United States

Inspired by the Arab Spring and Spain's movement of The Indignants (which began occupying city squares to build a citizens' movement for real democracy and against austerity), the Occupy Wall Street movement began taking to the streets in September in the famous financial district in New York.

The declaration published below was unanimously passed by all members of Occupy Wall Street on September 29. It is the first official document for release.

On October 7, Rene Gonzalez will be released from a United States prison in Florida after serving a 15 year sentence. Gonzalez is one of the Cuban Five — five Cuban men jailed in the US for infiltrating right-wing anti-Cuban terrorist groups to defend the security of the Cuban people. The US government is now trying to stop Gonzalez’s immediate return to his homeland after his release. In the most cynical and mean-spirited fashion, a US court is extending his punishment by making him spend three years on probation in Florida.

On September 21, death row prisoner in the state of Georgia, Troy Davis, was killed by lethal injection. His execution came despite a campaign from around the world in his defence, including by Amnesty International, and protests outside the prison where he was held and across the US. Last-minute legal appeals in the US Supreme Court failed to stop the execution. Davis was found guilty of the murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989 and sentenced to death.

Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia on September 21.. Journalist Jon Lewis was present at the execution and told media waiting outside the prison that Davis was “defiant until the very end, defending his innocence until the end”. Davis was convicted of killing off duty Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. He was sentenced to death.

The article below is an abridged editorial from US progressive magazine Against The Current. * * * The decade opened with the attacks of September 11, 2001 may have symbolically closed with the elite US death-squad assassination of Osama bin Laden. But the turmoil of these post-9/11 years, notably the self-inflicted wounds of US capitalism, have exceeded the terrorist mastermind’s wildest dreams. There are the wars that George W Bush, with the support of congressional Democrats, launched in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After 15 days on strike, 45,000 workers from United States’ telecommunications company Verizon marched in to work on August 23 after getting agreement from their stubborn employer to bargain. The communication and electrical workers will be working under their old contracts while talks continue. They agreed not to strike again for 30 days. During the strike, which stretched from Virginia to Massachusetts, Verizon was unable to provide timely installation and repairs, and reports of outages plagued the company.

The United States is facing its gravest housing crisis since the Great Depression. By at least one measure, today's crisis is worse. Housing prices have now fallen 33% from their peak, compared with 31% during the depression. Yet despite the almost unprecedented nature of the housing collapse, the administration of US President Barack Obama has remained stunningly passive if not utterly disinterested. This inaction is criminal given the fact that the largest US banks have used illegal means to file and carry out foreclosures.

A further 52 people were arrested at the White House on August 22 for taking part in an ongoing sit-in. They are trying to push President Barack Obama to stand up to Big Oil and deny the permit for a huge new oil pipeline. Obama will decide this year on TransCanada’s permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This would send 900,000 barrels a day of the world’s dirtiest oil to US refineries, allowing further development of the Alberta tar sands in Canada. The pipeline would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Nearly half a year after workers revolted over Wisconsin Republican Govenor Scott Walker's February announcement that he intended to bust Wisconsin's public-sector unions, voters went to the polls in nine recall elections. Unions and their supporters hoped the polls would put the state Senate in the hands of Democrats ― whose 14 Senators left the state for a month after Walker announced his anti-union bill in a bid to block it. Despite an obscene amount of money flowing into the state over the past few months, the union movement fell just one seat short of its goal.

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing,” African American revolutionary Malcolm X, assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, once said in a comment on the capitalist media that applies to contemporary reporting on English riots or refugees.

As I write these words, out-of-control hordes are swarming throughout downtown Manhattan. Their disregard for human decency, for the sanctity of people’s homes, jobs, property and health is beyond anything seen since the Dark Ages. These men and women, almost all of them white and disturbingly antiseptic for people living in a filthy and crowded city, are dressed in bizarre outfits.