"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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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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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) 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) Immigrant Laundromat Workers Fight Intolerable Conditions “¡Union, fuerza, solidaridad!” On November 25, defenders of labor and immigrant rights rallied to support the workers of the Wash Supply Laundromat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as they delivered a letter of demands to management. Wearing aprons reading “We Are the Union,” this courageous group of Mexican immigrant women gave voice to the struggle against the intolerable conditions, wage theft and abuse faced by many thousands in laundry sweatshops across the city. The action, called by the Laundry Workers Center (LWC), highlighted the workers demands for an end to wage theft and discrimination, the right to a break and paid sick leave, better health and safety conditions – including providing PPE needed during the coronavirus pandemic – as well as earning the city’s minimum wage. They are also demanding recognition of the union they are in the process of forming. The Internationalist Group (IG) and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth (RIY) joined in the action, emphasizing the need to mobilize the power of NYC labor to defend immigrant workers. Immigrant Laundromat Workers Fight Intolerable Conditions (November 2020) 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) From the Current Issue  The Internationalist No. 61 (September-October 2020)  click above or on image for full list of articles Trump Looks to Cops and Fascists, Democrats Appeal to Pentagon Brass Repression Elections 2020 You Can’t Fight Trump with Democrats U.S. capitalism is in a heap of trouble, and as usual, the working class and oppressed are paying the price. It’s about to get a lot worse. The country is beset by a deadly plague, the worst in a century. The economy is in a new depression, the deepest since the 1930s. An explosion of outrage over racist cop brutality brought millions into the streets daily in the largest sustained protest movement in U.S. history. The ruling class is sharply divided after a failed impeachment process, while U.S. society is deeply polarized over just about everything. And now we are on the eve of an election which could easily – even likely – set off weeks of turbulent unrest and perhaps a constitutional crisis not seen since 1876. In answer to Trump’s “law and order” campaign, Democratic standard-bearer Joe Biden calls to shoot “rioters” in the leg while his running mate, Kamala Harris, brags she was California’s former “top cop.” Neither Republicans nor Democrats will or can do away with the terrible scourges brought upon us by the decaying capitalist system of war, poverty and racism which they represent. We need a workers party to fight all the bosses’ parties on a revolutionary program to sweep away the entire capitalist system. Repression Elections 2020 (30 October 2020) Brazil: Workers Power Candidacy Against Capitalist Rule Comrades Carlos Alexandre Honorato (Cerezo) and Geraldo Ribeiro of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil are running on a Workers Power Candidacy Against Capitalist Rule for mayor and deputy mayor of Volta Redonda, site of the largest steel plant in Latin America. They are presenting a class-struggle program, including demands for free and rapid COVID-19 tests for all, expansion of the public health care system under workers control, teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools, union control of hiring, all police and military out of the impoverished favelas, and the formation of workers councils as the basis for a workers and peasants government. Cerezo is a former steel worker who played a leading role in the 1988 strike that won the six-hour workshift in the face of army occupation. Geraldo led the historic struggle to expel police from the municipal workers union. The bourgeois courts have banned the independent workers campaign, which unlike all the rest refuses to take one real (the Brazilian currency) from the state or bosses, but the class-struggle campaign continues. Brazil: Workers Power Candidacy Against Capitalist Rule (28 October 2020) Close the Camps – Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Down with Racist Fortress Europe! Greece: Moria Fire Ignites More Racist Repression As flames engulfed the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on September 8, burning it to the ground, Europe’s “forgotten” crisis was made visible once more. In the midst of a global pandemic that has claimed over a million lives, Greek authorities locked down the open-air prison with its nearly 13,000 migrant refugees. After protests against the