Canada
By Socialist Interventions
March 26, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — On November 26, 2018, General Motors announced a number of plant closures in North America, the largest of which was in Oshawa, Ontario. The Oshawa facility, once the largest auto complex on the continent, was to end all its assembly operations by the end of 2019.
The issue is not simply a matter of bringing the environmental movement and the labour movement together; each must be transformed if the sum is to be more than the currently limited parts. The environmental movement must raise itself to a new level by concretely engaging the working class and the labour movement must escape what for it has become an existential crisis. The threats and opportunities of the environmental crisis offer a chance for labour revival, but only if this incorporates a renewed approach to organizing, struggle, radical politics, and the maximization of informed membership participation.
By Karl Nerenberg
March 12, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rabble — Health-care experts and public health officials are expressing a high degree of concern over the potential impact of the COVID-19 virus on poor and vulnerable populations.
From the onset of this disease, the rich have made sure to take care of themselves, as the New York Times reported last week. Those for whom money is not an object are using private jets rather than commercial flights, vacationing in remote and isolated tropical paradises, stocking up on costly designer masks, and signing up for concierge medical services (or, as the Times calls them, "VIP emergency rooms").
The picture for poor and marginalised communities is the opposite.