By Alan Sears and James Cairns
Despite severe problems with electoral politics, radicals building movements for real social change need to engage seriously with elections. In this article, we look at the current Canadian election from a Toronto perspective.
By Scott Neigh
We hear a lot these days about the need for cuts to public spending, for saving money. The use of this rhetoric to cover massive changes in how our lives and societies are organized has a long history, but in the current “age of austerity” — ushered in by unprecedented giveaways of ordinary people’s money to rich people and powerful institutions and the Toronto G20 meeting’s commitment to make up for that by further attacks on ordinary people — mean that we’re hearing it rather a lot at the moment.
Many people on the left around the world have drawn
Wanted: A Left to Stop Ford
It will take a mighty movement to defeat the Ford agenda and turn back the age of austerity. We need a Left that can reach out to broad layers of the population, communicating a political alternative effectively and contributing to effective activism that really makes a difference.
By Ali Mustafa
The Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly (GTWA) is a promising new initiative aiming to build a united, non-sectarian, and militant anti-capitalist movement in the city among a diversity of rank-and-file labour unionists, grassroots community organizers, and youth alike. Since the GTWA’s inception in early 2010, mass public transit has emerged as one of the organization’s key political battlegrounds. In this in-depth roundtable discussion, members of the GTWA’s transit committee Jordy Cummings, Lisa Leinveer, Leo Panitch, Kamilla Pietrzyk, and Herman Rosenfeld explore both the opportunities and obstacles facing the campaign Towards a Free and Accessible TTC.
By Ali Mustafa
Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese writer, socialist, and antiwar activist. He is also a professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. In this interview, he discusses the significance of the ongoing revolutionary wave of mass protests occuring across the Middle East with one of the New Socialist webzine editors Ali Mustafa.
By Augusta Dwyer
An all-party report calling on the Harper government to pursue a vigorous poverty reduction strategy in Canada was recently introduced in the House of Commons. According to the Ottawa Citizen, “the report calls for pumping more money into affordable housing across the country, as well as increased supports to parents, seniors, people with disabilities and jobless and older workers.” The product of three years of cross-country consultations by a Commons committee, its recommendations were endorsed by all the opposition parties, but also—with some qualifications—by Conservatives.
By David Camfield
The fall of 2010 saw millions of private and public sector workers and students in France take to the streets, walk out on strike and blockade roads and oil refineries.
By Hamid Sodeifi
A Review of Greg Albo, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, In and Out of Crisis by (PM Press, 2010)
By Todd Gordon
It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for Canadian imperialism in the last couple of months. To start, in October Canada lost its bid to win a United Nations Security Council seat.
By Jackie Esmonde
In the lead up to the G20 meetings in Toronto this summer, the conclusion that the state perceived anti-G20 protest activity as almost inherently criminal was inescapable.
“The bill greatly expands the power of the government to
By Susan Ferguson
When last year’s Olympic torch arrived in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, Quebec, on its way to Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Games, the clash of politics and sports prompted some tricky negotiations.
We are glad to publish this letter from the US,
Jeff Webber argues in his new article “Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism”
Carlo Fanelli and Herman Rosenfeld of Socialist Project have written
The latest issue of the ISR contains an article on
By Chris Webb The first major agenda item from the
By Jeffery R. Webber
I met with Gloria Chicaiza, Coordinator of the Mining Campaign at Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action, AE), in AE’s centre in Quito, on July 7, 2010.
A united broad campaign for the release of all those
