"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. Read
more...
May 14 Is About
Pressuring the Democrats,
Who Will Do Nothing for Abortion
Rights, Again
To
Win Abortion Rights Fight,
Pro-Democrat Marches Are a Dead
End
Free Abortion
on Demand – Women’s Liberation
Through Socialist Revolution
Following the leaked Supreme Court
majority draft opinion that would
overturn the Roe v. Wade decision
granting women a right to abortion,
there have been large protests around
the country. Democratic elected
officials quickly grabbed the spotlight.
For them, the leak means that they have
six months to pound away at the theme
that a Republican victory in the
mid-term elections is a threat to every
woman’s rights. A nationwide series of
marches was held on Saturday, May 14 on
the slogan “Bans Off Our Bodies” calling
for “elected officials [to] take action
before the Court gets the chance to
overturn abortion.” Yet since the U.S.
Senate just blocked the Women’s Health
Protection Act, the actual aim of the
May 14 protests was to get out the vote
for Democrats. These capitalist
politicians are faux “friends” of women.
The Democrats are a party of war and
mass incarceration that seeks women’s
votes, but buries legislation to defend
their rights. As Internationalist youth
emphasized at recent speak-outs in New
York and Los Angeles, what’s needed is
mass mobilization bringing out the power
of the multiracial working class,
fighting for the full and unrestricted
right to abortion. To
Win Abortion Rights Fight,
Pro-Democrat Marches Are a Dead End
(13 May 2022)
For Vaccine
Mandates and Free Testing “Vaccine Passports” = Police
Control, Not Public Health Fascistic
Forces Take Lead of Reactionary
Anti-Vaccine Protests
Since last summer, from Europe to
Canada, fascistic and outright
Nazi/fascist forces have taken the lead
in organizing protests over mandatory
vaccination against COVID-19. A dramatic
case of this ominous development was the
storming of the offices of the main
Italian labor federation in October by
squads from an anti-vaxxer demo led by
leaders of the fascist Forza Nuova
terror squad. Later, in the port of
Trieste, an attempt was made to portray
a no-vax sit-in as a workers protest,
although only a small minority of the
dockers participated. Sensing a new
“movement” budding, some on the left
have opportunistically tailed after
ultra-rightist-led anti-vaccine
mobilizations. As a public health
measure to protect the population from
the deadly virus, the League for the
Fourth International supports obligatory
anti-COVID vaccination to the extent
feasible. We do not support “vaccine
passports,” which do nothing for public
health, and oppose repression of
anti-vaxxers by the forces of capitalist
state repression, which would much
sooner go after labor and leftists.
Rather, from the onset of the pandemic,
the LFI and fraternally allied trade
unionists have put forward a program for
workers control of safety, and actively
sought to implement it in workplaces. Fascistic
Forces Take Lead of Reactionary
Anti-Vaccine Protests (April 2022)
The “Green Tide” in Latin
America: A Festival of Class Collaboration The
Struggle for Full Abortion Rights,
From Latin America to the U.S. Free Abortion on Demand –
For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist
Revolution
The battle over abortion is at a critical
point throughout the Americas. As
reactionary forces in the United States
wave the banner of the “right to life” and
“the family” to eliminate rights won in
the past, elsewhere in the hemisphere
there has been an upsurge in actions to
eliminate laws that have sent thousands of
women to jail for the “crime” of ending an
unwanted pregnancy – or just having a
miscarriage. In Latin America much has
been made of an advancing “Green Tide,” as
feminist groups have labeled the mass
mobilizations in Argentina that won a
partial legalization of abortion. Yet that
movement was led by bourgeois political
currents – bringing with it obstacles and
limitations to winning crucial rights. In
the U.S., the issue is sharply posed of
how to fight against the assault on
women’s rights, abortion rights, gay and
transgender rights. The new/old
dead-end “strategy” of
bourgeois feminists is to vote for the
Democrats, who despite the hype are no
friends of women.Everywhere, the issue of
control of women’s bodies by the state is
poised point-blank, as decaying capitalism
endangers the rights of all the oppressed.
The pending calamity in the U.S., where
the constitutional right to an abortion is
on the verge of being eliminated after
being in force for a half-century,
underlines the need for a revolutionary
class struggle for the liberation of
women. The
Struggle for Full Abortion Rights, From
Latin America to the U.S. (March
2022)
Democrats, NLRB No
Friends of Labor Amazon Labor
Union Victory at JFK8 Unionize All of Amazon with
Class Struggle!
On Friday, April 1, the Amazon Labor Union
(ALU) won a historic vote to unionize the
massive JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island,
New York, by a decisive margin. This is
the first union victory in North America
against the giant distribution and
e-commerce monopoly, which has 1.1 million
employees in the U.S alone. The vote,
which the media are calling “one of the
biggest victories for organized labor in a
generation,” came amid growing restiveness
in the working class, and followed large
strikes last fall at Midwest industries.
It will be a beacon for millions of
workers at Amazon and throughout country
who desperately need unionization to fight
against the low wages, miserable
“benefits” and deadly working conditions
that are the standard in capitalist
America. It will take genuinely
revolutionary political struggle to break
the stranglehold of capitalist Democrats
and pro-capitalist labor bureaucrats that
has been driving the unions to the grave.
Key to winning the major class battle at
Amazon, as well as to organizing the
unorganized and building a fighting labor
movement overall, will be to forge a solid
core of class-struggle militants in the
warehouses, factories and other
workplaces. Amazon
Labor Union Victory at JFK8 (14
April 2022)
Interview with ALU
Worker at Staten Island JFK8 Warehouse Unionizing
Amazon Will Be a Huge Class Battle The Internationalist interviewed
Will, a supporter of the
Internationalist Group who works at
Amazon’s big warehouse in Staten Island,
New York and has been part of the Amazon
Labor Union effort almost from the
start. Interview
with ALU Worker-Activist at JFK8
(14 April 2022)
Imperialist Press
Fawns Over Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalist
Militias Smash
U.S./NATO-Backed Nazi-Fascist Mass
Murderers! The
Truth About Ukraine’s Fascist
Infestation
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February
24 was announced by Russian president
Vladimir Putin in a speech declaring a
“special military operation” to
“de-nazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine.
The bourgeois press in the United States
and in the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) imperialist countries
immediately mocked the notion. The
Ukrainian state apparatus, particularly
its repressive forces, is in fact riddled
with fascistic nationalists, outright
fascists and Nazis, would-be ethnic
cleansers, some of whom are openly
anti-Semitic and admirers of Hitler.
Fascist militias are a large component of
the military forces that have relentlessly
besieged the Russian-speaking population
of the Donetsk and Lugansk self-proclaimed
“people’s republics” that broke away from
Ukraine eight years ago. Moreover, many of
these fascist and pro-Nazi squads have
been financed, armed and trained by the
U.S. and NATO. The ultra-nationalist
fascists and Nazis embedded in the
Ukrainian state and its repressive organs
must be rooted out, permanently stopped
and brought to justice, and their program
of “ethnic cleansing” smashed. To have a
lasting effect this must be accomplished
by the working people themselves, on an
internationalist basis. The
Truth About Ukraine’s Fascist
Infestation (4 April 2022) Question
Answered: Who Was Behind the 2014
Maidan Massacre?
The 20 February 2014 massacre in Kiev’s
Maidan (Independence Square), in which 48
protesters and several policemen were
killed, was the trigger that set off the
coup d’état, led by fascist and Ukrainian
ultra-nationalists, that the very next day
overthrew the government of Viktor
Yanukovich. The coup plotters, the
imperialist press and U.S. authorities in
unison blamed the riot police of the
Yanukovich government, which they
considered pro-Russian. But from the
outset there were numerous questions about
where the fusillade came from. At the
time, we published an article asking: “Who
Were the Snipers Who Killed Kiev
Protesters and Police on February 20?”
