Published bimonthly since 1986, Against the Current is a Solidarity sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The September/October ATC continues its coverage of '68 with articles by Gerd-Rainer Horn and Michael Lowy plus an interview with Dr. Gwen Patton, who joined SNCC while at Tuskegee University in the early '60s. The issue also features Peter Rachleff on the Postville ICE raids, Terry Eagleton on "The God Question," and Au Loong Yu on "The New Chinese Nationalism." Dorothy Pinkney tells the story of her husband's imprisonment for quoting Deuteronomy 28:15.
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International Viewpoint
is the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International. IV is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
Bomb kills 60, injures 250 at Islamabad Marriott: Most of the 60 dead and over 250 injured as a result of suicide attack on a five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad were security guards and drivers. Read More...
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- Update on Troy Davis and a letter from Troy
by Isaac posted on 09/30/08
- Some Talking Points on the Financial Crisis
by Kate G posted on 09/30/08
- Labor Goes to Wall Street
by subcomandante micah posted on 09/30/08
- Capitalist Absurdity of the Week #2 - Well, of course, the meltdown, "regulation" etc.
by JohnM posted on 09/29/08
- Thinking about the antiwar movement
by Dianne posted on 09/25/08
- Troy Davis: "I'll be 40 my next birthday"
by Isaac posted on 09/23/08
- Troy Davis is innocent.
by Isaac posted on 09/23/08
- Party Like Its 1929: Understanding the Crisis on Wall Street
by Kate G posted on 09/21/08
from the Webzine
A Brief To-Do List for the Next President's First Day...
New from Solidarity! This brief, four-page leaflet asks what a true progressive agenda for the next president might look like. Inside, a brief overview of this historic election cycle, and our endorsement of Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente's campaign with the Green Party.
Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left
As part of the preparation for our 2008 Convention, members of SOLIDARITY have begun a political document describing some perspectives for socialist renewal in the twenty-first century. We welcome responses to this initial draft of the document. Some of the themes here have also been developed in Solidarity's Founding Statement and our 1997 pamphlet, “Socialist Organization Today.”
New Pamphlet: Hell on Wheels
New from Solidarity! Long time transit worker activist Steve Downs has written a pamphlet charting the twenty year story of New Directions, a rank and file caucus in New York City's transit union that he helped build and develop - including the challenges of keeping the rank and file democracy movement alive after New Directions won control of the local.
Read a review and order your copy today!Bill Banta 1941-2008
Bill Banta, a member of the Chicago branch and founding member of Solidarity, died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospice on August 20th. He was 67. Bill was a revolutionary socialist his entire adult life.
From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Justice
New from Solidarity's Feminist Commission, this leaflet responds to the right wing attack on reproductive freedom and argues that the movement must go beyond "pro-choice" to true reproductive justice. This socialist and anti-racist feminist agenda would take up issues such as access to health and child care, forced sterilization, and the division of "productive" and "reproductive" labor.
Download the pamphlet...
South Africa Journal: SANPAD Conference
Submitted by Kate G on January 9, 2008 - 3:27pm.
Last summer, I traveled to South Africa to do some academic research related to health care. To keep myself busy and record my experience, I kept up a private blog for family and friends. Now that Solidarity has its own weblog(!), I'm sharing some of these old posts. I intend to follow up with some more current analysis on South Africa and the themes my trip got me thinking about. This post, is a description of my experience at the SANPAD conference in Durban on June 26th-30th, 2007.
For the last two days, I’ve been attending the SANPAD poverty conference here in Durban. It’s an interesting collection of socialist and other radical intellectuals and more traditional NGO and government types. The first day of the conference was interrupted by protests of dozens of ‘poors’ demanding to be able to confront the deputy mayor, one of the conference’s opening speakers over issues of 1) closure of the Durban port to individual fisherman, 2)police harassment of street vendors 3) sanitation, electricity and water in the informal settlements.
Inside, we had a cultural show with a smoke machine and a multiracial rainbow doing contemporary dance based in Zulu “tradition”; outside were toyi-toying, chanting, sarcastic poors. I decided to leave the conference room and go to where the real action was, outside. Some of the conference organizers tried to tell me I couldn’t leave the conference room–“I didn’t want to go out there”, according to them. I argued that the meeting room didn’t have a bathroom and that it was an emergency. After seven minutes of arguing, the lady relented and released me out into the demo. I tried to hold the door open, but she was bigger than me.
Ashwin Desai, whose book I previously reviewed, was a conference organizer and the mediator between the protesters and the event. Among the demonstration leaders were individuals recognizable from his book. He got flustered (and told someone to “fuck off”), but did get the deputy mayor to come out to be shouted at. Dozens of police arrived, called by the manager of the posh Elangeni hotel, and stood around while Desai tried to convince them that the thing could be negotiated without military interference.
At first I thought it was a bit embarrassing – Desai should have just invited his friends to dinner! Today I realized that 20% of the protest is here at the conference for free, still causing trouble. What the protest did was set the terms of the rest of the week, and force the policy people to deal first and foremost with the complaints of real, live, loud, inconvenient, thoughtful, angry poor people.
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