John Wojcik pays tribute to a black US activist who spent six decades at the forefront of struggles for voting rights, economic justice and peace – reshaping US politics and inspiring movements worldwide
Thanks to Banksy, Louise Michel is fighting oppression once more
LEA REISNER tells the Star about the Louise Michel, a feminist refugee rescue ship named after the famous anarchist and funded by the world's most elusive street-art star — and how the civil fleet came to its aid when Europe abandoned it
Lea Reisner on the deck of the Louise Michel
In the fifth and final part of a series of articles, Storming the Heavens author JENNY CLEGG explains how the Communist Party of China’s approach demonstrates how Marxism, rooted in concrete conditions and mass participation, can shape history
In times of genocide, art is not a refuge from politics but a weapon against injustice, says ROGER McKENZIE, highlighting three of his own favourite political truth-tellers
As members elect their first leadership, a deeper battle is unfolding over what democracy should mean in practice, says CASSI BELLINGHAM
The language of humiliation is a step towards a second civil war, argues RAMZY BAROUD
ANDREW MURRAY says switching the prime minister on and off again is no substitute for new political approach we need
“THE revolt of the tribes was deadly serious,” wrote the French anarchist Louise Michel in her memoir about the doomed 1878 Kanak rebellion against French colonial rule on far way New Caledonia.
The Kanak people, whose south Pacific home France had turned into a penal colony, were seeking the same liberty that Michel and her comrades had sought during the 1871 Paris Commune.
“Let me say only that my red scarf, the red scarf of the Commune that I had hidden from every search, was divided in two pieces one night. Two Kanaks, before going to join the insurgents against the whites, had come to say goodbye to me. They slipped into the ocean.
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