lockdown, and pushed to the edge by spending many months and even years in the  squalid camp, Europe’s largest, some camp residents set it ablaze. The desperate act of rebellion was fueled by years of humiliation and dehumanization, carried out under the racist immigration policies of the German-dominated European Union (EU) and its Greek border guards.With a rightist government and outright fascists cooperating in immigrant-bashing rhetoric and actions, the League for the Fourth International calls to close the concentration camps, free all migrants and allow them the same freedom of travel as everyone else while demanding asylum for refugees and full citizenship rights for all immigrants. We also call for workers action against racist attacks, and for refugees fleeing the devastation caused by imperialism, we say: let them in! Greece: Moria Fire Ignites More Racist Repression (28 October 2020) Greek Refugee Crisis Redux: Made in Germany (28 October 2020)   In Wake of Upsurge Against Racist Cop Terror Democrats’ Pro-Cop Ticket Vies with Trump Over “Law and Order” So this is what “democracy” looks like, USA-style, as election season enters its final stretch: a hellscape for the oppressed, workers and youth. Unending police murder of black people, hundreds of thousands dead of coronavirus, millions unemployed, fascistic vigilantes gunning down anti-racist protesters, and now the West Coast up in flames. It’s not an apocalyptic Hollywood movie – it’s the “death agony of capitalism” 2020. And after millions come out in the streets demanding an end to police terror; after “progressive” Democrats (and their echo chamber on the reformist left) work overtime to channel protest into calls for “defunding” the cops; after these same “progressives” fall in line behind the upcoming nominee – the result is the most ostentatiously pro-cop Democratic ticket in decades. While many organizers of Black Lives Matter protests this summer urged people to vote (Democratic) in November, this is what they get: Joe Biden, a “shoot ’em in the legs” segregationist for president and Kamla Harris, a “lock ’em up” top cop for veep. Revolutionary Marxists call to break from and defeat the capitalist parties of racist cop terror, poverty and war, and to build a workers party to fight for a workers government. Democrats’ Pro-Cop Ticket Vies with Trump Over “Law and Order” (18 September 2020) The Rap Sheet of “Top Cop” Kamala Harris (18 September 2020) As U.S. Convulsed Over Racist Police Murder SL Silence = Capitulation to the Democrats U.S. capitalism is mired in deep crisis, with 200,000 dead from COVID-19, 50 million having lost their jobs, over 1,200 civilians killed by police so far in 2020, and now a putrid election campaign in which Democrats and Republicans vie over who can best carry out racist repression. While most of the left has gone along with the Democrats’ “law and order” ticket, who has been fighting against the Dems and all capitalist parties? The Internationalist Group has done so since Day One of the wave of anti-racist protests, in our press, polemics, placards, banners, chants and speeches. The Spartacist League, in stark contrast, has not said one word about the continuing pandemic of racist police murders, and has been absent from the mass marches. Politically, their absence from the battlefield destroys any remaining pretense of providing leadership, much less revolutionary leadership. These ex-Trotskyists turn their backs on youth seeking to fight racist oppression. The latter-day SL provides no opposition to the Democratic Party. On its epitaph, we can read: when the U.S. blew up over racist cop murder, when Democrats were misleading millions into a dead-end, they did nothing. SL Silence = Capitulation to the Democrats (2 October 2020) Prepare a Joint UFT/AFSCME/TWU Strike Against “Doomsday” Cuts NYC Teachers: Use Your Union Power to Make Schools Safe to Reopen New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to reopen city schools on September 10 sparked widespread unrest among teachers and other school employees. The pressure from the ranks was so strong that, on August 19, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) leader Michael Mulgrew held a press conference in which he said the union would be prepared to strike if union demands for a checklist of safety conditions are not met. As the deadline approached, Mulgrew and de Blasio announced a deal to delay reopening until September 21, but the union tops abandoned their demands for testing of everyone entering NYC school buildings. Class Struggle Education Workers calls on the union and teachers to ensure that every classroom in New York City is made safe, every school building has to be approved by a committee of educators and families in that school, thousands of new teachers and educators should be hired, and a joint strike against layoffs together with transit workers and all city employees be prepared that can shred the no-strike Taylor Law.  