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“Right Wing Recall Defeated: How Kshama Sawant Won (again!),” hosted by Socialist Alternative Cincinnati and Columbus Socialist Alternative

Wednesday, January 26, 7pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Socialist Alternative leader and Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant has won a fourth election: a winter special face-off against a racist, right-wing recall backed by big business. What can we learn from this victory? How can we apply these lessons from Kshama’s successful independent working-class politics?

RSVP for this event by clicking “Going” on this “Facebook event” page.

Hosted by Socialist Alternative Cincinnati and Columbus Socialist Alternative.

Facebook Event

PDA/Greep Town Hall to save American Democracy

In the face of the Trump Cult’s fascist assault on American democracy, the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition has joined with the Progressive Democrats of America to present a uniquely powerful and comprehensive town hall.

The meeting—which drew more than 300 citizen participants—featured more than two dozen top-of-the-line intellectuals, organizers and activists offering their brilliance and their guidance on election protection.

We open with actress/activist MIMI KENNEDY and PDA Executive Director ALAN MINSKY with their deep insights into the forces attacking the remnants of our republic.

We’re then joined by ANDREA MILLER and RAY MCCLENDON, creators of the crucial “Georgia Way,” which against all conceivable odds turned two US Senate seats in Georgia to progressive campaigners who unseated Mitch McConnell.

They are followed by an astounding line-up of key players in saving American democracy, including:  REV. RODNEY SADLER, CHRISTIAN NUNES, MIKE FOX, TATONKA BRICCA, SARA NELSON, DANNY SHEEHAN, LORI PESANTE, ROBERT WILSON, JAMES FUKUDA, DANNY GOLDBERG, KENNY BRUNO, JOHN BRAKEY and JAN GOODMAN.

Is Washington Under Alien Control?

The drama currently unfolding in which the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to provoke a war with Russia over Ukraine is possibly the most frightening foreign policy misadventure since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1967 Lyndon Johnson attempt to sink the USS Liberty and blame it on Egypt, either of which could have gone nuclear. I can well recall the Robert Heinlein sci-fi book The Puppet Masters, later made into a movie, which described how alien-slugs, arriving by way of a flying saucer landing in Iowa, invaded the earth and parasitically attached themselves to the central nervous systems of humans and became able to completely control their minds. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And the tale gets really scary in geopolitical terms when some Secret Service Agents are “occupied” by the invaders and they are thereby poised to capture the President of the United States. I would point out that the movie came out when Bill Clinton was president, which should have provoked some concerns about whether it was fact or fiction.

50th Annual MLK Celebration

MLK

Tuesday, January 25, 2022, 6:45 PM

Democratic Socialists at OSU demanding higher wages and better working conditions for student workers employed by university

Students marching

If students cannot rely on their university to pay them a living wage and provide good working conditions, what do they do? This is the question many student workers are asking themselves at Ohio State University (OSU). While tuition, housing, food, and transportation costs continue to rise, wages for student workers employed by OSU remain stagnant. It is apparent to them that it is time to fight back.

On Friday January 21st, in collaboration with student workers, Students for a Democratic Society at Ohio State (SDSOSU) and Young Democratic Socialists at Ohio State (YDSOSU) held a protest to raise demands towards the university that student workers desperately need. They included a $15-an-hour minimum wage, free parking for student workers, paid sick leave, holiday pay, more frequent and higher raises, and higher work hour limits for international and DACA (a federal program to protect immigrant youth from deportation) students.

Activists in Canada Build Construction Site on Pipeline Executives’ Front Lawns

Toronto, Ontario, Canada — This morning, Toronto supporters of the Wet’suwet’en land defense struggle against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline set up construction sites at the Toronto homes of TC Energy Board Chair Siim Vanaselja and Royal Bank of Canada Executive Doug Guzman. The supporters also flyered the neighborhood with photos of the two men with signs warning, “Your neighbour is pushing the Coastal Gaslink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en Territory at gunpoint.”

How Israel’s ‘Facebook Law’ Plans to Control All Palestinian Content Online

It is ironic that even former right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had rejected a Knesset (Israeli Parliament) bill which proposed to give the government greater power to control and suppress online content. This was in 2016, and the bill was introduced by Netanyahu’s Likud party rival, Gideon Sa’ar. 

 

LUNANA: A YAK IN THE CLASSROOM: Film Review

Writer/director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s heartfelt Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom will charm the pants off of you – or, rather, the robes off of you. Because this captivating feature was shot mostly in the hard-to-get-to Kingdom of Bhutan, a Buddhist nation of less than 1 million inhabitants straddling the Eastern Himalayas between India and the Tibet region of the People’s Republic of China. Indeed, Lunana was largely lensed on location in the actual village of that same name, a remote, tiny hamlet, which translated into English Lunana means: “The Dark Valley.” Minus electricity, let alone Internet connectivity and cell receptivity, Dorji’s crew had to shoot on location there using solar power batteries.

We need to prevent war in Ukraine

Logo

No War in Ukraine! Nothing is worth risking war, much less nuclear war. No side wants war in Ukraine, and certainly not the people of Ukraine. Someone must find the courage to push back against the momentum toward war, and lead the way toward cooperation and disarmament.

We are alarmed by the increasing tensions between the nuclear-armed governments of the U.S. (and its NATO allies) and Russia and are extremely concerned about what seems to be the increasing likelihood of war.

We must raise our voices. Add your name and comments to the petition. Share it with others to sign. Then help us forward it to your elected officials.

Busting Myths: The Misrepresentation and Marketing of “Financial Literacy” - The Fallacies and Dangers of FL4ALL

Harvey J Graff

A public relations and marketing campaign called FL4ALL announced itself in a full-page ad in the New York Times on August 3, 2021. It represents a dangerous fiction and threat to students and unsuspecting “hard working citizens,” to repeat its promotional language. The campaign’s actions follow what I declared in my 1979 book, The Literacy Myth, the exaggerated importance of literacy by itself, taken out of context. To borrow terms from the field of literacy studies, “reading” the advertisement as “written” is revealing. 

Let’s look at the text. It misrepresents both literacy and economics, and is a danger to the population this corporate coalition claims to serve. 

First, no reputable person says or writes “FL” for “financial literacy.” Perhaps for a football league. Second, only marketers and business corporations seeking to derive financial profits would consider promoting a flawed slogan like “FL4ALL.” In corrupting well-established public civil rights movements, such sloganeering is a shameful misappropriation. The ad proclaims that “financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation.”

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