"All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet 'ripened' for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for proletarian revolution have not only 'ripened,' they have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership."  – Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program

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New Publications (click on headlines to order) Journal of Class Struggle Education Workers Internationalist pamphlet on the history of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America.   Internationalist pamphlet with writings by Marx, Engels, Bebel, Zetkin, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. Plus articles from Women and Revolution

Marxist Readings

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Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution

Women’s Liberation through Socialist Revolution

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

Immigration Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants

Labor Labor’s Gotta Play Hardball to Win

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Palestine For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution

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Welcome! The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. After a decade and a half in which the ruling class trumpeted the supposed "death of communism," the imperialists are bogged down in losing wars of colonial occupation in the Near East while a global economic crisis shakes the foundations of the capitalist order. With mass unemployment, poverty and hunger ravaging the planet, once again there is talk of socialism and revolution. But as in the past, the key question is that of forging a vanguard to lead the struggle of the workers and the oppressed. Read more... The founding statement of the Internationalist Group is available on this site, as well as the LFI's declaration, Reforge the Fourth International, in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog.
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Backlash Against Mass Protests of Racist Police Murder Mobilize to Fight Racist “Anti-CRT” Gag Laws! They Want to Force You to Stop Teaching About Racism By Class Struggle Education Workers As the 2020-21 school year drew to a close, there was an explosion of laws and regulations restricting how teachers could discuss racism, sexism and other controversial issues in class. Republican governors and state legislatures have declared that teachers who discuss these topics are practicing “critical race theory.” In fact, the anti-“CRT” campaign has nothing to do with that theory. Rather, it is a racist backlash on the cultural front against the massive nationwide protests sparked by the racist police murder of George Floyd last year. It is akin to the propaganda campaigns of the white citizens councils in the 1960s, raising the spectre of McCarthyite repression in the schools. The witch-hunting laws are aimed at banning any discussion in schools of the social roots of racial, sexual and other forms of social and class oppression, and are also avowedly anti-communist. These racist gag laws should be shredded by mass mobilization and broken by concerted action of the education unions – backed by anti-racist and class-conscious educators, students, parents and school staff – against the whitewashing of U.S. history.  Mobilize to Fight Racist “Anti-CRT” Gag Laws! (6 September 2021) Revolutionary Integrationism vs. “Critical Race Theory” (6 September 2021) The 1776 Report: Whitewashing U.S. History (6 September 2021) The 1619 Project: Misidentifying the Roots of Racism  (6 September 2021) All U.S. Troops, Military/Security Forces, Agencies and Mercenaries Out of the Middle East, Now! Afghanistan: Humiliating Defeat for Murderous U.S. Imperialism Puppet Government Collapses, U.S. Personnel Flee, the Taliban Take Over On August 15, the two-decade long U.S.-led imperialist occupation of Afghanistan came to an inglorious end. In the face of the rapid advance by the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, the deeply corrupt puppet government collapsed. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was billed as a war against terrorism, and reprisal for the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. In reality, it and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were part of a war for U.S. imperialist global domination. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International called immediately after 9/11 to defeat U.S. imperialism and to defend Afghanistan and Iraq. The exit of U.S./NATO forces is a major defeat for the imperialist overlords who imagine themselves masters of the world. It should be greeted by opponents of imperialism everywhere. But the victory of the reactionary Islamist Taliban is no win for the oppressed. The question of women’s oppression will be at the forefront of events in Afghanistan as the Taliban consolidate their rule. Yet when the Soviet Union intervened in 1980 to defend a reform government that enacted measures defending women, the opportunist left joined the imperialists in calling for Soviet troops out.  Trotskyists Said Hail Red Army in Afghanistan in 1980 – Defend Afghanistan, Defeat U.S. Imperialism in 2001. Afghanistan: Humiliating Defeat for Murderous U.S. Imperialism (26 August 2021) Afghanistan and the Left (26 August 2021) Class Battle in Alabama: Victory to the UMWA Warrior Met Coal Strike! For four months, some 1,100 coal miners organized in four United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) locals have waged a bitter strike against the Warrior Met Coal company in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Miners are striking to reverse the vicious terms of a 2016 contract. With contract negotiations stalled, on July 28, hundreds of miners rallied outside the Midtown Manhattan headquarters of Black Rock, the biggest shareholder in Warrior Met mines and by far the largest investment management company in the world. What has been missing from the strike is sustained mass, militant labor action to shut down the mines and the processing facilities. What’s desperately needed to win is a mobilization of Alabama workers and supporters of labor and black rights to build mass, militant picket lines that scabs can’t cross and that keep the cops at bay. We need to revive the traditions that built the unions in the first place. Victory to the UMWA Warrior Met Coal Strike! (31 July 2021) Counterrevolutionary Instigators Exploit Frustration Over Economic Crisis The Truth About Cuba Protests Defend the Revolution Against U.S. Imperialism and Its Frontmen Fight for International Socialist Revolution The protests that took place in several dozen cities and towns of Cuba and locations in and around the capital on July 11 were the biggest anti-government mobilizations since the dawn of the Revolution. While fueled by desperation over food shortages, lack of medicine and blackouts that have beset the island in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the marches were instigated, manipulated and exploited by forces seeking to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. With its exemplary public health system, Cuba has been able to contain the virus far better than almost anywhere else on the planet outside of China. Yet U.S. rulers are seeking to capitalize on the economic toll of the pandemic, and weariness from 60 years of imperialist blockade. In this difficult situation, the first duty of revolutionary communists, in Cuba and worldwide, is to actively combat the forces of capitalist counterrevolution. The Truth About Cuba Protests – Defend the Revolution (23 July 2021) U.S. Blockade of Cuba: “Bring About Hunger, Desperation, Overthrow” (23 July 2021) “Cuba Is Being Accused of Many Things – Let’s Fact Check Them” (23 July 2021) “From Black Nationalism to Maoism to Trotskyism” In Memory of Joe Johnson (1948-2021) Joseph “Lil Joe” Johnson, whose youthful activism during the rise of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles was an opening chapter in his life-long dedication to socialism, black freedom and Marxist education, died on June 5 at the age of 73. Born in Louisiana in 1948, he came of age in Los Angeles, where his self-education in the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky led him to become a mentor to generations of young radicals seeking a road to socialist revolution. In August 2020, comrade Johnson gave this talk, titled “From Black Nationalism to Maoism to Trotskyism,” to the Internationalist Group/Revolutionary Internationalist Youth New York study group. In Memory of Joe Johnson (June 2021) Expropriate the Ruling Class Through Socialist Revolution! “Tax the Rich” No Answer to Capitalist Inequality During the coronavirus pandemic, as low-paid essential workers bore the brunt of the deadly plague at the front lines with little protection from the virus, workers’ income from wages fell while some 660 U.S. billionaires received a windfall of $1,100,000,000,000 (that’s 1.1 trillion dollars in profits). The spectacle of the ruling class gouging megaprofits from disease and death, and being rewarded for doing so with free money in bailouts and tax cuts, has led to a resurgence of calls to “tax the rich.”  This slogan has become the calling card of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and groups that tail after and adapt to it. For pseudo-socialists and labor reformists, the appeal to “tax the rich” is yet another means to subordinate the working class to the Democratic Party, calling on people to pressure their “elected representatives.” Calls to “tax the rich” are just tinkering, and won’t affect the fundamentals of a system that produces fabulous wealth for the owners of capital and grinding poverty for millions, while the working class lives paycheck to paycheck. These calls also blur over the obvious fact that the government already has at its disposal more than enough funds to meet dire human needs. Meanwhile, Democratic president Joe Biden wants to “tax the rich” in order to prepare for war on China. Revolutionary Marxists are not in the business of advising the capitalist state on how to “fairly” finance its apparatus of war and repression, but call to expropriate the capitalist exploiters. “Tax the Rich” No Answer to Capitalist Inequality (15 June 2021) The Working Class Paid for the New Deal (15 June 2021) From the Current Issue  The Internationalist No. 63 (April-June 2021)  click above or on image for full list of articles George Floyd’s Murderer Convicted, Police Impunity Remains One Year After George Floyd, Racist Killer Cops Keep Killing Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! On the first anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by killer cop Derek Chauvin, it is clear to all that, despite the massive protests against racist police brutality that swept the country, there has been no change in the treatment of black people at the hands of the enforcers of “law and order.” Year in and year out, wanton police killing of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, as well as hundreds of white working people goes on and on.  