(Refaat Alareer, Palestinian poet, one of the founders of the We Are Not Numbers project and professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed yesterday (Dec 7)  in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and her four children.)


If I must die - Refaat Alareer
           
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story,
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye,
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze
- and bid no one farewell
not even to his own flesh
not even to himself –
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love.
If I must die,
let it bring hope,
let it be a tale.

(Refaat Alareer, one of the founders of the We Are Not Numbers project and professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed Decenber 7 2023  in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and her four children.)

We no longer need the Cop circus – technology and markets are already solving the climate crisis https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/05/cop28-circus-technology-markets-solve-climate-crisis/ Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 5 December 2023

Lessons from the past: Interview with Com. Thangappan on struggle strategies, leadership and future of working class movement  https://www.cec-india.org/libpdf/1485753435Lessons%20from%20the%20past_%20Interview%20with%20Com.pdf
Posted on January 30, 2017 by Thozhilalar Koodam

Adapting New Strategies
Earlier workers were in joint families and they s upported each other, neighbours will help you out, unions might help out as well. Workers will go back to native place and live. That kind of thing is not there anymore.
For example the education cost of the children have gone up considerably, the monthly cost of the workers is high, even if for one month the workers don’t get salary, it is very difficult. They would have taken credit outside and that has to be paid up. So workers capacity for enduring long struggle is far too less.
The forms of struggle evolve from the conditions at the time and place and what the workers are able to come together in agreement. For example, Gherao movement that emerged in west Bengal in the 1960s, was not the brainchild of any one leader, but the outcome of situation at that time. Indefinite strikes and bandhs were very
popular and effective in the 70s but employers found a way to defeat these methods.

We should be innovative and find strategies that will force the employers to concede. If not, a union should have huge financial strength to carry on a long strike which is impossible. We should have such discussion. These debates are important to evolve our strategies.