Costas Lapavitsas: Merkel’s visit to Greece shows Eurozone leadership don’t want to push Greece out, but situation is explosive as people are furious at austerity measures
Most Greeks Look to Left for Solutions, but Far Right Gaining Strength
Costas Lapavitsas Pt.2: Left party Syriza leads polls but conditions for fascism also developing as crisis deepens
One hundred thousand workers march on the capital as unions warn austerity isn’t working and threaten a general strike for the first time since 1926,
from The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann (RT)
Richard Wolff, economist & visiting professor in the Graduate Program for International Affairs, New School University, joins Thom Hartmann. Workers in Greece went on strike Wednesday to protest another round of spending cuts under consideration by the Greek government. Public employees, teachers, medics, lawyers, and even banksters walked off their jobs and took to the streets to protest salary and pension cuts. It’s the first such strike since the new Conservative government took power in June. Yet the Greek government today unveiled it’s new austerity budget pledging to cut $11.5 billion over the next several years. So what will this latest round of cuts due to a nation that is already collapsing under the banksters demands?
from The Nation
The short-term work of strikes and sensational displays of worker power will not be enough to dislodge capitalism’s grip on our lives, says Professor Gayatri Spivak of Columbia University. These short-term tactics must be paired with the longer-term efforts of education and organization. This educational work, Spivak insists in this video, is “not really the pedagogy of the oppressed, it is indeed the pedagogy of the liberated, because if you do not have training in the practice of freedom, when you win… it will not last.”
from Democracy Now!
On Tuesday, May 1st, known as May Day or International Workers Day, Occupy Wall Street protesters hope to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country under the slogan, “General Strike. No Work. No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere.” Events are planned in 125 cities. We speak with leading social theorist David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about how Occupy Wall Street compares to other large-scale grassroots movements throughout modern history. His most recent book is “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.”
from The Nation
When May 1 rolls around, the proposed general strike will probably not strictly resemble famed general strikes of history. But the tactic is no less significant now than it used to be. In fact, a lot rides on this upcoming May Day. This video, featuring archival footage and the words of Marina Sitrin, Francis Fox Piven and John Nichols, explains why the general strike matters so much, not just for Occupy and labor but for the legitimacy of democracy itself.
from The Nation
The idea of the general strike is not reformist simply because it demands changes to laws and working conditions. Rather, as Professor Gayatri Spivak of Columbia University argues in this video, the general strike is one vital tool in the array of tactics that must be used to fundamentally alter the relations between the classes. What’s more, revolution will not come about through a “catastrophic change” as was once imagined, and that concept should be given a decent burial.
from The Nation
The call for a general strike on May 1 should not be solely about work, argues Marina Sitrin, a postdoctoral fellow at CUNY specializing in global mass movements. Instead, it should reshape our ideas about how society is built, as Sitrin explains in this video, by asking hard questions about class, consumption, work and society.
from The Nation
The idea of a general strike might seem a little outdated for today’s global economy, but general strikes nevertheless demonstrate not just the power but also the necessity of coordinated action for social and economic justice. In this video, John Nichols, who grew up in a factory town, offers a brief overview of the history of unionization and the general strike and the impact of both on workers’ rights.
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