NYC Teachers: Use Your Union Power to Make Schools Safe to Reopen (6 September 2020) A Class-Struggle Program to Reopen New York City Schools Safely (6 September 2020) Get Ready to Strike to Make NYC Schools Safe to Reopen (30 August 2020)  Defeat the Bipartisan Capitalist Attack on Public Education The Fight Over Reopening Schools Is a Class Battle On July 7, Donald Trump held a series of White House events to demand that schools be reopened throughout the U.S. for in-person instruction in the fall, after they had shut down in March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The presidential diktat was part of his reelection drive. But while Trump’s aim was transparently political, where transmission rates are low, schools should be reopened, safely, in view of the damage to the education, development and well-being of children resulting from keeping them out of school. “Remote learning” is an oxymoron, and greatly intensifies racial and class gaps in education. This article is a detailed analysis of the issues and class forces behind the battle over opening schools. Calls by various liberals and reformists to keep schools closed until COVID-19 is no more are deeply reactionary and play into the hands of enemies of public education, both conservative and liberal, who want to replace public schools (and teachers) with remote instruction, as part of their agenda to privatize public education. What’s needed is to bring out the power of labor together with all the oppressed to push through longstanding demands for quality education which are now key to safely reopening the schools. But that requires a revolutionary leadership that breaks with all parties and politicians of the ruling class to wage a class offensive. The Fight Over Reopening Schools Is a Class Battle (6 September 2020) Mobilize Workers Action Against Racist State Terror! Los Angeles: Outrage Against Murder of Dijon Kizzee On August 31, 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee was gunned down in a hail of bullets to the back by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies for supposedly riding his bike in an “illegal manner.” The day before the murder of Dijon Kizzee, a whistleblower’s testimony surfaced, shedding light on a murderous gang within the LASD’s Compton station called the “Executioners,” which recruits members based on their “success” in committing racist murders in the streets. The Internationalist Group calls for labor/black/Latino/immigrant mobilization against police terror. In contrast, many liberals and pretend-socialists seek instead to divert struggles against cop terror into the dead end of trying to reform the unreformable police. The is reflected in calls to “defund” and for “community control” of the police/sheriff’s department. The idea that the ruling class – the capitalists and their politicians – would let those whom the police are intended to repress control the repressors shows a fundamental (and in the case of would-be socialists, willful) misconception of the nature of the capitalist state. Los Angeles: Outrage Against Murder of Dijon Kizzee (6 September 2020) Cops Shoot Jacob Blake in the Back, Shackle Him to Hospital Bed, Anti-Racist Protesters Murdered by Fascistic Gunman Cops, Feds and Fascists Unleash Racist Terror in Kenosha, Wisconsin For Mass Worker/Black/Immigrant Action!Jacob Blake lies paralyzed in his hospital bed, shackled by hand and foot, after being shot with seven bullets to his back by police in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 23. Two days later, anti-racist protesters Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum were murdered by a rifle-toting 17-year-old white supremacist vigilante from Illinois, Kyle Rittenhouse. Racist Republican president Donald Trump has dispatched hundreds of militarized forces to lock down Kenosha, while pro-Trump fascistic militias descended on Kenosha. But it was the Democratic mayor and Democratic governor who unleashed the racist police on demonstrators, imposed a curfew and brought in the Wisconsin National Guard to suppress the protests. Cops, Feds and Fascists Unleash Racist Terror in Kenosha, Wisconsin (28 August 2020) Trump and Democrats Assault Protesters Police State Portland: Cops and Feds Get Out! Following Donald Trump’s attempt to impose martial law in Washington, D.C. in the first days of June to put down protests over the racist police murder of George Floyd, the racist pyromaniac in the White House is at it again. Now he’s seeking to provoke explosions of unrest as an election tactic, in order to pose as the “law-and-order candidate.” The police-state tactics of federal agents dispatched to Portland, Oregon, intended to terrorize, have instead escalated the massive Black Lives Matter protests. Trump’s use of his Gestapo of secret police forces, assaulting protesters