Since then, particularly due to the
painstaking work of Canadian academic Ivan
Katchanovski, the answer to this question
has become crystal clear. The massacre was
a false flag operation carried out by the
fascist action squads in the Maidan and
their oligarchic Ukrainian nationalist
backers. Question
Answered: Who Was Behind the 2014 Maidan
Massacre? (10 April 2022)
Report
from Germany Imperialist
Racism and the Russia-Ukraine War
Every weekend now, tens and hundreds of
thousands of protesters pour into the
streets of German cities in “peace”
demonstrations supposedly against war in
Ukraine. In reality, many if not most of
these are pro-war demos in that they are
overwhelmingly for support to Ukraine in
the war with Russia. Many speakers called
for arms deliveries to Ukraine, i.e., by
the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) imperialists who provoked
this fratricidal war in their escalating
war drive against Russia and China.
Meanwhile, in stark counterpoint to the
chauvinist backlash against refugees from
Middle Eastern wars, there has been an
unprecedented outpouring of support for
Ukrainian refugees. This has been whipped
up with outright racist media coverage
stressing that Ukraine is a “relatively
civilized, relatively European” country,
with “people with blue eyes and blond
hair.” And it is reflected in the sharply
contrasting treatment at the border of
white refugees fleeing Ukraine and those
considered non-white. Today, as almost 3
million Ukrainians (so far) have fled the
war we call for for revolutionary
defeatism on both sides of the reactionary
nationalist Russia-Ukraine war, for
revolutionary struggle against the
capitalist rulers in Moscow and Kiev, and
to defeat the U.S./NATO war drive pointing
to World War III against Russia and China.
Imperialist
Racism and the Russia-Ukraine War
(19 March 2022)
Oppose
Imperialist-Provoked Russia-Ukraine War
–
For Revolutionary Struggle Against the
Capitalist Rulers in Moscow and Kiev!
Behind
the War: U.S./NATO War Drive Against
Russia, China
Defend Self-Rule in Southeastern
Ukraine! Smash the Fascists – For
Proletarian Internationalism Against
Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism!
On February 24, Russian president Vladimir
Putin launched a military operation in
Ukraine. The first day consisted of
dispatching troops to bolster the
breakaway “people’s republics” of Donetsk
and Lugansk, accompanied by air strikes
against military targets in many parts of
Ukraine. This quickly turned into an
invasion by Russian ground forces
surrounding and launching attacks on
several Ukrainian cities. After previously
talking of defending the embattled regions
of the Donbass, upon launching his
military attack Putin declared its purpose
to be to “to demilitarize and denazify
Ukraine.” This is now a war between the
Russian capitalist state, with its
nationalist ruler in Moscow, and that of
Ukraine, whose nationalist regime in Kiev
has acted as a cat’s paw of Western
imperialists and uses fascist forces to
besiege the Russian-speaking population of
southeastern Ukraine. We Trotskyists call
for revolutionary defeatism on both sides
in this reactionary nationalist war, for
internationalist proletarian struggle
against both capitalist regimes and, above
all, against the U.S. and European rulers
who set off this conflagration. Behind
the War: U.S./NATO War Drive Against
Russia, China (28 February 2022)
Ukrainian Fascists
and Nationalists Hands Off Donbass! Defend Self-Rule in Southeast
Ukraine! Defeat
U.S./NATO War Drive and Sanctions
Against Russia! Statement of the League for the
Fourth International
On February 21, after weeks of
increasingly hysterical imperialist war
propaganda and daily escalating attacks by
Ukrainian government and fascist/nationalist
forces against the breakaway
Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and
Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, Russian
president Vladimir Putin formally recognized
the independence of these embattled
self-styled people’s republics and sent in
troops. The United States, NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the
European Union immediately condemned Russia
for its defensive action and announced they
would impose severe economic sanctions.
Class-conscious workers and all opponents of
imperialism should denounce the U.S./NATO
imperialist war drive, which raises the
spectre of world war. The imperialists seek
to isolate, provoke and demonize Russia,
which despite Putin’s imperial ambitions is
an intermediate, regional capitalist power.
Yet the imperialists’ ultimate aim is to
spark counterrevolution in China, Cuba and
North Korea. Facing the escalating threats
and dangers, we call on the world working
class to defend China and the other
bureaucratically deformed workers states
against imperialism and counterrevolution. Defeat
U.S./NATO War Drive and Sanctions Against
Russia! (23 February 2022)
Spike
U.S./NATO
Anti-Russia War Threats and
Provocations!
The war propaganda being
spewed out by Washington and NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization) has become
increasingly hysterical. As the U.S.
administration of Democrat Joe Biden
declares that Russian president Vladimir
Putin is about to seize Ukraine next month,
next week, tomorrow or yesterday, it seems
intent on provoking the Kremlin into
undertaking anything that could be portrayed
as an invasion. The evident purpose is to
have an excuse to impose heavy economic
sanctions against Russia. In the face of the
incessant imperialist drum beat for war,
there have been very few protests by the
left, much of which is itself imbued with
the anti-Russia phobia promoted by its
liberal big brothers. In contrast,
supporters of the League for the Fourth
International attended protests at Berlin’s
Brandenburg Gate on February 18 and at New
York City’s Grand Central Terminal on
February 19 with signs calling to “Spike
Biden/NATO War Threats and Provocations
Against Russia” and “Defeat U.S./NATO War
Drive – Defend China Against Imperialism and
Counterrevolution,” among other slogans. Spike
Biden/NATO Anti-Russia War Threats and
Provocations! (20 February 2022)
Use
Union Power to Keep Schools Open
Safely By Class Struggle
Education Workers/UFT
The rapid spread of the highly
contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19
has caused much justified worry among
educators, parents and students. This
concern has been seized on by some in
the teachers unions to push to return to
“remote education,” possibly for an
extended period of time until the
current high levels of infection are
past. Calling to close the schools is a
huge mistake. It does not protect
teachers, it will almost certainly
increase infections among students, and
it plays into the hands of enemies of
public education. This includes not only
Trump Republicans but also Biden
Democrats like the mayors of New York
City and Chicago, Eric Adams and Lori
Lightfoot. These forces, who back
charter schools and are out to break the
power of the teachers unions, are
angling to mobilize parents against
teachers on a program of keeping the
schools open. Instead, Class Struggle
Education Workers calls to use union
power to keep schools open safely. That
includes, first and foremost, demanding
a drastic reduction in class sizes,
entailing hiring thousands of new
teachers, custodians, counselors and
nurses; and requiring frequent testing
of all in the schools. Use
Union Power to Keep Schools Open
Safely (12 January 2022)
For Workers
Safety Committees –
Democrats, NLRB No
Friends of Labor Unionize
Amazon with Class
Struggle!
The fight to unionize the
giant e-commerce monopoly
Amazon has heated up. In
June, the powerful
International Brotherhood
of Teamsters (IBT) union
resolved to carry out a
coast-to-coast campaign to
organize Amazon workers.
Then in November the
National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) threw out the
results of the union
recognition vote held last
spring in Bessemer,
Alabama because of
Amazon’s dirty tricks and
interference in the
election. And on December
22 in New York City, the
independent Amazon Labor
Union re-filed its
petition for a union
recognition vote at the
JFK8 warehouse in Staten
Island. Only days before,
tornadoes tore through an
Amazon warehouse in
Edwardsville, Illinois,
killing six workers inside
and injuring others. This
was industrial murder. The
tragedy in Edwardsville
underlines the urgent need
to unionize the entire
Amazon empire. While
demanding the most
rigorous safety standards
be adhered to, there
should be worker safety
committees empowered to
shut down production in
unsafe conditions. One
can’t rely on Amazon or
the NLRB, an agency of the
bosses’ government, or
look to the Democratic
Party, a capitalist party.
