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Environmental Racism and Climate Justice

A talk given to Ideas Left Outside August 1 2013

What is environmental racism?

There are disasters from natural causes, and then there are environmental catastrophes and tragedies imposed by the capitalist and imperialist systems which cause unimaginable hardship and suffering. We know that racism is part and parcel of these systems. Environmental racism has been termed “any policy that differentially disadvantages individuals, groups, of communities based on race or colour” such as by locating “hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators or polluting industries in areas inhabited mainly by [racialized] and low-income peoples.” (Gosine 2008 p. 4)

Let us take the example from Haiti. In [2011] Haiti was struck by a savage epidemic of cholera, an environmental disease. Cholera was introduced, in fact, by the massive UN military mission in Haiti, which dumped untreated sewage into a stream from which Haitians washed and bathed and from which they drank. More than 7,500 Haitians died. Continue reading Environmental Racism and Climate Justice

Resisting the tar sands: An ecosocialist approach

Based on a talk given to the Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago, June 28, 2013.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has a dream. If he has his way Canada will be the new world oil superpower – a rival to Saudi Arabia. It’s a wonderful dream for Harper and Canada’s profiteers, but the reality for the rest of humankind is grim. Here in Toronto we are gaining experience in resisting this project.

What are the tar sands? They are a mixture of tar and sand that must be boiled to extract the tarry oil, called bitumen. The process of extraction, which covers a large part of Alberta, destroys and poisons the surroundings, causing cancer and many other illnesses. Indigenous peoples who live on this land and have treasured its bounty, denounce corporations and government for this destruction. Continue reading Resisting the tar sands: An ecosocialist approach

John Riddell’s achievement is a team effort

I made the following comments to a celebration of John Riddell’s multi-volume series of books on the history of the world revolutionary movement. The meeting, attended by 120 people, took place on March 3, 2013. We were marking the publishing of John’s book on the Communist International’s Fourth World Congress, Toward the United Front. Here is what I said:

John’s books show that the Comintern was led by many persons, a team. And John himself is a team person. That was his approach from his youth, and it is how he organized his Comintern publishing.

Look at his latest volume: he thanks sixty-two people in fourteen countries. Continue reading John Riddell’s achievement is a team effort

Toronto rally welcomes ‘Toward the United Front’

17 February 2013 – by Sarah Berliner. Toward the United Front, John Riddell’s edition of the Communist International’s Fourth Congress, is “an outstanding achievement in the recuperation of pivotal historical experiences for the revolutionary left of today and the future,” Marxist author David McNally told an enthusiastic gathering of 120 people in Toronto, March 3.

The Fourth Congress proceedings, 1,300 pages long, make up the seventh installment in a series of documentary volumes edited by Riddell, which present a record of the world revolutionary movement in Lenin’s time. The soft-cover edition has just been published by Haymarket Books.

Riddell explained the purpose, character, and present stage of this project in the main presentation, which is published separately as “Translations for the Twenty-First Century.” Continue reading Toronto rally welcomes ‘Toward the United Front’

50 years since ‘The Feminine Mystique’

31 January 2013 — Green Left Weekly — Fifty years ago, on February 13, 1963, the publication of US writer and activist Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique sparked a new awakening in the thinking of women across North America. Friedan denounced the repression women suffered in the aftermath of World War II, when they were forced out of wartime jobs and convinced to accept the role of keepers of the home.

Profiteers of the market launched an unrelenting but subtle propaganda campaign to venerate women as wife and mother. This role, Friedan said, was the “feminine mystique”.

This domestic existence became, Friedan wrote, “a religion, a pattern by which all women must now live or deny their femininity”. In submitting to this concept of womanhood, women gave up their self-respect, recognition of their talents and abilities, and — most importantly — their identities. Fundamentally, Friedan said, this was a scam to sell more consumer goods to women, who were to be the major purchasers for home and family. Continue reading 50 years since ‘The Feminine Mystique’

How workers rallied to aid the early Soviet republic

29 December 2012 – The following brief talk on work by the Communist International to gather material aid for the Soviet Republic was given by Suzanne Weiss at the fourth Toronto study session on Toward the United Front, a 1,300-page edition the Fourth Communist International Congress (1922).

The study session, entitled “The Comintern’s Struggle for Social Hegemony,” surveyed Comintern work in unions, cooperatives, education, youth organizations, and on material assistance to Soviet Russia. The presentation, taking up a speech by Willi Münzenberg, is followed by a brief biography and a description of the study session. For more information on this program, see Self-Guided Tours of Revolutionary History. More information on Toward the United Front is available here.  – John Riddell Continue reading How workers rallied to aid the early Soviet republic

A Handbook for Defenders of Free Speech on Palestine

28 July 2010 – Michael Keefer has compiled a timely and effective handbook for all those resisting attacks on free speech regarding the Israeli government’s crimes against Palestine.

His 268-page book, Anti-Semitism Real and Imagined, contains contributions from eleven committed campaigners in the fight for freedom of expression, as well as position papers from seven well-respected Canadian social organizations.

The book reports on an extra-parliamentary committee named the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA), established in 2009 as a lobbying venture by 21 members of parliament hostile to criticisms of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians. Continue reading A Handbook for Defenders of Free Speech on Palestine

On the Holocaust memorial day why I support Palestinian rights

In Canada, Holocaust Memorial Day has been established by Heritage Canada to be on April 11. It is a good opportunity to review what we learn from the Holocaust experience and how we apply these lessons to the troubled situation in the Middle East.

This year, students in more than 60 cities took part in educational meetings on conditions in Palestine as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, held March 1–7.

It is a controversial event, not popular in Canadian government circles.

It is criticized for supposedly dishonouring the victims of Hitler’s holocaust.

I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis’ mass murder of Europe’s Jews.

The tragic experience of my family and community under Hitler makes me alert to the suffering of other peoples denied their human rights today – including the Palestinians. Continue reading On the Holocaust memorial day why I support Palestinian rights

Israel’s apartheid: Making Palestinians pay for Hitler’s crimes

This speech was given on March 2, 2010, to a meeting of students at the University of Waterloo in Canada, held as part of the Israeli Apartheid Week. She, a holocaust survivor, is a member of Not in Our Name: Jewish Voices Against Zionism and of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto.

A year after a murderous Israel’s assault, the war on the people of Gaza continues. Gaza is still under siege – still surrounded by walls and checkpoints. Its people are denied the necessities of life and the right to rebuild and shape their future.

For me, as a survivor of the holocaust, the tragic situation in Gaza awakens memories of what I and my family experienced under Hitlerism – the ghetto walls, the killings, the systematic starvation and deprivation, the daily humiliations. Continue reading Israel’s apartheid: Making Palestinians pay for Hitler’s crimes

A Woman’s Voice of Resistance in Afghanistan

 A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, by Malalai Joya, with Derrick O’Keefe. Scribner, 2009.

5 January 2010 – Afghan social activist and writer Malalai Joya is the voice of another, hidden Afghanistan – the partisans of independence, democracy, and human rights that have no voice under the corrupt U.S.-sponsored regime of Hamid Karzai.

She has survived multiple assassination attempts for her outspoken advocacy of women’s rights and withdrawal of U.S., Canadian, and other NATO armed forces. She believes the people of Afghanistan, especially the women, can organize the struggle for fundamental rights such as health care, education, control of their bodies and their lives – but only when the foreign occupiers leave their country. Continue reading A Woman’s Voice of Resistance in Afghanistan