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‘Ready to Fight’ for Climate, Students Walk Out Over Trump

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Students at Michigan State University joined nationwide walkouts organized by the Sunrise Movement on November 8, 2024. (Photo: Lilli/Sunrise Movement)

“We won’t stand by while Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda threatens everything we believe in,” said one student.

Students with the youth-led Sunrise Movement walked out of over 30 high schools and universities across the United States on Friday to stand against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s “extreme agenda” and promote “the fight for climate justice, workers’ rights, and democracy.”

The protesters carried signs and banners with messages including “This Is a Climate Emergency,” “Protect Our Futures,” “People Not Profit,” “Fuck Trump,” “Together We Rise,” and “The Dems Failed, The People Won’t.”

“Students from every corner of the country came together to send a powerful message of solidarity. We won’t stand by while Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda threatens everything we believe in,” said Aster Chau, a 16-year-old from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “This movement is about hope—hope that when we stand together, we can push our leaders to take bold action. We won’t back down. This is our future, and we’re taking it back.”

Students in New York City joined nationwide walkouts on November 8, 2024. (Photo: Mahtab Khan/Sunrise Movement.

Trump’s first presidential term featured a wide range of attacks on the Earth. This cycle, he pledged to “drill, baby, drill,” provoking warnings about how his return to power would lead to a surge in planet-heating pollution, and vowed to roll back Biden-Harris administration climate policies if Big Oil poured just $1 billion into his campaign.

Since Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, critics including the Sunrise Movement have called out her party’s leadership for failing to adequately prioritize the needs and demands of the working class.

“Millions of people are fed up after living through decades of a rigged economy and corrupt political system,” the group said on social media Wednesday. “They are looking for someone to blame. It’s critical the Dem Party takes that seriously.”

Students at Bard College in New York state joined nationwide walkouts on November 8, 2024. (Photo: Sunrise Movement

Sunrise said in a Friday statement that the “walkouts represent a call to action for both parties: If Democrats want to win, they need to stop pandering to big donors and corporations and instead focus on the bold policies that will ensure a livable future for all.”

Manuel Ivan Guerrero, a student at the University of Central Florida, stressed that “today was just the beginning. We’re angry and we’re scared but we’re ready to fight.”

“We have the power to win and defeat Donald Trump, but our leaders need to be bold enough to fight for us,” the 18-year-old added. “The time for empty promises is over. We are ready to do whatever it takes to win a better world.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Second version, corrected text.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Second version, corrected text.
Continue Reading‘Ready to Fight’ for Climate, Students Walk Out Over Trump

Progressive Delegation Back From Palestine Boosts Case for Embargo on Israel

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Demonstrators call for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon and an arms embargo on Israel during an October 20, 2024 rally in Brussels. (Photo: Laia Ros/Getty Images)

Progressive International’s Palestine Delegation—whose members were attacked earlier this week by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank—on Thursday issued “an urgent call to governments across the globe” to impose “a total energy, economic, and arms embargo against Israel” to punish its ongoing 13-month U.S.-backed assault on Gaza.

The Palestine Delegation—which was co-convened by Progressive International (PI), the National Lawyers Guild of the United States, and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers—released a report containing findings of members Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona and lead delegate; Marc Botenga, a Belgian member of European Parliament (MEP) from the Marxist-socialist Workers’ Party; and Jaume Asens, a leftist MEP from Spain.

“The Israeli regime must urgently be subject to total isolation on all fronts.”

“The evidence is clear: The genocide in Gaza and the systematic nature of the abuse of Palestinian detainees recall the worst historical abuses committed by colonial powers against Indigenous populations… seeking their liberation, from the concentration camps used by Britain against the national liberation movement in Kenya to the internment of millions of Algerians by France,” the report states.

Israel’s 398-day assault on Gaza has killed or injured at least 155,000 Palestinians, including those who are missing and feared dead, while forcing nearly the entire population of the coastal enclave from their homes and causing widespread starvation and sickness. The International Court of Justice in The Hague is weighing evidence of genocide presented by South Africa in a case backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs and thousands of experts, advocates, and rights groups around the world.

“Any government providing arms, energy, economic, or diplomatic support to Israel is complicit in these crimes against humanity—and threatens the basic integrity of the international order,” PI asserted. “The Israeli regime must urgently be subject to total isolation on all fronts—economic, military, cultural, political, and diplomatic—to lay the groundwork for the end of the genocide and the dismantling of the colonial occupation in Palestine.”

The U.S. boosts Israel with tens of billions of dollars worth of armed aid and unwavering diplomatic support. Other nations including Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India also provide Israel with substantial backing.

