As many as 1,000 protesters turned out on 15 June for a demonstration in support of Edward Snowden who fled to Hong Kong last month after leaking details to the media of US government hacking of internet and phone accounts on a massive scale. In driving rain, protesters shouted “Defend Free Speech”, “Protect Snowden”, and “No Extradition”. Socialist Action, the supporters of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) in Hong Kong, were one of 19 groups who organised the demonstration.

On June 10th, non-union cleaning workers at Target stores across the Twin Cities called for a two-day unfair labor practice strike after the employers refused to open dialogue with the workers by a 5pm deadline. CTUL, a workers center based in Minneapolis, has been attempting to organize these workers for three years. Workers have faced retaliation for union involvement and receive poverty wages with little to no benefits for their work.

Socialist Alternative members and Kshama Sawant campaign supporters participated in an emergency protest against the City Council’s June 11th vote to eliminate the Nickelsville homeless encampment that houses many families.

With seven strikes of fast food workers in eight weeks, demanding $15/hour and the right to a union, a discussion of raising the minimum wage has begun to stir up the predictable frenzy of pro-market mythology.

The Socialist Alternative candidates for city council, Kshama Sawant in Seattle, Seamus Whelan in Boston, and Ty Moore in Minneapolis, issued this joint statement on the new revelations about the Obama administration's secret surveillance program.

KESK, Turkey’s Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions, announced a national strike against police violence for today (4 June 2013) and on Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands are expected to come to the demonstrations. Yet the police continue to use tear gas and to violently attack demonstrators.

Following an appeal from advocates of an academic boycott on Israel, physicist Stephen Hawking recently turned down an invitation to speak at a conference in Jerusalem. He joins others who have boycotted Israel in one form or another, particularly in reaction to the horror of the 2008/09 Gaza war, the killings of Turkish aid activists on the May 2010 aid flotilla, and the week of attacks on Gaza last November. What attitude should trade unionists and socialists adopt towards the boycott campaigns? JUDY BEISHON takes up some of the questions frequently raised.

The murder in 2011 of José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo hit international headlines. Both were environmental activists in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Their deaths drew comparisons with other prominent campaigners who were killed in the Amazon basin, including Dorothy Stagg in 2005 and Brazilian trade unionist and environmental campaigner Chico Mendes (Francisco Alves Mendes Filho) in 1988.

This Memorial Day weekend, Socialist Alternative hosted its first National Summer Camp in Minnesota's St. Croix State Park. The camp drew nearly one hundred members from over a dozen branches around the United States and was the largest gathering in the organization’s history. Many came from SA’s newest branches: Mobile, Alabama; Tampa Bay, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was an inspiring example of the growing energy and openness to socialist ideas and proof of the opportunities to build Socialist Alternative and expand the Marxist movement in the United States.

As more information becomes available, the Minneapolis Police Department’s version of the events surrounding the May 10th killing of Terrance Franklin doesn't hold water. More likely, this is yet another cover-up for a racist police murder, once again exposing the legacy of police brutality and racial inequality in Minneapolis and nationally.

We are pleased to announce that Seamus Whelan was one of the first three candidates certified for the ballot for City Council at-large in Boston this year!

How is it possible, in one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world, that we face such basic infrastructure problems? The politicians are trying their best to dance around this basic question, but the undeniable truth is that this tragedy was entirely foreseeable and preventable.

The change from the existing CPI to chained CPI will hurt the most vulnerable in our society without making much of a dent in the federal budget in the short term. By putting this proposal forward in his budget address, President Obama shows that he can touch the "third rail" of American politics and survive - not as the lesser of two evils but the more effective evil.

The Taiwanese government is whipping up anti-Filipino sentiment in the wake of the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman on May 9 by the Philippine coast guard. Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan are already bearing the brunt of the diplomatic fallout. The past few days have seen angry protests outside the Philippines’ unofficial ‘embassy’ in Taipei and – most alarmingly – a number of vicious street attacks on migrant workers.