After a landslide vote of just under 67% to repeal the constitutional abortion ban on 25th May, on 18th September, the eighth amendment was formally repealed in the South, after all appeals made seeking to the challenge the referendum result were dismissed.
The landslide victory of left-populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on a programme of increased welfare and tackling corruption marks a potential turning point for the Mexican working class.
Strikes of African agricultural workers have taken place in Italy, sparked by the deaths of 16 workers in two separate incidents caused by unsafe transport conditions over the span of 48 hours. The strike began in the workers’ shanty town named ‘‘The Great Ghetto’’ near Foggia, and over 200 individuals marched 10 kilometres to the fields where they work to protest their conditions, chanting “we are not slaves”.
On 9th August, the Argentinian senate rejected a bill to legalise abortion up to 14 weeks into pregnancy. That the vote took place was testament to the mounting pressure on politicians from a growing wave of women’s struggles against oppressive laws and social norms, in Argentina and around the world.
The women’s movement in Argentina has a proud history of unity in action to fight to legalizing abortion. It was this struggle which led, eleven years ago, to a bill being drafted for parliament, which has now been debated more than seven times.
Millions of workers and young people are not satisfied with the Democratic Party strategy of “wait till November” (for midterm elections) to challenge Trump and are actively organising to combat his anti-labour, anti-women and anti-migrant policies.
Without a clear and strong socialist alternative, the whipping up of anti-migrant sentiment by the right will continue to go unchallenged in any meaningful way. It is up to Italian socialists to build a credible party of the working class that’s capable of challenging the reactionary forces. Only a movement built on working class solidarity, anti-racism and internationalism is capable of taking on the establishment and delivering a victory for working-class people.
It has been mass outrage and the threat of mass protests that have forced Trump to reverse his position of separating children from parents at the border. We must use the momentum of the current anger at the outrageous treatment of children to challenge the whole policy of criminalization of immigrants.
