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Month: May 2008

Labour solidarity with Palestine

“I want to express my gratitude to both CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) and CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers) for the solidarity they have shown to the Palestinian people.” With these words, Manawell Abdul Al, member of the executive committee of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions summed up the sentiment at the 150-strong opening plenary of the “Brick by Brick” conference at the Steelworkers Hall in Toronto. He was referring to the motions passed first at CUPE-Ontario, and this year at CUPW national, supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.…

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The toxic tango of markets and housing

You can see it in the streets of Cleveland, or Buffalo, or Minneapolis. On all those streets, the working poor who five years ago lived in their own homes, are back in cramped apartments, paying rent to their landlords. On the streets where they used to live, their old houses sit boarded up and rotting. Every week, some of these homes come down, as city governments spend millions to demolish houses abandoned because of what is being called the “subprime” mortgage crisis. It should be called the “free-market” housing crisis. What these streets tell us is the catastrophic failure of…

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