The PI delegation said it “arrived in Palestine amid sustained efforts by Israeli authorities to prevent access to the occupied territories and obscure the conditions of deprivation, detention, apartheid, and annexation endured by the Palestinian people.”

Delegation members got a small taste of what Palestinians living in the occupied territories endure when they were reportedly attacked with tear gas and stun grenades by armed Israeli settlers and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops Monday while accompanying West Bank farmers in Qusra as they attempted to harvest from the olive trees that are the lifeblood of Palestine’s rural economy and a frequent target of land-grabbing settlers trying to drive Arabs away.

Last month, IDF soldiers fatally shot Hanan Abu Salameh, a 59-year-old Palestinian woman who was working with relatives in her family’s olive grove in the village of Faqqua, located east of Jenin in the northern West Bank.

“We are dealing with something as simple as harvesting olives,” said Colau. “And even this has now been turned into an act of war by the illegal settlers and the army.”

Earlier this week, around 50 countries joined in a call for an arms embargo on Israel. All but one of the nations—Norway—are in the Global South. They include: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, South Africa, Sudan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Neoliberal Fascism Is Now the Dominant Ideology in the United States of America

Original article by C.J. Polychroniou republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena on November 05, 2024 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The formation of a united front against this far-right realignment is more important and urgent than ever before.

It’s official. Neoliberal fascism has become mainstream in the United States. This is the only rational conclusion that one can draw from Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election. Indeed, Trump’s historic victory (which includes leading the GOP to a much larger-than-expected Senate majority and potentially in control of the House) has changed the nature of the Republican Party and shifted the center of gravity in U.S. politics in such earth-shattering fashion that it has led to the actual collapse of the Democratic Party.

Neoliberal fascism is now the dominant politico-ideological orientation in the United States and its dire consequences will undoubtedly be felt for years to come both inside the country and across the world. In this context, the formation of a united front against fascism is more important and urgent than ever before.

Under the leadership of Donald Trump, a political movement has been born that encompasses different major coalitions (working-class voters, women [whose share of support for Trump, ironically enough, went up by 2 percentage points from the last election], Christian fundamentalists, minorities [Black, Hispanic, Asian voters] and youth [though largely white and conservative], and the ultra-wealthy) all of whom have been drawn to the “America First” slogan.

As such, the followers of Trump’s movement are apparently enthused by the idea of witnessing the radical restructuring of the federal government (the shrinking of government agencies accompanied by the expansion of the powers of the presidency) and retribution for the great leader’s political enemies; they are apparently in favor of rolling back civil and human rights and in approval of “law and order” politics which includes, among other things, militarizing the police and carrying out a militarist plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and banning sanctuary cities; they are apparently in support of a political agenda that targets climate change and curtails measures that protect the environment; and they are apparently in approval of massive tariffs on all imports as a tool of economic competition and tax cuts to benefit the rich.

The GOP is now Trump’s party, and it is fascistic. It was a fallacy all along on the part of many Democrats to think that MAGA Republicans were a minority within the GOP. Kamala Harris exhibited anything but political savviness by going after wavering Republicans, flip flopping on key issues, and ignoring the needs of working-class people. Thus, as Bernie Sanders aptly put it, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

The Democrats should have learned from the mistakes of Social Democratic parties in Europe, which abandoned working class people and subsequently opened the door to authoritarian populist leaders who promised voters fed up with neoliberal policies a return to a “golden age” of economic independence, national identity and traditional social values. But they didn’t because Democrats have become the party of Wall Street and jet-setting celebrities.

The question now facing progressive and radical forces in the US is what to do next. Questions over political identity, vision and strategy ought to dominate public discussions in the weeks and months ahead. A united front against Trump must be formed in order to curtail the scope of his neoliberal fascist plans. As things stand, there are virtually no checks on Trump in his second term. And he cones into office armed with a Supreme Court ruling that grants the president immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office.

Dark times lie ahead. Many of those who voted for Trump will come to regret their choice, but that’s of little consolation now to the rest of society. Now it’s up to the rest of us to become more involved ever more passionately in pedagogical projects and political struggles that would build walls of resistance against a fascist takeover in the US. The fascist threat is real, and the Democratic Party bears much responsibility for democracy’s imminent demise.

The country needs a new vision and new politics. A powerful popular mass political response is urgently needed. It can happen. It must happen. The time to get organized in a much more serious and effective way is now.

Original article by C.J. Polychroniou republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingNeoliberal Fascism Is Now the Dominant Ideology in the United States of America