Socialism

Really been enjoying this podcast. Highly recommend giving it a look! Most are paywalled unfortunately but they do a free one every month. They don't take sponsors though

The alt-text "AI ART & intellectual property" in blue, next to the ancom flag with a green brain made of circuits over it. This is all on a digital art wooden background featuring individual textured planks with varying distances between them lined up as a wall.

I just discovered economist Gary Stevenson. He has over a million views of each weekly video on YouTube.

He is working class AF but graduated from LSE & Oxford and then made millions since 2008 betting that inequality will rise and that most people will be worse off. He was the most successful trader for Citibank but quit in disgust to reveal the scam to the public.

~~https://youtu.be/03lydX8XHF4&amp;t=1m0s~~ <--- Fuck Piers Morgan

Watch/hear a cutup with just the Gary parts instead https://youtu.be/BRvMuefnl0k

One has to strain to think of even one or two pro-worker or pro-union moves that Trump has taken. The White House says his tariffs are pro-worker and pro-union, insisting they will bring back manufacturing jobs. But many economists say Trump’s tariffs will hurt myriad industries and workers. His auto tariffs, for instance, will increase car prices and as a result, auto sales, auto production and auto jobs will decline, at least short-term. Not only that, other countries’ retaliation will pummel various US industries and trigger additional layoffs. Moreover, Trump’s tariffs will undermine GDP growth and perhaps push the US into recession. Bottom line: Trump remains obsessed with tariffs, even though they’re likely to result in more pain than gain for US workers.

Florida, like other states in the South, is regularly dismissed as a “non-union” state, where decades of anti-union policies, and deep-rooted corporate and political resistance to unions have stunted and degraded the labor movement’s power.

Only about 6% of workers in Florida even have union representation, and just 5% are dues-paying union members — below the national average. But new organizing does happen here in the Sunshine State, maybe more often than you’d think.

In order to file a petition for a union election, at least 30% of workers need to sign what are known as showing-of-interest cards demonstrating their support for unionization (generally, organizers shoot for a higher percentage, in case the employer tries to water down support for the union ahead of the election). Unions can also seek certification through a voluntary recognition/card-check process, which requires showing that a majority (more than 50%) of workers support unionization.

Here’s a rundown of new organizing drives that launched last month and union election results:

Transcript

As students returned to campuses last fall, they entered a new phase of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. The encampments were gone, corporate media had turned away their cameras, but student organizing continued in new forms and upon a new and more repressive terrain. Indeed, university administrators had spent the summer months preparing a new arsenal of “security” policies and personnel intended to prevent the appearance of a second student intifada in the fall.

It is difficult to grasp the full extent of this new repressive apparatus at any given university, much less Canada-wide. In order to provide a fuller picture and support ongoing Palestine solidarity organizing, we investigated changes in “security” policy and personnel from June to December 2024 at 17 Canadian universities: Acadia University; University of Alberta; University of British Columbia; University of Calgary; Concordia University; Dalhousie University; University of Manitoba; McGill University; McMaster University; Memorial University; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD); Queen’s University; University of Toronto; Vancouver Island University; Western University; University of Winnipeg; and University of Waterloo. Our research relied on media reporting, social media posts, university websites, and information provided by students and/or faculty at these universities.

Our findings paint a portrait of repressive policies and practices but also include the administrative anxieties provoked by students who have dared to demonstrate what solidarity looks like and what universities could be – places of learning and liberation rather than institutions devoted to corporate donors and deadly imperialist interests. It shows how a longer history of political repression on university campuses, perhaps most evident in the late 1960s, has been reactivated through moments of conflict between universities’ support for imperialism and students’ commitment to anti-imperialism and international solidarity.

Transcript