USA/Canada

US dockers strike against occupation

25,000 dockers at all 29 ports across the West Coast of the USA staged an 8-hour strike on 1 May calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq. The action was not only supported by significant demonstrations in the USA but also by a solidarity strike staged by Iraqi port workers in Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair. When the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) called the strike in February it was widely reported that it was a mere demonstration, and that the union had one day at its disposal each month for its own purposes. In fact the Pacific Maritime Association tried to use...

US West Coast dockers protest against war

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union conference in San Francisco has passed a motion “calling on unions and working people in the US and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” on May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East”. Their strike call is reminiscent of the actions taken at the outbreak of the war in Iraq by train drivers in Motherwell and Italian dockers who refused to transport arms, as well as the May 2007 teachers’ pickets of docks in Oakland...

James P. Cannon - “a revolutionary that one could model oneself after”

Review of Bryan D. Palmer, 2007, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, University of Illinois Press

James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a titanic figure in the history of Marxism, yet in spite of a long life devoted to socialism, he has until now eluded a...

Equality before the law! No religious interference!

Archbishop Rowan Williams has proposed that British courts should use Islamic sharia law for family matters among Muslim citizens. It is yet another example of the different religious sects tacitly collaborating to use each others' demands to boost the overall role of religion in society. Similar moves in Ontario, Canada, were defeated by a big campaign. A report by Ontario's former attorney general Marion Boyd had recommended the use of Islamic law to settle issues such as divorce and child custody. Ontario had allowed Catholic and Jewish faith-based tribunals to resolve family disputes on a...

The story of the Blues

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what it is – the source. — BB King Europeans involved in the slave trade stripped as much culture from their human cargo as possible but music was so deep rooted in the African men and women that it was impossible to tear it away from those who survived the horrific journey. In West Africa, where the slaves came from, every ceremony was celebrated with singing and dancing and the music went with them to work into the fields of North America. Initially the music took the form of Negro spirituals and field hollers. What came to be known as...

US writers "Down Pencils"

On Monday November 5, the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) “downed pencils”. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action. It’s a strike of writers who work in television and film production — including the staff of major TV...

Cannon: A life worth living

James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, by Bryan D. Palmer (2007) reviewed. James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a titanic figure in the history of Marxism, yet in spite of a long life devoted to socialism, he has until now eluded a decent biography. This book by Canadian Marxist Bryan Palmer has been long in gestation but has been worth the wait: at last Cannon’s life — or at least the first 38 years of it — has been told. Cannon’s time is also very much the history of the revolutionary left in the United States, at least at its origins. First thrust into...

American writers "down pencils"!

On Monday November 5, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) ‘downed pencils’. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action. It’s a strike of writers who work in television and film production – including the staff of major TV...

Japan, 1945-52 When US imperialism forced democracy

Parts of the left back any opposition to US imperialism around the world dogmatically, without qualification, and with little attempt to examine what the effects and actions of the imperialist power are. Or what the political character of the local alternatives to imperialism are. These leftists might be suprised by the story of the US imperialist intervention in Japan, contradicting as it does, some preconceived notions of how an imperialist power behaves. Japan’s Second World War had the most brutal end. On 6 August 1945 a US Superfortress bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atom bomb on the...

How to rebuild the US unions

Review of US labor in trouble and transition , Kim Moody, London: Verso Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades, has produced a coherent answer to these questions, with implications for the revival of trade unionism everywhere. The absolute membership of US trade unions peaked in 1980 at 20 million members. Union density peaked a lot earlier; in 1953 unions accounted for nearly a third (32.5%) of non-agricultural workers. By 2005 US unions organised...

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