Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

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)

From the Previous Issue

The Internationalist No. 34
(March-April 2013)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

We Demand: Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants
Obama’s “Bipartisan” Immigration Reform Is A Fraud
Workers’ Struggle Has No Borders

Phony plans for “immigration reform” are the talk of the town in Washington. Don’t be fooled by the hype. The “reform” they are preparing will not be one to benefit the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, but instead it will serve the interests of the capitalists who profit from their labor. In addition, it will involve ominous attacks on civil liberties and labor rights affecting everyone in the U.S. And it won’t just be because “reformers” are capitulating to the xenophobic, immigrant-bashing right-wingers. The liberal, supposedly “immigrant-friendly” Democrats have unleashed even more repression against the foreign-born than the conservative Republicans ever did. What is emerging is a “reform” that would tell the police where to find the undocumented, could well increase unemployment for immigrants, would lead to an expansion of government police control and at most, for a hefty price, would gain the status of indentured servants or being on probation. This is what the Democrats and “mainstream” immigrants’ rights groups want to cheer about. Not us Marxists. We demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. A real fight for immigrants’ rights must be a fight against capital, which profits enormously from the present situation in which millions of workers have no legal rights, and which seeks to garner even greater profits by “legalizing” them. Obama’s “Bipartisan” Immigration Reform Is A Fraud (April 2013)

No to Gun Control: Racist Ruling-Class Ploy to Disarm the Population
Who Controls the Guns?
In the wake of the horrific Newtown school shooting and a shooting spree at a shopping center in Clackamas, Oregon this past December, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have joined with Republicans like New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and the liberal media in launching a drive to tighten gun control laws. There is a division among the capitalist rulers over gun laws, but they all agree on intensified police repression across the board – as well as U.S. imperialist war in Afghanistan and murderous drone strikes in half a dozen countries. So-called “progressives” want to further strengthen the repressive apparatus by disarming the population. All historical evidence shows that “gun control” will not reduce violent crime or prevent rampages by deranged individuals. It will, however, embolden racist police rampages in impoverished African American, Latino, Asian and immigrant areas. The police are there to “serve and protect” the interests of the capitalist rulers and to keep their victims down. That’s why they want a monopoly on violence. Gun control has always targeted exploited populations in order to undercut their ability to resist. In the United States, from colonial times to today, it is an incontrovertible fact that gun control kills blacks. The Internationalist Group says no to gun control and other schemes to keep the working class and the oppressed disarmed in the face of a rapacious ruling class and its murderous, racist state. Who Controls the Guns? (April 2013)

Bogalusa 1965: Deacons for Defense (April 2013)

The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal
The 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation went by with as little public acknowledgement as possible. Unlike the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1 January 1863 was never going to be a holiday in racist, imperialist America. In the U.S. rulers’ campaign of historical amnesia, the issue of how slavery was abolished tops the list of events to be mystified. The second American Revolution – the Civil War – went beyond political rights to pose questions of property. Karl Marx recognized from the outset that for the Southern Confederacy, this was “a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery.” Slavery was not abolished by a stroke of Lincoln's pen but by victory on the battlefield, in which freed slaves played a fundamental role. But the northern bourgeoisie refused to turn over plantation land to the freedmen. As a result, the former chattel slaves were reduced to wage slavery or worse, sharecropping and debt peonage, setting the stage for KKK terror and Jim Crow segregation. The struggle for emancipation had run into the limits of a bourgeois revolution. Only a new, socialist revolution can achieve genuine black liberation and bury the heritage of slavery once and for all. The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal (April 2013)

Lincoln, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery
Lincoln has been called a history lesson in film. Dealing with the formal abolition of slavery, it was timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The problem is that history is a casualty of war in Lincoln. At bottom, the film is a political tract billing the United States as an eternal beacon of freedom, and hailing Obama-style liberalism and compromise. Works of art often take liberties with historical details in order to dramatize a point, but the important historical inaccuracies in Lincoln go to the heart of its message. Most striking is the near total absence of African Americans, except for a handful in peripheral roles, and in particular of black slaves fighting for freedom from bondage. Lincoln the movie deliberately excludes the role of blacks in the struggle to crush the slave system. Showing Frederick Douglass would have made it harder to ignore the 200,000 black soldiers who signed up to fight against the slavocracy – and whose contribution was termed “indispensable” to Union victory and emancipation by Lincoln the man – as well as the more than 50,000 among them who gave their lives on the battlefield or in Confederate captivity in this cause. Lincoln, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery (April 2013)

For a Nationwide Strike to Smash Capitalist Education “Reform”!
Mexico: Labor Cop Gordillo Busted to Crush Teachers’ Resistance
Peña Nieto, Hands Off the Teachers!
Let the Government Agent Gordillo Go, So Teachers Can Try Her for Murder
The arrest of the “president for life” of the corporatist National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), Elba Esther Gordillo, in a massive military operation was obviously a settling of scores at the highest levels of power. For misappropriation of funds and obscene corruption you could arrest nearly the entirety of the country’s rulers. At the same time, Elba Esther Gordillo was the perfect target in order to promote Peña Nieto’s privatization agenda, especially his education “reform.” The Elbazo was intended to crush any resistance from the side of the teachers, and thus its real targets are the dissident teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers CNTE. The CNTE leadership, however, has made a monumental error in cooperating with, and even egging on, the attorney general’s “investigation.” This reflects its political subordination to the bourgeois opposition of the PRD and MORENA. All of Gordillo’s crimes – and they are much worse than the official charges – were extolled by, or committed in the service of, the same criminal state that now wants to try her. We insist that this state criminal should be tried by the colleagues and family members of the teachers who fought against corporatist control, and because of this were gunned down, tortured and disappeared on the specific orders of the clique of state agents. The installation of a new government flunky as leader of the SNTE after an interview in the interior ministry underlines the nature of this pseudo-union as labor police for capital. The goal of class-conscious educators should be to build a genuine education workers union, completely independent of the state and without any political ties to any of the bourgeois parties. Mexican Government Busts Its Labor Cop Gordillo to Crush Teachers’ Resistance (March 2013)

Special Supplement
(10 February 2013)

Stop Union-Buster Bloomberg: Shut the City Down!
Mobilize Labor’s Power to Win NYC School Bus Strike!
Finally! New York City labor leaders have called for a “Union Unity March and Rally” for Sunday, February 10 to support the striking school bus drivers and matrons of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181. With the backing of major city unions, they could bring out tens of thousands of protesters, enough to really occupy Wall Street and shut down the center of international finance capital. But it’s no accident it’s being called on a weekend instead of a regular workday. The demonstration is clearly intended as a show of sympathy for the strikers rather than deploying labor’s power to actually win the strike. Moreover, the sponsors include the Democratic Party in various guises. The strategy of the union leaderships is to wait out Bloomberg’s final term in hopes that a Democratic successor elected in November would be more “labor-friendly.” To win, the school bus strike should be escalated. We have the power – “union power.” Now’s the time to use that power to shut the city down. Mobilize Labor's Power to Win NYC School Bus Strike! (7 February 2013)

School Bus Drivers, Teachers, All City Workers Are Under Attack – For Mass, Militant Workers Action to Shut Down Wall Street!
Bust Bloomberg Union-Busting!
On February 1, the National Labor Relations Board rejected a complaint by New York City school bus companies to declare the strike by over 8,000 drivers and matrons illegal. But this didn’t faze Mayor Michael Bloomberg who is refusing to negotiate and clearly hopes to bust the union. That’s what this strike is all about. This strike is not just about the school bus workers, or even just about education, it’s part of a fight, nationally and globally, against the offensive against labor by the forces of capital. The claim that the strike is “illegal” is just a naked assertion of the “rights” of capital against labor. It has to do with the power of one class against another. This is a war, a class war. These attacks are coming straight from the top, it’s not only the Republicans like Bloomberg, it’s also coming from Democrats, from Cuomo, from the Obama White House. What’s necessary is to mobilize the working class, which needs to have a class-struggle leadership. Politically it’s necessary to break with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. Because right now we have the dictatorship of capital. Bust Bloomberg Union-Busting! (2 February 2013)

