🇧🇫/🇲🇱/🇳🇪 In a major advancement towards mutual cooperation, the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

“This alliance will be a combination of military and economic efforts between the three countries…Our priority is the fight against terrorism,” Malian Defense Minister Abdoulaye Diop told journalists.

The three countries have committed to “prevent, manage, and resolve any armed rebellion or threat to the territorial integrity and sovereignty… privileging peaceful and diplomatic channels, and, if necessary, to use force to deal with situations [that] breach peace and stability.”
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/18/burkina-faso-mali-and-niger-form-alliance-of-sahel-states-to-advance-collective-defense/

🇵🇸/🇮🇹 Youth and student groups in Italy have protested the detention of Italian-Palestinian student Khaled El Qaisi by Israeli authorities.

Khaled is a researcher and student of the Department of Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the Sapienza University of Rome. He is the founder of the Palestinian Documentation Center and an activist of the Giovani Palestinesi d’Italia (Palestinian Youth of Italy) group.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/18/youth-groups-demand-release-of-italian-palestinian-researcher-khaled-el-qaisi-who-was-detained-by-israel/

#PeoplesHistory | Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez became the first Black person to travel to space on September 18, 1980, as part of the crew on the Soyuz 38.

Missed the show on Friday?

Here you can listen to Vijay Prashad, Zoe Alexandra and Prasanth R speak about the UAW strike, the floods in Libya and all the working-class news you need, on a new episode of Give The People What They Want!

👉 https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/peoples-dispatch/episodes/Give-The-People-What-They-Want--UAW-goes-on-strike--Floods-in-Libya-e29fqfp

🇨🇺✊🏽🇧🇷 Members of the Brazilian movement Levante Popular da Juventude protested in front of the US embassy in Rio de Janeiro against the US blockade and joined the #LetCubaLive campaign to collect signatures to take Cuba off the States Sponsors of Terrorism list.

🇵🇸 Kayed al-Fasfous and Sultan Khlouf entered the 48th consecutive day of their open-ended hunger strike on Monday, September 18. The two are being held under the Israeli policy of administrative detention without charge or trial.

Several Palestinian prisoners have also embarked on a mass hunger strike in recent days to protest poor prison conditions and increasingly severe restrictions on prisoners’ rights.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/19/deteriorating-health-of-two-palestinian-administrative-detainees-on-hunger-strikes-raises-concerns/

As the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly gets underway, we remember the historic speech of Ernesto Che Guevara at the UNGA in 1964.

Che's statements continue to be as valid today as they were back then.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke at the 78th session of UNGA. He has pledged to continue fighting against injustice and for a better world, just as he did on his first speech 20 years ago.

In Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel's speech at the UNGA, he spoke about the 60-year-long US blockade against Cuba, denouncing how it breaches the United Nations charter and international law.
#LetCubaLive

🇱🇾 The Osama Hammad-led government in Libya has dismissed the Derna Municipal Council and put all its members under investigation following large-scale demonstrations.

People in Derna came out on the streets demanding accountability from the authorities. They gathered around Derna’s al-Sahaba Mosque and shouted slogans against the government, especially targeting the speaker of the Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh. They demanded unity across Libya and an end to conflict in the country.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/19/public-anger-mounts-over-poor-official-response-to-floods-in-libya/

🇨🇴 Colombian President Gustavo Petro spoke at the 78th Session of the General Assembly, reflecting on the year since his last speech at the UNGA. He snubbed US imperialism in highlighting the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup in Chile and the over 60-year-long blockade on Cuba.

🇨🇺 On the opening day of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is also the Chairman of the G77+China bloc, delivered a powerful speech critiquing the current global order and listing out the structural changes needed to address pressing challenges such as hunger, poverty and climate change.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/20/miguel-diaz-canel-brings-the-voice-of-the-exploited-to-the-unga/

Chileans gathered for the One Thousand Guitars and Voices for Victor Jara, a festival, to remember and honor the revolutionary artist who was killed by the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship.

#PeoplesHistory | Today, we remember Orlando Letelier, the Chilean politician and Minister of Foreign Affairs of socialist President Salvador Allende. Letelier was killed in 1976 by a car bomb in Washington, D.C., while in exile.

After the brutal coup of September 11, 1973, supported by the Nixon administration and the CIA and that killed President Allende, Letelier was arrested and tortured for a year. After an intense international diplomatic campaign, the Pinochet regime was forced to release him and he went to exile in Washington DC.

The right-wing military dictatorships of Latina America, with the support of the CIA and the US government, put in place a brutal arrest, torture, and killing program known as Operation Condor, to shut up any opposition to their regimes.

Letelier was one of the most prominent figures who were victims of the Condor operation. He was a target as he was a very vocal opponent of the Pinochet regime.

We are now live with a new episode of Give The People What They Want!

Vijay Prashad, Prasanth R, and Zoe Alexandra bring you the latest working-class developments from the week.
👉 https://youtube.com/live/mwz0hihvbw8

🇵🇸 “Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full and legitimate national rights would be mistaken,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/22/palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-demands-renewal-of-peace-process-full-un-membership/

Organizers gathered for the #LetCubaLive demonstration in solidarity with Cuba, to demand president Joe Biden remove the island nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The SSoT designation has far-reaching consequences that contribute to shortages of daily necessities such as fuel and medicine, inhibit humanitarian aid, and discourage financial transactions and trade.

Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel surprised the demonstrators with a visit and thanked the people of the US for their solidarity.

While threatening war on #Niger ostensibly to restore democracy, #France continues to back #Chad's military junta, holding on to power after killing at least 128 pro-democracy protesters. But popular resentment threatens the junta and its colonial backer. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/23/under-french-backed-military-ruler-mahamat-deby-chad-is-a-pressure-cooker-waiting-to-explode/

“We’re not gonna wait around forever for a fair contract at the Big Three,” said United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain in an update today on the ongoing strike of auto workers against the “Big Three” largest automakers in the country.

This latest escalation targets all of the parts distribution centers (PDCs) at Big Three corporations Stellantis and General Motors. PDCs are highly profitable for the Big Three. Ford, the other Big Three car company, has agreed to five of the central UAW demands. As a result, the union has decided to play the companies off of each other and ramp up the pressure against Stellantis and GM.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/22/uaw-mobilizes-thousands-more-to-join-stand-up-strike/

Cuba’s embassy in the US capital of Washington DC was the target of a violent attack late on Sunday, September 24.

In a statement shared on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that an individual had thrown two Molotov cocktails at the embassy building.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/09/25/cuban-embassy-in-washington-dc-faces-another-terrorist-attack-activists-express-solidarity/