May Day: Reflecting on Bangladesh factory disaster and corporate terror
Via Al Jazeera
The manifestation of the “race to the bottom” contributes directly to increasing rates of inequality in Bangladesh.
By Paula Chakravartty & Stephanie Luce
How is it that we label some acts of violence with the brush of global terrorism while others are relegated to the more mundane category of everyday violence? Tsarnaev brothers were instantly characterised as terrorists, and Muslim terrorists at that, with a national and social media frenzy dissecting their crimes boosted by the live spectacle of the “manhunt” in Boston.
Yet in the same week, an explosion in a fertiliser factory killed 14 people and caused enormous damage to a small town in West Texas – with little media attention. The Boston Bombings were deliberate acts of terror committed by villains targeting the innocent; the Texas explosion while tragic, was seen as accidental - as opposed to the outcome of the deregulation of industry and safety standards – and therefore easily forgotten.
The horrific factory collapse on April 24 outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, that killed more than 400 people, mostly young Muslim women, and injured at least 1,000 more might conceivably also be understood as an example of globally networked violence.
The eight-storeyed Rana Plaza complex housed a variety of businesses, including a bank and five garment factories that employed 3,122 garment workers. Workers noticed a large crack in the building on April 23 and the building collapsed the next day. Police ordered it to be evacuated, and the bank on the second floor told its workers not to come in the next day.
However, the garment factories decided to stay open for business, and the result was senseless and preventable tragedy. This was only the latest in a series of factory fires and collapsed buildings in Bangladesh that have killed over 900 workers since 2005 and injured thousands more.
Fight for May Day’s Two Traditions
Via Labor Notes
May 01, 2013 / Jane Slaughter
Since 2006, May Day in the United States has come to mean immigrants’ rights. That was the year millions of people marched to stop a bill that would have made undocumented immigrants (and anyone who helped them) felons.
Many took the day off work to march—making that May Day the largest political strike in U.S. history.
Those immigrant marchers from Latin America undoubtedly knew more about the origins of May Day as International Workers’ Day than U.S. workers do.
On Saturday, May 1, 1886—a work day—35,000 Chicago workers walked off their jobs, demanding the eight-hour day for 10 hours’ pay. Strikes for the eight-hour day continued throughout the city, police rioted, and four workers who had led demonstrations (three of them German-born immigrants) were hanged.
A hundred years later, on May Day 1986, I was living in Guatemala City. Some workers at a small factory were on strike, resisting the 12-hour day their boss wanted to impose. A leader named Julio Coj spoke at a rally: “The martyrs of Chicago died for the eight-hour day, and we owe it to their memory to fight for it as well.”
I was moved to tears by Coj’s words—and embarrassed that so few U.S. workers had ever heard of “the martyrs of Chicago.”
Greek pensioners march through Athens in protest over Pension Cuts
ITN
April 19, 2013 -- Thousands of pensioners from across Greece flood the capital to demonstrate over cuts to their pensions.
A sea of old age pensioners from across Greece flooded into Athens on Friday (April 19) to protest against pension cuts. Aristides Manikas, protester, said "I have grandchildren, I have great-grandchildren, and I don't have enough money to buy them candy.
Can Civilization Survive Really Existing Capitalism?
This video is re-posted from ZNet.
One of the world's leading intellectuals and political activists, Professor Noam Chomsky has been awarded the UCD Ulysses Medal, the highest honor that University College Dublin can bestow.
Professor Chomsky was presented with the UCD Ulysses Medal by the President of UCD, Dr Hugh Brady, following a public lecture hosted by the UCD Philosophy Society and the UCD School of Philosophy at University College Dublin on Tuesday 02 April 2013.
Brazil: Poor Peasants League Honors Revolutionary Martyr Renato as Land Struggle Advances
Written by LCP Rondônia and Western Amazon, Published on 10/04/2013
On April 9, Jaru was shaken by a vibrant rally and demonstration in honor of the companion Renato and denunciation of his barbaric murder a year ago. The action was also taken in support of new land seizures in the region of Jaru and new campaign against criminalization of the struggle for land, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ênedy, the 7th Battalion of the PM.
The Death of Thatcher and the Resurgent Popularity of 'Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead' by Yip Harburg
Yip Harburg: the man behind the Munchkins
by Noah Tucker / 21stCenturySocialism / April 15th 2013
The banning of all but seven seconds of ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’ from airplay by the BBC is not the first time that Yip Harburg’s work has been subject to censorship. Harburg, who wrote all the lyrics and much of the dialogue for The Wizard of Oz, was blacklisted as a communist sympathiser by the Un-American Activities Committee of the US Congress, preventing him from being employed in the American film and television industries from 1951 to 1962.