to sow terror, is an ominous threat to the democratic rights of all. It is a major step toward the imposition of direct military/police rule. But while Democrats pose as heroes of the “resistance,” the reality is that the vast majority of the thousands of arrests and innumerable brutal beatings of protesters in the last few weeks have been carried out by police forces under the command of Democratic mayors and governors. The Democrats threaten lawsuits and legislation, but that won’t stop Trump and his stormtroopers. The Internationalist Group calls for workers strikes and mobilizations together with all the oppressed, against racist repression and martial law threats. In the present sharp crisis, the IG and Class Struggle Workers – Portland raise the call: “Cops and feds get out!” Police State Portland: Cops and Feds Get Out! (21 July 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) From the Previous Issue  The Internationalist No. 60 (May-July 2020)  click above or on image for full list of articles Millions Take the Streets in Upheaval Against Cop Murder Machine To Uproot Racist Oppression: Socialist Revolution The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop set off a wave of outrage that swept across the United States and has continued for weeks. Millions of people took to the streets to denounce the racist police murder of black people. As protests spread cops geared up for battle attacked demonstrators. Democratic mayors and media screamed about “looting” to justify “law-and-order” crackdowns, while the incendiary racist Trump called to shoot looters and brought in thousands of troops to the capital. These have been the largest sustained protests in U.S. history. Seeing the shift in public opinion, Democratic mayors, who are “the bosses of the racist killer cops,” tried to coopt protests by pretending to shift some funds from the police to social programs. Yet none of the many plans to “reform” the police have ever succeeded because racist and anti-working-class repression is the essential function of the police. The only way to put an end to the cop murder machine is through socialist revolution. The combustible material that can fuel a revolution is everywhere. What’s urgently needed is revolutionary leadership. To Uproot Racist Oppression: Socialist Revolution (10 July 2020) Opportunist Word Games to Justify Tailing Democrats “Abolish the Police” Under Capitalism? As activists call to “defund” the police while Democratic leaders call for more funds to the cops, in a presidential election pitting “shoot the looters” Trump vs. “shoot ’em in the legs” Biden, the Democratic Party is worried about energizing young voters. The need a little help from the opportunist left, to get out a “Dump Trump” vote in November. The Democratic (Party) Socialists of America were glad to oblige, Opportunist leftists present “abolish the police” as if that is the true meaning of protests calling to “defund the police.” But the actual role of the “abolish” demand is  to tie BLM protests to budget machinations by Democratic politicians. The Internationalist Group calls instead to snash the racist capitalist state with workers revolution. “Abolish the Police” Under Capitalism? (10 July 2020) Cops Out of the Unions – Now! By Class Struggle Workers – Portland The racist police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others have highlighted why police of all kinds have no place in the labor movement. The demand “Police Out of the Unions” is a crucial aspect of bringing the power of the working class into the fight against racist oppression today. The labor bureaucracy has brought the class enemy‘s thugs into our labor movement through many doors. Major unions including the SEIU, Teamsters and AFGE include thousands of police in their cop affiliates. Moreover, policing is not solely relegated to police departments. It is also carried out by prison guard and security guards. Class Struggle Workers – Portland demands that ALL police “unions” and locals or affiliates of other unions be removed from the labor movement. In addition, defenders of labor and the oppressed must demand that prison guards and security guards should also be removed from the unions. Cops Out of the Unions – Now! (7 July 2020) No to Military/Police Rule: Mobilize Workers Power! Trump and Democrats Stage Ominous Trial Run for Martial Law In the days following the May 25 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, furious protests spread from coast to coast, including right in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. After being rushed to an underground bunker, racist president Donald Trump let loose a barrage of tweets, threatening to shoot protesters. On June 1, he berated governors, called for “total domination” of the streets and threatened to send in active duty troops to suppress demonstrations. In Washington, D.C., he did just that, bringing in thousands of National Guardsmen and the 82nd Airborne. This was a dry run at imposing martial law. Trump was thwarted not by non-existent “resistance” by Democratic governors, who had already mobilized the National Guard, but by the military brass, worried that troops might not follow orders to attack demonstrators. The Internationalist Group called for workers strikes now against racist terror and martial law threats.  