Struggles in passing

Protests flare across Poland after death of young mother denied an abortion

Protests are under way across Poland after the death of a 37-year-old woman this week who was refused an abortion, a year since the country introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

On the streets of Warsaw on Tuesday night, protesters laid wreaths and lanterns in memory of Agnieszka T, who died earlier that day. She was pregnant with twins when one of the foetus’ heartbeat stopped and doctors refused to carry out an abortion. In a statement, her family accused the government of having “blood on its hands”. Further protests are planned in Częstochowa, the city in southern Poland where the mother-of-three was from.

“We continue to protest so that no one else will die,” Marta Lempart, organiser of the protests, told Polish media. “The Polish abortion ban kills. Another person has died because the necessary medical procedure was not carried out on time.” All-Poland Women’s Strike has called on people across the country to picket the offices of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) and organise road blockades in the coming days.

Agnieszka was first admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa with abdominal pain on 21 December. She is said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she arrived and was in “a good physical and mental shape”, according to her family, who said her condition then deteriorated.

On 23 December the heartbeat of one of the twins stopped and, according to Agnieszka’s family, the doctors refused to remove it, quoting the current abortion legislation. They waited several days until the second foetus also died. A further two days passed before the pregnancy was terminated on 31 December, according to the family.....

Boise Tent Demonstration Remains Strong In Face Of Continued Police And Far-Right Harassment

Report on the ongoing situation in Boise, Idaho, as houseless demonstrators continue to face down harassment and attacks from the far-Right and police.

Folks are three weeks into the tent demonstration in so-called Boise, Idaho. Lasting through multiple police raids, attacks from local fascist groups, and a whirlwind of misrepresentation in local media; folks are war weathered but are regaining strength and pressing forward.

In the early morning hours of Friday, February 4th, 2022 folks began to hear the soft and eerie hum of police drones flying overhead, followed by the invasion of 40 Idaho state police filling the area. Cops started opening tents and grabbing whatever they could find that could be used to sustain warmth for the protesters who have been occupying the space. They stole more blankets, sleeping bags, people’s clothing, harm reduction items (clean sharps, sharps containers, narcan – harm reduction items kept at camp in case anyone stops by or comes through that needs safer items for addictions/substance use) chairs, heaters, and propane and put it all in a trailer they parked nearby.

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Further, local media was present during the raid and have been reporting false information to the larger community; collaborating with the state and local law enforcement agencies to lead the general public to believe that the cops only picked up trash, that everyone protesting is using the space for illicit activity, and/or that there are no folks experiencing houselessness and the whole thing is just an attempt to further a ‘communist agenda.’ They are using language and misinformation to cover up the audacious actions of local government and cops who are stealing property, that people rely on for survival in the below freezing weather, from folks who have nothing. They’re trying to make homelessness invisible, which is impossible. They’re trying to control and punish folks for experiencing poverty and houselessness.

The Starbucks Union Drive Is Spreading With Impressive Speed

In just the last two months, workers at more than 50 Starbucks locations across 19 states have filed for union elections. The movement is being driven by rank-and-file workers and so far has brushed aside organizing challenges and management fearmongering.....

In a Landslide Victory, Mexican GM Workers Vote In an Independent Union

Auto workers at a General Motors plant in central Mexico delivered a landslide victory to an independent union in a vote held February 1-2. It's a major breakthrough for workers and labor activists seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement.

Turnout among the plant’s 6,300 eligible voters was 88 percent. The independent union SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union) picked up 4,192 votes—78 percent of the vote. SINTTIA, which grew out of the successful campaign which ousted the previous corrupt union last year, promised to raise wages and fight for workers on the shop floor.

Workers at the Silao plant voted last August to invalidate the contract held by a well-connected national auto workers union headed by Congressman Tereso Medina of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). That union was affiliated to the Congress of Mexican Labor (CTM), the country’s largest union federation.

CTM affiliates, tied to the long-ruling PRI, have long been criticized for signing employer-friendly “protection contracts,” which lock in low wages and prevent workers from organizing genuine unions.

In this week’s vote, a paltry 247 votes went to another CTM affiliate that appeared on the ballot, with 932 (17 percent) to a third union known as “the Coalition,” widely perceived by workers to be a CTM front. (A fourth competitor got just 18 votes.).....

