The Standing Rock Sioux in the U.S. have been fighting against the construction of a major gas pipeline which would threaten their water supply and violate their sacred sites. They have organized popular direct action against the construction company and the state and inspired people throughout the country and the world.

The Campaign for the Freedom of Rafael Braga makes a call for collectives, movements and popular organizations all over the world to join us in the International Campaign for the Freedom of Rafael Braga.

One of the main issued raised by the Campaign is the motivation behind the arrest of Rafael Braga. He was arrested and condemened in 2013 even without being a protester. He was arrested because he is Black and poor. Because he is not an activist, no mobilizations were made at the time and he was tried and condemned very quickly. Even after his sentencing, the mobilization around his case never achieved the level of the mobilizations around the case of other arrests of militants in 2013 and 2014. Rafael is a symbol of the penal selectivity and structural racism of the justice system of Brazil.

[Português]

The ZACF is saddened to learn of the passing away of comrade Bobo Makhoba in Soweto this Thursday 29 September, at the age of 41, after a long illness. He is survived by his son, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences – as we do to the rest of his family, friends and comrades.

Bobo was a founding member of the ZACF as well as one of the original guerilla electricians for the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee’s Operation Khanyisa campaign, which illegally reconnected thousands of households’ electricity after it was cut off for non-payment – forcing Eskom, the state electricity utility, to scrap arrears for thousands of Sowetans.

The last 4 months in Zimbabwe can surely be characterized as an awakening of the Zimbabwean working class, as thousands of these citizens have taken to the streets, responding to Pastor Evan Mawarire’s call: “hatichatya” – we are not afraid. The #Thisflag movement followed soon after. This is certainly a historic time for Zimbabwe; a time of growing labour pains as the country (hopefully) enters a process of rebirth towards a better and new Zimbabwe.

But before we can even begin to talk about a free Zimbabwe and how we would go about getting that, we need to first have a clear and coherent class analysis of the Zimbabwean social and political climate.

Understanding who we are fighting is essential. Zimbabwe without a doubt needs to rid ourselves of the 92-year- old man who thinks the state house is his graveyard. But in the same breath, we must rid itself of the oppressive state system altogether. Swapping a vicious state capitalist manager with another is nowhere close to constituting progress.

See also:

Inside the Zimbabwean uprising

Prisoners from across the United States have just released this call to action for a nationally coordinated prisoner workstoppage against prison slavery to take place on September 9th, 2016.

This is a Call to Action Against Slavery in America

In one voice, rising from the cells of long term solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.