To defeat the hard-nosed
union-busters at Amazon it
will be necessary to
mobilize the power of the
workers movement in sharp
class struggle, including
strikes and walkouts,
flying pickets, plant
occupations – the kind of
class-struggle methods
that built the unions in
the 1930s. Unionize
Amazon with Class
Struggle! (28
December 2021)
U.S. Big
Lie Over Wuhan Is
War Propaganda Not Just a
Conspiracy Theory, an
Anti-Communist Battle
Cry
For the past two years,
all factions of the U.S.
ruling class, backed by
the bourgeois media and a
number of bellicose
scientists, have unleashed
a propaganda barrage
scapegoating China for the
pandemic of COVID-19
caused by the coronavirus
SARS-CoV-2. This is not
limited to the “Wuhan lab
leak” conspiracy theory,
which started out as a
far-right fixation, went
viral with Republican
Donald Trump’s rambling
campaign rants, was picked
up by unreconstructed Cold
Warriors in the new
Democratic administration
and the liberal media, and
then received the
presidential imprimatur of
Joe Biden. A soft-core
strain of the campaign is
to accuse Beijing of
grossly mishandling the
outbreak of the disease
and worse, covering up
their bungling with police
state repression. A
transparent aim of this
virulent China-bashing is
to shift responsibility
for the deadly outcome of
the disease. Rather than
(correctly) blaming the
capitalist world, whose
utterly calamitous actions
and inaction turned an
epidemic into a pandemic
in which well over 5
million people have died
from this modern plague,
they want to pin it on
China, which effectively
and spectacularly confined
the spread of the virus
with a toll of less than
5,000 dead. This, the
first of two articles, is
a detailed analysis of the
lab-leak “theory.” U.S.
Big Lie Over Wuhan Is
War Propaganda (27
December 2021)
Vigilante
Rittenhouse Is Guilty as
Hell –
So Are the Cops Who Shot
Jacob Blake
Kenosha
“Trial” Was Rigged –
Fascistic Murderer
Gets Off All Sides
Bought the
“Self-Defense” Ruse –
There’s No Justice in
the Capitalist Courts!
On November 19, the jury
in the Wisconsin trial of
teenage killer Kyle
Rittenhouse handed in a
verdict of not guilty on
all counts. Letting this
vile murderer of two
anti-racist protesters
walk is proof positive
that there is no justice
in the capitalist courts.
Rittenhouse was not a lone
killer. The gunman was
part of a swarm of white
supremacist vigilantes who
infested Kenosha that
night in August 2020,
working in tandem with the
police. This hideous
verdict will embolden
murderous fascist thugs
and killer cops
everywhere. This is the
trial of George Zimmerman,
the vigilante murderer of
Trayvon Martin, all over
again. All opponents of
racist terror should
protest this atrocity. The
Internationalist Group
immediately protested,
from Kenosha to New York,
calling for
worker/black/immigrant
action against racist
terror and to fight for
socialist revolution. Kenosha
“Trial” Was Rigged –
Fascistic Murderer Gets
Off (19
November 2021)
Against
Bosses’ Threats and
Maneuvers –
Solidarity from CUNY
Victory
to the
Columbia
Student
Workers
Strike!
On November 3, the
Student Workers of
Columbia (part of
United Auto Workers
Local 2110) went on
strike. It is the
fourth strike in
five years, as the
union is still
fighting to win a
first-ever contract.
Representing more
than 3,000 Columbia
University graduate
and undergraduate
academic employees
(including
instructors,
teaching assistants,
graders, researchers
and others), the
SWC’s demands
include a living
wage , better health
care and measures
against
discrimination and
harassment. Now in
its ninth week, the
strike is at a
critical juncture.
Activists from the
CUNY
Internationalist
Clubs and Class
Struggle Education
Workers have
participated
intensively on the
picket lines and in
helping build
support. We have
emphasized that it’s
essential to put
into practice the
principle that
“Picket lines mean
don’t cross.” On
December 8, the SWC
called a day of
action to shut
Columbia down.
Hundreds joined in
the picketing. Victory
to the
Columbia
Student
Workers
Strike!
(28 December
2021)
Called for
November 15
Anti-Cuba
Provocation Made
in U.S.A. For
Workers Mobilization
to Block
Counterrevolutionary
Action
A
“Civic March for
Change” has been
announced by
U.S.-backed
forces in Cuba
for November 15.
The march was
called by a
recently founded
outfit calling
itself the
Archipiélago
platform, in
cooperation with
the
long-standing
reactionary and
far-right Cuban
exile milieu. As
we have written,
while the Cuba
protests last
July 11 were
fueled by
discontent over
shortages,
blackouts and
the pandemic,
those marches
were instigated,
manipulated and
exploited by
forces seeking
to overthrow the
Cuban
Revolution. Now
these and other
pro-capitalist
forces, grouped
together in an
umbrella
formation, the
Council for a
Democratic
Transition in
Cuba, are
staging an
anti-communist
provocation
clearly aimed at
“regime change.”
While some
leftists join
the U.S. State
Department in
denouncing the
Cuban
government's
prohibition of
this blatant
counterrevolutionary
action,
revolutionary
Trotskyists are
for workers
mobilization to
block the
provocation. Anti-Cuba
Provocation
Made in U.S.A.
(11 November
2021)
Social-Democratic
Counterrevolutionaries
and Camp Followers
Cuba Protests: Litmus Test for the Left
As Facebook videos and tweets started
coming in from
the July 11
protests in
Cuba –
instigated,
propagated and
exploited by
counterrevolutionaries
– the media
machine of
U.S.
imperialism
kicked into
high gear.
When police in
Havana
responded to
protesters
throwing rocks
by making some
arrests, there
followed a
chorus of
denunciations
of
“repression.”
The reality is
that the Cuban
police stood
by and did not
make arrests
until the July
11 protests
turned
violent, while
Communist
Party
supporters
mobilized to
stop
provocations.
Bringing up
the rear of
the bipartisan
imperialist
hue and cry
over
repression by
the Cuban
regime were
assorted
voices on the
left, ranging
from liberal
intellectuals
to avowed
socialists.
Among the most
egregious are
some would-be
“Trotskyists”
who are at
bottom social
democrats of
the sort that
Trotsky and
his Fourth
International
fought against
tooth and
nail. The
League for the
Fourth
International,
in contrast,
has called to
actively
combat
capitalist
counterrevolution,
to break the
U.S.
imperialist
blockade,
mobilize
workers
councils to
defend the
gains of the
Cuban
Revolution and
to extend them
through
international
socialist
revolution. Cuba
Protests:
Litmus Test
for the Left
(October 2021)
The
“Voice of the
Voiceless”
Held 40 Years
in
Pennsylvania’s
Racist
Dungeons
Mobilize
Labor/Black
Power to Free
Mumia
Abu-Jamal
On December
11, a
demonstration
in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
marked the
40th
anniversary of
the
imprisonment
of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, the
U.S.’ most
prominent
class-war
prisoner. A
contingent of
supporters of
the
Internationalist
Group/Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth
participated
prominently in
the protest
with signs
calling for
workers action
to free Mumia
and all
class-war
prisoners,
notably former
Black Panthers
who have been
behind bars
for more than
half a
century. The
latest
development in
Mumia’s
endless battle
in the racist
judicial
system was an
October 26
ruling by the
Pennsylvania
Superior Court
quashing
Mumia’s fifth
appeal in 40
years. This
shows once
again that
through
decades of
prosecution
and
persecution,
for former
Black Panther
Abu-Jamal, as
for so many
others, there
is no justice
in the
capitalist
courts. Mobilize
Labor/Black
Power to Free
Mumia
Abu-Jamal
(29 December
2021)
After
Court Orders
Partial
Legalization Mexican
Trotskyists
Call for Free
Abortion On
Demand Women’s
Liberation Through Socialist
Revolution!