“Today I believe we as workers are more united than ever,” said Alejandra Morales, SINTTIA’s principal officer, who has worked at the plant for 11 years. “Not only in Silao, but in all of Mexico.” The independent union's landslide victory at the plant is a major breakthrough for workers seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement. Photo: Casa Obrera del Bajio

Gassy Jack’s Statue Is Toppled in Vancouver

Participants in an annual march in Vancouver to remember murdered and missing Indigenous women today pulled down a statue of a colonial figure known for marrying an Indigenous girl when she was just 12-years-old.

As marchers drummed and sang, organizer Veronica Butler ordered onlookers to get back as people pulled on a rope attached to the statue of “Gassy” Jack Deighton, which stands on the corner of Water and Carrall streets.

With a heavy thunk, the statue toppled onto the sidewalk in part of the city where a steam clock and brick sidewalks promote the area’s colonial history.....

..came across another

 3 Ex-Minneapolis Cops Found Guilty of Violating George Floyd’s Civil Rights

In Minnesota, three former Minneapolis police officers have been found guilty of violating George Floyd’s civil rights. On Thursday, a federal jury found J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao each failed in their duties on May 25, 2020, as they ignored Floyd’s repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe” while Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, murdering him. Two of the officers also helped Chauvin physically restrain Floyd, while one officer prevented passersby from intervening. Federal prosecutor Charles Kovats spoke after the verdict.

Charles Kovats: “These officers had a moral responsibility, a legal obligation and a duty to intervene, and by failing to do so, they committed a crime. This is a reminder that all sworn law enforcement officers, regardless of rank or seniority, individually and independently, have a duty to intervene and provide medical aid to those in their custody.”

The three officers remain free on bond until their sentencing hearing. They still face a state trial in June on charges of aiding and abetting George Floyd’s murder. Floyd’s family welcomed Thursday’s verdict, which they said should serve as an example for police departments around the country. This is George Floyd’s nephew, Brandon Williams.

Brandon Williams: “Oftentimes, you know, officers kill Black and Brown men and women, and we get little to no consequences. A lot of times we don’t even get charges, let alone a conviction, you know, so we’ll take this small victory and smile about it and be happy. But deep down, we’re still hurting. You know, we want this to stop.”

..came across another toppling pic. it gave me goose bumps.

People gather around the Gassy Jack statue after it was toppled and covered in red paint during the annual Women’s Memorial March on Feb. 14. Photo by Darryl Dyck, the Canadian Press.

Feminist organizing by high school students

Emma Clark and Hayley Bryant are grade 12 students at Western Canada High School in Calgary, Alberta. Scott Neigh interviews them about the feminist organizing they do as members of a group at their school called the Committee on the Status of Women and Girls (CSWAG).

The experiences of high school among young women and other gender-oppressed people today are both very different and sadly similar to those a generation or two in the past. On the one hand, there has been remarkable technological, cultural, and political change over the last 50 years – at least some of which has been driven by feminist and other justice-oriented struggles from at least the late 1960s. On the other hand, as important as those past victories were, a lot of the challenges that young women face in high school are still very related to what their mothers and grandmothers faced, even if the details differ.

Bryant identified, for instance, a “general level of misogyny that’s accepted” and a kind of broad questioning of women’s accounts of their own experiences. Today’s guests also talk about a lack of representation of material by and about women, especially racialized women, in curriculum, and a lack of discussion of ideas central to naming the experiences and struggles of women in all of their diversity. Perhaps most crucially, is the ongoing, pervasive reality of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault – in lots of gendered configurations, yes, but most often experienced by women and girls and most often perpetrated by cisgender men – and a lack of adequate educational and institutional resources to respond to that.

For Clark, as a young girl she derived a lot of her confidence from her knowledge and intelligence. Then, in her early teens, she started to be treated very differently – to be given the message from all manner of sources that really what mattered was her appearance and her ability to fulfill certain narrow scripts expected of young women. And when the #MeToo movement began to receive mainstream attention in 2017, with its public revelation of pervasive sexual harassment and abuse faced by women in Hollywood and in so many other industries, it “really upset” Clark and made her even more conscious of gendered injustices.

