/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

US Volkswagen workers file for union election to join United Auto Workers
It is the first union election filing for the union since it launched a massive campaign aimed at organizing 150,000 workers at non-unionized auto plants in the US in the wake of securing historic gains in their contracts at the big three US automakers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/18/volkswagen-workers-file-union-election-to-join-uaw

San Francisco protesters who blocked bridge to demand cease-fire will avoid criminal proceedings
Seventy-eight protesters were ordered to do five hours of community service and pay restitution to avoid criminal proceedings for allegedly blocking traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for hours in November to demand a cease-fire in Gaza, prosecutors said.
https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-protesters-charged-israel-gaza-war-3f48ce5eecfb9f49b30bc989dbef0d25

War on Gaza: Christian Americans mobilise for Gaza ceasefire and against Zionism
"Christian Zionism and Christian Nationalism work side by side - both are ideologies that justify violence against others, fueling antisemitism and anti-Muslim violence, and currently enabling a genocide. We instead turn to the liberating path of Jesus, who fought against empire and proclaimed 'Blessed are the peacemakers'."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-christian-americans-mobilise-gaza-ceasefire-and-against-zionism

Attorney wants stiffest penalties ahead of sentencings for Rankin Co. ‘Goon Squad’
Attorneys for the two men who were tortured by six Rankin County law enforcement officers are seeking the stiffest sentences possible ahead of their sentencings this week. “Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker continue to suffer emotionally and physically since this horrific and bloody attack by Rankin County deputies,” said attorney Malik Shabazz. “We are advocating for the stiffest of sentences for the defendants.”
https://www.wlbt.com/2024/03/18/attorney-wants-stiffest-penalties-ahead-sentencings-rankin-co-goon-squad/

Florida is seeing an increase in homelessness. A Republican bill could make it worse
The new law will require counties and municipalities without sufficient existing capacity to establish homeless camps, with state oversight, far away from more prominent facilities such as parks and waterfront spaces, and impose penalties if they allow or authorize rough sleeping outside of them. Equally concerning to critics is that there is no mention of increased funding for substance abuse and mental health treatment promised by DeSantis when he promoted legislative proposals to “combat homelessness” in a February press release.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/18/florida-homelessness-bill-ron-desantis

Supreme Court That 'Let Trump Off the Hook' Allows Insurrection Ban on State Official
The high court—which has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees and Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife backed the Republican's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss—declined to take the case of Couy Griffin, who was booted off the Otero County Commission by a New Mexico court in 2022, after he was convicted of breaching and occupying Capitol grounds.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/couy-griffin

EPA bans remaining uses of cancer-causing asbestos in the US
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a United States ban on the ongoing use of chrysotile asbestos – a carcinogen that the agency estimates is linked to more than 40,000 U.S. deaths each year.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/epa-bans-remaining-cancer-causing-asbestos-us/story?id=108248383

Ben Barka Was a Lost Leader of the International Left
Mehdi Ben Barka was a leading figure in the Moroccan nationalist movement against French colonialism. After independence, he became the focal point for opposition to the autocratic rule of King Hassan II and a driving force behind the alliance of national liberation movements that came together at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana. However, Ben Barka never made it to the conference. On October 29, 1965, he was approached by two police officers on his way to a well-known brasserie in central Paris. They led him to a car and then he was driven to a villa on the outskirts of Paris. He was never seen again. It is likely that Ben Barka’s assassination was ordered by King Hassan II and carried out by his interior minister Mohamed Oufkir, who was convicted of the murder in absentia by a French court in 1967. Supporting roles were played by President Charles de Gaulle’s secret services, a network spanning parallel police forces and the criminal underworld, masterminded by his dirty-tricks fixer, Jacques Foccart, and by Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad. The full truth behind the murder has never come to light. Successive French presidents from De Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron have persistently obstructed justice in the name of secret défense, a perfectly legal and very effective means of covering up state crimes.
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/ben-barka-morocco-colonialism-nationalism

Workers' rights have not improved since the P&O scandal – quite the reverse
Despite a flurry of cosmetic outrage from Tory ministers at the time, they have done nothing to deter employers from copying P&O by dismissing workers en masse to replace them with cheaper labour, and have further undermined workers’ rights through draconian anti-strike legislation. There are few clearer examples of the impunity granted to corporate crooks than the P&O scandal. Boss Peter Hebblethwaite actually admitted in Parliament that the firm knew it was behaving illegally when it sacked 786 seafarers by video link (claiming that they were being made redundant, though they were in fact being replaced) and then had them escorted off their ships by masked goons. P&O simply calculated that the cost of breaking the law would be outweighed by the higher profits it could make by hiring foreign workers on less than the minimum wage (and indeed, its parent company DP World announced a 50 per cent increase in profits in the first half of 2022). So useless are the deterrents to corporate law-breaking in Britain that he even blandly told MPs he would do it again.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-workers-rights-have-not-improved-po-scandal-quite-reverse

Alexandra Kollontai: Communism and the Family
Will the family be maintained in the Communist State? Will it just be as it is today? That is the question which is tormenting the women of the working class, and which is likewise receiving attention from their comrades the men. In recent days this problem has particularly been agitating all minds among the working women, and this should not astonish us. Life is changing under our eyes; former habits and customs are gradually disappearing; the entire existence of the proletarian family is being organized in a manner that is so new, so unaccustomed, so "bizarre", as to have been impossible to foresee. That which women at the present day all the more perplexed is the fact that divorce has been rendered easier in Soviet Russia. As a matter of fact, by virtue of the decree of the People's Commissaries of December 18th, 1917, divorce has ceased to be a luxury accessible only to rich; henceforth the working woman will not have to petition for months, or even for years, for a separate credential entitling her to make herself independent of a brutish or drunken husband, accustomed to beat her. Henceforth, divorce may be amicably obtained within the period of a week or two at most. But it is just this ease of divorce which is such a hope to women who are unhappy in their married life, which simultaneously [???] other women particularly those who have become accustomed to considering the husband as the "provider", as the only [???] in who do not yet understand that women must become accustomed to seek and to find this support elsewhere, no longer in the person of the man, but in the person of society, of the State.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/family.htm

Thanks News Anon