Stop Union-Buster Bloomberg! NLRB: Hands Off!
School Bus Drivers’ Strike: Mobilize NYC Labor to Win!
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is on a union-busting binge. The tycoon who proclaimed himself the “education mayor” is determined to eliminate any vestige of job security for any and all workers in the city’s school system. First in line on the mayor’s hit list are the 8,100 drivers and matrons of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, who were forced out on strike last week. Next up are the teachers who are being threatened with massive cuts and layoffs in an attempt to blackmail them into accepting management “evaluations” that will put thousands of veteran educators’ jobs at risk. Union-buster Bloomberg must be stopped, and we have the power to do it. But the school bus drivers today and teachers tomorrow can’t do it on their own. To win it is necessary to bring out city workers’ unions, backed by parents, students and supporters in a massive mobilization against union-busting to shut the city down. School Bus Drivers’ Strike: Mobilize NYC Labor to Win! (21 January 2013)

Class Struggle Education Workers: Bring Out NYC Labor to Support School Bus Drivers Strike (20 January 2013)

Internationalist video: Scenes from the NYC School Bus Drivers Strike, January 2013 (24 January 2013)

Stop the Zionist Witch Hunt!
Defend Free Speech at Brooklyn College
The CUNY Internationalist Clubs denounce the thuggish campaign of slander and attempted censorship bearing down on Brooklyn College over a panel discussion on the campaign for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) of Israel. Strident supporters of Israel and its guiding ideology (Zionism) have engaged in witch hunting – reminiscent of the notorious Joe McCarthy – on campuses around the country, and have repeatedly targeted Brooklyn College. Joining this hue and cry were 19 Democratic “progressive” elected officials and ten members of the New York City Council, whose leader went so far as threatening to cut off funding for the public university. As Marxist revolutionaries, we defend the Palestinian people. We see the working people of the entire region – Arabs and Jews, Kurds, Persians, Turks and of all other national and ethnic groups – as the power that is key to defeating Zionism as well as the other oppressive regimes that enforce capitalist rule with blood and iron. Thus our strategy is very different from that of the BDS campaign, which is ultimately an appeal to the U.S. imperialists (the biggest and most dangerous mass killers on the planet) to get tough on their Israeli junior partners. At the same time, we militantly defend the right of BDS supporters to hold events free of intimidation and threats from Zionist hoodlums and their apologists. Stop the Zionist Witch Hunt! Defend Free Speech at Brooklyn College! (7 February 2013)

Special Issue
(November-December 2012)

A Capitalist Disaster
Class, Race and Hurricane Sandy
We Need a Workers Revolution
Major disasters serve as an x-ray of the societies in which they occur, laying bare the social contradictions that run like seismological fault lines through them. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy was magnified as it hit the economic and media center of world capitalism, New York City. This was yet again an “unnatural disaster” like so many in the past decade in which warnings were ignored and the death toll multiplied by capitalist-induced chaos, skimping on infrastructure and not only callous indifference towards those affected by it but even a deliberate desire to remove “unwanted” populations. Beyond the wanton vindictiveness of city rulers, Hurricane Sandy highlighted the utter inability of capitalism (and particularly the American “free market” variety) to plan and produce to fulfill human needs. Social democrats and liberals yearn for the bourgeois state to step in and clean up the mess, as if it were a matter of reorienting budget expenditures from guns to butter. This won’t happen as long as capital rules. Occupy radicals and anarchists dream of building a new society based on “mutual aid,” while cooperating with the NYPD, the mayor and the National Guard. The issue is not priorities but power – state power. What it will take to right the wrongs and all the injustices laid bare by Sandy is nothing less than socialist revolution. Class, Race and Hurricane Sandy (16 December 2012)

It’s Showdown Time on the Portland Docks
We Need to Win This One!
Bring Out Workers Power to Defend the ILWU!
The global grain cartel, made up of some of the world’s biggest, greediest and most secretive monopolies, is gorging on record profits while hunger stalks millions of poor and working people. Now these profiteers are gunning for the hard-won gains of the working class. Their target is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and ground zero is the Portland docks. On November 29, the Northwest Grainhandlers Agreement between the ILWU and the agribusiness/shipping cartels expired. The employers are demanding huge givebacks from the ILWU, and they are preparing to use force to do so. They want to impose the terms of the concessionary contract at the new EGT grain terminal in Longview, Washington, which the ILWU bureaucracy and many on the left wrongly hailed at the time as a victory. Now we are seeing the consequences. This is class war: there are no neutrals here. Unions should prepare now to stand with the ILWU in building mass picket lines that scabs won’t dare to cross. In case of a lockout, all U.S. ports should be struck, and there should be solidarity action around the globe. All working people must come to the defense of the ILWU. Bring Out Workers Power to Defend the ILWU! (29 November 2012)

After 55 Days on Picket Line, a Solid Labor Victory Including Union Hiring Hall!
Hot and Crusty Workers Win With Groundbreaking Contract
After months of struggle, immigrant workers at the Hot and Crusty bakery/restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side have made big news for the workers movement. A solid union victory – including a union hiring hall and benefits virtually unheard of in the industry – has been achieved. Dramatic ups and downs marked the campaign from the start. But fed up with abuse and workweeks in some cases of up to 72 hours without overtime pay, the workers’ determination to stick it out, come what may, was crucial to winning this battle. A lockout and threats of migra action did not deter them. Instead, determined efforts were made to win support from NYC unions, as well as students. Hot and Crusty workers did not fight alone. The inspiring outcome has the potential to spark further, wide-ranging efforts to organize low-wage immigrant workers throughout the food industry in New York City, “the restaurant capital of the world.” Hot and Crusty workers showed what class-struggle unionism can achieve. Hot and Crusty Workers Win With Groundbreaking Contract

For International Workers Action to Defeat Israeli Assault/Occupation!
Zionist Mass Murderers Strike Again: Defend Gaza!
U.S./NATO Imperialists, Israeli Zionists and Arab Islamists: Hands Off Syria!
Defend the Palestinian People – For an Arab/Hebrew Workers State in a Socialist Federation of the Near East
As soon as the U.S. elections were over, the Zionist Israeli government launched a rain of death against the beleaguered Palestinian population of Gaza. If U.S. president Barack Obama began his re-election campaign with the murder of Osama bin Laden, Israel’s war criminal premier Benjamin Netanyahu launched his campaign for the January 2013 elections by the terrorist assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the head of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. This was accompanied by a full-scale barrage of indiscriminate aerial bombing, that killed dozens of Palestinians. Meanwhile in Egypt, while Cairo masses denounce the Israeli terror bombing, the Muslim Brotherhood government is calling for a ceasefire while continuing to keep Palestinians locked up in the tiny Gaza Strip. The attack on Gaza is a prelude to a wider Middle East War. We demand: imperialists, Zionists and Islamists, Hands off Syria. Smash imperialism and Zionism through international socialist revolution. Zionist Mass Murderers Strike Again: Defend Gaza!(17 November 2012)

Oppose Obama/Romney, Break with Democrats and Republicans
No Choice for Workers in Capitalist Election Shell Game
Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
The world’s attention is focused on the American presidential election pitting Republican Mitt Romney against Democratic president Barack Obama. But the idea that millions of poor, working-class and middle-class voters can determine the fate of the country is an illusion. The electoral battle is between two multi-millionaires who are proposing to manage the affairs of capital. Their issues are over how exactly to wage the capitalist war on the workers or which country to invade next. Profits up, wages down and persistent mass unemployment: that is the state of the American economy today. Yet the labor bureaucracy ties the workers to the capitalist parties that are screwing us. The working class needs to oust the bureaucrats, break with the Democrats and build a workers party, a revolutionary party to champion the cause of all the victims of capitalism and lead the class struggle forward to a fight for power. Our issues – racism, oppression of women, attacks on immigrants, poverty, economic depression, imperialist war – can only be solved by expropriating the capitalist system and launching the socialist revolution which is key to liberation for all. No Choice for Workers in Capitalist Election Shell Game (5 November 2012)

