Fans of socialist Rosa Luxemburg looking at Hurricane Maria’s assault on Puerto Rico may recall the deaths of 40 000 people in 1902 when Mt. Pelee erupted in Martinique, a French colony.  Luxemburg wrote then that “the lords of the earth,” who with “faith unshaken – in their own wisdom …have all turned to Martinique [to] help, rescue, dry the tears and curse the havoc-wreaking volcano.” They had plundered and murdered in colonies like Martinique and she was accusing them of hypocrisy in trying to comfort the survivors. More

Arriving in Barcelona in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, Ernst Toller was moved to write, “’The most striking experience a foreigner has in Barcelona is that of the functioning of democracy.” In 2017 something akin to history repeating is unfolding in the Catalonian capital, where democracy has again been raise aloft as a cause worth fighting for.   More

Donald Trump decided, despite promises made here and there, that he would renounce former President Barack Obama’s policy towards children who had come to the United States without papers. These children, now close to a million, had entered the country with their parents. Obama’s executive action, named Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), allowed these young people to apply for a work permit and claim some important benefits of United States residency. To take advantage of DACA, these young people had to come out of the shadows and register voluntarily with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. government, in other words, was able to get information on almost a million people who did not have papers. This act of good faith, to register with the government, will now make it easier for the government to find, arrest and deport them.  More