This was something that US commentators failed to understand about Nicaragua. There had been a real revolution. It wasn’t a seizure of power by a little band of Marxists; it was tens or hundreds of thousands of people like these women organizing themselves and their neighbors.
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
October 22, 2013
Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is back in the news, at least in New York City.
On September 23 The New York Times ran a front-page article on the decades-old Nicaragua solidarity activism of Bill de Blasio, now the frontrunner in New York’s November 5 mayoral election. Some two dozen other articles quickly appeared in the local and national press, most of them recycling old perspectives on the thousands of us who, like de Blasio, traveled to Nicaragua in the 1980s to demonstrate our opposition to the Reagan and Bush administrations’ efforts to overthrow that country’s government.[...]
Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19543-the-return-of-the-nicaraguan-revolution
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Wobblies — another way forward for low-wage workers?
By Chris Longenecker, Waging Nonviolence
October 4, 2013
With next to no planning and little experience with labor law or direct action, all four workers on the late-night shift at the Insomnia Cookies store in Cambridge, Mass., walked off the job on August 18, declaring themselves on strike. Fed up with inadequate wages, long shifts without a break and no benefits, they timed the strike to begin with Insomnia’s midnight rush, causing maximum financial damage to the firm. As striking Insomnia worker Jonathan Peña put it, “We don’t have anything to lose.”
Insomnia Cookies has more than 30 branches nationwide. The chain specializes in delivering cookies and milk in areas with large college-student populations. Its busiest times are between midnight and 2:45 a.m., when students have returned from a night out and are willing to pay a premium for Insomnia’s treats to be delivered to their dorm rooms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/wobblies-another-way-forward-low-wage-workers/
October 4, 2013
With next to no planning and little experience with labor law or direct action, all four workers on the late-night shift at the Insomnia Cookies store in Cambridge, Mass., walked off the job on August 18, declaring themselves on strike. Fed up with inadequate wages, long shifts without a break and no benefits, they timed the strike to begin with Insomnia’s midnight rush, causing maximum financial damage to the firm. As striking Insomnia worker Jonathan Peña put it, “We don’t have anything to lose.”
Insomnia Cookies has more than 30 branches nationwide. The chain specializes in delivering cookies and milk in areas with large college-student populations. Its busiest times are between midnight and 2:45 a.m., when students have returned from a night out and are willing to pay a premium for Insomnia’s treats to be delivered to their dorm rooms. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/wobblies-another-way-forward-low-wage-workers/
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Behind Haiti’s Hunger
Ayiti Kale Je/Haiti Grassroots Watch
October 10, 2013
Port-au-Prince, HAITI, 10 October 2013 – During the past year or so in Haiti, as humanitarian actors raised a cry of alarm about hunger, Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) journalists kept hearing complaints and rumors about the misuse, abuse, or negative effects of food aid.
Our journalists and the community radio members who worked with them decided to investigate.
Why – when the country has received at least one billion U.S. dollars worth of food aid between 1995 and the 2010 earthquake – is hunger on the rise?
Who are the actors in the “hunger games” in Haiti and internationally?
What can be done that isn’t currently being done? [...]
Read the articles and watch the videos:
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/10/8/behind-haitis-hunger.html
October 10, 2013
Port-au-Prince, HAITI, 10 October 2013 – During the past year or so in Haiti, as humanitarian actors raised a cry of alarm about hunger, Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) journalists kept hearing complaints and rumors about the misuse, abuse, or negative effects of food aid.
Our journalists and the community radio members who worked with them decided to investigate.
Why – when the country has received at least one billion U.S. dollars worth of food aid between 1995 and the 2010 earthquake – is hunger on the rise?
Who are the actors in the “hunger games” in Haiti and internationally?
What can be done that isn’t currently being done? [...]
Read the articles and watch the videos:
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/10/8/behind-haitis-hunger.html
Monday, October 7, 2013
Opportunities Present for “Labor Left” in Walmart and Fast Food Fights
By Ryan Hill, Solidarity
October 1, 2013
For the first time in many years, there are not one, but two exciting new campaigns that have great potential to put unions back on the map of public consciousness. The efforts to organize workers at Walmart as well as workers at fast food restaurants and other big box stores in cities across the US have caught the attention of millions of people who previously had little to no connection to organized labor.