Working Families Party: Putting Lipstick on a Pig
The Working Families Party, in spite of what its name implies, is no more than a tool used by politicians and union bureaucrats to bolster support for the Democrats. What it does is offer another ballot line for Democratic candidates: hardly an alternative. To build a real workers party that can lead the class struggle it’s necessary to break with all the capitalist parties, the Democrats first and foremost. And to do that, we have to drive out the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, which is tied to the Democrats by an umbilical cord. Working Families Party: Putting Lipstick on a Pig (5 November 2012)

Oppose Democrat/Republican Drive to Police-State Rule
Barack Obama’s Global Assassination Bureau
Democratic president Barack Obama began his re-election campaign over the May Day 2011 weekend, when a Navy SEAL hit squad killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and NATO war planes bombed a residential compound in Tripoli, Libya attempting to murder Muammar Quaddafi. At the Democratic National Convention in September, the delegates broke into cheers of “USA, USA” when speakers mentioned the bin Laden execution. Such “targeted killings”(assassinations) have become the administration’s signature tactic in waging its terror war. Over the last several years, almost 3,000 individuals have been killed in “precision” strikes by U.S. “drone” aircraft. Now journalists report that this program has been systematized into a “disposition matrix” (kill list) in which “nominations” (individuals marked for death) are personally approved by the U.S. president. Instead of complaining of leaks, Democratic campaign officials are reveling in the revelations, supposedly showing that Obama is not “soft on terrorism.” Indeed, the biggest international terror masters are to be found in the White House Situation Room. Barack Obama’s Global Assassination Bureau (4 November 2012)

Workers Must Rely on their Own Power, Not Capitalist Parties
Fast Food Workers Need a Whopping Raise And a Fighting Union!
Recently, some 200 workers carried out a first-ever strike at New York City outlets of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Domino’s Pizza. Demonstrators chanted, “We can’t survive on $7.25,” the minimum hourly wage nationally, and in New York state. This was the kick-off of a campaign for a $15 an hour wage. Fast food workers are certainly not going to be unionized by the losing tactics the labor bureaucracy has relied on for years. But they won’t win by relying on legal gimmicks, favorable media coverage and “support” from Democratic elected officials. Organizing fast food workers to win a huge wage increase will take militant union action defying the bosses’ anti-labor laws. This requires total independence from the capitalist parties and politicians. Fast Food Workers Need a Whopping Raise And a Fighting Union! (5 December 2012)

Walkouts Show Potential for Class Struggle
Walmart “Black Friday” Strike Actions, Protests Called at Stores Across U.S.
Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico, all of Latin America and the world, with a total of over 2 million “associates” around the globe. It is also almost completely non-union. Walmart management has been found guilty of systematically keeping women and racial minorities in low-paying positions, locking night-shift workers in its stores, bribing governments, exposing workers to serious health hazards, paying less than the minimum wage and keeping workers in part-time positions to avoid paying for health care. Life on the Walmart plantation is hell. Now on “Black Friday,” November 23, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year, protests have been called at up to 1,000 Walmart facilities around the U.S. The hidebound labor movement so far has failed miserably to unionize the retail giant. A real strike would aim at Walmart’s supply chain, and would require solid mass pickets that no one dares cross. You can’t do that playing by the bosses’ rules, and Walmart workers can’t do it on their own, but a class-struggle mobilization of union power can. Walmart “Black Friday” Strike Actions, Protests Called at Stores Across U.S. (19 November 2012)

UFT Censors Opposition to Obama Endorsement
On October 17, the United Federation of Teachers in New York City voted on a leadership motion to endorse Democrat Barack Obama for president. Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers came in to explain why teachers should vote for a candidate who has been at the forefront of the attacks on teachers unions. But when delegate and supporter of Class Struggle Education Workers attempted to present a resolution against the AFT/UFT endorsement, the bureaucracy refused to let the body hear the opposition motion, much less vote on it. Moreover, when the leadership motion was presented, no opposition speakers were allowed. The labor bureaucracy chains workers politically to the bosses’ parties, and union reform groups go along, underlining the need for a class-struggle opposition. UFT Censors Opposition to Obama Endorsement (October 2012)

Rip Up the Sellout Contract – Mobilize to Stop Layoffs, Racist School Closures
Chicago Teachers: Strike Was Huge, Settlement Sucks
Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama Are No Lesser Evil
Break with the Democrats – Build a Class-Struggle Workers Party!
The strike by 30,000 teachers and school personnel in the country’s third-largest school district electrified educators and union militants across the U.S. It was the first strike nationally against the teacher union-bashing corporate education “reforms” pushed by both Republicans and Democrats, from the White House and Congress on down to the state house and city hall. Teachers struck against the policies of Wall Street candidate Barack Obama and stood up to his former chief of staff, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. The outcome, however, is something else entirely. The reform leadership of the CTU agreed to a contract that caved in to the bully boy mayor “Rahmbo” and the education deformers on every key point, selling out vital union gains while preparing the way for mass firings and the loss of hundreds, possibly several thousand teachers’ jobs. The union membership should turn down this giveback contract. The rotten settlement underscores that union “reform” caucuses based on simple labor militancy and “union democracy” end up reproducing the bureaucracy they replace. Only class-struggle unionism that openly fights against capitalism can defeat the class war on workers and the oppressed.
Chicago Teachers: Strike Was Huge, Settlement Sucks (23 September 2012)

Teacher Evaluations and Illinois Law (23 September 2012)

Police of Popular-Front Government Slaughter Dozens of Workers
Bloody South Africa Mine Massacre Unmasks ANC Neo-Apartheid Regime
On August 16, an elite force of hundreds of South African cops opened fire on workers of the Lonmin mine in Marikana with automatic rifles, using live ammunition at point-blank range. It was, by far, the bloodiest massacre of black people in South Africa since the end of the apartheid regime of institutionalized white supremacy – only this time it was a black president and ministers who presided over the slaughter of striking miners. The capitalist government of the African National Congress and its “partners” of the South African Communist Party, backed by the National Union of Mineworkers, acting on behalf of one of the world’s top mining companies, sought to police the workers and put a violent end to their walkout. . It was cold-blooded mass murder in the service of capital. Such deadly backstabbing is the ultimate recourse of all manner of reformists when the capitalist system they support is at risk. In particular, it is the deadly face of the popular front. It is necessary to break labor from the nationalist popular front and build an internationalist, Leninist-Trotskyist, revolutionary workers party to fight for a black-centered workers government in a socialist federation of southern Africa.Bloody South Africa Mine Massacre Unmasks ANC Neo-Apartheid Regime (29 August 2012)

For a South African Internationalist Trotskyist Group (August 2012)

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

Click here for selected articles from The Internationalist and other
statements from the League for the Fourth International.

