University of Michigan grad students strike for COVID-19, anti-policing demands

With an average height of 6’6” versus 5’9” for the general U.S. population professional basketball players are giants in the conventional physical sense. They recently proved they are moral and political giants as well. First, with the Milwaukee Bucks leading the charge, they halted play in the midst of their playoffs to state their opposition to racist police violence following the brutal shooting and paralysis of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 23…

David Graeber’s heartbreaking early death is a great loss to leftist scholarship, popular political discourse, and political action. His work was broad-ranging and explicitly anti-capitalist, and he wrote and advocated along these lines for decades. He wrote extensively on theories of anarchist practice and tactics in terms of direct action and prefigurative politics, principles that he applied in his own activist work throughout his life.

In addition to his fundamental role in shaping the Occupy...

Professor Rabab Abdulhadi gave this presentation on the situation in Palestine and the growth of the global solidarity movement to a webinar on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 sponsored by the Detroit branch of Solidarity, Jewish Voice for Peace - Detroit, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) - Detroit and Palestinian Youth Movement - Detroit. Dr. Abdulhadi emphasized the importance at this critical time of movements coming together to oppose racism and colonialism everywhere, from the USA to Palestine....

Record wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area rapidly erupted in less than two weeks, in the midst of a scorching heat wave.

As of August 24, nearly 120,000 have fled their homes as 1.2 million acres have burned, greater than the state of Rhode Island. Two of the wildfires rank as the second and third largest in California’s history – and they’re still growing. The largest was in 2018.

This is happening during the pandemic, which has caused increased difficulties for those evacuated from their...

APRIL 5, 1968 — the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. — was the opening of a crucial playoff series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. Reluctantly, the players from both teams went ahead with the game, although their hearts weren’t in it in an atmosphere that sportswriter Leonard Koppett called “subdued.” It’s never been clear to me how much pressure they may have been under, but evidently those players, some of whom were civil rights fighters,...

Recently, Veterans for Peace issued a statement condemning the deployment of troops in the U.S.: 

 “Veterans For Peace condemns the inflammatory statements of Donald Trump. His declaration of calling for military troops on US soil to quell people exercising their First Amendment right is inflammatory and incredibly dangerous. We stand unequivocally with the protestors who are in the streets calling for an end to senseless police killings and white supremacy.  

In addition to the...

August 5th will go down in Indian history as the day aggressive, chauvinistic nationalism, in its most fascistic form, but also with a deeper implantation in society than any other ultra-right fascist-type force, succeeded in throttling the First Indian Republic.

It is incontestable that the constitution, the political practices, of independent India always had a Hindu, and Brahminical tilt. However, what was one element among many became, in the hands of the RSS, and the entire range of political...

BY ALL POLITICAL leading indicators, Donald Trump is taking down the Republican Party to its most shattering electoral debacle in decades. “Presiding,” if that’s a word for anything Trump does, over the entirely preventable health and economic COVID-19 calamity, he’s proving himself willing to sacrifice anything for his own interests.

As Dr. Anthony Fauci warned of 100,000 new daily coronavirus infections by November, Trump’s dispatching federal marshals and border patrol thugs to face off...

SOLIDARITY, THE SOCIALIST organization that sponsors Against the Current, is taking no formal position regarding the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In view of the complexity of the issues and the impossibility of in-person meetings during the coronavirus pandemic, the National Committee organized an online poll to test the balance of opinion of the membership. Three options were offered, and members were also encouraged to submit comments…

It will take time to establish the truth about the specific causes of the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in Beirut harbour in the early evening of Tuesday 4 August, if it can ever be determined. However, what is evidenced by this catastrophe – which caused at least 158 deaths and over 6,000 injuries – is the extent to which the Lebanese State had abdicated its responsibilities. The country’s Prime Minister mentioned a case of negligence. That negligence, which was literally a crime,...