Trump and Democrats Stage Ominous Trial Run for Martial Law (27 June 2020) For Labor/Black/Immigrant Action to Fight Racist Terror Fury Over Minneapolis Police Murder of George Floyd “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) Bad Apples, Broken Windows and Other Myths About the Police (February 2016) Jim Crow “Justice” and the Capitalist State (February 2016) Silent Amidst Mass Upsurge Against Racist Oppression Spartacist League Declares Bankruptcy In the almost four weeks since Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd, the ongoing upheaval against racist police terror is by far the largest sustained wave of protest this country has seen in many decades. “Progressive” bourgeois politicians and their auxiliaries and surrogates on the reformist left are now working overtime to channel protests into updated versions of the same old fakery about “reforming” the police. For Marxist revolutionaries, this is a crucial time to intervene in the ongoing struggle with the communist program. That is what the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International have been doing. Yet amid the most massive protest movement in the U.S. in decades, the formerly Trotskyist Spartacist League has not published a paper, put out a leaflet or posted a single statement on its website on the killing of George Floyd or the mass protests against racist police terror. The sepulchral silence of the SL speaks volumes: its abject abdication is a declaration of political bankruptcy. Spartacist League Declares Bankruptcy (21 June 2020) Mobilize Labor/Black/Immigrant Power Against Cop Terror! ILWU Shutdown of West Coast Ports Points the Way Forward The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down all 29 ports on the U.S. West Coast on June 19, in honor of George Floyd and to protest “police brutality and systematic racism.” This is a big step forward, as daily and nightly mass protests of thousands continue across the United States weeks after Floyd was brutally murdered by a Minneapolis cop. From the outset of the protests, the Internationalist Group has called to mobilize labor/black/immigrant action against racist police terror. In addition to the outrage over the police murder of Floyd, the initiators of the ILWU port shutdown were impelled to take action by President Donald Trump’s threats of gunfire against protesters, and Democratic and Republican governors calling in the National Guard to suppress demonstrations. The ILWU action has been called for Juneteenth, which celebrates the day – 19 June 1865 – that slavery was formally abolished in Texas, the last of the Confederate slave states to be occupied by the Union Army, bringing the Civil War, the second American Revolution, to a close. The only way to break the death grip of the killer cops today is to smash the whole racist police/prison/judicial apparatus of the capitalist state through socialist revolution. ILWU to Shut All West Coast Ports Against Racist Police Brutality (16 June 2020) Shipbuilding Workers in Maine Fight General Dynamics Union-Busting Victory to the Bath Iron Works Strike! On Monday, June 22, some 4,300 members of Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America/IAM Local S6 went on strike at the Bath Iron Works (BIW) shipyard in Maine. BIW, which produces destroyers for the U.S. Navy, is owned by General Dynamics, one of the largest military contractors in the world. Amid record unemployment, a global pandemic and mounting pressure from the military as BIW’s order backlog grows longer, the shipyard workers have shown they are ready and willing to fight. In mid-March, 3,000 called out sick demanding the company sanitize the site. What they are up against now is “flat-out union-busting,” said the international president of the IAM, as the company “is exploiting the current pandemic to attempt to outsource work.” The BIW workers’ strike must be taken up by the entire labor movement – a victory here could set the stage for a wave of labor struggles nationwide. Victory to the Bath Iron Works Strike! (29 June 2020) Fruit Packinghouse Workers Stand Up for Their Rights Yakima Strikes: The Battle Has Just Begun After 22 days on strike, workers at the Allan Bros. packinghouse in Naches, Washington, celebrated an agreement with the company and returned to work on Monday, June 1. By Friday, June 5, the other companies settled, leaving Columbia Reach in Yakima as the last ongoing strike. But as many strikers commented, the