Redouble the Fight to Free Mumia Now!
Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
The Philadelphia district attorney has announced that he is giving up on the decades-long crusade by the state to carry out a death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal. But even after three decades in jail, the racist rulers are still dead-set on silencing this courageous defender of the oppressed who became known as the “voice of the voiceless.” Millions around the world have come out in support of Mumia, who has become the symbol of the struggle against the racist death penalty in the U.S. The determined international protest certainly played a key role in saving him from the state executioner. But instead, he is sentenced to life without parole. While the legal lynchers were set back, we cannot proclaim victory until Jamal walks free. Every day that he is in jail, his life is in danger. Rather than looking to the capitalist state with calls for a “new trial” and appeals to the Obama administration, we have called to mobilize the power of the working class to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The fundamental fact is, there is no justice for the oppressed in the racist, capitalist courts. We must redouble our efforts to free Mumia now! Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal (8 December 2011)

See also: Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now! (25 November 2009)

Brazilian Teachers Strike Again for Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal (May 2008)

“Anti-Austerity” Protest in Portland
Capitalism Can’t Be Reformed: The Only Solution, Workers Revolution
No Vote for Obama, Romney – For a Revolutionary Workers Party
On Saturday, November 3, a “Solidarity Against Austerity” protest was held under the auspices of a number of Portland-area labor, community and left groups, including offshoots of the Occupy movement and several trade unions. The endorsers are politically diverse, some proclaiming “Our dreams don’t fit in their ballot boxes” while many of the unions are supporting Barack Obama and other Democrats in the elections. But independent of their formal positions, the protest amounts to pre-election pressure on Obama and the Democratic Party. A favorite demand of the reformist groups is “tax the rich,” which is also the program of Democratic Party liberals and even multi-billionaires like Warren Buffet. Yet taxing the rich won't stop austerity, because the attacks on poor and working people and the oppressed have nothing to do with a lack of dollars in government coffers. Many also want to return to Keynesian Keynesian “welfare state” policies. But the source of the war on workers, the poor and oppressed is capitalism, not a set of economic policies that can be changed at will. The Internationalist Group calls instead for a class-struggle fight against capitalist austerity. Capitalism Can’t Be Reformed: The Only Solution, Workers Revolution (3 November 2012)

“Hot and Crusty Workers’ Fight Is Every New York Worker’s Fight!”
NYC Unions Back Hot and Crusty Workers at Labor/Immigrant Rights Solidarity Rally
On Thursday, October 18, one hundred union, immigrant rights, student and community activists came out to the “Labor/Immigrant Rights Rally in Solidarity with the Hot and Crusty Workers.” The immigrant workers have been on the picket line for 50 days after the old owner closed the restaurant on August 31 in reprisal for the workers organizing their union, the Hot and Crusty Workers Association. In line with an agreement signed with a prospective new owner early last month, the workers are fighting to win their jobs back with union recognition and a union hiring hall, crucial to their job security. The event featured speakers and delegations from some of the city’s largest and most powerful unions, including TWU Local 100, Utility Workers Local 1-2, CWA Local 1101, AFSCME DC 37, UFCW Local 1500, PSC, LIUNA Local 78, as well were delegates, organizers and activists from the UFT, UAW, ROC-NY and other labor groups. Activists from community, immigrant rights and left groups also made up a key part of the rally. The impressive turnout showed that the workers have broad support, and reflected the growing recognition that the Hot and Crusty workers’ struggle is a key battle for New York City labor. NYC Unions Back Hot and Crusty Workers at Labor/Immigrant Rights Solidarity Rally (19 October 2012)

Defeat Lockout, Win Union Recognition…and Agreement to a Union Hiring Hall
“Hot and Crusty” Workers Show the Way
A groundbreaking and potentially historic step forward has been taken by immigrant workers in NYC’s food industry with the announcement by the Hot and Crusty Workers Association (HCWA) that bakery workers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side have prevailed against an employer lockout. A statement by the HWCA on the tentative agreement with the store’s new owners reported: “The Union announced that the company has agreed to recognize the union immediately and commence negotiations towards a collective bargaining agreement.” In addition,the union has negotiated the institution of a hiring hall through which all employees must be referred by the Hot and Crusty Workers Association.” Workers at today’s rally expressed their determination to consolidate a solid union victory that can serve as an inspiring example to the many thousands who face starvation wages, employer abuse and anti-immigrant discrimination in “deli-sweatshops” throughout the city. Activists from several area unions participated in the daily pickets, as well as a number from the Occupy movement. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Internationalist Group and Class Struggle Education Workers have also been working with the HWCA and Laundry Workers Center activists. “Hot and Crusty” Workers Show the Way (8 September 2012)

Special Issue
(Summer 2012)

What Happened to the “Arab Spring”?
Storm over the Middle East
U.S./NATO Imperialists Hands Off Syria!
For Workers Revolution!
A year and a half after a wave of protest and revolt swept through the Arab East, in Tunisia and Egypt military-based authoritarian regimes have been replaced by military-based pseudo-democratic regimes with weak Islamist governments subordinate to imperialism. Last year, everyone from Barack Obama’s White House to the bourgeois media to the vast majority of the left were all hailing the “revolutions” in Cairo and Tunis. Key to perpetrating the fraudulent illusion of revolution was proclaiming its goal as simply “democracy.” In this era of capitalist decay, the imperialists will not tolerate even limited bourgeois democracy for those who toil in the workshops of “globalized” capitalism.Today the military still holds the whip hand. Yet the civil war in Syria and U.S./Israeli threats to “bomb, bomb Iran” could set off a conflagration engulfing the region. And the working class is beginning to move, notably in Egypt. Storm over the Middle East (May 2012)

Portland Trotskyist Study Group Fuses with Internationalist Group
After intensive discussions, visits and several months of joint work, the members of the Portland, Oregon Trotskyist Study Group and the Internationalist Group have decided to unite their forces in a single organization, the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International. The members of Portland Trotskyist Study Group have a number of years of experience on the left, both as unionists and members of socialist groups, among them the International Socialist Organization. They fought against bureaucratic sabotage to build support for the courageous longshore workers of Longview, Washington battling a union-busting attack. The comrades of the PTSG see this as a big step forward in embracing authentic Trotskyism against the parodies they had known of various currents which falsely claim the legacy of Leon Trotsky, co-leader together with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 October Revolution. Together we see this as an opportunity and challenge to build a class-struggle opposition in the workers movement on the program of revolutionary Marxism. The fusion of the PTSG with the IG is an expression of revolutionary regroupment which will be vital in seeking to reconstitute an authentically Trotskyist world party of socialist revolution. Portland Trotskyist Study Group Fuses with Internationalist Group (July 2012)

Explosion of Outrage in Orange County, California
Anaheim Cops on Murderous Rampage Against Latino Youth
Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Racist Cop Terror
A wave of outrage has swept through southern California in response to a rampage of racist shootings of Latino youth by the Anaheim police. When cops gunned down two young men, Manuel Angel Diaz and Joel Acevedo, on July 21 and 22, residents immediately took to the streets. They were met with even more vicious cop terror. When hundreds of protesters were denied entrance to a city council meeting, the media labeled it a riot. The city had become a war zone, “Anaheimistan.” Demonstrators chant, “The whole system is guilty.” American capitalism is racist to the core. Capitalist politicians need their killer cops to defend their class rule. To fight police brutality it is necessary to mobilize an even more powerful force, that of the working class without whose labor capitalism would grind to a halt. There should be a strong mobilization of labor’s power in conjunction with the Latino, African American and Asian poor and working people to stop racist police brutality. Ultimately, there can be no “solution” to the pervasive racial profiling, to black oppression and the super-exploitation of immigrant labor short of overthrowing the ruling class that profits from it. Anaheim Cops on Murderous Rampage Against Latino Youth (3 August 2012)

Part of a Whole System to Criminalize Black and Latino Men
Thousands Protest Racist NYPD “Stop and Frisk”
Police "Serve and Protect" Capital – It Will Take Socialist Revolution to Get Rid of Racist Cop Terror
In New York City last year, some 685,000 people were stopped by police on the basis of the color of their skin. The police practice of “stop and frisk” is racial profiling with a vengeance. On June 17, some 15,000 people marched down Fifth Avenue to protest this policy. But the Democrats and labor bureaucrats who headed up the march only want to modify the practice with a few cosmetic “reforms” that would only sanitize the image of the police while doing nothing to stop the massive dragnet operations against the black and Latino communities. “Stop and frisk”is part of a system of dominating the ghettos and barrios with police terror, and criminalizing an entire generation of young black and Latino men. The police are the backbone of the capitalist state and cannot be reformed. Nothing short of socialist revolution that sweeps away capitalist rule can put an end to cop brutality. Without a revolutionary leadership based on the social power of the working class, the current protests cannot break through the blue wall of police power. Thousands Protest Racist NYPD “Stop and Frisk” (21 July 2012)

Defend Malik Ayala and Jazz Hayden (21 July 2012)

