/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Alabama lawmakers OK bill barring state incentives to companies that voluntarily recognize union
The Alabama Senate voted 23-5 for the bill by Republican Sen. Arthur Orr, of Decatur. It now moves to the Alabama House of Representatives. The measure says that companies would be ineligible for economic development incentives if they voluntarily recognize a union after a majority of employees return union-authorization cards — a process sometimes called “card check-off.” Under the proposal, a secret ballot election would be required to determine if a union would be formed.
https://apnews.com/article/alabama-legislature-unions-ballot-elections-state-incentives-a94bafbe016d05b4031b70293a2a261f

Volkswagen union vote in Tennessee to test UAW's power after victories in Detroit
A victory would give the UAW its first major automaker win outside General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler parent Stellantis. It would also offer a launching point for the union’s unprecedented organizing campaign of 13 automakers in the U.S. following major contract wins in 2023 with the Detroit companies.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/16/vw-workers-to-vote-on-joining-uaw-union-in-tennessee.html

Denver sweeps homeless encampment due to health concerns
The advocate group Housekeys Action Network said the encampment is made up of about 150 people who gathered there because Mayor Mike Johnston promised to break up large encampments into micro units. The city confirmed that they will not move people from this encampment into housing. The city will remove all items obstructing public areas during a coordinated multiagency cleanup.
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/denver-homeless-camp-sweep-la-alma/73-00be03eb-3380-4e8e-b1d4-edd1e017e98e

Migrants rally at NYC's City Hall, want officials to make it easier for them to work
The migrants and their advocates say they've received unfair treatment and have been left forgotten. The rally at City Hall was a bid to get attention of state and federal lawmakers. They're hoping changes could be made to immigration laws, and they could help contribute to the economy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/migrant-rally-for-housing-work-permits/

DeSantis tweaks Florida book challenge law, blames liberal activist who wanted Bible out of schools
The new law limits people who don’t have students in a school district to one challenge per month. The PEN America report says Florida is responsible for 3,135 of the 4,349 school book bans in the United States so far this school year. Just this week in conservative Clay County, one person challenged 40 books, Meehan said.
https://apnews.com/article/florida-ron-desantis-education-book-bans-65daf4420318a837487976c10bb75d86

'Call Your Senator Now': Privacy Advocates Ramp Up Effort to Stop Spying Expansion
The Turner-Himes amendment would significantly expand who could be ordered to cooperate with government surveillance efforts, broadening Section 702 language to encompass "any other service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used" to transmit or store electronic communications.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/call-your-senator-now-privacy-advocates-ramp-up-effort-to-stop-spying-expansion

ThSince Oct. 7, StopAntisemitism has flagged hundreds of people who have criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza. Many were swiftly fired.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded by attacking Gaza, groups have poured resources into identifying people with opposing political beliefs, sometimes deploying aggressive publicity campaigns that have resulted in profound real-world consequences. Within weeks of Oct. 7, “doxing trucks” prowled the campuses of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, displaying the names and photos of students and professors who had signed statements declaring solidarity with Palestinians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/16/stop-antisemitism-twitter-zionism-israel/
https://archive.is/ySRjm

Tudeh Party of Iran, The catastrophic playing with fireby imperialism and reactionary forces in the Middle East, and its perils for the people of the region and world peace
In recent months, the policies of global imperialism led by the US imperialism in the region have increasingly placed the Middle East in the quagmireof the risk of a widespread military confrontation which might extend the war to Iran's soil, all the while unjustifiably defending the "crimes against humanity" policies of the Netanyahu government, which have led to the massacre of over 33,000 Palestinians, including more than 11,000 children. The expansion of the US military presence in the region and the announcement of the direct participation of the US naval fleet and the air forces of Britain and France in destroying Iranian drones indicate a dangerous policy pursued jointly by imperialism and local reactionary forces in the region.
http://www.solidnet.org/article/Tudeh-Party-of-Iran-The-catastrophic-playing-with-fireby-imperialism-and-reactionary-forces-in-the-Middle-East-and-its-perils-for-the-people-of-the-region-and-world-peace/

Petro Is Trying to Rein in Colombia’s Infamous Riot Police
The 2021 demonstrations and national strike in Colombia, called to protest unpopular tax increases and health care reforms proposed by then president Iván Duque and to demand an end to police violence, were themselves met, unsurprisingly, with police violence. Despite an aggressive campaign by official media and government outlets to portray the protesters as vandals and criminals tied to terrorist groups, videos of the rampant human rights abuses, violence, and assassinations against peaceful protesters on the part of the Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, or ESMAD), the country’s dreaded riot police, went viral on social media. The police repression backfired and helped swing the tide of popular sentiment against the right-wing government, culminating in the election of President Gustavo Petro, a left-wing ex-guerrilla. President Petro began his administration with a plan for “Total Peace,” negotiating with the major armed groups to bring peace to a country that has been mired in a civil war for as long as anyone can remember. Although he has had success in getting many criminal organizations and guerrillas to lay down their arms, Petro has been struggling to reform another of the armed groups frequently responsible for violence and assassinations in Colombia — that is, the ESMAD.
https://jacobin.com/2024/04/gustavo-petro-police-reform-esmad

Andrew Rothstein: Zionism
Zionism told the Jewish worker not to have anything to do with the socialist movement in his own country, which linked him with the rest of the workers there (‘time enough to exercise the right to build socialist parties once the Jewish people are in Palestine’, said Herzl in August 1903, at St. Petersburg). The anti-Semites told the rest of the workers not to have anything to do with the Jews. In short, Zionism was anti-semitism inside out. How had this come about? Zionism appeared as a reaction of middle-class Jews against the ‘pogroms’, or officially-inspired massacres of Jews, which befouled Roumania from the ’60’s onwards, Russia from the ’80’s: and against the anti-Semitic propaganda, also encouraged by the authorities, which developed in these countries, as well as in Austria-Hungary and Germany, by the end of the century. Indeed what mass support it got came from the terror aroused by the pogroms, not because the miserably poor Jewish workers, artisans, petty hucksters and peasants were moved by national feeling. But what was the origin of all these bestialities? It was the panic of the ruling classes at the growth of socialism and the labour movement: they attempted to use the Jews as a whipping-boy. Furthermore, the Jewish industrial workers in all European countries (in Russia from the ’80’s onwards) were among the most active in trade unionism and in accepting progressive socialist ideas. Their response to anti-semitism and pogroms was to strengthen their organisation and their links with the general working-class movement in the lands where they lived. As such they were welcomed: Plekhanov, in the first report of the Russian labour movement ever presented to an international Congress (London, 1896), wrote that ‘in some respects they can be considered the vanguard of the workers’ army in Russia’. But for that very reason the Jewish labour movement was not welcomed by the petty Jewish capitalists and Jewish intellectuals wanting a middle-class career. For them Zionism was a heaven-sent way of diverting the Jewish workers from pursuit of their class interests—and in this, too, it coincided with the desires of the ruling classes.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/rothstein-andrew/1953/03/zionism.htm

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