Lefteast
One aspect missing in the coverage of what happened in Kazakhstan was the initial workers-led protests in the Western part of Kazakhstan, where large mining projects have been running since the mid 1990s. Not considering the working-class beginnings of the protests and focusing only on elite power struggles between Tokayev vs. Nazarbayev, as many observers […]
This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she was welcomed by Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian president […]
Note from the author: Girls and women in Albania rise up (again and again) throughout the country against domestic and systemic violence. From an almost infertile context, we can finally talk about and describe the arcs of the feminist movement in Albania. It is truly sedimenting its roots, with stable organizations, massive public activities, and […]
Note from LeftEast editors. This is a reprint of an article that appeared on 13 Apr 2021 at Transnational Social Strike Platform. Bulgarian translation is also available We publish the report of the online meeting with trade unionists and activists organized by LevFem (Bulgaria) to discuss the possibility of solidarity and strike action in Bulgaria […]
LeftEast has been around for just over eight years. It was preceded by two summer schools in Budapest, where some of its future editors—leftist East European(ist)s—met in a moment of happy recognition. One of them, Florin Poenaru, also happened to be the editor of the Romanian site CriticAtac, which hosted another meeting of East European […]
More gutting than Bernie Sander’s ultimate defeat in the Democratic primaries is the paradoxical context in which it happened. He exited the stage just as the policies he so much advocated in the past two electoral cycles, if not his entire career, were badly needed to fight the rampant consequences of the new corona virus. […]
Bernie Sanders’ second presidential campaign brought a ray of hope to what had been a dismal political news cycle in the United States dominated by Trump’s odious figure and the Democrats’ ineffectual, “back to normal” opposition to him. To be sure, the broader resistance to Trump has also galvanized genuine movements devoted to protecting the […]
In the days following the end of Bernie’s initial 2016 campaign, I remember many of us put a lot of hope in Bernie’s plans for building a lasting organization beyond a national electoral campaign. The leftover funds and some of that grassroots energy were eventually directed into Our Revolution, an effort to elect progressive candidates […]
For a brief moment, a little over a month ago, we thought it would be easy. I had amazing conversations with genuine and thoughtful people in five states. We shook hands and smiled and I stood in doorways and chatted with people in their homes and kitchens. I was finishing my monograph and teaching two […]
I felt kicked in the gut, that morning when I heard Bernie had pulled out of the race. It was a surprising feeling, because in recent years I have been less and less passionate about electoral politics. The last electoral cycle had really sealed it for me: the Democratic Party establishment decided to represent their […]