Last September
7, the Mexican
Supreme Court
of Justice
declared
“absolute
criminalization”
of abortion
unconstitutional
throughout the
country.
Invalidating
several
sections of
the penal code
of the state
of Coahuila,
the court
legalized
abortion for
the first 12
weeks of
gestation.
This is an
important step
that will
bring relief
to many women
seeking to
terminate an
unwanted
pregnancy. And
by eliminating
“conscientious
objection,” it
removed a very
real barrier
to carrying
out abortions.
However, these
are limited
measures, and
after the
first
trimester,
abortion is
still
considered a
crime. The
Grupo
Internacionalista
fights for the
unrestricted
right to free
abortion,
based
exclusively on
the decision
of the woman
or other
pregnant
person, at any
time during
pregnancy and
with access to
medical and
health care of
the highest
quality. Mexican
Trotskyists
Call for Free
Abortion On
Demand
(December
2021)
UCLA
Internationalist Club Statement of
Class-Struggle Solidarity
Victory
to the UC-AFT Strike – All Out to
Win!
The Internationalist Club at the
University of California at Los Angeles
is helping mobilize students and workers
in support of the November 17-18
University of California system-wide
strike called by the UC-AFT. In addition
to the unfair labor practices cited as
the legal grounds for the walkout, the
strike motivation flows from the
desperate situation of lecturers and
other campus workers who are essential
to making the university run, but
receive only poverty pay and lack job
security. All sectors of the campus
workforce need to unite in genuine
solidarity. It's a basic principle: One
out, all out. Picket lines mean don’t
cross! And it is necessary to take on
the Democratic Party, which is the boss
that the UC-AFT is striking against. We
say: On
strike means shut it down. All
classes should be stopped, and
students brought out en masse to
the pickets and rallies. Victory
to the UC-AFT Strike – All Out
to Win! (16 November 2021)
Cinematographer
Killed on New Mexico Set After Union
Camera Operators Walked Out Over
Unsafe Conditions
IATSE Members
Voted to Strike: Let’s
Do It
Vote No to
Sweetheart Deal with Motion
Pictures Bosses and Prepare to
Walk Out
Sixty thousand film and
television workers affiliated
with the International
Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees (IATSE) were on the
verge of a national strike,
the first in the union’s
128-year history. In a
membership vote, over 98%
voted to authorize a strike.
But the day before the
strike deadline, the union
tops struck a deal with the
film studio bosses. The
Tentative Agreement resolves
none of the issues at
stake – continuing to
allow 14-hour work days, short
weekends, and with a wage
“hike” that amounts to a pay
cut due to inflation. Then on
October 21, Halyna Hutchins, a
Local 600 director of
photography, was accidentally
shot and killed during the New
Mexico filming of the film Rust.
This deadly incident
underscored the safety
concerns that have been at the
heart of motion picture
backlot workers’ enthusiastic
support for a strike. The
IATSE ranks should
resoundingly vote down this
rotten deal and prepare to
carry out the strike they
voted enthusiastically and
overwhelmingly to authorize. IATSE
Members Voted to Strike:
Let’s Do It (26 October
2021)
For
Labor
Solidarity
Action to Win
the UAW John
Deere Strike!
On October 14,
more than
10,000 John
Deere workers
walked off the
job at the
world’s
largest
agricultural
equipment
manufacturing
company. A
total of 14
plants
represented by
the United
Auto Workers
were struck,
centered on
Iowa and
Illinois. As
labor strikes
are spreading
in the U.S.,
the walkout at
Deere is the
biggest this
year, and the
largest
nationwide
since the
six-week UAW
strike at
General Motors
in 2019. The
strikers are
in a strong
position.
Sales are
booming, the
company is
making record
profits,
there’s a
labor
shortage, and
workers are
fighting mad
after laboring
right through
the pandemic
as “essential
workers,”
risking their
lives, while
the bosses are
raking it in.
The Deere
strikers can
win, and win
big, so long
as they don’t
play by the
bosses’ rules.
It’s necessary
to completely
shut down
production,
with militant
mass picket
lines that no
one dares
cross. Workers
must look to
exercise their
own power –
through labor
solidarity and
alliance with
all those
oppressed –
understanding
that both the
Democratic and
Republicans
parties defend
the interests
of capital. For
Labor
Solidarity
Action to Win
the UAW John
Deere Strike!
(19 October
2021)
All
U.S. Troops,
Military/Security
Forces,
Agencies and
Mercenaries
Out of the
Middle East,
Now!
Afghanistan:
Humiliating
Defeat for
Murderous U.S.
Imperialism Puppet
Government
Collapses,
U.S. Personnel
Flee, the
Taliban Take
Over
On August 15,
the two-decade
long U.S.-led
imperialist
occupation of
Afghanistan
came to an
inglorious
end. In the
face of the
rapid advance
by the
reactionary
Islamic
fundamentalist
Taliban, the
deeply corrupt
puppet
government
collapsed. The
U.S. invasion
and occupation
of Afghanistan
was billed as
a war against
terrorism, and
reprisal for
the 11
September 2001
attack on the
World Trade
Center in New
York and the
Pentagon. In
reality, it
and the
invasion and
occupation of
Iraq in 2003
were part of a
war for U.S.
imperialist
global
domination.
The
Internationalist
Group and
League for the
Fourth
International
called
immediately
after 9/11 to
defeat U.S.
imperialism
and to defend
Afghanistan
and Iraq. The
exit of
U.S./NATO
forces is a
major defeat
for the
imperialist
overlords who
imagine
themselves
masters of the
world. It
should be
greeted by
opponents of
imperialism
everywhere.
But the
victory of the
reactionary
Islamist
Taliban is no
win for the
oppressed. The
question of
women’s
oppression
will be at the
forefront of
events in
Afghanistan as
the Taliban
consolidate
their rule.
Yet when the
Soviet Union
intervened in
1980 to defend
a reform
government
that enacted
measures
defending
women, the
opportunist
left joined
the
imperialists
in calling for
Soviet troops
out.
Trotskyists
Said Hail Red
Army in
Afghanistan in
1980 – Defend
Afghanistan,
Defeat U.S.
Imperialism in
2001. Afghanistan:
Humiliating
Defeat for
Murderous U.S.
Imperialism
(26 August
2021)
Democrats,
Republicans:
Enemies of
Immigrants
Stop
Racist
Deportation of
Haitians!
A year ago,
Democrat Joe
Biden was
running for
president
promising to
replace
Trump’s
vicious
attacks on
immigrants
with a
supposed “fair
and humane”
U.S.
immigration
policy. Since
taking office,
the exact
opposite has
happened: the
Biden
administration
has been
deporting at
an even faster
rate than the
Trump
administration
ever did. By
mid-September,
thousands of
Haitians
started
appearing at
the Texas
border with
Mexico. The
U.S. Border
Patrol holding
9,000
migrants,
mostly
Haitian,
corralled
under the
international
bridge at Del
Rio, Texas, in
unsanitary
conditions
with no
shelter
against dust
storms and
extreme heat.
