Tag: capitalism

May Day, the day celebrated for over a century as an emblem of workers’ power, seems to have become a symbol of its fall. Social and communal wealth has been funneled to banking and corporate interests – bailouts for billionaires – while workers have faced, at best, a plague of cutbacks; at worst, mass layoffs and firings as businesses reorganize by being even more antagonistic to labor.

Who IS Angela Davis? Don't miss Angela Carroll's new film, “Angela Y. Davis: Radical Pedagogy,” screening Wednesday, March 10, 1-3 p.m. in the Richard Oakes Room, Cesar Chavez Student Union, SF State University, and 6-7 p.m. and 7-8 p.m., at the Jazz Heritage Center, 1330 Fillmore St., San Francisco; Friday, March 12, 8-9 p.m. and 9-10 p.m., also at the Jazz Heritage Center; and Thursday, April 1, 6:30 p.m., at Barrios Unidos, 1817 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz.

They shoot us, then display us as looters. / Then they bring in the U.N. and the rest of the U.S. friends, / Blackwater forces who now go under the new name Xe, / Who, like a fatal disease, once they get in, they don’t / Never plan on leaving. ... / Haiti! The land of my brotherman … and sister woman, / The ones that kicked Napolean’s ass, / The land of sugar cane and Africans, / The land in which the enslaved revolt.

Recently the cold war against Cuba was ratcheted up when an acrimonious debate broke out over the issue of racism in Cuba and for the first time the issue of Brazil was thrown into the mix. The brouhaha began when scores of prominent African Americans, many of whom should have known better, put their names to a petition calling upon the Cuban government to release a dissident from prison.

Welcome M1 of dead prez to East and West Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Sonoma, San Jose, Santa Cruz – 7 events in 7 cities on 7 days, Sept. 23-29, comparing his experiences in Gaza, Cairo and Europe with ghetto life in the U.S., benefiting SF Bay View and Block Report Radio. Check out new M1 interviews, with Min. of Info JR and KPFA Morning Show.

Angela Davis called for a new movement to abolish what she called "the prison-industrial complex" in the U.S., which has become the largest jailer in the world. "Racism is directly responsible for the fact that the U.S. has become the great incarcerator."

Banco de Venezuela is one of the most important banks in Venezuela, with a 12 percent share of the market in loans and obtained profits of US$170 million in the first half of 2008, a 29 percent increase on 2007, when its profits had already increased by 20 percent. It has 285 offices and 3 million customers. Banco de Venezuela was nationalized in 1994 after a massive banking crisis which bankrupted 60 percent of the banking sector, only to be privatized in 1996 and bought by the Spanish multinational banking group Grupo Santander for only US$300 million. In only nine months Grupo Santander recovered its original investment.

The Prisoners of Conscience Committee delegation from the United States returned recently from a fact-finding mission in El Salvador. We were in three cities - San Salvador, Suchitoto and Sansonate - and we talked to former combatants, government officials, union leaders, community leaders, members of street organizations, former political prisoners and more. One of my favorite groups that we met was Radio Zurda, a collective of youth who do a political radio show heard in El Salvador and Honduras, targeted towards a youth audience.