USA/Canada

The politics of the lie-blizzard

According to the New York Times of 13 January, many Republicans had long been suspicious of the stories George Santos told about himself before he was elected to the US House of Representatives on 8 November 2022. They let it go. Now Santos, a pro-Trump Republican, opposed to abortion access and mask mandates and considering police brutality a “made-up concept”, has been found out. He insists he will serve his term in Congress. Kevin McCarthy, whipped by his difficulty in winning the far-right Republican votes he needed to become Speaker of the House of Representatives, backs Santos. Santos...

Chaos at the Capitol again

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone on record saying the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress would have succeeded with her in charge, because she’d have made sure the pro-Trump crowd all had guns. For an elected politician in any other purportedly democratic country to come out with such remarks would be career suicide. However, Greene now exercises considerable influence in the House of Representatives as part of the far-right faction wringing concessions from Speaker Kevin McCarthy. (She did it while voting McCarthy from the start, while others refused him a majority until he...

Indefinite strike action builds power across California campuses

After over a month on strike, graduate student workers across the campuses of the University California (UC) will vote on a new contract this week (18-23 December). Their bargaining team came to a tentative agreement with management last week, after making a series of concessions on the strike’s demands, and voted by a narrow majority to recommend what they are calling a “historic” contract. Some on the bargaining team, and many workplace activists, are campaigning for a “no” vote, arguing against making concessions when the strike is still strong. A struggle in the union is taking place...

The strange tale of Tulsi Gabbard

Congresswoman Gabbard meets Narendra Modi, 2019 Imagine if a Labour MP championed Corbyn in 2016, stood to be leader in 2020 – then left the party and become active on the far right. You are getting something of the flavour of US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (in office 2013-21). Discussing Gabbard, the cases of George Galloway and Barry Gardiner spring to my mind, for different reasons. Gabbard’s case, stranger and more disturbing than either, surely has lessons beyond the US. Gabbard made great play of being the first Hindu member of the US Congress. But the Hindu tradition in which she was...

Women's Fightback: Dorothy Pitman Hughes, 1938-2022

Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering black feminist, child welfare advocate, and community activist has died at 84. She will be remembered for her tour with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s which gave us one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement. The photo, now in the National Portrait Gallery of the US, shows the the two raising their fists in the Black Power salute. Where Steinem came to feminism from journalism, Hughes came from grassroots activism, and pushed liberal feminism to look at the experience of working class black women. She was brought up in Lumpkin, Georgia...

Victory in Ohio? The Teamsters’ midterm election mess

Ohio Teamsters celebrate the re-election of Republican Governor Mike DeWine. The Teamsters claimed a major victory in the Ohio Governor’s race with the reelection of Governor Mike DeWine, a conservative Republican, during the recent midterm elections. Its celebration on the union’s social media channels should raise concerns among labor reformers and socialists, who’ve been looking for a new direction from the Teamsters after the disastrous Hoffa years. DeWine had wide support from the Republican establishment, and was also endorsed by former President Donald Trump, despite their past...

Women's Fightback: Canadian First Nations women under threat

Melanie H Morin reports in Niwhts’ide’ni Hibi’it’en (The Ways of Our Ancestors): “In 1897, drunken miners shooting their guns, blowing tinhorns and ringing the church bell broke down the doors of Gitxsan homes looking for women, though reserves were off-limits to Euro-Canadians. The federal Indian Agent — a representative of the Canadian government on First Nations reserves who enforced the racist Indian Act law from the 1830s to the 1960s — had no control over the situation and was told by Gitxsan leaders that ‘protection of the law [seemed] to exist only for the Whites and not for them, and...

US strikes spread despite Biden

The “pro-labour, pro-union” US President Joe Biden has ratified a deal for rail workers to break a national strike that was due to hit on the 9 December. The deal ends a stalemate in negotiations between four out of the 12 US rail unions that have been ongoing for three years and affects 120,000 rail workers. The deal ensures pay increases of up to 24%, but spread over five years. It also fails to add a single extra paid sick day to the zero currently provided, and many workers feel it risks turning the railroad into a “revolving-door job” with long-term job cuts. A handful of “progressives”...

How work visas help Musk

Twitter right now is weird: a funeral wake where the subject is still alive, just. Its chaotic breakdown since 27 October, has been livestreamed to an audience of millions through leaked emails, saluting emojis, Titanic memes, and spicy tweets from senior leadership. On Wednesday 16 November, Elon Musk, currently live action role-playing as a tech CEO with one of the world’s largest social media platforms, issued an ultimatum to the remaining workers at Twitter. In the email, Musk invited staff to be part of “hardcore” Twitter 2.0: long hours, aggressive deadlines, and engineers revered above...

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