All-round racist president Donald Trump incited police terror with his incendiary rhetoric about shooting “looters,” but in the first hundred days of the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, more than 650 people died in police actions. The fact that one badge-toting killer was convicted of murder changes nothing. Racist police brutality is not a matter of a few “bad apples,” or even a barrel full. Police impunity is built into the system, and that system is racist American capitalism. To stop it will take nothing less than a revolution to sweep away the capitalist system, and with it, its murderous thugs in blue. One Year After George Floyd, Racist Killer Cops Keep Killing (25 May 2021) Biden, Sanders, Democrats Arm Zionist Butchers Defend the Palestinians Against Israeli War  For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution! The storming of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by hundreds of Israeli police on May 10 was the opening shot of renewed Zionist war on the Palestinian Arab people. While the imperialist media talk of military conflict between Israel and Hamas in the besieged enclave of Gaza, the reality is a one-sided slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli war machine. Added to this is the terror unleashed by Zionist-fascist vigilantes against Palestinians in Israeli cities of mixed Arab and Jewish population. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party of U.S. imperialism has provided the weapons Israel uses to rain death on the Palestinian people. The horrific images – of apartment buildings in Gaza flattened by bombs, of a father staring at his dead children in a morgue, of an Arab being lynched by Jewish pogromists – have set off protests of tens of thousands worldwide. In the face of the new outbreak of the unending Zionist war, the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call to defend the oppressed Palestinian people, to drive the Israeli army and all Zionist settlers out of occupied Palestinian territory,  for labor action against the Zionist/imperialist war on Palestinians, and for an Arab-Hebrew Palestinian workers state, as part of a region-wide socialist federation of the Near East. Defend the Palestinians Against Israeli War  – For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution! (18 May 2021) The Birth of the Zionist State, Part 1 (November 1973) The Birth of the Zionist State, Part 2 (May 1974) Oppose G7/NATO Imperialist War Drive Against China, Russia In back-to-back summit meetings in mid-June, imperialist leaders of the Group of 7, meeting in Cornwall, England, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Brussels, Belgium, issued a pair of sabre-rattling communiqués demonizing China and denouncing Russia.The G7 (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States) went after Beijing for cracking down on anti-China rioters in Hong Kong, echoed Washington’s Big Lie about supposed “genocide” against Uighurs and took up the U.S. call for an “investigation” of the origins of the coronavirus. We repeatedly warned that Biden’s election would bring U.S. war moves against China, one of the few areas of “bipartisan” agreement between Republicans and Democrats. While much of the left parrots imperialist anti-China war propaganda, Trotskyists call to defend the deformed workers state against the threat of imperialist aggression and internal counterrevolution. Oppose G7/NATO Imperialist War Drive Against China, Russia (June 2021) CUNY Union Denounces U.S. Anti-China Drive (June 2021) Lula 2022 Campaign and the “Broad Front” in the Streets, the Bourgeoisie in Deep Trouble Over COVID Catastrophe Brazil: “Bolsonaro Out” Is Not Enough Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government! Vaccines For All – For Workers Control of Public Health! Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Party In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has now killed half a million in Brazil, protests against the bonapartist government of Jair Bolsonaro were held on May 29 in more than 200 cities, bringing out more than 100,000 demonstrators with the slogan “Fora Bolsonaro!” (Bolsonaro out). Then the labor federations along with the two popular fronts called for a day of protest on June 19, with the same insipid program. This time an estimated 750,000 marched. Meanwhile, Brazil’s Supreme Court nullified the rigged trial of former president Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, who can now run for president again. Most of the left is now the left is trying to build a broad front, including even right-wing bourgeois parties. But to break the infernal cycle of military/police-type regimes and corrupt bourgeois democracies, to get out of the nightmare of the COVID pandemic and the pandemic of police terror, it is essential to break the “Bolsonaro Out” framework in order to attack the roots of these capitalist plagues, by fighting for a revolutionary workers and peasants government. Brazil: “Bolsonaro Out” Is Not Enough (18 June 2021) Adam Toledo, Anthony Alvarez and So Many Others Chicago Cops’ Killing Machine Grinds On For Workers Action Against Racist Repression! In the early hours of March 29, 13-year-old Adam Toledo was murdered by a police officer who chased him down an alley in the Latino neighborhood of Little Village, on Chicago’s Southwest Side. The incident was set off by an automated gunfire locator. The app registered shots, sent an automatic alert to police, and less than three minutes later, a white cop had executed a seventh-grader with his hands up. The CPD today is an automated racist murder machine. When the video of George Floyd’s murder went viral in May 2020, the thousands who spontaneously went into the streets of Chicago to protest were met with armed battalions of cops in full riot gear. Most dramatically, the nearly two dozen bridges over the Chicago River were suddenly raised to trap protesters in the Loop, where over 1,000 were arrested. The growing use of such police-state methods and a militarized police apparatus are a function of the growing inequality and increasingly sharp class polarization in decaying capitalism. “Democratize the police,” “disarm the police,” “abolish the police”? Not possible under capitalism. The Internationalist Group calls for powerful workers mobilization and strike action against racist repression, pointing the way to socialist revolution. Chicago Cops’ Killing Machine Grinds On (April 2021) Smash the Fascist Networks with Worker/Immigrant Action Germany: The “Neukölln Complex” –  State Apparatus Complicit with Fascists The Berlin district of Neukölln is under siege, by the coronavirus and by the bourgeois state – which in Berlin is administered by the coalition of the SPD, Left Party and Greens – especially by its racist crusade against alleged immigrant “clans” and against shisha bars (hookah lounges). This state repression has always had its fascist outriders, although officially classified only as “right-wing extremists.” The “Neukölln Complex” ominously reveals the entanglement of the political, judicial and police apparatus with Nazi fascists. This phenomenon, of which there are an untold number of examples nationally, can be seen in this Berlin district as only one facet of a comprehensive network, of systematic cooperation of the state with fascist and fascistic forces. The task of revolutionaries is not to lure the masses into the dead end of an impossible “denazification” or even “democratization” of the bourgeois state, but to lead them to hard class struggle on the road to revolution. Today, in besieged Neukölln, this means fighting for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, and for joint worker/immigrant defense to mobilize working-class power against the fascists and their official protectors. Germany: The “Neukölln Complex” –  State Apparatus Complicit with Fascists (April 2021) For Workers Control of Safety – End Poverty Wages – Expropriate For-Profit Chains Nursing Home COVID Horror Show: Health Care Workers Held Hostage For the last three weeks, over 6,000 unionized healthcare workers in Connecticut nursing homes and group homes have been preparing to strike. Long-term care (LTC) workers in Connecticut, both in nursing homes and group homes for adults and youths with developmental difficulties, have been working right through the COVID-19 pandemic in some of the most deadly conditions in the U.S. Almost one-third of all deaths from COVID-19 over the last year were of residents in long-term care facilities. At least 1,800 healthcare workers in these facilities died. This was murder, a monstrous crime fueled by the profit system that discards those it cannot exploit profitably, warehousing seniors in jam-packed quarters with woefully inadequate staffing, and then infecting them with a deadly disease by bringing back COVID patients in order to save the hospitals from collapse. We call for expropriation without compensation of the LTC chains and slumlords for control of scheduling, hiring and safety in every facility by union-led workers committees, and for socialized medicine to provide high quality free health care for all. It will take a revolution to get it. Nursing Home COVID Horror Show: Health Care Workers Held Hostage (7 June 2021) The Pandemic in Connecticut Group Homes: Not Just the Virus, It’s the Capitalist System (7 June 2021) Cover-Up for SL Boycott of Protests Against Racist Police Terror Spartacist League’s Lockdown Lunacy Breaking months of sepulchral silence from the Spartacist League/International Communist League, a croak from the crypt: a bizarre ICL statement on “Down with the Lockdowns!” The tract admits that lockdowns “may” slow the rate of infection, but dismisses this. Not a word about necessary public health measures to stop the spread of the deadly plague. The degeneration of the once-revolutionary Spartacist League and its affiliates has led it to take refuge in its own “alternate reality.” Back in the real world, the SL/ICL’s statement is a disingenuous attempt to excuse its boycott of the