ANNOUNCING: A new cohort of Council members from 18 countries — activists and artists, MPs and ministers, trade union militants and tenant organizers — joins the @ProgIntl on the occasion of its first anniversary.
A thread on the newest members of the Council:
1/ Lina Attalah (@Linaattalah) is an award-winning journalist and campaigner for freedom of speech based in Egypt. She is co-founder and Chief Editor of @MadaMasr, an independent online Egyptian newspaper and member of the @ProgIntl Wire.
2/ Selay Ghaffar (@Selay_Ghaffar) is a fearless activist for political and women’s rights in Afghanistan. She is spokesperson for the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (@hambastagi), a member of the @ProgIntl.
3/ Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) is a Member of UK Parliament and the founder of the Peace and Justice Project (@corbyn_project), a new member of the @ProgIntl.
4/ Walter Chambati (@wsschambati) is Executive Director of The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies (SMAIAS), Harare, Zimbabwe and Associate Editor of the Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.
5/ Hasina Khan is one of India's most courageous activists for women's rights in general and Muslim women’s rights in particular. She is the founding member of Bebaak Collective (Voice of Fearless), fighting repressive forces from an intersectional feminist perspective.
6/ Tara Raghuveer (@taraghuveer) the director of @KCTenants, organizing tenants across Kansas City, leading rent strikes, and directing the national campaign for a #HomesGuarantee.
7/ Ammar Ali Jan (@ammaralijan) a historian who works on Communist thought in the non-European world. He is a member of Haqooq-e-khalq Movement, an anti-capitalist organization that is working among workers, farmers, students and women to build an alternative political project.
8/ Baltasar Garzón is an international human rights lawyer, renowned for his courageous efforts to deliver justice for the victims of authoritarian repression, from his indictment of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 to his defense of Julian Assange two decades later.
9/ Dr. Yara Hawari (@yarahawari) is a Palestinian activist, academic and political analyst. She received her PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter in 2018. She currently works as the Senior Analyst for @AlShabaka, a Palestinian transnational think tank.
10/ Tom Morello (@tmorello) is an activist, advocate, and founding member of Rage Against the Machine. His rules are simple: "Feed the poor. Fight the power. Rock the f*ck out.”
11/ Solomon Yeo is the co-founder of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (@pisfcc) and the World’s Youth for Climate Justice (@WY4CJ), both organizations dedicated to address the climate crisis and inequality through a human rights-based approaches.
12/ Gerardo Pisarello (@G_Pisarello) is a member of the Congress of Deputies for @EnComu_Podem. He served as First Deputy Mayor of Barcelona between 2015 and 2019, and represents @CatEnComu, a member of the @ProgIntl on the Council.
13/ Vashna Jagarnath (@VashJag) works in the office of the General Secretary of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (@Numsa_Media). She is also the Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party.
14/ Luka Mesec (@LukaMesec) is a Member of Slovenian Parliament and a founding coordinator of @strankalevica, an eco-socialist party and member of the @ProgIntl.
15/ Zarah Sultana (@zarahsultana) is the Member of Parliament for Coventry South. Elected in 2019, Zarah has a background in community organising and anti-racist movements.
16/ Sacha Llorenti (@SachaLlorenti) is the Excecutive Secretary of ALBA–TCP. Previously he was Ambassador to the United Nations for the Plurinational State of Bolivia and President of the UN Security Council.
17/ Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher, political theorist, and — in his own words — a "moderately-conservative Communist." He is the international director at the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities, London University.
18/ Lidy Nacpil (@lnacpil) is the Coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (@AsianPeoplesMvt), the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (@gcdcj), and member of the Coordinating Committee of the Global Alliance on Tax Justice (@GA4TJ).
19/ Tiny Kox is a Senator for the Socialist Party in the Dutch Parliament and Chair of the Group of the Unified European Left in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a new member of the @ProgIntl.
20/ Nazma Akter (@NazmaAkter73) is President of the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, one of the largest union federations in Bangladesh. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Awaj Foundation and co-chair of Asia Pacific Women’s Committee of @IndustriALL_GU.
21/ Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) is a senior public interest lawyer and human rights activist. He has been a relentless crusader for the rights of the poor and the marginalised. He is the convenor of the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms.
22/ Leïla Chaibi (@leilachaibi) is a member of the European Parliament La France insoumise. She is a fierce defender of workers' rights, and leads efforts in the European Parliament to protect digital platform workers and fight against the corporate ravages of Amazon.
23/ Eyal Weizman (@weizman_eyal) is the founding director of @ForensicArchi and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a prolific author and holds a range of positions at international organizations like the @cijournalism.
24/ This Council cohort joins a range of organizations — including @corbyn_project, @GravelInstitute, @IGJ2012, and @WiphalasW — as new members of our planetary front as we prepare for a second year of actions, campaigns, and internationalist organizing.
END/ So join us.
We rely *exclusively* on people like you to keep us going — and we are only 10% of the day to our fundraising goal for 2021.
2/ We launched with a mission as simple as it was radical: to unite, organize, and mobilize progressive forces all over the world in a common front. roarmag.org/essays/progres…
3/ And in a difficult year of lockdowns, isolation, and economic hardship, we have managed to accomplish so much together.
On this day in 1975, Vietnam’s National Liberation Front defeated the invading US forces, paving the road to the reunification of Vietnam — and liberating its people from over a century of imperialist rule.
“Our resistance will be long and painful, but whatever the sacrifices, however long the struggle, we shall fight to the end, until Vietnam is fully independent and reunified,” Ho Chi Minh warned in 1946 as Vietnam struggled for independence from French colonial rule.
US involvement, which began after World War II and intensified from November 1955, would lead to a ten-thousand day war. It claimed an estimated 3.1 million Vietnamese lives — including 2 million civilians.
BREAKING: A shock poll by @DataProgress and @ProgIntl finds that 60% of US voters want @POTUS to temporarily waive patent protections on Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization. Only 28% disagreed.
In October 2020, 100 lower-income countries presented the WTO with a proposal to waive patent protections on the Covid-19 vaccine for the duration of the pandemic.
But a coalition of rich countries, led by the United States, opposed the waiver.
Today, 86% of all vaccines dispensed worldwide have been administered in rich countries.
Only 0.1% have been administered in poor countries.
As @IlhanMN says, the current WTO rules are a death sentence for millions around the world.