On the first day of school in September 2020, Clark asked one of her friends where she needed to go to sign up for the feminist club at their school, and was shocked to discover that there was no such thing – nor did such a thing exist in any other high school in Calgary, either. So the two of them set out to found one. “It was kind of a no-brainer for us to get it started,” Clark said.....

MARCH 20: UNITE AGAINST RACISM! STATUS FOR ALL!

Whether its white supremacists mixing in with the “Freedom Convoy”; or Black and people of colour refugees and migrants fleeing Ukraine facing abuse – racism is rising. We know that racism is a strategy to divide us to push an anti-people agenda that hurts our climate and our communities in the interests of the richest few. The 1. 6 million mostly racialized working class migrants who have been at the frontlines of COVID-19 need full and permanent immigration status so that we have the power to protect ourselves against being scapegoated and exploited.

Why Unite Against Racism & Status for All?

Look at the “Freedom Convoy”. Many of its leaders and spokespeople were found to have racist ties. Some protestors brought Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic and racist imagery to the events. And when the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change launched a reporting tool for discrimination, it was over-run with vile and violent messages.

Or look at what’s happening in Ukraine. Black and other racialized migrants fleeing the war have been met with incredible bigotry at the border. Under pressure from refugee groups likes our, Canada has created a two-year visa for Ukrainians with few conditions. This is a crucial step to ensuring access to safety, but racialized refugees already in Ukraine from other countries such as Yemen and Afghanistan are excluded. Such visas are not being grated to people of colour refugees from any other place in the world.

This global rise in racism is happening at the time as massive inflation, and the continued economic crises that emerged during COVID-19. When gas and food prices rise, many of us look around searching for who is responsible.....

..another remembering.

On this day (March 18) in 1871 the "heaven-stormers" of the Paris Commune took flight.

“It was essentially a working class government, the product of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of man.” -- Karl Marx

Hungary’s teachers’ unions prepare largest-ever mobilisation

Nothing could be achieved without a walkout

January’s two-hour warning strike was preceded by a months-long series of strike talks between a delegation from the Teachers’ Trade Union (PSZ) and the Democratic Trade Union of Teachers (PDSZ) on the one hand and the representative of the Ministry of Human Resources, Deputy State Secretary László Kisfaludy on the other. After the talks, the unions saw no other way to get their demands accepted than to call for a warning strike.

The teachers’ demands are:

• The projection basis for the teachers’ basic pay base should be the current minimum wage – and applied retroactively from 1 September 2021. The salary scale is still calculated based on the 2014 minimum wage.
• The guaranteed pay for non-teaching staff in education should also be increased retroactively from September.
• Teachers’ working time dedicated to education and teaching should not exceed 22 hours per week.
• Pedagogical and special educational assistants – who currently spend 40 hours per week with their duties – should be employed for a maximum of 35 hours and should be granted 5 hours a week outside the institution for regeneration and preparation, just like teachers.

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In addition to playing for time, the authorities launched an all-out offensive, trying to discredit the unions and their demands among teachers and the whole society, claiming that they were part of the opposition campaign, sometimes sinking to the level of obvious and utter nonsense. On the other hand, they threatened teachers who supported and participated in the strike, claiming that if they failed to provide “just sufficient service” during the strike – the level of which had not been agreed upon because of the government’s dedicated efforts – they would be breaking the law and the strike would be declared illegal anyway. They communicated that participants would face retaliation – and in many cases, they did not shy away from disinformation and other indecent means.

At the same time, the teachers had a lot of support – from the Trade Union Co-operation Forum, which organized a motorcade for supporters, to the mayors of Budapest, the “ironing board teacher” László Vezsenyi, parents, trade unions and various other groups.

Equally important was the court’s ruling on the Friday prior to the strike that the teachers’ warning strike was legal.

This gave trade unions a strong trump card, making it easier for them to convince colleagues who, fearing possible reprisals, would not have participated in the walkout and the protest. The blatantly hostile statements of the operator and the government are likely to have silenced a high number of teachers nonetheless, who did not dare to speak out for fear of their livelihood.

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The path ahead

What remains to be seen is the extent to which parents will be able to support a potential indefinite strike, taking into account practical considerations. They may well be able to look after their children for two hours when there is no schooling. But if schools are closed for days or even weeks, they may not be able or willing to provide supervision. Schools may nonetheless overcome this difficulty by providing childcare during strikes.