We Don’t Beg, We Demand: Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
The Empty Election Promises of “Mr. Deportations” Obama
Forge a Revolutionary and Internationalist Workers Party!
When U.S. president Obama announced on June 15 that he was suspending the deportations of certain undocumented youth, it caused a tremendous stir nationwide. Ten days later the Supreme Court of the U.S. issued a ruling that gave the green light to implementing the central provision of Arizona’s racist SB1070 law. The Democrats want to use the false hopes awakened by the former and the justified fears provoked by the latter in order to round up votes for the November elections. But by deporting more than a millioin immigrants, Barack Obama is in no way a “lesser evil”. The two parties of capital represent a system which profits from the superexploitation of millions of workers who lack the most basic rights. It is in the economy where the immigrants’ strength lies. They don’t vote but they produce the values and create the wealth that the capitalists appropriate. In order to defeat the war against immigrants it is indispensable to forge a workers party capable of fighting against the representatives of capital and their state. The Empty Election Promises of “Mr. Deportations” Obama (20 July 2012)

Labor Must Clean its Own House: For a Class Struggle Opposition in the Union Movement
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
Members of an opposition Reform Slate in United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 156 (Oregon and southwestern Washington) were recently brought up on bogus charges and convicted in a rigged union trial after twice winning Local elections. Labor militants should protest this outrage. However, an article by the Workers Action group on this praises the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, better known as the Landrum-Griffin Act. This is dangerously wrong. The LMRDA was enacted in order break union power. Any government intervention into the unions, whatever the pretext, should be resisted. Inviting the biggest gangsters in the world, the U.S. government, to run a union places control in their hands and union members’ rights at their whim. We need union democracy in order to better fight capital. You can’t do that by appealing to the capitalist state, its laws and courts against our unions, no matter how rotten the leadership. Class-conscious unionists in the building trades have from the beginning insisted instead that labor must clean its own house. Labor Must Clean its Own House: For a Class Struggle Opposition in the Union Movement (19 July 2012)

Quality Education Is Not a Commodity But Everyone’s Right
Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Stop Work to Stop High-Stakes Test
On June 27 and 28, teachers in Rio de Janeiro are stopping work for an unusual purpose: to boycott a high-stakes test, the SAERJ. This “Education Evaluation System of the State of Rio de Janeiro” has nothing whatsoever to do with a scientific diagnosis of the pedagogical development of the students. It is an arm of the enemy in the capitalist offensive to privatize public education. The bourgeois politicians seek to link the wages of educators to the “product,” as if education were a commodity purchased on the market rather than a fundamental democratic right of working people and the entire population. The work stoppage called by the SEPE after previous efforts to boycott the SAERJ is a beginning. The combative Mexican teachers have taken resistance to another level in calling strikes to stop these phony “evaluations.” And because it is an offensive of imperialism, of capitalism in its phase of decay, of systematic destruction of past gains, the reformist trade-unionism of the past no longer works – what’s required is a revolutionary international response. Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Stop Work to Stop High-Stakes Test (27 June 2012)

The Boom of the Lula-Dilma Government Paralyzes the Popular Front Left
Brazil Prepares for Militarized Olympics By Repressing the Poor and Working People
The year 2011 around the world was one of explosive popular uprisings, of workers’ struggles, of rebellions by students and youth in general. The bourgeois media present Brazil as an exceptional case. The government of Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff has made use of the raw materials boom to dish out a few crumbs to the poor, using its welfare programs to reduce extreme poverty. They are silent about the fact that they have only managed to raise the poorest to the level of a brutal “normal” poverty; and that these welfare programs are financed by slashing health care and pension programs. As part of the preparations for the 2014 World Cup (soccer) and the 2016 Olympics, the government has sent the military police after residents of favelas (slums) in eviction operations. At the beginning of 2012, the military police called a “strike.” Most of the left scandalously supported this mutiny in the armed fist of the bourgeoisie. In a situation of great social volatility more than ever a leadership is required that can go beyond the merely “democratic” bourgeois program, to intervene in events with a program aiming at international socialist revolution. Brazil Prepares for Militarized Olympics By Repressing the Poor and Working People (May 2012)

Mission Impossible: #YoSoy132 Proposes to Clean Up the Electoral Farce
Mexico: Defeat the Bourgeois Repression of the PRI, PAN and PRD! Workers to Power!
No Vote to Capitalist Parties and Politicians! Break with López Obrador’s Bourgeois Popular Front! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
The sudden appearance on the political scene of the movement #YoSoy132 (I am 132) a month ago has shaken up the previously listless campaign for the July 1 elections. By questioning the media coverage of the Televisa-TV Azteca duopoly and opposing the “imposition” of Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as president, the students have thrown a wrench into the works. By denouncing the undeniable authoritarianism of PRI rule while barely mentioning the more than 60,000 dead in the “war against drugs” of President Felipe Calderón, it is attempting to prettify the present government of the PAN. Meanwhile, various groups of the opportunist left who habitually tail after every new “movement” are trying to clamber aboard the brand new student movement. The fact that even students of the well-off petty bourgeoisie are mobilizing, both in Mexico and southern Europe, indicates the depth of the world economic crisis. But in order to really fight against oppression and poverty, they will have to break their ties with the ruling classes and take their place along side the proletariat and the oppressed in the class struggle. Mexico: Defeat the Bourgeois Repression of the PRI, PAN and PRD! Workers to Power! (June 2012)

Beyond the June 17 Elections
Battle Over Anti-Worker Austerity Comes to a Head in Greece
On the eve of the June 17 Greek elections, imperialist bankers and political leaders are on pins and needles. They fear a worldwide “contagion” like that which set off the 2008 financial crisis following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment house. But Greek working people face a threat to their very existence, and it won’t be solved at the ballot box. Following the earlier May 6 election, Greek rulers and the international markets were stunned by the dramatic increase in the vote for SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left. Greece today is seething with discontent on the cusp of a pre-revolutionary situation. June 17 is not one more parliamentary election, and defensive struggles by the workers are wholly inadequate to counter the capitalist assault. Most of the left is hailing the social-democratic SYRIZA, which calls for a bourgeois “left government.” But neither the Communist Party (KKE) nor the other left coalition, ANTARSYA, present a program for revolutionary class struggle. Facing mass layoffs and drastic wage cuts, Greek workers should be waging industrial struggle leading to a real general strike and workers control of production, on a program of transitional demands pointing to Europe-wide socialist revolution. Battle Over Anti-Worker Austerity Comes to a Head in Greece (16 June 2012)

In the Face of the War Measures of the Liberal Government,
Mobilize the Heavy Battalions of the Working Class!
Quebec Student Strike: Defeat the Capitalist Attack
For more than three months, Quebec students have been on strike against the plan of the provincial government of Liberal Party premier Jean Charest to impose a massive tuition increase. Mobilizing up to 300,000 strikers, the students have rocked the Quebec nation. This is the largest student mobilization in the history of Quebec and one of the fiercest social struggles in Canada in recent decades. It is of prime international importance, together with the eight-month-long Chilean student strike last year. These are among the main current struggles against the capitalist war on public education, and on working people in general. Hoping to put an end to the strike, Charest rammed through, in less than 24 hours, en emergency law which amounts to a lockout of the student strikers plus a “Riot Club Law” to prohibit picket lines. To win a struggle against this international offensive of capital, it is necessary to wage a class struggle that goes beyond the bounds of phony bourgeois democracy, which is now revealed as a police state, and to forge a leadership based on a revolutionary internationalist program. Quebec Student Strike: Defeat the Capitalist Attack (20 May 2012)

Victory to the Electrical Workers! No Wisconsins in NYC!
Turn Up the Heat on Con Ed!
Bring Out Workers' Power to Knock Out the Lockout!
The lockout of 8,500 workers by the Con Edison utility monopoly is a crucial battle for all New York City labor. A lockout is always a threat to break the union. Con Ed has assigned 5,000 managers to work as scabs and brought in strikebreakers from Virginia and elsewhere. The profit-hungry Con Ed bigwigs may think they can imitate Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in ripping up labor’s hard-won rights. We need to show them that there will be no Wisconsins in New York. The union has been looking to the state Public Utilities Commission and to federal mediation, and to Democratic Party politicians to rein in Con Ed. But bourgeois politicians will not win this fight for Con Ed workers. Democrats from Barack Obama in the White House to Andrew Cuomo in the State House on down have repeatedly sided with the bosses. The fight at Con Ed is a key battle against the capitalist assault on the unions. If the unions are to survive to fight and prevail in the sharpening class struggle it is urgently necessary to break with the Democrats and build a workers party to fight for a workers government. Bring Out Workers' Power to Knock Out the Lockout! (17 July 2012)

