Indigenous People of Mexico Fight More Than Pandemic, by Yanis Iqbal

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by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 26, 2020

In Mexico, the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic is increasing. With more than 568,600 cases and 61,450 deaths (third largest number of Covid-19 deaths), the country is staggering under the Coronavirus pandemic. While the entire country is experiencing the impact, indigenous communities represent the hardest hit demographic. Data from Coneval, the national government’s social development agency, has shown that the Covid-19 fatality rate in Mexico’s poorest 427 municipalities is 14.1. On the other hand, the fatality rate in the country’s 54 wealthiest municipalities is 8.1, “meaning that people who live in impoverished parts of the country are almost twice as likely to die if they become sick with Covid-19 than those who live in affluent areas.”

Covid-19 and the Health Crisis in Latin America, by Yanis Iqbal

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by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 9, 2020

Latin America has surpassed more than 5 million Covid-19 cases to overtake North America, with 4.8 million Covid-19 cases, as the region worst-hit by the Coronavirus pandemic. This astronomic increase in Covid-19 cases has been accompanied by a corresponding economic catastrophe of great magnitude. According to a United Nations Policy Brief entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Latin America and the Caribbean”, “Parts of Latin America and the Caribbean have become hotspots of the coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic, exacerbated by weak social protection, fragmented health systems and profound inequalities. COVID-19 will result in the worst recession in the region in a century, causing a 9.1% contraction in regional GDP in 2020…This could push the number of poor up by 45 million (to a total of 230 million) and the number of extremely poor by 28 million (to 96 million in total), putting them at risk of undernutrition.” The Policy Brief further states that “The sharp drop in economic activity is expected to lift the unemployment rate from 8.1% in 2019 to 13.5% in 2020. The poverty rate is expected to rise by 7.0 percentage points in 2020, to 37.2%, while extreme poverty is expected to rise by 4.5 percentage points, from 11.0% to 15.5%, which represents an increase of 28 million people.”

Over the Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd, by Jim Kavanagh

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by Jim Kavanagh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Polemicist
June 8, 2020

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” — Aristotle

It has been an extraordinary week. On the heels of a pandemic and months-long lockdown, a nationwide uprising erupted in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. In some 75 cities across at least 16 states, and around the world, militant, multiracial gatherings of thousands of rightfully-enraged people overwhelmed police forces, prevented arrests, forced the evacuation of, and burned, a police precinct, and damaged and burned dozens of buildings. Mainstream news reporters from around the world were arrested and fired upon with rubber bullets on live television. Police SUVs drove into crowds of people. It has been the most extensive, and the most threatening, explosion of popular rage against the machine since the uprisings of 1967-8.

The Start Of The Great Meltdown For Industrial Civilization, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, May 17, 2020
May 20, 2020

Consumer society has tried to legitimize itself by making people believe that it represents a sustainable way of living. For those in the First World, all the evidence that a meltdown is coming—the deterioration of the climate, the decline of the biosphere, the diminishing of available resources—has usually existed outside of immediate view. Commercialism and the mass media, which have gained an unprecedented presence in our lives through the digital revolution, have distracted us from these realities while the machine of global capital has continued to run.

Chris Hedges: Segregation in Education

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Apr 18, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Cornell University Professor, Noliwe Rooks about how America’s public education system, under successive administrations, continues to be segregated along racial lines, and what is taught often shaped by business goals and ideas.

Abby Martin: Eradicating Homelessness

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Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

Empire Files on Feb 9, 2020

Abby Martin meets with Nithya Raman, progressive candidate for LA City Council in District 4, about her campaign to end homelessness in the nation’s epicenter and how local politicians refuse to take easy actions to eradicate the phenomenon–but refuse to in the interests of big real estate developers.

Anya Parampil and Danny Haiphong: Busting Pro-War Propaganda: What China Is Really Like

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Dandelion Salad

with Anya Parampil and Danny Haiphong

The Grayzone on Jan 22, 2020

Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Danny Haiphong, a contributing editor at the Black Agenda Report, about his recent two week trip to China.

The Radicalization of Martin Luther King + Dr. Martin Luther King: Where Do We Go From Here?

Image via Cocoabiscuit

Dandelion Salad

Originally posted on Jan. 20, 2013

“One day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you’re raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.” — “Where Do We Go From Here?” Martin Luther King, Jr., Aug. 16, 1967

Caleb Maupin: Martin Luther King Was A Socialist!

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
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with Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Jan. 17, 2019
January 18, 2020

Caleb Maupin on Jun 2, 2010

Your history textbooks may have you convinced he was a blind patriot and arch conservative. They were wrong. Martin Luther King was a socialist, and the following clips show him talking extensively about the need to redistribute wealth and “economic power”, the right to a job, and the dignity of the working class.

Happy New Year! Who Was The Radical MLK? by The Anti-Social Socialist

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Happy New Year!

“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter to Coretta Scott, 1952

Rev. Chris Hedges: Christmas, Charity, Anti-Empire and the Revolutionary Jesus + Transcript

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Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

Originally published Dec. 24, 2014

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Dec 24, 2014

Rev. Chris Hedges and Rev. David Bullock discuss the real meaning of Christmas with Paul Jay.

The 2020s Will Be When America Experiences A Social Breakdown by Rainer Shea + Jeff J. Brown: 19-year-old Rainer Shea is a Proud American Communist

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 16, 2019
December 19, 2019

The United States, like the other parts of the world that have been ravaged by rampant economic inequality and corporate despotism, is headed for a social breakdown. This gets more apparent every time wealth disparity is shown to be at a decades-high level, every time the military budget is expanded billions of dollars to fight endless wars, every time the country’s militarized police shoots an innocent person. Ten or twenty years from now, our society’s current form will have taken on an extreme version of itself: no real freedoms, basically no semblance of democracy, and conditions for the majority of people that are in or approaching squalor.

Shopping as an Act of Resistance

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The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published December 1, 2013
December 8, 2019

The holidays are at hand. Boycott Season is in effect. As the snow starts to fall, the commercial war of the season asserts its dominance. Our identities as citizens are quickly buried in a blizzard of advertising that defines us as consumers.

Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi: The Killing of Eric Garner and The Criminalization of Poverty and Institutional Racism

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Nov 30, 2019

Chris Hedges talks to journalist Matt Taibbi about the killing of Eric Garner, the criminalization of poverty, and institutional racism. Taibbi’s book is titled I Can’t Breathe – A Killing on Bay Street.

The Big Lie of the Fascists: That Climate Holocaust is Inevitable by Rainer Shea + Can Eco-Socialism Save The World?

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Nov. 8, 2019
November 13, 2019

The forces of fascism are trying to convince us of a deadly lie: that it’s desirable, natural, or inevitable for great amounts of poor and nonwhite people to die off because of climate change. This lie enters the discourse in many forms, both obvious and not. But every time it appears, it has to be countered with the declaration that we must not write off any lives as disposable or doomed; we must work to save as many people as possible throughout the coming catastrophe.