The response
of the
administration
was to deport
thousands back
to Haiti, even
as the country
is falling
apart. The
Internationalist
Group
protested,
calling to
stop the
racist
deportations
(also from
Mexico) and
for full
citizenship
rights for all
immigrants. Stop
Racist
Deportation of
Haitians!
(27 September
2021)
Revolutionary
Perspectives
vs. Bourgeois
Reaction “At
Home” and
Abroad
Biden
Escalates
Anti-China War
Plans
The
repercussions
of the defeat
of the U.S.
occupation of
Afghanistan
reverberate
around the
world. The
myth of the
military
invincibility
of U.S.
imperialism
exploded in
front of
everyone’s
eyes. Now
Biden is
financing a
fleet of
nuclear
submarines for
Australia,
gearing up for
war with
China, when
his NATO
“allies” want
to have none
of it. In the
United States,
the bourgeois
political
scene remains
deeply
polarized.
State laws and
regulations
have been
issued seeking
to prevent any
discussion in
schools about
the racism
built into
U.S.
capitalism.
Now Texas has
passed a
draconian law
against
abortion.
Meanwhile, we
are seeing
spectacular
scenes
reflecting the
decay of U.S.
capitalism and
the total
submission of
the left to
the Democratic
Party.
Thousands of
migrants are
penned in
terrible
conditions
under a bridge
in Texas, and
Biden’s
response is to
launch the
biggest mass
deportation in
decades. But
where are the
protests
against this?
Amid a deadly
pandemic,
capitalism has
shown it
cannot provide
even the basic
needs of the
population.
The struggle
for authentic
Trotskyism is
key. Biden
Escalates
Anti-China War
Plans (24
September
2021)
Expropriate
the Ruling
Class Through
Socialist
Revolution!
“Tax
the Rich” No
Answer to
Capitalist
Inequality
During the
coronavirus
pandemic, as
low-paid
essential
workers bore
the brunt of
the deadly
plague at the
front lines
with little
protection
from the
virus,
workers’
income from
wages fell
while some 660
U.S.
billionaires
received a
windfall of
$1,100,000,000,000
(that’s 1.1
trillion
dollars in
profits). The
spectacle of
the ruling
class gouging
megaprofits
from disease
and death, and
being rewarded
for doing so
with free
money in
bailouts and
tax cuts, has
led to a
resurgence of
calls to “tax
the
rich.”
This slogan
has become the
calling card
of the
Democratic
Socialists of
America (DSA)
and groups
that tail
after and
adapt to it.
For
pseudo-socialists
and labor
reformists,
the appeal to
“tax the rich”
is yet another
means to
subordinate
the working
class to the
Democratic
Party, calling
on people to
pressure their
“elected
representatives.”
Calls to “tax
the rich” are
just
tinkering, and
won’t affect
the
fundamentals
of a system
that produces
fabulous
wealth for the
owners of
capital and
grinding
poverty for
millions,
while the
working class
lives paycheck
to paycheck.
These calls
also blur over
the obvious
fact that the
government
already has at
its disposal
more than
enough funds
to meet dire
human needs.
Meanwhile,
Democratic
president Joe
Biden wants to
“tax the rich”
in order to
prepare for
war on China.
Revolutionary
Marxists are
not in the
business of
advising the
capitalist
state on how
to “fairly”
finance its
apparatus of
war and
repression,
but call to
expropriate
the capitalist
exploiters. “Tax
the Rich” No
Answer to
Capitalist
Inequality
(15 June 2021)
Backlash
Against Mass
Protests of
Racist Police
Murder
Mobilize
to Fight
Racist
“Anti-CRT” Gag
Laws! They
Want to Force
You to Stop
Teaching About
Racism By
Class Struggle
Education
Workers As
the 2020-21
school year
drew to a
close, there
was an
explosion of
laws and
regulations
restricting
how teachers
could discuss
racism, sexism
and other
controversial
issues in
class.
Republican
governors and
state
legislatures
have declared
that teachers
who discuss
these topics
are practicing
“critical race
theory.” In
fact, the
anti-“CRT”
campaign has
nothing to do
with that
theory.
Rather, it is
a racist
backlash on
the cultural
front against
the massive
nationwide
protests
sparked by the
racist police
murder of
George Floyd
last year. It
is akin to the
propaganda
campaigns of
the white
citizens
councils in
the 1960s,
raising the
spectre of
McCarthyite
repression in
the schools.
The
witch-hunting
laws are aimed
at banning any
discussion in
schools of the
social roots
of racial,
sexual and
other forms of
social and
class
oppression,
and are also
avowedly
anti-communist.
These racist
gag laws
should be
shredded by
mass
mobilization
and broken by
concerted
action of the
education
unions –
backed by
anti-racist
and
class-conscious
educators,
students,
parents and
school staff –
against the
whitewashing
of U.S.
history.
Mobilize
to Fight
Racist
“Anti-CRT” Gag
Laws! (6
September
2021)
Counterrevolutionary
Instigators
Exploit
Frustration
Over Economic
Crisis The Truth About Cuba Protests Defend
the Revolution
Against U.S.
Imperialism
and Its
Frontmen Fight
for
International
Socialist
Revolution
The protests
that took
place in
several dozen
cities and
towns of Cuba
and locations
in and around
the capital on
July 11 were
the biggest
anti-government
mobilizations
since the dawn
of the
Revolution.
While fueled
by desperation
over food
shortages,
lack of
medicine and
blackouts that
have beset the
island in the
wake of the
coronavirus
pandemic, the
marches were
instigated,
manipulated
and exploited
by forces
seeking to
overthrow the
Cuban
Revolution.
With its
exemplary
public health
system, Cuba
has been able
to contain the
virus far
better than
almost
anywhere else
on the planet
outside of
China. Yet
U.S. rulers
are seeking to
capitalize on
the economic
toll of the
pandemic, and
weariness from
60 years of
imperialist
blockade. In
this difficult
situation, the
first duty of
revolutionary
communists, in
Cuba and
worldwide, is
to actively
combat the
forces of
capitalist
counterrevolution.
The
Truth About
Cuba Protests
– Defend the
Revolution
(23 July 2021)
Revolutionary
Trotskyism vs.
Gramscism:
The
Programmatic
Clash
For some
decades the
thought of
Antonio
Gramsci has
enjoyed
all-sided
popularity on
the
international
left. Groups
and supporters
of Stalinist,
Eurocommunist,
social-democratic,
populist, even
bourgeois
liberal
currents, lay
claim to the
legacy of the
Italian
Communist
leader.
Gramsci's
concept of
hegemony was
attractive to
leftist
academics, who
looked to
break the
“political-intellectual”
hegemony of
the
bourgeoisie as
a stage
preliminary to
the
revolution.
This, and the
“praxis” of
post-68
Gramscians, is
counterposed
to Marx’s
thesis, in The
German
Ideology
(1847),
holding that
“The ideas of
the ruling
class are in
every epoch
the ruling
ideas.” Most
astonishing
are groups
claiming to
represent
Trotskyism who
try to
appropriate
Gramsci, or to
combine the
contents of
these very
different
traditions.
His main
political
theses, such
as the
struggle for
hegemony and
to cohere a
“new
historical
bloc,” to
prioritize a
“war of
positions” in
the West
rather than
Bolsheviks’
“war of
movement or
frontal
attack,”
flatly
contradict the
policies of
the
Trotskyists,
and moreover
were devised
and formulated
explicitly
against
Trotsky and
the Left
Opposition. Revolutionary
Trotskyism vs.
Gramscism: The
Programmatic
Clash
(August 2021)
Nothing
In It for
Working People
and the
Oppressed
Germany:
Coalition
Dance in the
2021 Election
Farce
Berlin’s
“Red-Red-Green”
Senate: Enemy
of Workers and
Immigrants
No Vote for
the Left Party
– For a
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Workers Party!