Portland “Community Assembly to Create a People’s Budget”
Why Negotiating the Bosses’ Budget Doesn’t Work for Workers
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
Often in protests you hear the chant, “Workers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.” But the question is how, and here there are big differences. In late May, teachers in Reynolds, Oregon struck for five days and won; teachers in nearby schools who didn’t walk out got stuck with concessionary contracts. Earlier, a number of labor unions, community groups, trade unionists and leftists organized a “Community Assembly to Create a People’s Budget.” The notion of a “participatory” budget process is based on the false concept that “the people” can all get together, that the solution is more democracy, when in fact there are fundamental class issues at stake. Suggesting to the bosses’ government how to raise money or what its priorities should be is a dead end. It’s not “our” government but theirs. By accepting budget “constraints,” various sectors try to defend their mouthful of bread. This sets one group of workers against another and makes them complicit in cutbacks. Instead what’s needed is a program of demands going beyond empty reforms in order to turn defensive struggles into a workers counteroffensive against the collapsing capitalist system. Why Negotiating the Bosses’ Budget Doesn’t Work for Workers (July 2012)

A “Declaration of War” Against the Student Strike
Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Quebec Police State Law!
The militant Quebec student strike, now in its fourth month, is under massive attack. Up to 300,000 students have struck against a huge tuition increase (originally 75%, now raised to 82%), braving vicious repression, including more than 1,600 arrests. On May 17 the Quebec government introduced Bill No. 78 which shuts down struck colleges and universities until mid-August (a lockout of the students and teachers) and gives police arbitrary power to ban pickets and any demonstrations. It intends to pass the law in one day. This is a frontal assault on democratic rights and a threat to labor: workers’ strike pickets are surely next to be banned. Quebec students are in the front lines of an international battle against the capitalist assault on public education. They need our active solidarity and support. The three main Quebec union federations have condemned the new law, but what is needed is action, now, to shut down Montréal and other major Quebec cities over this vicious police-state law. Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Quebec Police State Law! (18 May 2012)

See also article on the web site of Class Struggle Education Workers on “Solidarity at CUNY with Quebec Student Strike” (11 May 2012)

No to “Secure Communities” in NY – Stop the ICE Dragnet!
Protest Obama’s Mass Deportations of Immigrants
The federal government of President Barack Obama has announced that it is overriding state objections to impose its “Secure Communities” mass deportation program on New York, Massachusetts and several other states starting on Tuesday, May 15. There should be a massive mobilization against this outrageous attack on immigrant working people. A protest has been announced for Monday, May 14, from 12 to 2 p.m. at the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan. We urge people to attend to show their outrage. But while demonstration organizers call for timid “immigration reform,” we oppose all cooperation with the migra immigration cops, and call for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Protest Obama’s Mass Deportations of Immigrants (13 May 2012)

Not One Vote for Any of the Bosses’ Parties!
Mexico Electoral Farce 2012: Militarization and Anti-Worker Attacks
No to the PRI-PAN Rotation and the “Loving Republic” of López Obrador
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
The six-year term of Mexican president Felipe Calderón, of the clerical-reactionary National Action Party (PAN), is nearing its end with a balance sheet of 60,000 violent deaths, unprecedented militarization, real unemployment of around nine million jobless and a record-setting pace of attacks on the working class, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in half a century. Moreover, large sections of the country are a literal war zone, a war that the government is not winning. Twelve years of “rotation” in power have not brought the “democratization” that many had hoped from the displacement of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the federal executive. Both the PRI (which is leading in the opinion polls) and the PAN promise savage repression. For his part, López Obrador, with his talk of “love of the family ... love of the fatherland,” seeks to “lovingly” reconcile the exploited with the exploiters, while at the same time proposing to carry out Calderón's militarist policies with a federal police trained in “techniques of excellence in police work.” In these elections, the working people and oppressed have no representation. Not one vote for the bourgeois parties and politicians! Mexico Electoral Farce 2012: Militarization and Anti-Worker Attacks (May 2012)

Special Issue
(May 2012)

Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Deportation Elections 2012: For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
May Day, the international workers day, since the massive marches in 2006 has become the day of struggle of immigrant workers as well. On May Day 2012, the American presidential election campaign is well underway. In the Republican primaries, each candidate tried to be more reactionary than the other. The virtual nominee, Mitt Romney, has called for immigrants to “self-deport.” Democratic president Barack Obama, meanwhile, is trying to outdo the Republicans in imperialist war abroad and police-state repression “at home.” Even as he appeals for the Hispanic vote by again promising to make immigration reform a priority after reelection, Obama has deported 400,000 immigrants a year, far more than his Republican predecessor ever did, earning him the title “Mr. Deportation”. The Internationalist Group fights for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, to break with the capitalist parties and build a revolutionary workers party. Deportation Elections 2012: For a Revolutionary Workers Party! (May 2012)

Trotskyism vs. Social Democracy and Anarcho-Liberalism
The Left, Labor and Occupy
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist “demands” on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel “black bloc” anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against “ultraleftists” in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers’ struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle. The Left, Labor and Occupy (May 2012)

Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland’s D12 Port Blockade
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
On December 12th, hundreds of activists from Portland, Oregon converged on the Port of Portland to shut it down as part of the West Coast Port Shutdown called for by Occupy Oakland. Many activists had never been on a picket line before, and debates began as the pickets settled in at the entrances to the Port about the strategies and tactics necessary to carry the day. Although the ILWU leadership resisted the shutdown from beginning to end, the membership decisively supported the action by not going to work that day. The intervention of class-struggle trade unionists from the ranks of the picket was key to avoiding a counterproductive confrontation. The lessons from the D12 shutdown are clear: Rather than acting on behalf of Port workers, it’s far more effective to act in solidarity with them. Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland’s D12 Port Blockade (May 2012)

Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin
Outrage over the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin compounds daily as the killer remains free, facing no criminal charges for gunning down the unarmed black youth from Miami Gardens, Florida. On February 26, George Zimmerman, a white self-appointed captain of a “neighborhood watch” team in a gated community in the Orlando suburb of Sanford, shot Martin, a black high-school student, who was returning to the home in the development where he and his father were staying. Police and local prosecutors never charged Zimmerman and accepted his cynical claim that he shot the unarmed youth in “self-defense.” Thousands have demonstrated around the country, particularly after police tapes of 911 calls by Zimmerman were released, showing that he was stalking Martin. But the main thrust of liberals is to divert the protests into a movement for gun control laws and to get rid of “Stand Your Ground” laws. The ruling-class response seeks to take the heat off the police and tries to obscure the key fact that this was racist murder. Trayvon Martin was killed for the “crime” of “walking while black.” Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin (26 March 2012)

Gofers for the ILWU Bureaucracy
SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview
In a recent article, the centrist Spartacist League joined reformists including the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Workers Party in acting as apologists for the bureaucracy of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The SL goes even further, defending an attack by ILWU bureaucrats against ILWU speakers at a January 6 Occupy forum in Seattle to build solidarity with Longview longshore. We warned that the ILWU tops had made major concessions in the contract that capped that key struggle. Now that the terms of the concessionary contract (which has never been voted on by the Local 21 membership) have become known, it is even worse than feared: it allows the company to choose its workers, and a key clause threatens the very heart of ILWU power, the union hiring hall. SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview (March 2012)

