Education and the Class Divide
Reflections on the Student Movement in the UK
Between rhetoric and reality: Evaluating the Oakland teachers’ strike
LA Teachers Strike Over the Emptying Out of the City's Classroom
Unrest in Panama
Born into a rich family in Panama, Juan Carlos Varela is an entrepreneur who is fiercely in favour of the free market. He led his conservative Panamenista Party into the elections in 2009, but was then bought off by his rival Ricardo Martinelli, who offered him the vice-presidency if he stopped running against him. In 2014 he won the presidential election, coming in on promises to develop the economic infrastructure of Panama and to proceed with urban renovation in the free trade zone city of Colon.
USA: The Role of the Union in the Teachers Strikes
It should be common sense that workers can only use their collective strength if united in some body which includes them all. But that assumes that the unions today are representative of the workers. Under modern capitalist conditions the union exists to mediate wage labour on behalf of the state. The unions’ existence as permanent bodies means they have to comply with the rules of the capitalist game. They have become another layer of management within the system.
Tragic events in Russia
Exactly a week after Putin’s “landslide” victory in the Russian Presidential election (March 18) a terrible fire broke out in the “Winter Cherry” shopping and entertainment centre of the Siberian city of Kemerovo. It killed more than 80 people, at least 40 of whom are children. Some are still missing. Appalling though Kemerovo was, it was not an isolated incident.
Education Strikes from West Virginia and Kenya to the UK
On Sunday March 25 the CWO held a meeting in Newcastle focussing on the recent educational strikes across the world. It was attended by students, academics and other university workers (some in the CWO, some not) who had participated in the recent pickets of Newcastle, York and Durham universities. A CWO comrade gave the following introduction.
Socialist Sunday School Song Book
Socialist Sunday Schools were a popular form of social activity from the early 1900s to the 1950s. They taught socialism instead of religion. Their ideology appears to have been Fabian(or at very least not class struggle marxism or anarchism but something safe and unoffensive)
Reproducing here for historical interest and value. This should not be taken as my agreement with their politics.