massive protests against racist police terror last summer. So the SL “accepted” and evidently obeyed the lockdowns – yet the Internationalists and millions of people in the United States did not. The ICL “repudiates” its acceptance of the lockdowns, and now pleads guilty to capitulating to “national unity” appeals. It wouldn’t be the first time, on both counts. The SL/ICL is seeking to put a “working-class” gloss on its sharp turn to the right in recent years as it has increasingly oriented to chauvinist forces. And what about lockdowns in China? Spartacist League’s Lockdown Lunacy (3 June 2021) Defend Combative Immigrant Workers Against Repression Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment and Death Mobilize the Entire Working Class to Defeat All-Sided Attack! No to Dead End of Reformism – Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! In the ongoing emergency of this second year of the coronavirus pandemic, the Italian bourgeoisie decided to dump the weak and unstable coalition government of the Democratic Party and Cinque Stelle (Five Stars) movement, replacing it with Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank. The first shots of the Draghi government have been to increase repression against the workers movement, in particular against the S.I. Cobas “rank-and-file” union of mainly immigrant workers. Some of the most deeply exploited sectors of the working class have undertaken trade-union and solidarity actions, centered on logistics. The response of much of the ostensibly socialist left has been to form an Action Pact with political supporters of S.I. Cobas, a political coalition of heterogeneous forces based on a reformist 15-point political program. This program consists overwhelmingly of appeals for the capitalist government to take action, rather than for workers themselves to enforce their demands. What genuine communists must say to the masses in the harrowing coronavirus crisis is that the working class must establish its revolutionary class rule, seizing and collectivizing the means of production and organizing production to satisfy human need, not the profits of the few. This fight requires above all the forging of a revolutionary workers party. Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment and Death (26 April 2021)  Jury Convicts Cop Who Murdered George Floyd, But Thousands of Killer Cops Have Gone Free Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! A jury in Minneapolis found killer cop Derek Chauvin, who lynch-murdered George Floyd last May, guilty on all counts. Given the massive upheaval last summer, the capitalist rulers calculated that they had to give up one of their murderous killers in blue, or else. Last year alone, police in the U.S. killed 2,206 civilians, and now one has been convicted of murder. Justice? The capitalist rulers will claim that “things are beginning to change,” even as they impose unprecedented massive police and National Guard occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, ordered by Democratic governors and mayors. Racist police terror is systemic in U.S. capitalism, and will only end when this system is overthrown. Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! (20 April 2021) From the Previous Issue  The Internationalist No. 62 (January-March 2021)  click above or on image for full list of articles Break with the Bosses’ Parties – For a Revolutionary Workers Party Democrat Biden’s Regime: Cold War and Racist Repression After the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by a racist mob instigated by Republican president Donald Trump, the response of the Democrats, now in control of both houses of Congress, was to try to split Republican “moderates” from the hard-core Trump supporters. To no avail. Biden delivered his inaugural address calling for national “unity” in a capital city turned into an armed camp. His call for a “domestic terrorism” law will inevitably be used against leftist and black rights protesters far more than against the white supremacists and fascist/fascistic groups. Meanwhile, the new Democratic administration consists overwhelmiingly of Cold Warriors bent on stoking war against China as Biden pushes for more money for the cops, and courts have approved police-state repressive measures against protests. Over the last year we have experienced endless expressions of the pathology of the decaying system of production for profit, with more than a half million people dying from a plague, more than 2,000 civilians killed by police, tens of millions of unemployed, millions facing eviction, and now massive power outages and an upsurge of anti-Asian attacks. No amount of tinkering or reforms can end the chaos and suffering. This is a crisis of the capitalist system itself – it will take socialist revolution to resolve it. Democrat Biden’s Regime: Cold War and Racist Repression (23 March 2021) Now Is the Hour – Organize the Unorganized with Workers Power! Amazon Union Drive in Alabama Electrifies Labor On March 30, votes will begin to be tallied in an election by 5,805 workers at the giant Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama on whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The union organizing drive in Bessemer is being closely watched by the media, business, labor and politicians. It is an international event, pitting workers making $15 an hour against the second-largest company in the world. And it is of intense interest for Amazon workers everywhere, and those fighting for class-struggle workers action amid the deadly pandemic and coronavirus depression ravaging the capitalist world. A victory for the RWDSU would be the first successful unionization election in the United States against the Amazon distribution and e-commerce monopoly.  It would provide a beacon for desperately needed union organizing campaigns at Amazon, its Whole Foods subsidiary, Walmart, and for workers throughout the U.S. and beyond. The Democratic Party is posing as defenders of the unions, with the support from the union bureaucrats, when in fact it is a party of capital.. To win real gains against this viciously anti-union company will require hard class struggle, which Democrat phony friends of labor” will seek to ensnare in a web of government control. It’s necessary to build a workers party to fight for a workers government. Amazon Union Drive in Alabama Electrifies Labor (23 March 2021) Fight Against Racist Terror, Key to Organizing the South (23 March 2021) Trump-Instigated, Fascist-Led, Police-Aided Racist Mob Assault on Congress Capitalist “Democracy” Falling Apart – Socialist Revolution the Only Solution For Workers Defense Guards Against Fascist Threats and to Defend the Rights of All the Oppressed Yesterday’s mob rampage at the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of Donald Trump’s campaign of frenzied claims that the November 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” The assault on Congress was instigated by Trump and his top lieutenants, led by outright fascists, spearheaded by white supremacists brandishing the Confederate battle flag of the slavocracy, and it was facilitated by the police. In the media and numerous politicians the Capitol attack is described as an “insurrection,” “coup d’état” or failed “coup attempt.” Yet this grotesque rampage by a would-be lynch mob was not an actual attempt to seize power (for which they obviously didn’t have the forces), nor was it the military trying to disperse and shut down the U.S.’ highest legislative body. It was a mob assault aimed at intimidating Congress into not confirming Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, and failing that, to galvanize hard-core Trumpers into an authoritarian movement for future action. It was not a last paroxysm of Trumpism, but a harbinger of dangerous times to come. The several hundred fascists who turned out, together with tens of thousands of enraged racists and reactionaries, are plenty dangerous, but the most powerful and central dangers come from the organs of state power of the capitalist ruling class – police, military, National Guard – which brutally repress protests for black rights and protect the fascist terrorists. Democrat Joe Biden is their new boss, and he backs them to the hilt. Capitalist “Democracy” Falling Apart – Socialist Revolution the Only Solution (7 January 2021) For Workers Action to Shut Down I.C.E. Concentration Camps Stop Biden’s Deportations, Let the Kids Go! Democrats, No Friends of Immigrants – Build a Revolutionary Workers Party The Biden administration's dramatic immigration crisis is the product of the glaring disconnect between the Democrats’ “immigrant-friendly” rhetoric and running the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) deportation machine. In its first month in office, Biden deported almost 29,000 people. Now many young immigrants are being held in jails run by the Border Patrol. Others are being stashed in tents in a holding facility in Donna, Texas built for 250 people but now holding 4,100. When Trump issued his vindictive order to separate children from their parents in May 2018, there was a huge outcry. Now Biden is holding kids in tents, sleeping on gym mats with foil “blankets,” but rather than massively protesting in the streets, liberals and the reformist left have largely limited themselves to lobbying the Biden administration. The Internationalist Group and Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas call “For Workers Action to Stop Deportations,” for “Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants” and “Smash the I.C.E. Gestapo with Workers Revolution.” Stop Biden’s Deportations, Let the Kids Go! (23 March 2021) Don’t Let Them Silence the “Voice of the Voiceless” No Execution by COVID – Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and the foremost class war prisoner in the United States, has been imprisoned for the last 39 years in the dungeons of the Pennsylvania penitentiary system, half that time on death row, an innocent black man framed by the police. On February 27, Mumia was hospitalized and diagnosed with COVID-19 and congestive heart failure. Despite having chest pains and difficulty breathing, four prior tests in the prison infirmary returned false negatives for COVID. It was only when he was moved to an outside hospital that an accurate diagnosis was made, following an outpouring of demands that he receive appropriate medical treatment. He is now back in the prison infirmary, in isolation, his health in a precarious state. