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On Tuesday, November 8th, Ohio workers went to the polls and repealed Gov.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.

Cuban author Leonardo Padura Fuentes visited Denmark in September to present his latest book, The Man that Loved Dogs, recently published in Danish. The IMT in Denmark, Socialistisk Standpunkt, interviewed him, asking what led him to write the book and his views on the present situation in Cuba.

The comrades of the Workers’ International League in the United States have been intervening in the #Occupy Wall Street movement since the very beginning. Here we publish several reports from comrades around the United States on the movement and their intervention within it.

The Canadian corporate media commentators were all united with a single opinion — the #Occupy movement would have no traction north of the border due to Canada’s “stable banks that never needed a bailout”. Despite the fact that this is a lie, (the federal government gifted $25-billion to the Canadian banks via the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation), on Saturday 15^th October the people showed the press just how out of touch they are. Over 1,000 in Montreal, over 2,000 in Vancouver, over 5,000 in Toronto, and hundreds more in a dozen other cities, marched to join the international occupy movement.

Judging from last night’s Ontario election results, it would not appear that we are currently living in the most turbulent time in several generations.  The disappointing campaigns of the three political parties — the Liberals, Tories, and NDP — carried through into the election where, for the first time in Ontario history, less than half of eligible voters found a reason to cast a ballot.  The CBC was vindicated in their decision to give preference to the Leafs’ 2-0 shutout of the Habs and punting election coverage to CBC News Network.

A letter from a student at New York University (NYU), Cecillia Gingerich, who was a member of the University of London Marxist Society while studying in London in the spring of 2010. She is now a participant in Occupy Wall Street and in her letter gives a first hand account of her experience of the movement from the beginning.