South African Metalworkers Union Fighting Political Corruption and Building a Socialist Movement

with
Irvin Jim, General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the biggest single trade union in South Africa. He is a strong critic of the ruling African National Congress, which he accuses of failing to implement the 1955 Freedom Charter. 

The Metalworkers union sees much of the leadership of the ANC as supporting a "post-Apartheid neoliberal capitalist South Africa with South African and multinational corporations and the South African white political community". Jim suggests that NUMSA is a union whose goal is the creation of a "Socialist Republic of South Africa" . The mission is to  convince society that capitalism has failed and a new worker-centered economic dispensation is required. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is planning to form a political party to fight for the abolishment of capitalism The newly launched trade union grouping in South Africa – the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) – promises to be a voice for the growing numbers of unorganized and marginalized workers in the country. 

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Dilma Rousseff Discusses the Attack on Democracy

and Human Rights in Brazil

The parliamentary coup that forced President Dilma Rousseff out of power has resulted in mass opposition to the interim government of  Michael Temer, who has known throughout Brazil as a golpista.  The  international community will need to pay attention, and we will need solidarity with U.S. organizations like the Committee to Defend Democracy in Brazil formed in February 2016 by artists, scholars, representatives of human rights movements, women’s groups, political parties, activists of environmental movements, and sectors of health services, among many others, whose aim is to support initiatives that defend the rule of law and democracy in

Brazil. Listen to President Rousseff as she spoke before a standing

room only audience of labor activists in NY, as she decried the

impeachment proceedings as a betrayal and an injustice and how her government was the target of nonstop sabotage.  Rousseff said. "The objective was to stop her from governing and therefore allow an environment inviting the coup." Before the cheering audience President Rousseff talked about the opposing forces engulfing the media and sectors of the legislative, judiciary and executive powers, as well as a part of the Brazilian elite, who worked to destabilize the sovereignty of the people and of the Brazilian Constitution. She further insisted that only respect for the laws of the democratic State brought about by the popular vote would bring stability and prosperity to the people of Brazil, contributing to the real fight against widespread corruption and the obstruction of public policies as they are necessary to national and international growth.  

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Fighting the Debt Crisis in Puerto Rico
with
Antonio Carmona Reis, social science professor at the University of Puerto Rico, and a militant with the Association of University Professors and a pro-independence activist.

Puerto Rico has a poverty rate approaching 50 percent, and a public debt that amounts to over $20,000 dollars per inhabitant.  With its poverty rate, more than double that of the United States’ poorest state Mississippi Puerto Rico had serious long-term economic problems that, like its current massive public debt, have been historically papered over.  Most of the media attention on Puerto Rico’s debt has focused on technical issues relating to the solvency of municipal bonds and austerity measures. Ignored is the history of how U.S. policies have resulted in more than three and a half million Puerto Ricans being affected by its colonial status.

The bottom line is that Puerto Rico is the United States’ colony, that it decided to take by force 117 years ago, and has since treated like a resented orphan it has consistently undernourished politically and economically.  Puerto Rico’s current fiscal crisis is, in this sense, really a crisis of American colonial policies.    

Meanwhile amidst the poverty and debt, the hedge fund vultures and Wall Street banks and lawyers are circling Puerto Rico.  They, are, sensing a fiscal death spiral they can feed off and care little about the consequences for millions of residents as they manipulate a financial system devoid of any social conscience.  The board appointed to oversee Puerto Rico’s debt restructuring is turning the island’s recession into a depression, of a magnitude seldom seen around the world.  Unemployment, already at 12.4 percent, is soaring. The plan, which puts the creditors’ interests above those of the island’s economy and people, has created a debt/death spiral and growing resistance to it by Puerto Ricans who are suffering under its yoke. 

to download or play stream go to

https://archive.org/details/BuildingBridgesFightingTheDebtCrisisInPuertoRico 

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