An even tougher question is whether teachers can financially afford a strike of indefinite length. It is precisely because of the humiliatingly low salaries that teachers are in a financially vulnerable position – and the government constantly reminds them that they are not paid during the strike.

Most people can bear losing two hours’ wage – but losing days’ or weeks’ wage is an entirely different matter.

In the best case, the union organizing the strike has a strike fund that can cover the living costs of the participants in the event of a work stoppage (further traditional means include strike barracks providing services, food, etc. for striking workers). However, teachers are poorly organized, the unionization rate being barely above 10%. Due to their low wages, the collected dues are also moderate – so strike funds are presumably insufficient for a longer period.

Which does not mean, however, that it is beyond their capacity to organize an indefinite strike.

Minneapolis Students Organize Occupation in Solidarity with Striking Teachers

Temperatures are below freezing in Minneapolis with rain and snow falling as teachers enter their third week on strike. Negotiations are occurring at the Davis Center, where Minneapolis Public School District has refused to provide a living wage to Educational Support Staff or accept other demands. Outside, hundreds of teachers are dancing, chanting and picketing. “We have decided to organize an occupation of the Davis Center. We are going to have students here 24-7. We are going to be here all the time. And this is to increase awareness of the strike,” said one of the students .

Inside, dozens of students announced that they are occupying the building. 

Students announce they will be occupying the Davis Center to bring attention to the Minneapolis teachers’ strike.

Pay attention yall. The kid and the teachers are fighting to win. pic.twitter.com/ez871PSM6o

— Left Voice (@left_voice) March 23, 2022

“As much media as we are getting, we haven’t been making big enough waves, or not enough waves to change MPS’ [Minneapolis Public Schools] mind.” The students hope an occupation will bring the attention that teachers need — there has been stunning silence about this massive strike from many progressive groups and the mainstream press.

Minneapolis educators are on strike for smaller class sizes, more mental health staff, higher retention and recruitment of BIPOC educators, and for higher wages, including higher wages for support staff who only make $24,000 a year. 

Here are some of students’ demands https://t.co/igu9CVu5ag pic.twitter.com/33UpwLPbHG

— Left Voice (@left_voice) March 23, 2022

Last week students organized two sit-ins at the Davis Center, once meeting with Eric Moore, a member of the negotiating team for the school district who spent an hour giving the students the run around. 

But the students are done being talked down to. And they are done being talked about.....

Protests Erupt in Madrid After Spain Drops Support for Sahrawi Self-Determination 

In Spain, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Madrid Saturday to protest the Spanish government’s recent announcement it no longer supports self-determination for the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

Fatu Abahai: “All Sahrawis in Spain have come here to demonstrate against the decision taken by Pedro Sánchez, which is once again betraying the Sahara. We feel betrayed because he said that he’d give sovereignty over the Sahrawi territory to the Moroccans, and we do not feel equal to them. We are Sahrawi, and we are the ones who decide our rights.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Morocco Monday, where he’s meeting with the kingdom’s foreign minister.

Nikole Hannah-Jones Call for Slavery Reparations in Speech to U.N. General Assembly

On Tuesday, the United Nations marked the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times’s groundbreaking 1619 Project, addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: “It is time for the nations that engaged in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade to do what is right and what is just. It is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the Americas. This is our global truth, the truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity. There can be no atonement if there’s no repair.”

..from snoops

In March 2021, controversy once again engulfed the British royal family after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle suggested in a high-profile interview with Oprah Winfrey that the family and associated institutions were beset by racial prejudice.  

In response, Harry’s brother, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, insisted that theirs was “very much not a racist family.”

On March 12, however, the gossip and celebrity news website TMZ published old photographs of William and his wife, the former Kate Middleton, or the Duchess of Cambridge, being carried on litters, or portable thrones, by people of color, and suggested they undermined any claims that the royal family was not racist. The article stated that:

Prince William insists the Royals are “very much not a racist family,” but photos of him and his wife being carried on elevated thrones don’t exactly reflect that… They show him and Kate Middleton being carried on thrones back in 2012 by people of color in the Solomon Islands. William and Kate were on their Diamond Jubilee tour of the British Commonwealth nations in the South Pacific at the time.