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the country’s largest union, has reiterated its call for the immediate release of Mumia, “framed by the corrupt racist justice system in the U.S.” We demand that Mumia be immediately freed, and urgently appeal to others to do so. No Execution by COVID – Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! (10 March 2021) Vicious Anti-Union Intimidation at Yakima Fruit Packing Plant On February 26, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered a hearing on a complaint by Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia (TUJ – Workers United for Justice) representing fruit packinghouse workers in the Yakima Valley, Washington. The NLRB found merit in the union’s charge that the employer, Allan Brothers, engaged in a long list of acts of coercion against the TUJ and its own employees. These practices were used against the Yakima strike last spring, when the mainly women workers courageously walked out at the height of the coronavirus pandemic demanding protective gear, cleaning of the plant and hazard pay. The same dirty tactics were used again successfully against the drive for union recognition in the fall. Despite the defeatist, legalist policies of the official labor leadership, the fight is not over and there may now be another chance to mobilize to unionize the valley. But that requires a very different kind of trade-unionism, one based on hard class struggle rather than the class collaboration of the present labor officialdom. Vicious Anti-Union Intimidation at Yakima Fruit Packing Plant (7 March 2021) Yakima Strikes: The Battle Has Just Begun (5 June 2020) Victory to Yakima Packinghouse Strikers! (17 May 2020) Heroes for Exposing the Crimes of Imperialism Free Julian Assange – No Extradition, U.S. Hands Off Edward Snowden! Wikileaks Has Performed a Public Service for All Humanity On February 12, it was announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a brief in support of a prior appeal against the January 4 decision of a British judge barring the extradition of Wikileaks leader Julian Assange. This confirms that the Democratic administration of Joe Biden is continuing to pursue the prosecution of Assange begun by Republican Donald Trump. Under the draconian provisions of the Espionage Act, the founder of the internet whistleblower site faces charges which could total 175 years in prison for obtaining and publishing a vast trove of internal documents detail the crimes of U.S. imperialism and the “dirty tricks” of its spy agencies. Chelsea Manning (who lifted the lid on U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq) was sent back to jail for a year for refusing to testify against Assange in secret grand jury proceedings. And U.S. authorities are dying to get their claws on Edward Snowden, who exposed the vast surveillance system that in the name of “national security” keeps the entire population in thrall. All defenders of democratic rights are deeply indebted to this trio for their services to humanity. Free Julian Assange – No Extradition, U.S. Hands Off Edward Snowden! (March 2021) For Teacher-Student-Parent-Worker Control of the Schools! Chaotic Reopening of NYC Schools: This Is What Mayoral Control Looks Like Use Union Power to Reopen Schools Safely! By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT The deadly coronavirus pandemic led to the first-ever nationwide U.S. school shutdown. While coronavirus cases were escalating in much of the country, rates of infection and of positive tests for COVID-19 in the summer and early fall were far lower in New York City, making it possible to reopen schools. The actual reopening of NYC schools in the fall was a story of unending chaos, with changing deadlines and confusing schedules of “blended” and fully remote instruction. Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group declared “Where Infection Rate Is Low, Schools Should Reopen Safely with Billions for Sanitation & Ventilation, Triple Classrooms Now, Hire Thousands.” Those who demanded that schools be kept closed even where virus contagion was low (and now even with vaccine becoming available) went against overwhelming evidence that “remote education” can’t work for the great majority of students and exacerbates racial/class inequalities. They play into the hands of the enemies of public education and blow the critical opportunity to win important safety measures which are also key to quality education, particularly by sharply reducing class size. The CSEW calls for union-led teacher-parent-student-worker committees at every school to inspect and sign off on reopening plans. Chaotic Reopening of NYC Schools: This Is What Mayoral Control Looks Like (23 February 2021) Google + D.O.E. + de Blasio & Cuomo = Capitalist CHAOS (February 2021) Owners Shutter Manhattan Laundry, Try to Move Machines NYC Labor: Stop Wash Supply Union-Busting! In a move straight out of the union-busters’ playbook, in retaliation for immigrant women workers organizing a union, the owners of the Wash Supply Laundromat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side fired them all on February 19, then abruptly closed the shop. The next morning, as the workers were protesting, the company tried to remove the equipment. This came only weeks after the company tried to intimidate the women by firing one of them on the eve of a scheduled unionization vote. The workers courageouosly voted for the union anyway. To stop this union-busting cold calls for a mobilization of power on the streets by city labor, including unions active in industrial-laundry, restaurant/hotel, service, transport and communications sectors. NYC Labor: Stop Wash Supply Union-Busting! (20 February 2021) Immigrant Laundromat Workers Fight Intolerable Conditions (November 2020) Front-Line Workers: Essential, Yes! Expendable, No! Temporary Hazard Pay: Not Enough Food Chain Workers: $5/Hour Permanent Raise and Vaccine Now! As Grocery Chains Rake in Pandemic Profits, Workers Face Dangerous Conditions, More Stress, Low Pay On February 1, the giant grocery conglomerate Kroger announced it was closing two of its chain stores (a Ralphs and a Food 4 Less) in Long Beach, California. Why? Because of an ordinance passed by the city council last month requiring that grocery store chains pay their workers an extra $4 an hour “hero pay” for the next four months. This is shameless blackmail, to keep grocery workers toiling in dangerous conditions at rock-bottom wages while owners rake in billions of dollars in profits during the COVID-19 pandemic. This fight is not just about a particularly greedy employer raking in obscene profits while its employees risk their lives toiling in dangerous conditions – although Kroger is certainly that. It is a class battle in which the workers movement and all working people must come to the defense of the low-wage essential workers who are called heroes in the media while being treated as expendable by the bosses.  Food Chain Workers: $5/Hour Permanent Raise and Vaccine Now! (February 2021) A Fight for All Workers Hunts Point Teamster Strike Shows Potential for Labor Upsurge The week-long strike by 1,400 mainly Latino and black workers at the Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx was the first major labor battle of 2021, and it ended with gains for the strikers, members of the Teamsters union. The workers have been on the job throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping New York City and surrounding region supplied with produce. At Hunts Point, the popular strike won gains which, although limited, could encourage labor struggle around the country. Around the U.S., many employers have been itching to use the pandemic as an excuse to bust unions, while many workers are fed up with being treated as expendable, risking their health for poverty pay, even as they are hailed as essential. An example of real class solidarity during the strike was the stopping of the freight train going into the market on Wednesday, January 20. The next night: no train. The night after that: a settlement. That’s the power of the bedrock labor principle: picket lines mean don’t cross! Hunts Point Teamster Strike Shows Potential for Labor Upsurge (30 January 2021) NYC Labor: All Out to Support Hunts Point Market Strikers! (18 January 2021) From Amazon Union Drive to Hunts Point Teamster Strike How the “World Scab Web Site” Aids the Bosses There it is, in your face, so stark that you can’t miss it: as we have repeatedly warned, the grotesquely misnamed World Socialist Web Site serves union-busting bosses against the unions. The (latest) proof: on January 15, an article posted on the “World Scab Web Site” calls to “Vote ‘No’ to the UFCW-backed union at Alabama Amazon facility!” So, acting in tandem with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, the political bandits of David North’s WSWS are actively trying to prevent the organization of a union at the viciously anti-union e-commerce monopoly’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse. It’s far from the first time: the WSWS has likewise opposed unionization of auto parts plants in the past. Revolutionary socialists have a diametrically counterposed position: we say emphatically “yes” to unions, while fighting to forge a class-struggle leadership. How the “World Scab Web Site” Aids the Bosses (January 2021)  Solidarity from CUNY – All Out to Win Victory to the Columbia Grad Workers Strike! Leaflet of CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth On March 15, the Graduate Workers of Columbia University launched a strike against the haughty barons lording it over this fiefdom of academic privilege in New York City. The strikers, members of UAW Local 2110, denounce the poverty wages they receive while Columbia sits on an endowment of over $11 billion. To defeat the anti-union administration and its ruling-class godfathers is a question of power. On strike means shut it down. All classes should be stopped, now, and students brought out en masse to the pickets and rallies. Moreover, for university strikes to win, all sectors of the campus workforce need to unite in genuine solidarity – one out, all out. At the City University of New York, solidarity with the GWC is connected with the fight against adjunct poverty, the two-tier labor academic system and conditions making it harder than ever for students to get an education. Victory to the Columbia Grad Workers Strike! (16 March 2021) On Trump’s “Border Ruffians” The mob on January 6 was led by paramilitaries in camouflage fatigues, with body armor and weapons. These white racists are the recognizable descendants of the “Border Ruffians” that John Brown and his comrades confronted in the 1850s in Kansas, defeating their terror campaign