struggle has only just begun. Over the course of the strike movement that broke out at Allan Brothers on May 7 and spread to eight area packinghouses, many people commented that nothing like this had been seen in the Yakima Valley for decades. As the year began, could the arrogant bosses who own the valley have imagined that “their” workers would dare to defy them by walking out – in the middle of a pandemic! – and force them to the negotiating table? For the strikers, who started with zero, the fact that their struggle made some gains can be a first step on the road to winning a union. Now come negotiations over demands for a pay raise. The courageous Yakima strikers, mostly women, must not stand alone. Action by the entire labor movement is key to achieving a solid victory in Yakima. Yakima Strikes: The Battle Has Just Begun (5 June 2020) Minneapolis Public Schools Give Cops the Boot In an historic move, Minneapolis Public Schools voted unanimously yesterday to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Horrified by the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by an MPD cop, educators in the Twin Cities and throughout the country denounced this racist murder. Students at local high schools and community have been organizing for years to get the misnamed “school resource officers” (SROs) out of the schools. On June 2, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers held a rally outside Minneapolis Public Schools Davis Center in North Minneapolis demanding “No More Police in Our Schools!” At the demo, teachers and parents shared stories about how their African American and Latino kids do not feel safe with MPD officers roaming their hallways. While the number of police in Minneapolis schools is small, the unanimous vote of the school board to remove them has national importance. Minneapolis Public Schools Give Cops the Boot (3 June 2020) To Meet Urgent Demand, Workers Power Is Key How Capitalism Sabotaged Ventilator Production As the coronavirus pandemic ravages the country, with New York City as the epicenter, hospitals and government at all levels have been caught wholly unprepared. A cut-throat ventilator bidding war is going on, in which state governments compete against each other and federal agencies to get their hands on these desperately-needed life-saving devices. There should be a crash program to produce tens of thousands of new ventilators – yesterday! So why hasn’t that happened? Ventilator manufacturers are loath to ramp up production on the massive scale needed because it would virtually eliminate their profits. The ventilator shortage has been known for years. Medical professionals and even some government officials had been ringing the alarm bells, warning that a pandemic would leave U.S. hospitals in the lurch. But when a federal program was begun in 2008 to purchase up to 40,000 new ventilators, the company was bought out by a larger competitor in order to stop production of the lower-cost machine. Workers at General Electric have called on the company to rehire laid-off workers and retool plants to produce the vital machines. Faced with the refusal of the bosses to do so, GE workers should take control to gear up ventilator production, on the road to socialist revolution. How Capitalism Sabotaged Ventilator Production (14 April 2020) Why Cops and Their “Unions” Have No Place in the Labor Movement By Becca Lewis Amidst nationwide protests ignited by the racist police murder of George Floyd, union members everywhere are asking: how can labor throw its weight into the fight to uproot racist repression? We have the power to shut down factories and docks, farms and urban transport, food plants and phone service. And now is the time to use it. But it’s also high time the labor movement cleans its own house. In fact, it’s long overdue. As mass anger at police killings shines the spotlight on police forces’ role as enforcers of racist repression, the time is now to carry through the demand long raised by class-struggle unionists: “Cops out of the unions.” Despite recent efforts by the Writers Guild of America, East and others to rightly call for the expulsion of the International Union of Police Associations from the AFL-CIO, the push has been met with resistance from the the AFL-CIO. When labor officialdom tries to stop or divert this vital fight, they are wielding the very outlook and policies that have drastically undercut and weakened our movement for years. Why Cops and Their “Unions” Have No Place in the Labor Movement (June 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) To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here 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 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, Casella Postale N. 6, 06070 Ellera Umbra (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

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