By CARL SACK At the time of this writing, Hurricane Nate is plowing through the eastern United States, the 14th named storm of what is on track to be the most costly Atlantic hurricane season on record. Over the summer, wildfires scorched millions of acres across the western U.S. and Canada, darkening the skies with…
Soon after hurricane Irma devastated islands in the Caribbean and parts of Florida, Socialist Action reporter Ernie Gotta interviewed Omar Pérez Figueroa about the effects of the storm on Puerto Rico. Gotta followed up with Perez after hurricane Maria decimated the island. Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, is a member of the Juventud Hostosiana, the youth…
Soon after hurricane Irma devastated islands in the Caribbean and parts of Florida, Socialist Action reporter Ernie Gotta interviewed Omar Pérez Figueroa about the effects of the storm on Puerto Rico. Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, is a member of the Juventud Hostosiana, the youth group of the Hostosian National Independence Movement. He is an…
INTERVIEW BY ERNIE GOTTA Puerto Rico has suffered for generations under the direct and indirect rule by the United States. The wealth of the island has been stripped by corporate interests while farmers and workers on the island have struggled with political, economic, and environmental degradation. Activists both at home and in the diaspora are…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Many cheered when Connecticut joined other states in proclaiming that they would stick to the Paris Agreement although the U.S. was pulling out. Unfortunately, the limits of that gesture became clear very soon. On July 26, the Connecticut Department of Energy and the Environment released a long-awaited report, a draft Comprehensive Energy Strategy. The…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER After swamping Houston and the Galveston Bay region, Tropical Storm Harvey wheeled into eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Residents of Tyler County, Texas, were told by authorities, “Get out or die!” Over two feet of water was dumped on cities and towns that were still rebuilding from the legendary Hurricane Katrina in…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER “We’re getting out!” President Trump declared before the press and a knot of governmental officials who had gathered in the White House Rose Garden on June 1. “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.” Trump characterized…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER On April 29, more than 200,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in a powerful show of determination to rescue the earth from the ravages of climate change. Over 370 sister marches took place simultaneously across the United States and in countries around the world from Britain to Brazil, and from Mexico to…
By BILL ONASCH On the eve of the April 29 People’s Climate Mobilization in Washington and other cities, Bill Onasch describes what working people and the labor movement must do in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. The working class faces challenges on many fronts today. But one crisis is overarching.…
By BUD SCHULTE and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL Rob Wallace is an evolutionary biologist and the author of “Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science” (Monthly Review Press). Through a dialectical process he shows us how Big Agriculture and its organization and methodology conflict with the epidemiological controls needed…
By CLIFF CONNER The Earth Day 2017 March for Science signals resistance to Donald Trump’s sharp infusion of irrationality into the national discourse. Official support for climate-change denial and other anti-science agendas has suddenly become much more explicit. At the same time, many protestors recognize a continuity linking Trump’s bizarre bluster with a pre-existing condition…
Alexandre Araujo Costa, a Brazilian ecology activist, spoke to Belgian ecology writer and activist Daniel Tanuro on a range of questions concerning ecology and ecosocialism. For many years, left-wing organizations did not pay much attention to environmental issues in general but at least since its 15th Congress, the Fourth International seems to be increasingly concerned about what…
By MARTY GOODMAN On his fifth day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Army Core of engineers to restart digging the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on sacred Sioux land, in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The camp, known as Standing Rock, near Cannonball, N.D., was officially closed on…
By MARTY GOODMAN In a move that surprised no one for its greed and arrogance, on Jan. 24 President Donald Trump reversed President Obama’s Executive Order impeding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The route of the pipeline goes across sacred Sioux land and under the Missouri River near Standing Rock, North Dakota. Delivering on…
By BILL ONASCH The Trump administration wasted no time before launching a veritable blitzkrieg on all fronts in pursuit of an “alt-right” America First agenda. But resistance has been swift and massive. In addition to various movements mobilizing we also heard from scientists. Agence France Presse (AFP) reported: “Comments by U.S. President Donald Trump on nuclear weapons…
By SUSAN ROGERS “To Change Everything, It Takes Everyone!” Under this mantra of the new climate justice movement, 400 Connecticut activists joined a “March for Jobs, Justice, and a Livable Earth” on Dec. 3. Picket signs carried the slogans voted up by the planning committee and included: Emergency Transition to 100% Renewable Energy Grid! Mass…
By MARTY GOODMAN More than bitter winter weather lies ahead for hundreds of Native American nations and their supporters battling hazardous fossil-fuel pipelines on sacred Sioux land at the Standing Rock camp near Cannonball, North Dakota. A far more bitter struggle looms for Native American rights and climate justice with the incoming Trump administration. Former…
By CHRIS MATO NUNPA Ho Mitakuyapi, Owasin cantewasteya nape ciyuzapi do! In the Dakota Language, this is a greeting that means, “Hello, my relatives. With a good heart I greet all of you with a handshake!” On Sunday, Dec. 4, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would not issue a permit for the…
By CHRIS MATO NUNPA For most of this year, since April 2016, the Great Sioux Nation has gathered, along with its allies and supporters, to protect its treaty lands, with the sacred waters, the animal relatives, sacred sites, and burial sites, from the “Black Snake” (the Dakota Access Pipe Line, DAPL). In the past…
By BRUCE LESNICK On Nov. 18, the Obama administration banned oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans for the next five years, while allowing drilling projects to go forward in the Cook Inlet (southwest of Anchorage, Alaska) and in the Gulf of Mexico. The media have noted the strong possibility that when…
By CARL SACK When I decided to become a cartographer, I didn’t just want to make pretty and useful maps. I became a cartographer to make maps that change the world for the better. Right now, no situation needs this kind of map more than the current drama unfolding around the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline’s…
By KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL and JOHN SCHRAUFNAGEL — MINNEAPOLIS — Close to 1500 people protested on Friday, Oct. 28, outside Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek’s office. The protesters were angered by the use of Hennepin County deputies and equipment brutalizing Indigenous people and their allies at Standing Rock. Sheriff’s departments from across the Midwest have been…
By BRUCE LESNICK This is the second part of an expanded debate in which socialist “Sydney Solidarity” squares off against the candidates of the ruling rich, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Part I of the debate, which appeared earlier on this website, dealt with economic matters. In this segment, the moderator, Lester Holt, asks the…
By CHRISTINE FRANK As a last-ditch effort to curb runaway global warming, while avoiding a definitive halt to fossil-fuel combustion, scientists, governments, entrepreneurs, and even right-wing think tanks are advocating various highly dangerous technologies to block solar radiation or draw down atmospheric carbon to cool the planet. Touted as Plan B, these risky methods come…
By BILL ONASCH Socialist Action’s vice-presidential candidate Karen Schraufnagel has filed extensive reports to this paper about the confrontations last month in remote Standing Rock, North Dakota. Efforts aiming to halt construction of a pipeline from the Bakken fracking fields to refineries in Illinois drew world attention to several important issues concerning Indigenous People’s rights,…
