Politics

Coronavirus and community activism

How can we centre community organising and mutual aid in response to coronavirus? by Jonathan Neale Medicare protest outside Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. Image rights: Holly Otterbein, Twitter. Some of the environmentalists and leftists I know tell me not to be fooled by the mainstream hype about covid-19. Others are pleased that the lockout in China has reduced pollution. Some say the real issue is not the disease, it’s racism. I want to suggest a different way of responding to epidemics. Communities I was an HIV counsellor in the UK between 1988 and 1994, before we had the retroviral…

John Wight

By Public Reading Rooms

How far will corporate America go to stop Bernie Sanders?

In words commonly, if erroneously, attributed to American novelist and prominent 1930s socialist Sinclair Lewis, we are told that ‘When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross’. Though no serious person would attempt to equate the current Trump administration with the goose-stepping fascism of Sinclair Lewis’s era, the aforementioned quote makes the salient point that cultural, historical and national specificities dictate what fascism looks, sounds and operates like in a particular country in any given period. On the scale of fascist tendencies, we live in a worrying time wherein authoritarian and ethno-nationalist…

Anti-Semitism

By Public Reading Rooms

A lesson in the ruthlessness of the British ruling class

John Wight

By Public Reading Rooms

Sinn Fein’s historic victory in Ireland is a tribute to Sands, McGuinness and Adams

In his classic volume of prison letters, Soledad Brother, George Jackson writes that ‘Patience has its limits. Take it too far and it’s cowardice.’ While no one familiar with the life of George Jackson would normally dare contradict the kind of wisdom acquired through extreme adversity and hard struggle, the historic victory of Sinn Fein in the 2020 Irish general election suggests that patience can in politics be more courageous than impatience in pursuit of a people’s and nation’s liberation. The torturous and tragic history of Ireland is inextricably linked to the crimes of British colonialism and empire. It’s partition…

Anti-Semitism

By Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson

Election defeat: what happened and what next?

Global anti-austerity upsurge

By Phil Hearse

Rebellion and Reaction – Worldwide anti-austerity upsurge met with brutal repression

Across the globe workers, indigenous people and youth are taking to the streets to protest against austerity, corruption, dictatorship and climate extinction – despite the setback of electoral victories by the hard right. How can we understand these movements, and what political obstacles do they face?

Julian Assange