On Oct. 23, Tom Hayden, a leader on the U.S. left who dedicated his life to social justice, died. His work began in the student anti-war and civil rights movements in the sixties to span nearly two decades in the California legislature, and included issues as diverse as organizing to improve U.S. relations with Cuba, ending the war on drugs and protecting the Los Angeles valleys he called home.
On Oct. 9, 200 activists marched along a dusty highway between Nogales and Tucson toward a Border Patrol checkpoint just north of Tubac, Arizona. At the front, activists prepared to risk arrest clutched painted crosses in their hands, each bearing the name of someone killed by US-trained assassins or the militarized US-Mexico border.
The broad student movement that won Chile’s alamedas – with demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of young people and the occupation of dozens of secondary schools, demanding changes in the education system – has sedimented in the creation of some thirty self-managed education initiatives in working-class territories.
It’s anybody’s guess how many victims of violence are still buried somewhere in the Juarez Valley on the Mexico-U.S. border. For starters, there is the still largely unexcavated Navajo Arroyo, where the remains of 18 young women who went missing from nearby Ciudad Juarez have been recovered and identified since late 2011, according to the local daily Norte.
The Colombian people voted NO to peace. Or to be exact, 50.2% of 37% of the eligible population voted no. In the referendum held Oct. 2, the majority of voters decided to scuttle four years of peace talks dedicated to ending 52 years of bloodshed.
The Free Brazil Movement was one of the groups in charge of convening the massive demonstrations to impeach Dilma Rousseff. The institutional coup they promoted encouraged the movement, made up primarily of youth between 17 and 30 years old, to launch bids for power in the Oct. 2 municipal elections, where they eight of their members were elected to city councils.
Tens of thousands march to support the peace process after the Oct. NO vote
Silent traumas grip a growing number of families in Mexico. Not knowing where a loved one is, relatives comb jails, hospitals, morgues and common graves. Digging into the earth, their shovels probe for bodies or remains–fragments of a human being who once warmed their lives.
The marchers have turned out by the thousands to tell the government of Enrique Peña Nieto that the forced disappearance of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Teachers College on September 26, 2014 continues to be a rallying cry for a people who are fed up with the violence and lack of justice in the county.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and Attorney General Thelma Aldana arrived in Washington to convince aid and lending agencies of Guatemala’s commitment to rule of law just a day after their government arrested its most prominent human rights prosecutor.
