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Saudi feminist artist’s work inspires struggle for change

Ms Saffaa is a Saudi artist currently studying in Australia. As part of her practice, she creates murals championing the freedom of women in Saudi Arabia — in particular drawing attention to the prohibitive “guardian­ship” laws.

Under these laws, women must be accompanied by a male “guardian” to do many every day activities — laws the Saudi regime slightly relaxed last month in a sign of pressure from campaigners.

Via Twitter, Saffaa’s work was taken up by a grassroots movement in Saudi Arabia and is now synonymous with the struggle to end these laws.

Comey sacking furthers Trumps authoritarian perspective

US President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey for one reason: he was not 100% loyal to Trump. The boldness of the move was to underscore Trump’s drive to establish an increasingly authoritarian presidency.

Gains and challenges for the left in Portugal

In these almost two years of socialist government, it has been possible with the support of the left-wing parties, to reverse privatisations in public transport, restore four previously eliminated national holidays, reverse salary cuts for public sector workers, reduce the working week in the public sector to 35 hours, eliminate the surcharge on individual income tax and increase the supplementary solidarity payment for the elderly as well as family allowances and other social subsidies.

However, despite this progress, the current and future situations is not without cause for concern.

Learn from Malcolm X

We live in strange times. A white, nationalist, billionaire businessperson has been elected president. His 24-member cabinet is made up primarily of wealthy white men, many former Goldman Sachs executives, who US President Donald Trump’s most extreme nationalist ideologues call “New York liberals.” Trump has appointed the fewest number of women and minorities to his cabinet since Ronald Reagan.

Photos: Sydney Al Nakba march

Photos from the Sydney Nakba march on May 15. Activists sent solidarity to the Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike during the protest.

Photos: Students protest fee hikes

Students marched from University of Sydney to University of Technology Sydney on May 17 to protest the latest proposed fee hikes in the federal budget.

The Bentley Effect — the story of the birth of a movement

It is rare to see such a powerful film as Brendan Shoebridge’s The Bentley Effect, which focuses on the successful struggle by Northern Rivers communities to save their land and water from the coal seam gas juggernaut at Bentley, near Lismore, NSW.

The power of community is often talked about, but this film shows how it actually happened, in a powerful tale of political awakening among several generations.

Radical poetry and the latest Green Left news

Published on May 18, 2017

In this week's vlog, Blair Vidakovich recounts the wonderful revolutionary solidarity that the Democratic Federation of North Syria has shown refugees, unlike the treatment they have faced at the hands of imperialist countries.

Also features snippets of radical poetry.