Bill Fletcher, Jr.

There is a struggle underway in Bolivia which has been largely overlooked or misrepresented in the mainstream circles in the USA. For the first time ever in Bolivia, the majority of the population exercises its rights as fully recognized citizens through electoral and civic participation. Efforts to battle poverty and illiteracy, the largest societal ills,…

Every year, with the opening of the football season, I have the same complaint: the name of the Washington, DC football team is obnoxious, racist (against Native Americans) and must be changed. And, every year I receive in response generally positive feedback from regular people who hold the same concern. Yet the team’s name does…

Slightly more than a year ago, a Haitian associate of mine was kidnapped in Haiti and, from the looks of it, was murdered. His body has not been recovered and nothing has been heard from him. Despite significant international attention to his case, Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, a noted Haitian activist and leader, an associate of…

With the end of the Republican Convention one could almost hear the voice, drawing from Shakespeare, announce: “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” In other words, it’s on. Senator Obama will need to win the November election based on much more than the excitement that he garnered in the primaries. Even his…

Organized labor has vanished, as if it were part of the story line of a science fiction novel. Labor Day 2008 came and went and…nothing. I searched through the newspaper…nothing. I looked at the TV schedule…nothing. It was as if there is not and never was anything called organized labor. You may be saying that…

Probably like many of you, I have found myself reflecting on Senator Obama’s choice of Senator Joseph Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate. From the standpoint of campaign strategy, I must say that it was a brilliant decision. Obama, sensing his own vulnerability on matters of foreign policy – in mainstream circles – picked…

In important respects there are several different “Nelson Mandelas.” For many of us who were active in and around the anti-apartheid support movement, Nelson Mandela became the face of the South African liberation struggle. This was true not only for activists, but also for much of the rest of the sympathetic world. In this respect…