We recommend a viewing of this 30 minute documentary on poverty in the USA by the BBC’s Panorama team. Millions unemployed. Millions hungry. Millions homeless. Millions without access to health care. These are the facts of life in America at a time when corporate profits, worker productivity, and income inequality are at record highs.

It’s official; with Obama’s State of the Union address, the 2012 election race is underway. But does this really mean that "the era of the 1% is over," as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has asserted?

We all observed dramatic battles by organized labor in 2011. There were the broad militant struggles in Wisconsin by public workers responding to the vicious attacks from right-wing Republican Governor Walker. During the summer, CWA & IBEW members went on strike against Verizon. They battled against the demand for givebacks from the very profitable Verizon company. In Ohio, the labor movement mobilized its forces to repeal anti-labor laws by referendum and won a terrific victory, gaining 61% of the vote.

We republish here a graph that was originally published in the New York Times, based on figures from “The State of Working America” by the Economic Policy Institute. It covers the period from 1913 to the present, with a focus on the period after 1947. This is significant because 1947 can be considered the starting point of the post-Word War II economic boom, a period during which the capitalists were extracting so much profit from the workers that they were able to throw them a few extra crumbs. The mass workers’ movements in the 1930s and the strengthening of the unions after the war had taught them a few lessons about how to try to maintain relative class peace.

“Marx was right!” For Marxists, this is not a particularly profound revelation. We have long known that the German revolutionary's analysis of capitalism was as fundamentally sound as the capitalist system itself is fundamentally unsound. But let's face it: for decades, we've been in a small minority, fighting against the stream and against the odds. After spending a long time in the “wilderness,” that is beginning to change. The fact that the more serious capitalist economists are forced to admit the correctness of ideas they once ridiculed is an important symptom of a transformation in public consciousness./(Editorial for Socialist Appeal USA Issue 65/)

29 November: In very quick succession, the bad news continues to rain down from the different layers of government in Ontario. The Rob Ford municipal government in Toronto is making no effort to hide the fact that they are preparing a long lockout of city workers in January 2012. Meanwhile, the provincial Liberals’ throne speech outlined historic cuts in provincial spending — even greater than those seen in the Mike Harris days. As 2011 comes to a close, it is appearing that Ontario workers will have the fight of their lives on hand in 2012.

The Occupy movement has many people looking to past movements to see what we can learn from them that can help us in today’s struggles.  The period of the 1960s and early 1970s was one of upheaval around the world: May 1968, the Tet Offensive, the revolution in Pakistan, etc. The USA was not exempt from these powerful social movements. In the 1950s, the movement to end Jim Crow segregation helped to spur on movements against the U.S. imperialist war on Vietnam, large strike movements by the working class, and the movements for equal rights for women and the LGBT community.

The global Occupy Movement swept across Toronto on the weekend of 15th October. For five weeks, protesters engaged in daily protests, coordinated around the St. James Park encampment, until the police-enforced eviction on 23rd November 2011. What lessons can be drawn from the experience?

For 30 years, American workers have been under assault. For decades, there were very few fight backs, and even fewer successes. Between 1973 and 2007, private sector unionization decreased by over 75 per cent and wealth inequality increased by 40 per cent. Strike levels fell to record lows. Politically, things shifted ever further to the right as the Democrats and Republicans fell over each other to carry out the wishes of the capitalists.

On Tuesday, November 8th, Ohio workers went to the polls and repealed Gov. John Kasich’s (R-OH) infamous, anti-union Senate Bill 5 (SB5). The lopsided 61%-39% vote represents a major victory for organized labor, which harnessed its significant resources to help achieve the victory. Labor spent $2.6 million to send out 825,000 pieces of mail, flyer over 3,000 worksites with over 4.1 million leaflets, and knocked on over 1 million doors.

Rather than wither away, Islamophobia has only become stronger as we are gripped with political and economic crisis. As with other forms of xenophobia, it functions to identity “boogiemen” in order to deflect blame away from the failure of capitalism to deliver. In this way it is remarkably similar to the function of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.

Over 200,000 Quebec students went on strike on Thursday (10th November) against the tuition increases being imposed on them by the Quebec Liberal government. Premier Jean Charest's proposes to increase post-secondary tuition fees by a total of $1,625 over the next five years, the biggest tuition increase in the province’s history. 

On November 2,Oakland saw one of the biggest demonstrations in years with different sectors of the working class coming together to make their voices heard and successfully shutting down one of the biggest ports in the United States. It was a clear indication that the U.S. workers are reaching the limit of what they can take. However, the media did very little to report on these actions; instead it focused on the graffiti, smashed windows and confrontations with the police that involved a small minority, a small and unaccountable group at its fringes. This is a blatant attempt to demonize the movement and to present a violent image of it as a movement headed by anarchists and

On October 25, people on the streets were confronted by hundreds of riot police launching anti-riot grenades. Plumes of tear gas rose as protesters fled from the rubber bullets of the police. The scene we have described was not in the streets of Tunis, Cairo or Homs, but occurred in the streets of Oakland, California in the United States. On that Tuesday, the police forcefully evicted the occupation taking place in Oscar Grant plaza, renamed so after the police killing of Oscar Grant on New Year’s Eve 2009 in the city of Oakland.

The mainstream media has made much ado about the fact that #OccupyWallStreet does not have a unified, cohesive message. In trying to belittle it, they smugly point out that the occupy movement is an amorphous and heterogeneous mix of people. Every shade of political opinion and ideology is present: Makhno anarchists and Ron Paul libertarians; Trotskyist socialists and New Age neo-hippies; Anonymous and Zeitgeist; atheists and hard core believers; the homeless and those who have quit their jobs to become full time protesters against unemployment.