In this article, I offer some thoughts on what makes these campaigns so exciting, followed by a sober assessment of the challenges that they face. I’ll close with four recommendations for radicals looking to get involved in supporting these efforts, as I believe they should.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4006
October 1, 2013
For the first time in many years, there are not one, but two exciting new campaigns that have great potential to put unions back on the map of public consciousness. The efforts to organize workers at Walmart as well as workers at fast food restaurants and other big box stores in cities across the US have caught the attention of millions of people who previously had little to no connection to organized labor.
In this article, I offer some thoughts on what makes these campaigns so exciting, followed by a sober assessment of the challenges that they face. I’ll close with four recommendations for radicals looking to get involved in supporting these efforts, as I believe they should.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4006
Friday, October 4, 2013
Low-wage workers, top-down unions
As large unions orchestrate dramatic actions around the plight of low-wage workers, it remains an open question what control the workers themselves will have.
By Peter Rugh, Waging Nonviolence
September 30, 2013
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to act as allies. Their chants were not those of workers with a grievance so much as those of outsiders seeking to connect with Speciality’s labor force inside. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/low-wage-workers-top-unions/
By Peter Rugh, Waging Nonviolence
September 30, 2013
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to act as allies. Their chants were not those of workers with a grievance so much as those of outsiders seeking to connect with Speciality’s labor force inside. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/low-wage-workers-top-unions/
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
WNU Supplement: Nicaragua Solidarity Back in the News
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Special Supplement, September 30, 2013
1. NYC Mayoral Frontrunner Was Nicaragua Activist: NY Times
2. The Right Reacts: Anti-Semitism and the “Marxist Playbook”
3. “Purely and Nobly American”: Times Writers
4. Solidarity Activists Deconstruct the Media Coverage
5. Who Were the Real Anti-Semites?
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. NYC Mayoral Frontrunner Was Nicaragua Activist: NY Times
On Sept. 23 the New York Times ran a 2,000-word front-page article by reporter Javier Hernandez about New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio’s work in solidarity with Nicaragua during the late 1980s and early 1990s. De Blasio, the Democratic candidate and the current frontrunner in the Nov. 5 election, has spoken a number of times about his activist past, but the Times article was the first lengthy treatment of the subject. It highlighted his work with Quest for Peace--a program of the Quixote Center, a faith-based Maryland social justice organization--and with the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York (NSN). The NSN was formed in 1985 as a coalition of local Nicaragua solidarity groups and sister city projects; its only activity now is the sponsorship of the Weekly News Update on the Americas.
Although the facts in the article were generally accurate, the tone revived the dismissive attitude toward solidarity activism that was common in US mainstream media during the 1980s, when the US government was sponsoring a war of attrition in which rightwing fighters known as “contras” tried to wear down support for Nicaragua’s ruling party, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Hernandez described the young de Blasio as “scruffy,” characterized the Quixote Center by its offices “filled with homegrown squash and peace posters,” and referred to the NSN as “a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists.” [...]
Read the full article:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2013/09/wnu-supplement-nicaragua-solidarity.html
Special Supplement, September 30, 2013
1. NYC Mayoral Frontrunner Was Nicaragua Activist: NY Times
2. The Right Reacts: Anti-Semitism and the “Marxist Playbook”
3. “Purely and Nobly American”: Times Writers
4. Solidarity Activists Deconstruct the Media Coverage
5. Who Were the Real Anti-Semites?
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. NYC Mayoral Frontrunner Was Nicaragua Activist: NY Times
On Sept. 23 the New York Times ran a 2,000-word front-page article by reporter Javier Hernandez about New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio’s work in solidarity with Nicaragua during the late 1980s and early 1990s. De Blasio, the Democratic candidate and the current frontrunner in the Nov. 5 election, has spoken a number of times about his activist past, but the Times article was the first lengthy treatment of the subject. It highlighted his work with Quest for Peace--a program of the Quixote Center, a faith-based Maryland social justice organization--and with the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York (NSN). The NSN was formed in 1985 as a coalition of local Nicaragua solidarity groups and sister city projects; its only activity now is the sponsorship of the Weekly News Update on the Americas.
Although the facts in the article were generally accurate, the tone revived the dismissive attitude toward solidarity activism that was common in US mainstream media during the 1980s, when the US government was sponsoring a war of attrition in which rightwing fighters known as “contras” tried to wear down support for Nicaragua’s ruling party, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Hernandez described the young de Blasio as “scruffy,” characterized the Quixote Center by its offices “filled with homegrown squash and peace posters,” and referred to the NSN as “a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists.” [...]
Read the full article:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2013/09/wnu-supplement-nicaragua-solidarity.html
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