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Boston high school students walk out against Donald Trump, December 5, 2016.

Photos by Stevan Kirschbaum

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Zoom Thousands march in Seattle against racism By Jim McMahan At least 3,000 demonstrators marched in Seattle this year on the second anniversary of the 2014 Black Friday protests against the infamous grand jury decision not to indict the cops for the...

Thousands march in Seattle against racism

By Jim McMahan

At least 3,000 demonstrators marched in Seattle this year on the second anniversary of the 2014 Black Friday protests against the infamous grand jury decision not to indict the cops for the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Black Lives Matter activists led the multinational marchers through downtown for four hours, blocking off streets. This limited the business of the rich retailers, and an army of cops didn’t help them.

Demonstrators chanted, “Black lives matter, not Black Friday!” and “Refugees are welcome here!” They also chanted, “Mni Wiconi, Water is Life,” in solidarity with the great Native-American convergence with the Oceti Sakowin at Standing Rock, N.D.

There were also many signs and T-shirts which read, “Block the Bunker,” opposing the city’s plan to build a massive police precinct costing $160 million.

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Leonard Peltier’s message on Day of Mourning

Day of Mourning
November 24, 2016

Greetings my relatives,

Here we are again. This time the year is 2016. It has been more than 41 years since I last walked free and was able to see the sun rise, and sit and feel the earth beneath my feet. I know there have been more changes then I can even imagine out there.

But I do know that there is a struggle taking place as to whether this country will move on to a more sustainable way of life. This is something we wanted to have happen back in the seventies.

I watch the events at Standing Rock with both pride and sorrow. Pride that our people and their allies are standing up and putting their lives on the line for the coming generations, not because they want to, but because they have to. They are right to stand up in a peaceful way. It is the greatest gathering of our people in history, and has made us more connected than ever before. We need to support each other as we make our way in these times.

Water IS life, and we cannot leave this issue for our children and grandchildren to deal with when things are far worse for the natural world than they are now.

And Mother Earth is already in struggle.

And I feel sorrow for the water protectors at Standing Rock because these last few days have brought a much harsher response from the law enforcement agencies there, and our people are suffering.

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Zoom Chicago protesters: ?Stop racist cops!? By Jeff Sorel Chanting ?Boycott Black Friday, stop racist police!? hundreds of demonstrators blocked store entrances Nov. 25 on Chicago?s upscale Michigan Avenue to demand enactment of CPAC, a pending ordinance...

Chicago protesters: ‘Stop racist cops!’

By Jeff Sorel

Chanting “Boycott Black Friday, stop racist police!” hundreds of demonstrators blocked store entrances Nov. 25 on Chicago’s upscale Michigan Avenue to demand enactment of CPAC, a pending ordinance that would provide for an independent and elected review board to ensure that police terrorists are held accountable. The action was organized by the Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.

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Wikileaks Reveal Scope of Turkish Connection to IS and Media Crackdown

The Turkish Marxist-Leninists of Redhack provided wikileaks with tens of thousands of emails linking the Turkish state directly to the so called Islamic State waging genocide in Syria. Can the link between NATO and ethnic cleansing in Syria be anymore clear?

(GPA) Ankara – On Monday, Wikileaks released a batch of almost 58,000 emails sent and received by Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak.

The release, termed by Wikileaks as ‘Berat’s box’ includes thousands of emails detailing Albayrak’s dealings as the Turkish Minister of Energy. The emails encompass a span of sixteen years beginning April of 2000 until September of this year. Wikileaks was given the database of emails by a Turkish Marxist-Leninist ‘hacktivist’ group known as RedHack.

RedHack had initially announced that they had obtained the emails in September but their social media accounts and pages containing news of the hack were taken down. Originally the group threatened to release the emails if the Erdogan government wouldn’t release Alp Altınörs, a member of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a journalist named Aslı Erdogan. Suspected members of RedHack have beenthreatened since September by the government and subjected to the ongoing post-coup torture.