The last year
and a half
have been
hellish for
working
people, the
poor and
oppressed
throughout the
capitalist
world. A
deadly plague,
COVID-19, that
in Germany
alone has
infected over
4 million
people and
caused almost
100,000 deaths
(out of 230
million cases
and almost 5
million dead
globally).
Stop-and-go
lockdowns,
millions of
workers on
short
workweeks,
hundreds of
thousands laid
off in the
worst
recession
since 1949.
Yet the
campaign for
the September
26 federal
elections to
replace
federal
chancellor
Angela Merkel
after almost
16 years in
office is the
same old
coalition
dance as
usual. In this
election,
there is no
choice for the
workers. With
the Left Party
losing any
kind of
credibility as
an opposition
party,
pseudo-“socialists”
buried inside
it or buzzing
around it are
hard-put to
find any
convincing
arguments for
voting for it,
yet with their
differing
tactical
recipes they
are all
entwined with
this reformist
party.
The
Internationalistische
Gruppe, in
contrast,
insists that a
socialist
revolution
that
establishes
proletarian
power will not
come from
endless
electioneering
for the
bourgeois
parliament,
but by
fighting for a
revolutionary
program
through our
own
working-class
organizations.
Germany:
Coalition
Dance in the
2021 Election
Farce
(September
2021)
Berlin Housing Referendum Expropriate
Real Estate
Corporations
Without
Compensation –
But Only
Socialist
Revolution Can
Provide
Housing for
All
Berlin
2021:
Skyrocketing
rent, students
can’t find
housing,
people forced
out of the
city because
they can’t
afford to live
there. Some
8,000-10,000
homeless
living on the
street, while
100,000-plus
apartments
stand empty.
This is a real
housing
crisis. Behind
it are the
real estate
corporations
that are
making a
killing from
speculation.
In the
September 26
Berlin
referendum ,
voting “yes”
in favor of
the
expropriation
of real estate
corporations
will be a
protest
against these
parasites. But
as Friedrich
Engels wrote
in 1873: “As
long as the
capitalist
mode of
production
continues to
exist, it is
folly to hope
for an
isolated
solution of
the housing
question....
The solution
lies in the
abolition of
the capitalist
mode of
production.” Berlin
Housing
Referendum
(September
2021)
Class
Battle in
Alabama: Victory
to the UMWA
Warrior Met
Coal Strike!
For four
months, some
1,100 coal
miners
organized in
four United
Mine Workers
of America
(UMWA) locals
have waged a
bitter strike
against the
Warrior Met
Coal company
in Tuscaloosa
County,
Alabama.
Miners are
striking to
reverse the
vicious terms
of a 2016
contract. With
contract
negotiations
stalled, on
July 28,
hundreds of
miners rallied
outside the
Midtown
Manhattan
headquarters
of Black Rock,
the biggest
shareholder in
Warrior Met
mines and by
far the
largest
investment
management
company in the
world. What
has been
missing from
the strike is
sustained
mass, militant
labor action
to shut down
the mines and
the processing
facilities.
What’s
desperately
needed to win
is a
mobilization
of Alabama
workers and
supporters of
labor and
black rights
to build mass,
militant
picket lines
that scabs
can’t cross
and that keep
the cops at
bay. We need
to revive the
traditions
that built the
unions in the
first place. Victory
to the UMWA
Warrior Met
Coal Strike!
(31 July 2021)
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. 18 (September
2021) click
or on image
for full list of
articles
What
We’re Hearing: “The
Last Year Really
Opened My Eyes” Why
We Need a Socialist
Revolution As
students are
finally
returning to
campus, many are
saying that the
experience of
the last year
really opened
their eyes. A
healthcare
system that
wasn’t able to
handle COVID,
racist police
terror that led
millions to take
to the streets.
But while
Democrats talked
of “reforming”
the police to
gain votes, now
that they are
back in the
White House, the
cops keep
killing. It’s
“endemic to the
system,” many
have realized.
Poverty and
skyrocketing
inequality;
imperialist war
abroad and
growing
repression “at
home”; racial,
ethnic and
gender
oppression and
all the ways
capitalism is
devastating the
world we live in
– these are
rooted in the
system of
production for
profit, not
human needs, and
the ruling class
that lives off
it. Capitalism
can’t be
reformed; it
must be
overthrown. We
Marxists are
fighting for a
socialist
revolution,
unlike the raft
of
fake-socialists
who help tie the
oppressed to the
Democratic
Party. We call
to break with
the Democrats
and all bosses’
parties and to
forge a
revolutionary
workers party. Why
We Need a
Socialist
Revolution
(September 2021)
Bernie
Sanders and
AOC Peddle
Biden’s Bitter
Brew
In 2016 and 2020,
Bernie Sanders ran
in the Democratic
presidential
primaries promoting
a politics of the
“99%” against the
“billionaire class.”
Yet his “political
revolution” was just
a means to rope
disaffected youth
and workers into
voting for the
Democratic
politicians. His
“insurgent” campaign
over, his voters
duly delivered to
Biden, Sanders was
made head of the
Senate Budget
Committee. For her
part, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez,
together with the
rest of “the Squad,”
is accused of being
“communist,”
“unpatriotic,” etc.,
by misogynistic and
racist rightists. In
reality, they are
liberal Democrats
who have pledged
allegiance to the
red, white and blue,
in words and deeds,
over and over. As
they seek to rebrand
the Democratic
Party, various
reformist groups on
the left promote
them. The duty of
revolutionaries is
to tell the truth
about bourgeois
politicians, not
opportunistically
tag along whenever
they “talk left.” Bernie
Sanders and AOC
Peddle Biden’s
Bitter Brew
(September 2021)
“From
Black
Nationalism to
Maoism to
Trotskyism” In
Memory of Joe
Johnson
(1948-2021)
Joseph “Lil Joe”
Johnson, whose
youthful activism
during the rise of
the Black Panther
Party in Los Angeles
was an opening
chapter in his
life-long dedication
to socialism, black
freedom and Marxist
education, died on
June 5 at the age of
73. Born in
Louisiana in 1948,
he came of age in
Los Angeles, where
his self-education
in the ideas of
Marx, Lenin and
Trotsky led him to
become a mentor to
generations of young
radicals seeking a
road to socialist
revolution. In
August 2020, comrade
Johnson gave this
talk, titled “From
Black Nationalism to
Maoism to
Trotskyism,” to the
Internationalist
Group/Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth New York study
group. In
Memory of Joe
Johnson (June
2021)
A
Review of Trotsky
in New York 1917
“Bronx
Man Leads
Russian
Revolution”
“Bronx Man Leads
Russian Revolution,”
read the headline of
the Bronx Home
News. It was
referring to Leon
Trotsky, who having
been exiled from
Europe, spent
several months in
New York City in
early 1917. During
his brief stay,
Trotsky, who
together with V.I.
Lenin went on to
lead the Bolshevik
October Revolution,
threw himself into
the struggle to
mobilize the New
York working class
against World War I.
Kenneth D.