to turn it into a slave state. After the Civil War, the mob rearmed as the Ku Klux Klan and continued its depredations right through the defeat of Reconstruction in 1877, and beyond. Historical experience shows that the political regime and social set-up in the U.S. under capitalism recreates the racist mob over and over again. In the 1960s and 1970s, the ultimate leaders of the KKK wore suits rather than white robes or blue uniforms. These suited racists were Joe Biden’s close friends when he was a senator. Biden was key to successfully leading the racist fight to defeat desegregation in the public schools. On Trump’s “Border Ruffians” (8 January 2021) Voces del Epicentro Un folleto de Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (click on image to download pdf) As the coronavirus pandemic erupted in the United States, the first epicenter was in the neighborhoods of New York City with the highest number of immigrants, where Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle Immigrant Workers) has been active. Read the reports from TIC activists and teachers in Class Struggle Education Workers on the impact of this capitalist disaster, and the lessons to be drawn from it. Also reports from the strike of packinghouse workers in Yakima Valley, Washington. (In Spanish) To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! Slavery and the Constitution: Origins of U.S. Capitalist “Democracy” Long ago and far away in the B.C. (Before Coronavirus) era, bourgeois politics in the United States fixated briefly on impeachment. The Democrats leading the lower house of Congress did not, of course, impeach Donald Trump for his crimes against the oppressed, for example his vicious persecution of immigrants in the U.S. After all, the record deportations under the Democratic administration of “deporter-in-chief” Barack Obama paved the way for Trump. Trump was “brought up on charges by the wrong class for the wrong crimes,” we noted at the time. One generation after another is brought up with the mythology of the Constitution as an embodiment of “democracy” in general, to be worshiped alongside the “Founding Fathers.” Yet the authors of the Constitution understood very well that they represented not “the people” in general but the ruling class of planters and merchants, and wrote it to safeguard their interests, in particular to bolster and uphold the power of the slaveowners in the newly established American republic. The U.S. Constitution established a series of institutions that are strikingly anti-democratic. They remained so even after slavery’s abolition through the Civil War. Revolutionaries explain the need for a revolutionary workers party to lead a socialist revolution to overthrow the entire capitalist system. Slavery and the Constitution: Origins of U.S. Capitalist “Democracy” (August 2020) PSL Targeted for Marches Against Cop Murder of Elijah McClain Defend Denver Anti-Racist Protest Leaders! On Thursday, September 17, police raids were carried out in Denver, Colorado against the organizers of protests denouncing the racist murder of Elijah McClain, a young black man, by police in suburban Aurora in August 2019. Six of the protest leaders were arrested, including four members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has played a leading role in the protests. They have outrageously been charged with multiple serious felonies, including the absurd charge of “kidnapping.” Following Trump’s failed attempt at imposing martial law in Washington, D.C. and the subsedquent the dispatch of federal agents to Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Denver arrests mark a new escalation of police-state measures that are a threat to the civil liberties of all. The Internationalist Group  and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth denounce this ominous attack on the right to protest. We demand that the arrested activists be immediately released and that all charges against them be dropped. Defend Denver Anti-Racist Protest Leaders! (18 September 2020) Elijah McClain (1996-2019) (August 2020) Revolution Publication of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and of students from the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index) Revolution No. 17 (August 2020) click or on image for full list of articles The Racist Police Murder of George Floyd Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! By Gordon Barnes Amidst the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, the United States has been wracked by nationwide protests against racist police brutality and murder. Nightly we hear the helicopters overhead; daily come new images of police violence, repression, curfews, arrests, and the threat of martial law. Why is it that, despite the waves of protest and cyclical pledges of “reform,” the police keep murdering black people? The list of their names is endless. As marchers chant them, some of us add “It never stops.” Born as a professionalized force from the slave patrols in the U.S. South, the police serve the ruling elite and protect their property and social order. That is the fundamental role of the cops under capitalism. What is in danger of occurring again during the current cycle of fervent protest, is the funneling of dissent into the Democratic Party. Democratic mayors largely control the urban centers in this country, and their police forces. It is these Democratic mayors who have instituted the various curfews and police crackdowns, and a series of Democratic Party governors have, along with their Republican confreres, deployed the National Guard. To overcome the racial oppression which is, and always has been, part of the bedrock of American capitalism, the power of the multiracial working class must be mobilized. When Will It End? The Racist Police Lynching of George Floyd (3 June 2020) Protests Denounce Murders of Transgender People in Racist, Capitalist U.S.A. Since Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd on May 25, mass demonstrations against police terror have swept the U.S. Amid this upsurge, protesters have called attention to the fate of African American and Latino trans people killed at the hands of police, prison guards and reactionary bigots. The capitalist dystopia called the United States is a living hell for the oppressed, triply so for black and Latino trans people. At a Hunter College protest in September 2015, after the lynch-law death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail, the Internationalist Club held a speakout against racist terror, with posters with the names and faces of transgender people who had been murdered that year. But in this racist, capitalist country, the killing never stops. Some of the names we remember today are Dominique Rem’mie Fells, Jayne Thompson, Layleen Polanco. The working class and all defenders of democratic rights must actively oppose discrimination and attacks on transgender people. Ultimately, to put an end to this terror requires putting an end to the capitalist system itself. Protests Denounce Murders of Transgender People in Racist, Capitalist U.S.A. (August 2020) No Segregation at Anti-Racist Protests! At a number of demonstrations that the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth has attended in the past period, liberal organizers have literally tried to segregate protesters in line with their notions of hierarchies of oppression. Starkly counterposed to real struggle against oppression, such “privilege theory”-inspired antics are no joke. In the face of the cops, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) and other repressive forces, this expression of guilt-tripping identity politics liberalism can quickly endanger the safety of protesters. This year, at a June 28 protest called in downtown Manhattan by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, a lead organizer announced that the march, which highlighted the issue of police brutality, would be separated into groups – according to tiers of oppression. Fortunately, the crowd of thousands was already integrated and it stayed that way. Fortunately, the crowd of thousands was already integrated and it stayed that way. No Segregation at Anti-Racist Protests! (August 2020) Herding Votes for Biden, Pushing More Cash for Cops Like We Said: Bernie Sanders’ “Political Revolution” Was a Scam With populistic bluster about a “political revolution against the billionaire class,” Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who calls himself a democratic socialist, drew wide support from youth disenchanted by capitalism’s escalating crises. His foot soldiers revved them up, registered them as Democrats and lined them up for the November 2020 vote. In April, Sanders dropped out of the primaries, throwing his weight behind the embodiment of the “Democratic establishment” his followers had reviled: Joe Biden. Now Bernie Sanders proclaims that Joe Biden could be the “most progressive president” since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like his ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who snagged a prized post as co-chair of Biden’s climate taskforce, Sanders holds up Democratic imperialist icon FDR and his New Deal as a model and inspiration. Like we said from the beginning: Sanders’ so-called political revolution was and always has been a political scam, in the service of the Democrats. Like We Said: Bernie Sanders’ “Political Revolution” Was a Scam (August 2020) Defend International Students! Defeat Attacks Against Immigrants! Statement of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth On Monday, July 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) launched a vicious attack against international students, who now “may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.” If they cannot find in-person classes, they must leave the country or face deportation. This xenophobic action by the U.S. immigration Gestapo targets over one million of our fellow students and classmates, including over 350,000 students from China. This sadistic bigotry comes after the U.S. has summarily deported over 2,000 children in the middle of the pandemic. The Revolutionary Internationalist Youth call for labor/black/immigrant action against racist police and anti-immigrant terror, and to stop this vile attack on international students. Defend International Students! Defeat Attacks Against Immigrants! (7 July 2020) For Labor/Black Mobilization Against Racist Police Attacks! Cops Off the Trains and Out of the Stations! Upwards of a thousand people have protested in recent weeks against a wave of racist police brutality in the New York City subways. Cellphone videos