    
|
"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." |
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.
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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.
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)
The Internationalist No. 62
Break with the Bosses’ Parties – For a Revolutionary Workers Party
(January-March 2021)
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for full list of articles
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)
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)Heroes for Exposing the Crimes of Imperialism
Victory to Yakima Packinghouse Strikers! (17 May 2020)
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)
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)
The Internationalist No. 61
Trump Looks to Cops and Fascists, Democrats Appeal to Pentagon Brass
(September-October 2020)
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for full list of articles
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)Defeat the Bipartisan Capitalist Attack on Public Education
Get Ready to Strike to Make NYC Schools Safe to Reopen (30 August 2020)
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)
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)
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)
Fury Over Minneapolis Police Murder of George Floyd
Only Revolution Can Bring Justice!
(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)
in Existential Crisis
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
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)
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)Occupation of Hundreds of Schools Blocks Threatened Closures
Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016)
Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016)
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, 1915-1934Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 1
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 2
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)Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack
NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015)
NYC May Day 2011 video
NYC May Day 2010 video
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 InternationalistEl 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.comBRAZIL
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
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