Showdown in Alma: To Win, Mobilize the Power
of the Entire Workers Movement
Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan
On January 1, the bosses of the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum plant in the city of Alma, in northeastern Quebec, imposed a lockout in order to stifle the will to struggle of the 787 working men and women. By means of a sharp increase in subcontracting, the world leader of aluminum production wants to drastically reduce the wages of several hundred workers to less than half of what they earn today. The locked-out workers have received many gestures of solidarity, but what counts is action. It is necessary to strike and occupy all of the RTA installations in Quebec and the rest of Canada to cut off its profits at the source. For the workers to win, they must break the chains imposed by the bourgeois courts and undertake determined class struggle to impose the law of the workers against that of the bosses. Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan (20 February 2012)

Bloody Bogalusa, 1919: When Four White Unionists Died
Defending Their Black Comrades
In November 1919, black and white workers joined in struggle for their rights at the Great Southern Lumber sawmill in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The company, founded by Northern investors, was determined to defeat unionization at all costs and keep the predominantly black workers down. When a posse of lynchers came for the leading black organizer, Sol Dacus, he escaped and the next day marched down the main street of town accompanied by two white unionists with shotguns. The company dispatched a horde of 150 gunmen from its private army who attacked the union offices, killing four white members of the Carpenters union, J.P. Bouchillon, Stanley O'Rourke, Lem Williams and Thomas Gaines. The company won, but the example of black-white labor solidarity set the background for the rise of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in the 1960s and continues to inspire today. Labor cannot unionize the South without rooting out the bloody legacy of slavery and the Confederacy. Honor the heroes of Bogalusa 1919! Bloody Bogalusa, 1919 (February 2012)

All Honor to Our Comrade Marília,
A Communist and Poet of Struggle
Sadly, comrade Marília Costa Machado died today, 15 February 2012. It was an irreparable loss of a communist comrade who during her career of 30 years as an educator was always in the vanguard of the teachers of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Marília had been a director of the SEPE teachers union and as a writer she published two books of poems. In 1997 she was named Muse of Poetry of the city of Rio de Janeiro, notably for her poems against the military dictatorship. As a member of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (Fourth Internationalist League of Brazil) and the Comitê de Luta Classista (Class Struggle Committee), her internationalism placed her in the forefront of the campaign to free Mumia Abu Jamal. All Honor to Our Comrade Marília, A Communist and Poet of Struggle (February 2012)

Poems and Photos of Comrade Marília Machado [in Portuguese] (February 2012)

Scabs Are Out, But ILWU Concessions
Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost
The drive to break International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) jurisdiction on Pacific Coast grain shipping has been beaten back after months of explosive labor struggle. A multinational consortium, EGT, built and began operating a new $200 million grain terminal with scab labor. Last week, EGT recognized the union as bargaining agent and on Thursday the membership of ILWU Local 21 approved a contract. But this has come at a cost, as the union leadership made significant concessions in the bargaining. This could set the stage for future battles as other shippers demand similar terms. Nevertheless, ILWU workers are in the plant and the scabs are out. Credit for this is due to the militancy of Longview and other longshore workers and their supporters who would not be intimidated by the capitalist courts and cops. The showdown in Longview is a harbinger of sharp class battles to come. Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost (12 February 2012)

Open Letter to Supporters of the ISO
“Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum
The January 6 furor in Seattle has highlighted the increasingly charged relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the official leadership of trade unions. The violent disturbance by officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was directed not only against Occupy Seattle but particularly targeted ILWU militants speaking at the forum. Outrageously, several self-described socialist groups took up cudgels for the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. The egregious apology for the bureaucratic disrupters by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) has caused an uproar, including inside the ISO. Basically, there was a clash of opportunisms: two different “constituencies” the ISO was tailing after (Occupy and labor leaders) came into conflict. The ISO came down on the side of the labor bureaucracy. From Wisconsin to Washington, these social democrats seek to push the bureaucrats ever so slightly to the left. But when the capitalists and the pro-capitalist bureaucracy crack the whip, the ISO obeys. “Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum (February 2012)

ILWU Bureaucrats Target Union Militants, Attack “Occupy” Solidarity Meeting
January 6: An Outrage in Seattle
On January 6, 2012, a labor solidarity forum called by Occupy Seattle was held to support International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 (Longview, Washington) in its battle against union-busting by the giant EGT consortium. However, a couple dozen right-wing bureaucrats and hangers-on from the Seattle, Tacoma and Portland ILWU locals physically disrupted the meeting with yelling, pushing, shoving and punches, in attempt to prevent its democratic functioning. The bureaucratic union misleaders seek to intimidate solidarity actions by claiming they would violate the slave labor Taft-Hartley Act, which outlaws most effective strike tactics. Some Occupy activists falsely portrayed this attack as demonstrating the bankruptcy of unions. However, speakers and many in the audience made clear that these bureaucratic thugs did not represent the ranks of labor, chanting "ILWU, ILWU" against the disrupters. The meeting ended with an appeal for all supporters of labor rights to come to Longview to protest the anticipated arrival of a ship to load the scab grain. January 6: An Outrage in Seattle (January 2012)

Video: Seattle Labor Solidarity Forum Disruption (12 January 2012)

Solidarity with Longview Longshore Workers
Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting
Chanting “What’s disgusting? Coast Guard union-busting,” some 75 protesters demonstrated for an hour and a half in soaking rain in front of the Federal Building in downtown New York City on January 23. The united-front protest brought together supporters of a number of area unions, student and left groups. They were denouncing the government’s announced plan to use the U.S. Coast Guard against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Longview, Washington. For the last year, the ILWU ranks have militantly fought against an attempt to break their union by a giant consortium, EGT, which has opened a new $200 million grain export terminal in the West Coast port which it is operating with scab labor. This government/employer attack on the strongest and most combative union in the U.S. is a threat to all labor. Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting (23 January 2012)

Exchange with Spartacist League on the January 23 Protest (23 January 2012)

Following Dec. 12 West Coast Port Blockade
Longshore Workers, Truckers:
Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast!
Class War on the West Coast Docks
Ports up and down the West Coast were blockaded, from Seattle to San Diego. Despite a barrage of hostile propaganda in the media, opposition from union bureaucrats and heavy police repression in some places, overall the blockade was successful – this time. The blockade was called in solidarity with longshore workers fighting a union-busting assault in Longview, Washington and with port truckers seeking union recognition in the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach. This support should have been greeted. Instead, the union bureaucracy attacked the port blockade, although longshore workers respected the picket lines. But now the class war on the West Coast docks is coming to a head, and it can’t be waged from the outside. Bay Area labor has called for a caravan to Longview. The goal should be a real occupation of the terminal by the workers to prevent the loading of the scab cargo. Longshore militants have called on the longshore unions to shut down every port on the West Coast, and the East and Gulf Coasts, to smash EGT’s union-busting. Can it be done? Yes, but only though sharp struggle against the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. Longshore Workers, Truckers: Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast! (28 December 2011)

BoT Meeting at Baruch: Cops Run Wild Against Student Protesters
CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY!
Abolish the Board of Trustees – No Tuition, Open Admissions!
On November 21, the City University of New York unleashed its campus cops on a crowd of several hundred students, shoving, beating and arresting 15. The protesters were clamoring to attend a “public hearing” of the Board of Trustees dealing with plans for a tuition increase, from which all but a few dozen people (many of them campus administrators) were excluded. Students chanted “CUNY is not a jail” and “Cops out of CUNY.” The police assault, following the NYPD eviction of Occupy Wall Street, is part of nationwide ramp-up of repression, including the sadistic pepper-spraying of student protesters at the Universithy of California Davis campus. CUNY Internationalist Clubs have long called for all cops off campus, for abolition of the Board of Trustees, for student-teacher-worker control of the university and for no tuition and open admissions. To win these demands, we have have called, in signs and chants, “Workers and students, shut the city down!” On November 17, thousands took up this chant. It will take convulsive student struggles in conjunction with a powerful mobilization of the working class and the oppressed to defeat the ruling-class attack. CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY! (22 November 2011)