The Turkish government has also banned access to Wikileaks prompting the organization to release the emails to “promote transparency in Turkey.” It’s understandable why the Turkish authorities wouldn’t want these emails to reach the public, they detail multiple shady aspects of both Turkey’s recent involvement in the oil trade out of Syria and their post-coup crackdown on, and manipulation of media in the country.

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Zoom Rome, ItalyVia Banda Bassotti

Rome, Italy

Via Banda Bassotti

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Poverty, despair breed new generation of Philippine rebels

SIERRA MADRE MOUNTAINS, Philippines — In the late-night hours and amid the chirp of crickets, Katryn welcomed a huddle of exhausted Filipino journalists in cheerful spirits like she was home. “Coffee?” she asked with a comforting smile.

Comrade Katryn is her nom de guerre, however, and for her, home is a rebel encampment concealed in the rain-soaked wilderness of the Philippines’ Sierra Madre Mountains. The 24-year-old walked away from her family two years ago to join one of the world’s longest-raging Marxist rebellions.

Mostly in their 20s and 30s, a few dozen New People’s Army guerrillas lugged M16 rifles and grenade launchers on a plateau where red hammer-and-sickle flags adorned a makeshift hall. Most wore mud-stained boots while cooking over wood fires or guarding the peripheries of the encampment, just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the nearest army camp.

They’re part of a new generation of Maoist fighters who reflect the resiliency and constraints of an insurgency that has dragged on for nearly half a century through six Philippine presidencies while Cold War-era communist insurgencies across much of the world have faded into memory. They are driven by some of the same things as their predecessors, including crushing poverty, despair, government misrule and the abysmal inequality that has long plagued Philippine society.

“The New People’s Army has no other recruiter but the state itself,” a young rebel, Comrade May, told The Associated Press.

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Fidel’s concept of Revolution

“Revolution is having a sense of the historic moment; it is changing everything that must be changed; it is full equality and freedom; it is being treated and treating others like human beings; it is emancipating ourselves on our own and through our own efforts; it is challenging powerful dominant forces in and beyond the social and national arena; it is defending the values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice; it is modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity, and heroism; it is fighting with courage, intelligence and realism; it is never lying or violating ethical principles; it is a profound conviction that there is no power in the world that can crush the power of truth and ideas. Revolution is unity; it is independence, it is struggling for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world, which is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism, and our internationalism.”

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State to Flint and Detroit: ‘You have no rights’

By Martha Grevatt 

Attorneys for the state of Michigan have filed a 62-page motion to dismiss a lawsuit on behalf of children in the Detroit Public Schools. The DPS student body is over 90 percent African American. The lawsuit argues that, based on the 14th Amendment, all children have the right to literacy. This right is denied by the conditions under which Detroit children are forced to learn: buildings infested with rodents, insects and mold; classrooms that are frigid in winter or steaming hot due to malfunctioning heaters; widespread shortages of books, desks, supplies and even teachers; and class sizes over 50. Teachers staged walkouts during the previous school year to protest these deplorable conditions.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Haynes argued that “literacy is a component or particular outcome of education, not a right granted to individuals by the Constitution” and that “the U.S. Supreme Court has unambiguously rejected the claim that public education is a fundamental right.” Apparently he slept during class when Brown v. Board of Education was discussed.

Though out of the public spotlight, Flint, Mich., continues to suffer from a water crisis caused by decisions made by state-appointed EMs. The city was lead-poisoned after the EM decided to stop supplying water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and draw water from the polluted Flint River. When Flint, in order to cut costs, did not add anti-corrosive chemicals, the lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply. Children with elevated blood lead levels were suddenly failing school.

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Zoom Today in history: December 6, 1961 - Frantz Fanon dies. Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer who was a member of the National Liberation Front which lead the anti-colonial revolutionary movement in Algeria. His writings...

Today in history: December 6, 1961 - Frantz Fanon dies. 

Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer who was a member of the National Liberation Front which lead the anti-colonial revolutionary movement in Algeria. His writings such as ‘Wretched of the Earth’ have inspired and influenced revolutionaries around the world.

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