Jan Myrdal

PEOPLE 

Sumanta Banerjee

Frontier | Vol. 53, No. 28, Jan 10 – 16, 2021

I met Jan Myrdal for the first time in Delhi in 1980–through my friend Gautam Navlakha (who is now languishing in a jail in Maharashtra) , and the late C V Subba Rao (professor in a Delhi college, who led the civil liberties movement during the 1970-80 years in Delhi ). Both of us at that time were involved in the human rights movement through our organisation PUDR (People’s Union of Democratic Rights). Jan had come to India that year, with his daughter Eva, at the invitation of one of the then CPI (M-L) leader, Chandrapulla Reddy, to visit the villages in parts of Andhra Pradesh, claimed to be ‘liberated’ by the Maoists from the hold of the oppressive landlords. He roamed around those villages, found out for himself the facts, and later wrote the book: ‘India Awaits’ (1984). It exposed to the world the new experiments that were being carried out in the backwaters of India. During his stay in Delhi, we spent evenings having long discussions and debates over the future of the Left movement–usually at Gautam’s place in Greater Kailash.

2020: Unprecedented Struggles, Renewed Hope for Victories

PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES  

Peoples Dispatch | December 31, 2020

2020 brought unexpected and unforeseen challenges. It tore away the fantasies of the capitalist regimes who amid the worst global healthcare crisis in history, still put profits over people. People’s movements and socialist governments showed that a different world is possible, and that we must fight for it.

One Hundred Years of Indian Communism

COMMUNISM AND INDIA

Prabhat Patnaik

International Development Economics Associates | October 18, 2020

A theoretical analysis of the prevailing situation, from which the proletariat’s relationship with different segments of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry is derived, and with it the Communist Party’s tactics towards other political forces, is central to the Party’s praxis. A study of this praxis over the last one hundred years of the existence of communism in India, though highly instructive, is beyond my scope here. I shall be concerned only with some phases of this long history.

There is No Shortcut to an Ecosocialist Future

ECOSOCIALIST FUTURE

Voting for liberals won’t work. Nor will isolated actions by small groups. Building mass movements is hard work, but it is the only way to win

Fred Fuentes

Climate and Capitalism | October 21, 2020

Winning broad support for a radical challenge to the triple crisis requires patient work.

(Republished, with permission, from Australia’s ecosocialist newspaper, Green Left)

Faced with a global triple crisis — health, economic and climate — it is no wonder most people believe the world is heading in the wrong direction. But who people blame for this situation and their responses have varied.

Socialists believe the capitalist system is at the heart of these crises and that the solution lies in replacing it with a democratic socialist society.

Canda: Is Our Right to Peaceful Protest Disappearing?

Council of Canadians | January 25, 2020

Demonstrators hold signs to protest the construction of TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. (Photo: Unist’ot’en Camp/Facebook)

 

The right to protest is an important part of Canadian democracy and the right to free expression.

Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the freedom of peaceful assembly. Protests are a way for people to express themselves for or against decisions made by government or other powerful institutions. People have taken to the streets throughout history to stand up for what they believe in.

Switzerland: World Economic Forum Kicks Off Amid Demonstrations

teleSUR | January 21, 2020

Anti-World Economic Forum protesters marching on Bern, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Some 3,000 politicians, businessmen, and academics attend the annual high-level pro-corporate meeting.

Hundreds of environmental and social activists are performing a three-day protest march which departed from Landquart and heads to Davos, where businessmen and politicians attend the World Economic Forum that begins on Tuesday.

USA: ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal is just one step away from freedom,’ says Maureen Faulkner

by Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio

San Francisco Bay View |  November 12, 2019

Mumia Abu-Jamal

From the minute Mumia picked up a microphone and a pen at the age of 14, Philadelphia’s notoriously racist police department has been seeking to silence him. Just look at the FBI files, documenting that the Philadelphia PD Civil Disobedience Unit Red Squad trailed him – and the Police Chief Frank Rizzo targeted him, feeding his name to the FBI to put him on the “security index.” Mumia was literally covering community events and rallies and writing for the Black Panther Party newspaper, all this while he was still in his teens!

Mumia was a daily radio reporter for WHYY and NPR in the early ‘80s, drawing both acclaim and the notice of Frank Rizzo and the Philadelphia Police for his award winning reporting.

100 Killed, 5,500 Injured in New Wave of Protests in Iraq

teleSUR | October 31, 2019

Iraqi demonstrators carry away a man who was affected by a tear gas during an anti-government protest in Baghdad, Iraq October 31, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

The Higher Ministerial Committee formed to investigate civilian deaths during the initial protests revealed in its final report that 157 people perished, including eight members of the security forces.

The Iraqi High Commission For Human Rights said on Wednesday that 100 people have been killed and 5,500 others injured in the latest round of anti-government protests, which began Oct. 25.

Working in the bourgeois press: Prelude to a career in left journalism

by Noyma Appelbaum

People’S World | November 01, 2019

A newsroom of the 1940s. | AP

This is the fourth of a number of excerpted stories from a memoir “Where Were You on May Day? Transitions in Red, 1930s-1960s.” Earlier installments can be read here.

The Communist movement was prolific in its production of books, pamphlets, slogans, popular art, photographs, and music in support of its ideas. Here are fragments of two of the Communist-inspired songs written in the late 1920s and early 1930s I learned and which we sang at meetings and around campfires:

Banker and boss hate the red Soviet star
Gladly they’d build a new throne for the tsar
But from the steppes to the dark British sea
Lenin’s Red Army brings victory.

A Week in the Northeast

by David Rovics

Dissident Voice | September 29, 2019

“Are you going to write something about this?  If you do, I’ll share it.”

This wasn’t exactly a writing assignment, from one of the co-founders of the venerable anarchist newspaper from Detroit, Fifth Estate, but close enough to prompt a travelogue that I’d likely have written anyway…