IV492 - January 2016

IV 492 January 2016 PDF magazine

Humberto Montes de Oca Luna is the Secretary for External Relations of the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME) and the one of the coordinators of the New Confederation of Workers (NCT). He was interviewed in Mexico City in October 2015 by Franck Gaudichaud and Fabrice Thomas.

This week’s presidential election represented a defeat for the left, as Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, TV’s most known commentator for the past ten years in the country, was elected President of the Republic. The Socialist Party, divided in two faction candidates (pro-left and pro-right, that is, for and against the current Socialist Party Government, supported in Parliament by the left), summed up 27,8%. The Communist Party’s backed candidate didn’t go beyond 3,95%, while the Left Bloc’s backed candidate, the MEP Marisa Matias, achieved a 10,1% result, coming up third and achieving it best presidential result ever.

Radical Socialist condemns the state and University organised repressions on Dalit students that culminated in the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and member of Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA). The Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) has been, and is continuing to be subjected to vicious attacks, by Ministers and MPs, by the Vice Chancellor, Executive Council and officials of the University of Hyderabad and by forces of Brahmanism on media and social media.

On the day when president Obama visited the Detroit International Auto Show, almost 90 of the 100 Detroit Public Schools were closed as teachers en masse called in sick. In fact, they’re sick of schools overrun with rodents and mold, leaking roofs, and classrooms of 45-50 students without heat or textbooks. Hundreds took the day to protest and picket outside the Cobo Center site of the auto show.

This Sunday (17 January 2016) we celebrate the anniversary of our first public act: the press conference at the Lavapiés Theater District in Madrid in which we were lucky to participate. We have built a great organization which has managed in two years of history to produce a storm of enthusiasm for change and has become a reliable electoral tool. We have helped to open a new cycle in which public life is no longer split in two and, above all, we have repoliticized society in a moment in which possible responses to the suffering of the people might have been resignation, apathy, or even hatred. And we have done it fundamentally by articulating a new and terrible sense of reality in material terms (the crisis and its effects) and in subjective ones (outrage at the socioeconomic reality and the corruption in government).

Daesh? The name has been on everyone’s lips for several months, especially since the attacks in Paris...

The Islamic State controls an area larger than Britain, with a population of between 8 and 10 million people, and it has stepped up attacks outside its "borders" in recent months, from Beirut to Sharm El Sheikh via Tunisia and Turkey. It has become an inexhaustible source of articles and interventions by "experts", but also of rumours and fantasies. The pure incarnation of "absolute barbarism", a "creature" of the United States, an expression of the "laggard" character of Arab societies ... What exactly is it?

On December 3, the Chinese state detained more than 20 people associated with various labor solidarity organizations in Guangdong province. The detainees had been active in the labor movement there, providing various services and training. The government crackdown comes amid a rising tide of strikes and protests in Guangdong.

Ellen David Friedman, a long-time organizer with the National Education Association in Vermont, founding member of the state’s Progressive Party and member of the Labor Notes Policy Committee, has been working for the last decade with labor and union activists in Hong Kong and the mainland. When she was in China recently, she was briefly detained and interrogated by the government. She spoke with Ashley Smith of socialistworker.org about the crackdown, its causes and what activists can do to help the Chinese activists win freedom and justice.

There will be three presidential candidates competing in Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election. They are Tsai Ying Wen the leader of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Eric Chu who represents the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) and James Soong from the People First Party (PFP). According to pre-election opinion polls, Tsai Ying Wen’s popularity rating is the highest, much greater than that of Eric Chu and his party that is currently in power. The third competitor James Soong’s influence is relatively insignificant. Therefore, people are expecting that the opposition party, the DPP, will defeat the KMT. The result of this ongoing campaign seems quite predictable.

Under the Awami Workers Party’s policy on empowerment and status of women unveiled in March 2014, the party had committed to a 5-point communiqué that demanded the elimination of all social, economic and administrative structures that have led to gender-based exploitation. This document not only highlighted guiding principles for the party in terms of women’s participation within the organisation, it was a reminder of the harsh political climate in which men and women must act as agents of radical change.