Ackerman’s
cinematically
written Trotsky
In New York 1917:
A Radical On the
Eve of Revolution
(2016) gives a
definitive account
of the Russian
revolutionary’s New
York exile, and
uncovers the history
of his little-known
intervention into
the politics of the
U.S. Socialist
Party. In his
clashes with the
reformist Morris
Hillquit, Trotsky’s
collaborators –
including Louis
Fraina, Ludwig Lore
and others – went on
to become founders
of the communist
movement in the
United States. “Bronx
Man Leads Russian
Revolution”
(September
2021)
How
Cuba’s Heroic “Wasp
Network” Stung
U.S.-Backed
Counterrevolutionaries
After protests in
Cuba this past July
that were
instigated,
manipulated and
exploited by
counterrevolutionary
forces, the
mainstream media
(echoed by much of
the left) unleashed
a torrent of
anti-Cuban smears
trying to paint a
picture of a
revolution on its
last legs. In this
atmosphere of
rampant
anti-communism, we
bring to our
readers’ attention
an exciting film
called Wasp
Network
(2019). The film
tells the story of
the five Cuban spies
who in the 1990s
risked their lives
to thwart terrorist
attacks against
Cuba. Although the
French director is
no communist, the
film vividly
portrays the basic
fact that a
Miami-based gusano
mob has long served
as shock troops for
U.S.-sponsored
counterrevolution in
Cuba. Wasp
Network
achieves something
important: breaking
through the
imperialist
propaganda machine,
it tells the truth
about
counterrevolutionary
provocations against
Cuba and the Red
Avispa’s
heroic efforts to
thwart them. How
Cuba’s Heroic
“Wasp Network”
Stung U.S.-Backed
Counterrevolutionaries (September 2021)
Celebrating
International
Women’s Day
Forum
on “Women,
Class Struggle
and
Revolution”
Wash Supply
Worker: “We Face
Mistreatment and
Discrimination”
On March 10, the
CUNY
Internationalist
Clubs held an online
forum titled “Women,
Class Struggle and
Revolution” in honor
of International
Women’s Day. The
forum highlighted
the oppression of
black, Latina and
immigrant workers
thrown into sharp
relief by U.S.
capitalism’s triple
pandemic of
COVID-19, economic
crisis and racist
police murder. A
featured speaker was
one of immigrant
women workers of the
Wash Supply in
Manhattan, who had
just been fired two
weeks earlier for
forming a union.
That same day, the
courageous workers
attended a
demonstration in
solidarity with
unionization efforts
at the Amazon
warehouse in
Alabama. Other
speakers spoke on
the triple
oppression of black
women and on the
struggles of women
workers from
Bangladesh to Mexico
to New York City. Forum
on “Women, Class
Struggle and
Revolution”
(September 2021)
On
Rejecting Anarchism
and Joining RIY
Radicalized
By George
Floyd Protests
Last summer’s
protests against the
racist police murder
of George Floyd drew
millions into the
streets, many of
them young people
getting involved in
politics for the
first time. A letter
of application to
the Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth recounts the
comrade’s
radicalization,
followed by
disillusionment as
the protests were
being channeled into
votes for the
Democratic Party.
The experience of
organizing her own
no-leaders,
no-hierarchy protest
brought home that
“anarchists are
extremely liberal in
their beliefs and
reliance on identity
politics, despite
their hatred of
capitalism.
Graffitiing banks
will never bring an
end to capitalism.
Only the
international
organized
revolutionary
working class can.”
Radicalized
By George Floyd
Protests
(September 2021)
Response
to “Left Voice”
Supporters
Real
Reds Don’t Bow
to
Anti-Communist
Bans
Anti-communist bans
and restrictions on
free speech rights
have been attempted
by City University
of New York (CUNY)
authorities many
times, from the
1930s to today. All
the more alarming
when attempts to
censor communists
are carried out or
backed by students
or faculty
themselves. We
reprint here the
response of an
activist of Class
Struggle Education
Workers in an
exchange with two
reporters for Left
Voice, part of a
media network of the
current calling
itself the
Trotskyist Fraction.
The April 2021
letter details the
shameful role of LV
in helping to ram
through a ban on
leftist literature
at a “7K or Strike”
conference slated to
discuss strategy and
perspectives in the
fight against
poverty wages for
adjuncts at CUNY
(reported in Revolution
No. 16). Also
appended is a letter
from immigrant
workers of
Trabajadores
Internacionales
Clasistas protesting
the ban. Real
Reds Don’t Bow to
Anti-Communist
Bans
(September 2021)
Capitalist
Profit System Kills
“Africa
Starved of
Vaccines”: An
Imperialist
Crime
The COVID-19
pandemic has been a
crash course in the
dysfunction and
chaos of capitalist
society. At the
start of the
pandemic, with
hospital ICUs
overflowing with
patients, those who
tested positive (if
they could get a
test at all) were
sent home to infect
their families. When
vaccines were
developed and
available for
widespread
distribution, this
was a big advance.
But, predictably,
rich countries
gobbled up the
lion’s share of
supply. This is not
some random
“inequity,” as
liberals would have
it. It is the
workings of
imperialism. Case in
point: Africa, where
only about 4.6% of
the population has
been even partially
vaccinated, while
the world’s richest
countries hoard 1.9
billion surplus
doses – enough to
vaccinate the entire
adult population of
the African
continent. An
internationally
planned economy
would put technology
and resources to
work to provide
vaccines for all and
eliminate world
hunger. The ills of
the capitalist order
cannot be fixed with
reformist band-aids,
they must be
uprooted through
world socialist
revolution. “Africa
Starved of
Vaccines”: An
Imperialist Crime
(September 2021)
Defend
Combative Immigrant Workers
Against Repression Italy:
Draghi Government of
Repression, Impoverishment
and Death Mobilize the Entire
Working Class to Defeat
All-Sided Attack! No
to Dead End of Reformism –
Forge a Revolutionary
Workers Party!
In the ongoing emergency of this
second year of the coronavirus
pandemic, the Italian bourgeoisie
decided to dump the weak and
unstable coalition government of
the Democratic Party and Cinque
Stelle (Five Stars) movement,
replacing it with Mario Draghi,
the former head of the European
Central Bank. The first shots of
the Draghi government have been to
increase repression against the
workers movement, in particular
against the S.I. Cobas
“rank-and-file” union of mainly
immigrant workers. Some of the
most deeply exploited sectors of
the working class have undertaken
trade-union and solidarity
actions, centered on logistics.
The response of much of the
ostensibly socialist left has been
to form an Action Pact with
political supporters of S.I.
Cobas, a political coalition of
heterogeneous forces based on a
reformist 15-point political
program. This program consists
overwhelmingly of appeals for the
capitalist government to take
action, rather than for workers
themselves to enforce their
demands. What genuine communists
must say to the masses in the
harrowing coronavirus crisis is
that the working class must
establish its revolutionary class
rule, seizing and collectivizing
the means of production and
organizing production to satisfy
human need, not the profits of the
few. This fight requires above all
the forging of a revolutionary
workers party. Italy:
Draghi Government of Repression,
Impoverishment and Death (26
April 2021)
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)
For
Black Liberation
Through Socialist
Revolution!
Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
Long ago and
far away in
the B.C.
(Before
Coronavirus)
era, bourgeois
politics in
the United
States fixated
briefly on
impeachment.
The Democrats
leading the
lower house of
Congress did
not, of
course,
impeach Donald
Trump for his
crimes against
the oppressed,
for example
his vicious
persecution of
immigrants in
the U.S. After
all, the
record
deportations
under the
Democratic
administration
of
“deporter-in-chief”
Barack Obama
paved the way
for Trump.
Trump was
“brought up on
charges by the
wrong class
for the wrong
crimes,” we
noted at the
time. One
generation
after another
is brought up
with the
mythology of
the
Constitution
as an
embodiment of
“democracy” in
general, to be
worshiped
alongside the
“Founding
Fathers.” Yet
the authors of
the
Constitution
understood
very well that
they
represented
not “the
people” in
general but
the ruling
class of
planters and
merchants, and
wrote it to
safeguard
their
interests, in
particular to
bolster and
uphold the
power of the
slaveowners in
the newly
established
American
republic. The
U.S.
