The Digger

"It’s been more than a generation since the Congressional Black Caucus stood up for Black people, or progressive political principles, anywhere. “The Black Caucus remains silent on the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the creation of a system of apartheid in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.” An impressive list of Black intellectuals and activists is circulating an open letter to the Congressional Black Caucus, blasting the Black federal lawmakers for failing to mount a “robust defense” of one of their own, Ilhan Omar, the first-term Congresswoman from Minneapolis, who is a Muslim. Pro-Israel lawmakers had demanded that Omar be roundly rebuked for her critique of the power wielded on Capitol Hill by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. What finally emerged was a Resolution that condemned anti-Semitism, as well as Islamophobia and all other forms of racial, religious and ethnic hatred. Congresswoman Omar wasn’t named in the resolution, but was clearly the target. Th...

9 May 2019 On Saturday, May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International held the 2019 International   May Day   Online   Rally, the sixth   annual online May Day Rally held by the ICFI, the world Trotskyist movement. The rally heard speeches on different aspects of the world crisis of capitalism, and the struggles of the international working class, from 12 leading members of the world party, and its sections and sympathizing organizations around the world. On successive days,   the  World Socialist Web Site  is   publishing   the texts of the speeches delivered at the rally.   Below is the speech delivered by Alex Lantier ,  national secretary   of the Parti d’égalité socialiste (Socialist Equality Party) in France .   On Monday, the WSWS published the   opening report   to the rally, given by   David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the WSWS and national chair...

In the entire course of North American labor history, Labor Notes, now celebrating forty years of existence, is by far the most durable, and one of the most successful, interventions by activists who have come out of an explicitly socialist tradition. [ 1 ] Socialists of various sorts played important roles in the creation of the Knights of Labor and the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in the late nineteenth century, the Industrial Workers of the World a few years later, the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s, and the emergence of public sector unionism in the 1950s and 1960s. But one of three things happened. They were purged by a repressive state or a hostile union officialdom. Or the socialists merged themselves into or accommodated the politics, legal structures, and leadership of the trade unions they had sought to influence. Or they just got tired and retreated from active political engagement, not unlike the old radical...

December 17, 2010, the self-immolation of a young street vendor in Central Tunisia set off a revolutionary fire that spread across the region. Eight years later, on December 19, 2018, the Sudanese government’s implementation of austerity measures prescribed by the International Monetary Fund sparked a new  upsurge  of mass protest. And two months after the Sudanese uprising exploded, the Algerian population started its  own revolt , squaring off against an arrogant military regime poised to renew the presidential mandate of the sickly, barely functional Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The two uprisings, while still eclipsed by the conflagrations of 2011, have made the regional situation look more and more like an  Arab Spring  redux. More fundamentally, the new outburst of revolutionary ferment — following  the ebb  that began in 2013 and still persists in countries like Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen — is a strong confirmation that the 2011 explosion was not...

May 5, 2019 What? On April 19, 2019 (the date of the original Patriots’ Day in New England), American tech giant Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service, and its sister channel Hispan TV, an outlet in Spain.  Google denied their access to all its services, including its popular video streaming platform YouTube and its E-mail service Gmail.  The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation. The action’s date is particularly significant to Americans.  That day marked the beginning of the American Revolution.  It saw the first armed engagement between British soldiers and colonial militiamen at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775.  Patriots’ Day was intended to commemorate the colonists’ fight to win freedom from British rule. But, nearly 250 years later, it observes the loss of that freedom to invisible, uncontrollable organizations. Google and Facebook, ...