taken by bystanders have shown cops storming subway cars and brutally beating black youths. In response, first in downtown Brooklyn on November 1 and then in Harlem three weeks later, protesters marched through the streets chanting “being broke is not a crime” and “What’s our mission? Abolition.” The police assault has been defended by liberal Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio, while Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered 500 more police to flood the subways, trains and buses. The Revolutionary Internationalist Youth joined in the protests, calling for cops out of the subways, and to rip out the turnstiles – for free mass transit, run by the transit workers rather than the real estate speculators and Democratic Party pols who control the system today. TWU Local 100 representing transit workers is the stronghold of NYC labor, and if they were to intersect with the fight against cop terror in the subways it would produce a social explosion that would rock the city. But such a struggle must be waged politically and requires a fighting leadership prepared to take on the capitalist parties responsible for running the transit system into the ground. Cops Off the Trains and Out of the Stations! (November 2019)  “We’re All in This Together.” You Think? Top Ten Lies in the Time of Coronavirus and Mass Protests By Charles Brover U.S. capitalism is in the midst of a triple whammy crisis – economic, social, and public health. Inspiring massive protests against racism and cop terror not seen in their size and scope since the 1960s have set this nation’s cities aflame day after day, and have spread internationally. The historic protests are occurring against the backdrop of unconscionable government delay, deception, ignorant happy talk, and anti-scientific incompetence. Official public health malpractice has driven the confirmed death toll from COVID-19 to over 160,000. This plague is disproportionately ravaging black, Latino, and immigrant working class communities. For Marxist revolutionaries the racist system that is at the root of the oppression of black people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) is class-based capitalism. While the cities are in paroxysms of rage, grief and plague; while millions are fighting to save their livelihoods and their lives, the capitalist rulers, their politicians, and tamed pundits promote lies, damn lies, and even more murderous lies. Here are our top ten picks. Top Ten Lies in the Time of Coronavirus and Mass Protests (8 August 2020)   Millions of Undocumented Immigrants and Their Families Facing the Abyss New York: We Demand Equal Treatment and Emergency Support for Excluded Workers! Declaration of Class Struggle International Workers (TIC) In the sixth month of the health crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pademic, infections are spiking in much of the country while mass unemployment continues to grow and marches against racist police brutality continue. New storms of crisis are coming for the working class, and for immigrants in particular, beginning with a threatened wave of evictions. Nationally, undocumented immigrants are denied “stimulus” aid, unemployment benefits or any official support. In New York some 200,000 undocumented workers have lost their jobs or cannot find work, while over a million workers considered “essential,” a majority of them immigrants, receive poverty wages while running great risk of contracting the virus. Class Struggle International Workers demands that the state of New York include all workers, particularly the undocumented and those in the “gig economy,” among those eligible for unemployment benefits; that state and city governments make up for the exclusion of immigrants from federal support; and that rent be canceled and all residential evictions be prohibited during the pandemic. New York: We Demand Equal Treatment and Emergency Support for Excluded Workers! (11 August 2020) For Labor/Black/Immigrant Action to Fight Racist Terror Fury Over Minneapolis Police Murder of George Floyd Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! Internationalist Special Supplement (click on image to download pdf) “I can’t breathe,” George Floyd kept saying as a Minneapolis police officer dug a knee into his neck. For millions across the country and the world, it hauntingly, unbearably recalls the last words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island, New York man that a cop killed by chokehold in 2014. The racist cop murder of George Floyd set off furious protests in Minneapolis that soon spread to other cities. This latest racist outrage occurs in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is killing African Americans and Latinos at staggeringly high rates. The African American, Latin American, Native American, poor and oppressed communities in the Twin Cities, including a sizeable Somali population, have long been targeted by the police. The names Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Thurman Blevins, Chiasher Fong Vue are testimony that the police lynchings never stop. We call for mass workers action joining with the black population and all the oppressed to shut the Twin Cities down. The inescapable fact is that justice for George Floyd and all those killed by this racist system can only be achieved by socialist revolution. Fury Over Minneapolis Police Murder of George Floyd (28 May 2020) Supplement also includes: Minneapolis: “Cops and Klan Go Hand in Hand” (January 2016) Bad Apples, Broken Windows and Other Myths About the Police (February 2016) Jim Crow “Justice” and the Capitalist State (February 2016) Black America Under the Gun (June 2017) Workers Courageously Fighting in Coronavirus Hot Spot Victory to Yakima Packinghouse Strikers! Amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of workers in Yakima Valley, Washington, are courageously fighting for their livelihoods, and their lives. On Thursday, May 7, dozens of workers at a packinghouse in Naches walked out. The workers, mostly Latina women, are demanding cleaning and disinfectant, “social distancing” safety measures, personal protective equipment , a minimum of 40 hours work weekly and a “hazard pay” bonus to their poverty wages. Within days, workers at a half dozen other packinghouses joined the strike movement. By Monday the management at one packer conceded a $100 per week bonus. But other employers are resisting even such a concession, evidently playing for time to wear down the strikers, hoping that economic desperation will force them back to work. Meanwhile, the bosses are no doubt conferring with their union-busting lawyers on the swiftest and most economical way to return to “normal” conditions of profitable exploitation. This will be a hard fight. Victory to Yakima Packinghouse Strikers! (17 May 2020) MTA Bosses’ Coronavirus Disaster For Workers Control of NYC Transit! Right up at the top of the list of unsung heroes of the pandemic are New York City transit workers, at least 120 of whom have died of COVID-19. Transit workers are disproportionately falling victim to the disease because many are in close contact with large numbers of people, and because of perilous work conditions fostering lung disease, but also because of criminal actions of the employer. The Metropolitan Transit Authority refused to hand out personal protective equipment which had been stockpiled for a pandemic, even as workers were being infected. MTA managers, and their bosses in the State House and City Hall, have amply proven that they are incapable of producing a safe, efficient, clean and comfortable mass transit system – and certainly not one that would be in the interests of the workers who run it and the poor and working people who use it. From the “deferred maintenance” of the 1970s to the subway crashes and ever-worsening performance of the 2010s, the subway bosses focused on paying off Wall Street. The only way to clean up the subway mess is for the workers to take charge. MTA Bosses’ Coronavirus Disaster: For Workers Control of NYC Transit! (13 May 2020) Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia The rightist de facto government of Bolivia that seized power in last month’s “civic-police-military” coup has carried out a new act of repression, arresting Carlos Cornejo, correspondent of leftist Internet publication La Izquierda Diario, and the artist Leonel Jurado, charging them with “sedition.” They were seized yesterday afternoon in the city of El Alto, where they were helping prepare an event in solidarity with families of the at least ten people killed in the police massacre against a protest at the Senkata gas plant there on November 19. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International demand the immediate liberation and dropping of all charges against Carlos Cornejo, Leonel Jurado and all victims of rightist repression in Bolivia! Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia (17 December 2019) Left Reformists in Existential Crisis An Internationalist Group Pamphlet (click on image to download pdf) With the Bernie Sanders candidacy and the dramatic growth of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, the left reformists have been thrown into crisis. This 84-page pamphlet features documents from oppositionists who fought inside left groups to uphold the revolutionary politics of Lenin and Trotsky. To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here Socialist Action’s “Solidarity with Solidarity” How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism While the reformist left in the United States is in profound crisis, tripping over each other as they chase after the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, Socialist Action has remained relatively stationary and appears more red in comparison with those social democrats who are now being devoured by their own opportunism. In reality, SA’s program is pink social democracy. At every key juncture where defense of the degenerated/deformed workers states has been posed point-blank, Socialist Action has lined up with imperialism, from Poland in 1981 to the USSR in 1991 and continuing today. Poland was a key episode in the imperialist drive against the Soviet bloc, which led to capitalist restoration whose devastating consequences continue to be felt around the world. Today SA denounces China as imperialist and North Korea as capitalist while genuine Trotskyists defend them against imperialist threats and attack. And it’s not just words. When the chips were down, these fake-Trotskyists hailed their comrades’ direct and concrete role in delivering vital  CIA-financed equipment to counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarność. Read the details here. How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism (April 2019) “American Apartheid” by Design A Review of Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America By Charles Brover, Class Struggle Education Workers After more than a decade of hard struggle and the passage of laws in the mid-1960s against official Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement suddenly stopped. What was termed de facto segregation was deemed off-limits, or at least had to be left for another day. Rothstein’s book conclusively proves that rigid residential segregation and discrimination against African American, Latino and Asian minorities was always de jure, officially sanctioned. This has had a devastating effect on everything from school integration to murderous police repression. But while laying out key elements of the structural foundation of black oppression in the U.S., The Color of Law fails to go to their root in the system of racist American capitalism. In the United States in 2016 there were 2.3 million  evictions: 6,300 a day, four every minute. And with over 3.5 million homeless people in the country, there are 19 million unoccupied dwellings. This powerful essay from Class Struggle Education Workers demonstrates that it will take nothing short of a socialist revolution to solve the housing question. “American Apartheid” by Design (21 November 2018)  While “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez Chimes In Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain U.S. imperialism lost one of its most vocal and active warmongers on August 25 – Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Universally praised by ruling-class politicians as a “war hero” and “maverick,” McCain’s funeral at the National Cathedral was attended by some of the most infamous mass murderers of this and the last century, from Henry Kissinger to former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Far from being a “war hero,” a “man of honor” or paragon of “human decency,” Senator John McCain was a war criminal who bombed civilians. He was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing run against a civilian factory. But McCain’s most valuable service to U.S. imperialism was as an inveterate war hawk in Congress. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, he beat the drums for murderous imperialist intervention. What’s striking about McCain’s war crimes and endless warmongering is that in virtually all cases, he was joined or supported by Democratic politicians. And, notably, among those praising McCain was Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her eulogy was consciously paying the price of admission to the bipartisan imperialist club of the U.S. Congress. Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain (September 2018)  As The Boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Blames Black Community for Violence Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution On July 14, Chicago police gunned down yet another black person, Harith Augustus, a barber. “Snoop” Augustus, known as a peaceful man, was stopped on the pretext of exhibiting the “characteristics of an armed person,” and was shot dead even though he had a valid gun license. For the police in this rigidly segregated city, and throughout this country founded on the bedrock of slavery, it is always open season on black people. And on Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans … the list goes on. Moreover, in Chicago and almost every other big city, Democrats are the bosses of the racist killer cops. This is all coming to a head in the upcoming trial of killer cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. And Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, running for a third term, is stoking racist reaction by blaming lax “morals” in the black community for the violence engendered by rampant poverty, unemployment and brutal police occupation. Yet some of the same themes are echoed in protests, where instead of denouncing racist police repression the focus is on opposition to “gun violence” in general. Talk of “reforming” the police or controlling guns only serves to divert protest away from a revolutionary perspective and to strengthen the repressive agencies of the capitalist state, while leading protesters into the dead-end of bourgeois pressure politics. The stark fact is that there is no solution to war, poverty and racist repression under capitalism. Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree (August 2018)  DSA: Fronting for the Democrats An Internationalist Group Pamphlet (click on image to download pdf) A 70-page pamphlet analyzing the organizational and political history of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America. Includes articles on: The ABCs of the DSA (August 2017) Imperialist Social Democracy vs. Black Liberation (December 2017) The Real Heritage of Michael Harrington's DSA “Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism (February 2018) DSA Debacle Over Cop “Union” Organizer (September 2017) DSA Dodges Debate: “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018) Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left (June 2015) No, Bernie Sanders Is Not a Socialist (March 2016) Yesterday’s “Obama Socialists,” Today’s Bernie Boosters (December 2015) James P. Cannon on “Third Parties To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here Bourgeois Populism and Social-Democratic Reformism: A Dead End Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria The campaign for the March 4 Italian elections has been dominated by vile xenophobic anti-immigrant chauvinism. All the competing bourgeois parties and coalitions attack the bogeyman of “illegal immigration.” The racist Lega (ex-Nord)  rails about the “invasion of aliens, drug pushers, delinquents and illegals,” raising slogans such as “Italians first! Now or never! Stop the invasion!” With the populist Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement running first in the opinion polls, its historic leader, Beppe Grillo, recently called for immediately deporting all “illegals.” The strategy of the Democratic Party government has been to put itself at the head of the anti-immigrant hysteria by aggressively extending the sway of Italian imperialism in the Mediterranean, Libya and to the south. This imperialist drive to the south is accompanied by a campaign of all-sided racist repression against immigrants and refugee seekers in Italy. What the domesticated left is counterposing to the three main bourgeois coalitions of Forza Italia/Lega, Cinque Stelle and the PD with its various appendages of homeless bourgeois politicians, is a mixture of bourgeois populism and social-democratic reformism. in the present climate of anti-immigrant hysteria and fascist attacks, what is needed are mass mobilizations bringing out the power of the working class to stop the fascists. Above all, we must forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard.  Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria (24 February 2018)  (italiano) Elezioni del 4 Marzo: Isteria anti-immigrati (24 febbraio 2018) Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! By Class Struggle Education League On January 27, hundreds of defenders of immigrant rights from many leftist organizations, labor unions, churches and sanctuary networks rallied in Boston to protest the deportation of Siham Byah. A prominent Occupy Boston activist and single mother, Byah was grabbed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police last November 7, torn from her son, beaten in a local jail, driven to Virginia and then deported to Morocco. The Class Struggle Education League, based in Lowell, Mass. and New Hampshire participated in the protest, emphasizing the importance of mobilizing the power of workers action to stop the I.C.E. deportation machine. It also noted the parallel to the struggle against slave-catchers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a battle which came to a head in Boston and set the stage for the U.S. Civil War. The CSEL is undertaking joint work with the Internationalist Group. Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! (4 February 2018)  Guess Who’s Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and What Power Bishop Is His Vatican Fixer But, of course, one and the same Jeffrey Sachs who designed the post-counterrevolution “shock treatment” in Poland. Also in Bolivia where it led to tens of thousands of workers fired and brutal anti-union repression. In preparation for the no-photo-op pope-meet-and-greet, Bernie and Jeffrey dined with Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, “the pope’s right-hand man and one of the Vatican’s top power players.” This is the same cardinal who helped engineer (together with Hillary Clinton) the 2009 Honduran coup, and before that covered up for bloody massacres and “disappearances” in the 1980s. But then, Pope Francis himself is a veteran of Argentina’s 1970s dirty war. Guess Who's Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and His Power Bishop Vatican Fixer (17 April 2016) A Question of Whose Class Interests Prevail Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us The residents of Flint, Michigan have been living a nightmare ever since in early 2014 the city’s state-appointed “emergency manager” and the governor’s office decided to switch the water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. As a result, the population has been subjected to lead poisoning, particularly affecting the very young and elderly. The levels of contamination are astronomical. For almost two years Republican state authorities and Democratic federal officials refused to do anything about complaints. Now an emergency has been proclaimed, but the water is still undrinkable. Meanwhile, the same “emergency manager” has been overseeing Detroit schools as they descend further into the abyss. The emergency has been created by decaying capitalism: industrial pollution, closing factories and a bipartisan attack on teachers and public education. The dictatorial managers must be kicked out, but changing parties will change nothing. The bottom-line issue is which class is in power. Capitalism is literally poisoning our futures. Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us (3 March 2016) The State of Pennsylvania Seeks to Bar His Lawyer The Frame-Up of Corey Walker By Charles Brover Corey Walker was arrested in July 1996 on a bogus murder charge from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been behind bars ever since. Evidence of his innocence was withheld. He is the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal representation. Lorenzo Johnson, who was arrested in the same case, also remains in prison even though a federal appeals court recognized the insufficiency of the evidence against him, but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the state is trying to deny Walker the attorney of his choice, Rachel Wolkenstein, who has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania authorities will stop at nothing to cover up lying and manufacture of evidence, coercion of witnesses and suppression of evidence of innocence by police and prosecutors. This requires silencing Corey Walker and short-circuiting his legal appeal. In seeking to disqualify Wolkenstein from representing him, the state attorney general's office cites her political views that the judicial system is an organ of racist oppression that must be overthrown by socialist revolution. This witch-hunting attack and the continued incarceration of Walker and Johnson go to the heart of Jim Crow “justice system.” Free Corey Walker and Lorenzo Johnson! The Frame-Up of Corey Walker (4 February 2016) Jim Crow Justice and the Capitalist State (4 February 2016) Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016) Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016) Occupation of Hundreds of Schools Blocks Threatened Closures Student Revolt Shakes São Paulo, Brazil By Class Struggle Workers/UFT For the last three weeks, the city of São Paulo, Brazil has been convulsed by a combative upheaval of high school students protesting the state government’s plan to close 92 schools and order hundreds of thousands of students to change schools. When the state governor tried to ram through this plan without consultation, students responded by occupying almost 200 schools. Then, when military police began clearing out occupied schools this week, students took chairs and tables and set up class in busy intersections and highways. The students, backed by teachers, also refused to take high-stakes test. After several days, the governor backed down. This  is a dramatic example of how the international capitalist offensive against public education should be fought – by mass action in the streets, bringing out students, teachers, parents and mobilizing the power of the working class. Student Revolt Shakes São Paulo, Brazil (4 December 2015) The Haitian Revolution and U.S. Imperialism July 28 marks the 100th anniversary of the first U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1915, under Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. This led to an occupation of 19 years, as well as occupations of the Dominican Republic next door, of Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Veracruz, Mexico, and followed the 1898 U.S. invasion and occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines. But the occupations didn't stop there. In 1994, Democrat Bill Clinton invaded Haiti a second time, and in 2004 Republican George Bush II invaded a third time. Haiti today continues under imperialist occupation, this time outsourced to a United Nations “peacekeeping” force. As proletarian internationalist opponents of imperialism, on this centenary we republish articles from Workers Vanguard when it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism on the 1915-34 U.S. occupation, and a two-part series on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution that led to the first black republic in history, as well as sparking slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and in the United States. (30 July 2015) Yankee Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 1 Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 2 Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland On July 10, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American activist and education worker, was driving from Illinois to her new job at the historically black Prairie View A&M University in Texas, her alma mater. Sandra was pulled over by a Texas Ranger, supposedly for changing lanes without signalling. The trooper abusively demanded she get out of the car, theatening to use a Taser electric shock on her. After having her head slammed on the ground, Sandra was arrested for supposed “assault on a public servant,” for insisting on her rights. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell in Waller  County, Texas. The authorities claim she committed suicide. We say the police are guilty. Sandra was lynched by the cops. On July 22, hundreds gathered in New York City's Union Square to protest the police murder of Sandra Bland. Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group joined in. Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland (22 July 2015) (video) NYC May Day 2015 The Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education workers had a spirited contingent in the May Day march in New York City. Leading the contingent was a group with red flags with the hammer, sickle and 4 of the Fourth International. Then came a banner made by the Hunter Internationalist Club, proclaiming:“Ayotzinapa-Ferguson-NYC, Smash the Racist Capitalist State, Workers to Power. Signs emphasized the call to Defend Black Baltimore following the occupation of the city by the National Guard to squelch the upheaval over the police murder of Freddie Gray, and to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, who faces execution in prison by deliberate medical neglect. Also highlighted was the call for workers action against police terror, noting the historic action by ILWU Local 10 that shut down the port of Oakland on May Day and marched on City Hall calling to stop police terror. NYC May Day 2015 video (9 May 2015) NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015) NYC May Day 2011 video NYC May Day 2010 video Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack It’s been only two months since Eric Garner was chokeholded to death in Staten Island by the racist cops, and barely a month and a half since the police murder of 17-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But despite the national outcry and a thousands-strong march in New York in late August, two incidents in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn show once again the face of racist police violence under liberal Democratic NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. The first involved a heavy‑duty arrest of a vendor after a festival in the park; in the second, a cop slammed a pregnant woman on the pavement on her abdomen and her son and husband were arrested. The residents of this heavily immigrant neighborhood feel singled out for aggressive enforcement under NYPD chief William Bratton’s “broken windows” strategy of massive arrests for minor infractions. On Saturday, September 27, some 300 people came out to protest against the brutal police siege. While many called for Bratton’s resignation, racist cop terror is endemic in capitalist America. To put a stop to it will require nothing less than workers revolution. Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack (28 September 2014) Defend North Korea and China Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink For the Revolutionary Reunification of Korea, North and South! Over the last month and a half, the United States and South Korea have engaged in an escalating series of military provocations against North Korea. Simultaneous “war games” have simulated a nuclear aerial bombing of the North, a ground invasion from the South, annihilation of the leadership and the “insertion” of tens of thousands of U.S. troops searching for nukes. While the imperialist media are, as usual, strenuously demonizing the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and playing up blustering statements coming out of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has been laying the basis for a military strike against the North. The whole operation is part of detailed plan elaborated by the Obama administration, dubbed “the playbook,” for U.S. shows of force. But this is no football game. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International defend North Korea, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, against the war provocations, economic blockade and any attack by U.S. imperialism and its South Korean junior partners, no matter how it starts. We also defend North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its main deterrent against a war by the power which laid waste to the North in the Korean War. U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink (13 April 2013)

The founding statement of the League for the Fourth International La Declaración de la Liga por la IV Internacional se encuentra aquí en español.  La Déclaration de la Ligue pour la Quatrième Internationale se retrouve ici en français.  A Declaração da Liga pela Quarta Internacional é disponível aqui no português. Deklarasyon ng Liga para sa Ika-Apat na Internasyonal. Introducing The Internationalist El Internacionalista es el órgano en español de la Liga por la IV Internacional.  Vanguarda Operária é o jornal da  Liga Quarta-Internacionalista  do Brasil.  Liga für die Vierte Internationale Artikel und Erklärungen der LIVI auf Deutsch.

Contact us at the following addresses: U.S.A. To contact the League for the Fourth International write to: Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212) 460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711  E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.com  BRAZIL To contact the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write to: Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-970, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil  Caixa Postal 3982, CEP 20010-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil E-mail: lqb1996@yahoo.com.br GERMANY To contact the Internationalistische Gruppe in Germany, write to:  Postfach 80 07 21, 21007 Hamburg, Germany  E-mail: permanenterevolution@posteo.de ITALY To contact the Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia, write to: Anna Chiaraluce, C.P. N. 78, Ufficio Postale San Sisto, 06132 Perugia (PG), Italy E-mail: it_internazionalista@yahoo.com MEXICO To contact the Grupo Internacionalista/México write to: Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, Mexico D.F, Mexico E-mail: grupointernacionalista@yahoo.com.mx

We would like to hear from you. If you are interested in learning more about the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, contact us at: internationalistgroup@msn.com