Constitution
established a
series of
institutions
that are
strikingly
anti-democratic.
They remained
so even after
slavery’s
abolition
through the
Civil War.
Revolutionaries
explain the
need for a
revolutionary
workers party
to lead a
socialist
revolution to
overthrow the
entire
capitalist
system. Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
(August 2020)
PSL
Targeted for
Marches Against
Cop Murder of
Elijah McClain Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
On Thursday,
September 17,
police raids
were carried
out in Denver,
Colorado
against the
organizers of
protests
denouncing the
racist murder
of Elijah
McClain, a
young black
man, by police
in suburban
Aurora in
August 2019.
Six of the
protest
leaders were
arrested,
including four
members of the
Party for
Socialism and
Liberation
(PSL), which
has played a
leading role
in the
protests. They
have
outrageously
been charged
with multiple
serious
felonies,
including the
absurd charge
of
“kidnapping.”
Following
Trump’s failed
attempt at
imposing
martial law in
Washington,
D.C. and the
subsedquent
the dispatch
of federal
agents to
Portland,
Oregon, and
Kenosha,
Wisconsin, the
Denver arrests
mark a new
escalation of
police-state
measures that
are a threat
to the civil
liberties of
all. The
Internationalist
Group
and
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth denounce
this ominous
attack on the
right to
protest. We
demand that
the arrested
activists be
immediately
released and
that all
charges
against them
be dropped. Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
(18 September
2020)
“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)
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.
Socialist
Action’s
“Solidarity
with
Solidarity”
How
Fake
Trotskyists
Carried the
Bags for
Imperialism
While the
reformist left
in the United
States is in
profound
crisis,
tripping over
each other as
they chase
after the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America,
Socialist
Action has
remained
relatively
stationary and
appears more
red in
comparison
with those
social
democrats who
are now being
devoured by
their own
opportunism.
In reality,
SA’s program
is pink social
democracy. At
every key
juncture where
defense of the
degenerated/deformed
workers states
has been posed
point-blank,
Socialist
Action has
lined up with
imperialism,
from Poland in
1981 to the
USSR in 1991
and continuing
today. Poland
was a key
episode in the
imperialist
drive against
the Soviet
bloc, which
led to
capitalist
restoration
whose
devastating
consequences
continue to be
felt around
the world.
Today SA
denounces
China as
imperialist
and North
Korea as
capitalist
while genuine
Trotskyists
defend them
against
imperialist
threats and
attack. And
it’s not just
words. When
the chips were
down, these
fake-Trotskyists
hailed their
comrades’
direct and
concrete role
in delivering
vital
CIA-financed
equipment to
counterrevolutionary
Polish
Solidarność.
Read the
details here.
How
Fake
Trotskyists
Carried the
Bags for
Imperialism
(April 2019)
“American Apartheid” by Design
A
Review of
Richard
Rothstein, The
Color of Law:
A
Forgotten
History of How
Our Government
Segregated
America By
Charles
Brover, Class
Struggle
Education
Workers After
more than a
decade of hard
struggle and
the passage of
laws in the
mid-1960s
against
official Jim
Crow
segregation,
the civil
rights
movement
suddenly
stopped. What
was termed de
facto segregation
was deemed
off-limits, or
at least had
to be left for
another day.
Rothstein’s
book
conclusively
proves that
rigid
residential
segregation
and
discrimination
against
African
American,
Latino and
Asian
minorities was
always de
jure,
officially
sanctioned.
This has had a
devastating
effect on
everything
from school
integration to
murderous
police
repression.
But while
laying out key
elements of
the structural
foundation of
black
oppression in
the U.S., The
Color of Law
fails to go to
their root in
the system of
racist
American
capitalism. In
the United
States in 2016
there were 2.3
million
evictions:
6,300 a day,
four every
minute. And
with over 3.5
million
homeless
people in the
country, there
are 19 million
unoccupied
dwellings.
This powerful
essay from
Class Struggle
Education
Workers
demonstrates
that it will
take nothing
short of a
socialist
revolution to
solve the
housing
question. “American
Apartheid” by
Design (21
November
2018)
While
“Democratic
Socialist”
Ocasio-Cortez
Chimes In
Bipartisan
War Criminals
Celebrate War
Hawk John
McCain
U.S.
imperialism
lost one of
its most vocal
and active
warmongers on
August 25 –
Arizona
Republican
senator John
McCain.
Universally
praised by
ruling-class
politicians as
a “war hero”
and
“maverick,”
McCain’s
funeral at the
National
Cathedral was
attended by
some of the
most infamous
mass murderers
of this and
the last
century, from
Henry
Kissinger to
former U.S.
presidents
Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush
and Barack
Obama. Far
from being a
“war hero,” a
“man of honor”
or paragon of
“human
decency,”
Senator John
McCain was a
war criminal
who bombed
civilians. He
was shot down
over North
Vietnam on a
bombing run
against a
civilian
factory. But
McCain’s most
valuable
service to
U.S.
imperialism
was as an
inveterate war
hawk in
Congress. From
Afghanistan to
Iraq to
Ukraine, Libya
and Syria, he
beat the drums
for murderous
imperialist
intervention.
What’s
striking about
McCain’s war
crimes and
endless
warmongering
is that in
virtually all
cases, he was
joined or
supported by
Democratic
politicians.
And, notably,
among those
praising
McCain was
Democratic
Socialists of
America (DSA)
superstar
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.
Her eulogy was
consciously
paying the
price of
admission to
the bipartisan
imperialist
club of the
U.S. Congress.
Bipartisan
War Criminals
Celebrate War
Hawk John
McCain
(September
2018)
As
The Boss,
Mayor Rahm
Emanuel,
Blames Black
Community for
Violence
Chicago:
Democrat-Led
Cops Continue
Racist Killing
Spree For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14,
Chicago police
gunned down
yet another
black person,
Harith
Augustus, a
barber.
“Snoop”
Augustus,
known as a
peaceful man,
was stopped on
the pretext of
exhibiting the
“characteristics
of an armed
person,” and
was shot dead
even though he
had a valid
gun license.
For the police
in this
rigidly
segregated
city, and
throughout
this country
founded on the
bedrock of
slavery, it is
always open
season on
black people.
And on
Latinos,
immigrants,
Native
Americans …
the list goes
on. Moreover,
in Chicago and
almost every
other big
city,
Democrats are
the bosses of
the racist
killer cops.
This is all
coming to a
head in the
upcoming trial
of killer cop
Jason Van Dyke
for the murder
of Laquan
McDonald in
October 2014.
And Democratic
mayor Rahm
Emanuel,
running for a
third term, is
stoking racist
reaction by
blaming lax
“morals” in
the black
community for
the violence
engendered by
rampant
poverty,
unemployment
and brutal
police
occupation.
Yet some of
the same
themes are
echoed in
protests,
where instead
of denouncing
racist police
repression the
focus is on
opposition to
“gun violence”
in general.
Talk of
“reforming”
the police or
controlling
guns only
serves to
divert protest
away from a
revolutionary
perspective
and to
strengthen the
repressive
agencies of
the capitalist
state, while
leading
protesters
into the
dead-end of
bourgeois
pressure
politics. The
stark fact is
that there is
no solution to
war, poverty
and racist
repression
under
capitalism. Chicago:
Democrat-Led
Cops Continue
Racist Killing
Spree
(August
2018)
DSA: Fronting for the
Democrats An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click
on image to
download pdf)
A 70-page
pamphlet
analyzing the
organizational
and political
history of the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America. Includes
articles on:
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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
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