIELLO Harper Lee, “Go Set A Watchman,” (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 288 pp., $27.99. Why throw away the Christmas turkey after it’s been eaten? It can still be used. Take the carcass, simmer with water, and the bones make a good stock for soup. Take the carcass of a popular novel—its discarded rough…
By RACHEL WOLKENSTEIN Below are excerpts from a report by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein on the fight of Mumia Abu-Jamal to obtain necessary medical treatment. Mumia, a noted political commentator and innocent political prisoner, was convicted in 1982 of killing a Philadelphia police officer. He received the death penalty, a sentence that was later reduced to…
By JOE AUCIELLO Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me” (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 152 pp., $24. When Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to an overflow audience at Boston College last October as a distinguished guest of the Lowell Humanities Lecture Series, he was introduced by the Law School dean as a new voice in…
By ADAM SHILS — CHICAGO — On Oct. 20, 2014, Laquan McDonald, 17, was fatally shot by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. McDonald, who had been suspected of stealing car radios, was only armed with a knife. The police car dash-cam video shows McDonald some yards from the police officers and not moving toward them…
By KAREN and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL “To us, he was a loving young man. America has a criminal record. Minnesota has a criminal record against Black people. So if we are judging people against their past, let us start at the head.” —Kenya McKnight, spokesperson for Jamar Clark’s family, Nov. 17, 2015. — MINNEAPOLIS — UPDATED REPORT,…
By PATRICK BOND — DURBAN — An historic victory over South African neoliberalism was won on Oct. 23, after the most intense three-week burst of activist mobilization here since liberation from apartheid in 1994. University students have been furious, as their cry “Fees must fall!” rang out on campuses and sites of political power across…
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH British filmmaker Marc Silver’s documentary, “3 ½ Minutes 10 Bullets,” mainly consists of the trial of Michael Dunn, the killer of Jordan Davis, a Black teen. It plays out like television’s “20/20” or “Dateline” production, with no commercials. Despite the current inflamed debate on racial injustice, director Silver offers us a cool-headed…
By BILL ONASCH Netroots Nation bills its live body gatherings as the biggest conference of Progressives—by which they mean liberal Democrats. At their annual conclave, held in Phoenix in July, they featured a presidential candidate Town Hall Meeting that included the two top long-shot challengers to Hillary Clinton for the Donkey Party nod—Senator Bernie Sanders,…
By JOE AUCIELLO “In my career, my only training in the Constitution was how to get around it,” (Sue Rahr, former sheriff, executive director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, and member of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing). Drivers on their way to work, zipping by one of the predominantly…
March against police brutality, racial injustice, and economic inequality: Saturday, July 25, 12 noon. The march begins at the Lincoln Monument, Springfield Ave. & W. Market St., Newark, N.J. Below are articles about the march by Lawrence Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, and Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report: By…
By MARTY GOODMAN In a clear attempt at ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent have been rendered stateless under Dominican law. A series of racist court rulings on immigration in 2004, 2010, and 2013 paved the way for a dragnet based on race that might result in mass expulsions. A 2013…
By MUMIA ABU-JAMAL A young white man, barely at the age of his majority, walks into Charleston’s most storied Black church and, before he leaves, a new history is written. Attending the Wednesday night Bible study, he sits for nearly an hour, but his mind isn’t on the life of Jesus nor his disciples. It’s…
This is the video for a Left Forum panel discussion on South Africa organized by Socialist Action. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a contributor to Black Agenda Report, chronicled the EPA’s role in covering for an American corporation’s failure to protect South African miners from vanadium poisoning. The presentation of Patrick Bond, professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal,…
By BILL ONASCH The following commentary was posted in early May at kclabor.org/wordpress. “Baltimore: We Have Been Here Before”—that is the title of a perceptive piece by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Of course, every such uprising like the one sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while in custody of the Baltimore police has some…
By ERA BURKE The following remarks by Socialist Action member Era Burke were presented at an April 24 Bay Area Socialist Action public forum at the Niebyl Proctor Library in Oakland, Calif., entitled, “Revolutionaries past and present: Their relevance today from Malcolm X, on the 50th anniversary of his murder, to Mumia Abu-Jamal, on his…
By MARTY GOODMAN There has been a new wave of racist attacks on Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent inside the Dominican Republic (DR). The latest was the racist expulsion of 300 Haitians and Haitians of Dominican origin in the Ortega community in Moca. All Haitians in Moca were blamed for the April 8 death…
By JOE AUCIELLO Following the death of Freddie Gray, who died from a spinal injury sustained while in Baltimore police custody, almost three weeks of daily protests and marches—plus some incidents of arson and looting—finally culminated in a real and unanticipated break from “business as usual.” This does not refer to the first major league…