“99%” Populism Is No Solution
Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution
Occupy Wall Street: A Marxist Analysis
In the two months since Occupy Wall Street burst onto the scene it quickly swept the nation. There have been over 600 occupations in cities across the U.S., and many more around the globe. In New York City, “All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street” is not just a protest chant but an accurate description of local politics. The “Occupy movement” has crystallized a popular mood of anger and frustration as the world enters the fourth year of a full-fledged economic depression. Thousands of students burdened under a mountain of debt and college graduates unable to find work have taken to the streets to protest. Unions have given different kinds of support. But while denouncing the filthy-rich “1%” in the name of the other 99% of the population, it has not put forward any program for what is to be done. And the various demands and proposals floated by Occupy proponents do not challenge the capitalist system. While there are diverse tendencies among the occupiers, the ideological glue that has held them together is bourgeois populism. But in the course of the struggle, particularly under the blows of repression, political outlooks can change sharply. Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution (14 November 2011)

Revolution
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 9
(November 2011)
click above or on image to right
for full list of articles

Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
At 1 a.m. on November 15 New York City police descended on Zuccotti Park in the city’s financial center to shut down Occupy Wall Street. Ordered by billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the dead-of-night police attack is the culmination of two months of mounting pressure from NYC authorities and the recent unrelenting propaganda barrage against OWS from the media, both conservative and liberal. The eviction was part of a nationally coordinated crackdown, coming just a day after a similar attack on Occupy Oakland in California, and weekend raids in Portland, Oregon, Denver and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Democratic and Republican mayors have been united in their determination to put an end to the occupations. In the face of the cop assault on OWS, what is urgently called for is a massive mobilization of labor’s power to bring New York to a standstill over this police-state repression. Within hours of the police attack, the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) together with Class Struggle Education Workers and the IG distributed hundreds of leaflets calling for “Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!” Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street – Workers and Students, Shut the City Down! (15 November 2011)

Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution!
NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital
Students and Workers: Shut the City Down!
On October 1, the New York Police Department lashed out at the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, arresting over 700 demonstrators as they marched into a police trap on the Brooklyn Bridge. Coming after the arrest of 85 OWS protesters a week earlier, and the videotaped pepper-spraying of trapped women marchers by a top police official, the mass bust provoked outrage in the NYC population. On October 5, tens of thousands came out at the call of the labor unions in solidarity with the protesters and against the wanton police brutality. CUNY Internationalist Clubs marched, chanting “Students and workers, shut the city down!” Many OWS demonstrators have huge illusions in the police, calling on them to join the protests. Cops are not fellow workers but the armed fist of capital. Despite vituperation in the right-wing media, the vast majority of the protesters are not radicals but angry liberals. The occupation’s list of grievances points toward a slightly reformed, “green” capitalism, while protesters have been waving the American flag, symbol of U.S. imperialism. Yet tinkering with financial regulations will not solve mass unemployment, racist repression and imperialist war. Most of the left has written gushing articles about the occupation, refusing to tell the truth, that capitalism cannot be reformed to “serve the people,” it must brought down through a struggle for workers power. NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital (5 October 2011)

Video of Internationalist intervention at OWS protest against mass arrests (1 October 2011)

Isn’t That the American Flag They’re Waving? (6 October 2011)

Internationalists Protest Imperialism’s “Dr. Shock”
What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street?
On October 7, economist Jeffrey Sachs spoke at the Occupy Wall Street protest in the New York financial district. High-flying academic Sachs is notorious for implementing free market capitalism with a vengeance. He made his reputation with economic “shock treatments” that produced misery and death for untold numbers of working people in Bolivia, Poland and the former Soviet Union. When Internationalist supporters learned of his appearance at OWS, we rushed to the square to expose this economic hit man and inform those present of his crimes. Here is some of the evidence. The fact that this top capitalist privatizer and imperialist criminal was invited to spout off at OWS says a lot about the agenda of those who invited him. What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street? (9 October 2011)

Georgia to Carry Out Legal Lynching
Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
On September 20, the Georgia State Board of Pardons turned down the appeal of Troy Davis to commute his death sentence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989 shooting death of an off-duty Savannah police officer. There have been worldwide demonstrations demanding that he not be executed. Last week more than 630,000 letters were handed to the Board asking to stop the execution of Davis on the grounds that there is “too much doubt” about this case. In fact, massive evidence shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt Troy Davis is innocent. If Georgia carries out the death sentence, it will be nothing less than state murder, a legal lynching. It will show, as a number of black Georgians bitterly remarked to the press, that racist Jim Crow “justice” is alive and well in the state that was the lynching capital of the South in the 1920s. It will demonstrate that for the racist U.S. injustice system, innocence is not a defense – especially for a black man accused of killing a white cop. It will prove, once again, that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. But the legal lynchers can be stopped, by mobilizing the power of the working class. It will take nothing less than socialist revolution to sweep away this rotting system that lives on death. Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (21 September 2011)

Not a General Strike, But 30,000 Occupied the Port…
And Then the Cops Struck Again
Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland
Following the brutal police raid before dawn on October 25 and the bloody assault on protesters later that day, Occupy Oakland called for a “General Strike” on November 2. Tens of thousands came out and blockaded the port in the evening, but the union bureaucrats refused to call strike action. This robbed the mobilization of much of its power. Soon after the demosntrators went home, an army of 400 police retaliated, attacking the occupation of an empty building. To answer this naked display of police power, it is necessary to show that the working class has far greater power, by striking at the cops’ capitalist masters where it hurts: the source of their profits. In the face of the continuing police threat, workers defense guards together with Occupy Oakland are needed, as well as real strike action to shut the city down in the face of a new attack. No “reforms” will change the character of the police as enforcers of racist bourgeois order. Since police are the backbone of state power, it will take nothing less than a socialist revolution to get rid of cop brutality, which is endemic to capitalist rule. Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland (9 November 2011)

The General Strike and the “Occupy Movement” (November 2011)

Militant Class Struggle Like You Haven’t Seen in Years:
ILWUers Defy Federal Injunction, Block Train, “Storm” Scab Terminal
Showdown on West Coast Docks
The Battle of Longview
Since early this year a bitter struggle has been waged in the small West Coast port of Longview, Washington. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is fighting a vicious union-busting attack by a new grain shipping conglomerate. The battle got national attention when on September 8, some 800 union supporters “stormed” the new Export Grain Terminal, as the big business press put it. As security guards cowered, thousands of tons of grain were dumped on the tracks and railroad cars disabled. That morning more than 1,000 longshoremen refused to show up for work, shutting down the major ports of the Pacific Northwest. The day before, hundreds of ILWUers blocked a train carrying grain to the scab terminal and held off police. So far there have been more than 200 arrests in Longview. It all harked back to the militant union action that built the labor movement and which has seldom been seen in recent years. It gave a taste of workers’ power that needs to be mobilized in sharp class struggle today. This battle affects the entire maritime industry: to win it, the dock unions must prepare to shut down ports on all three coasts. The key is to build a class-struggle leadership. Showdown on West Coast Docks: The Battle of Longview (4 November 2011)

Oakland Port Shutdown
Workers Refuse to Work the Docks
Today thousands of working people are refusing to go to work in response to a call for a “General Strike” by Occupy Oakland. This includes many port workers who, in response to an appeal from rank-and-file members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, refused to load and unload ships, effectively crippling the port. Many will be joining the late afternoon march on the port denouncing the brutal police attack on Occupy Oakland demonstrators last week, ordered by liberal Democratic mayor Jean Quan. Report from longshore activist Jack Heyman at the Oakland docks. Oakland Port Shutdown: Workers Refuse to Work the Docks! (2 November 2011)

Hands Off Occupy Oakland!
Mobilize Labor's Power Against Racist Police Repression!
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
In the pre-dawn hours of October 25, police in Oakland, California violently evicted protesters camped out in Oscar Grant Plaza in front of city hall, and from a near-by satellite camp, arresting close to 100 people. That evening, facing an angry protest demonstration of several thousand the cops responded with repeated volleys of tear gas as well as concussion grenades, bean bag canisters and wooden slugs and possibly rubber bullets. The Oakland police are the same force that attacked an antiwar demonstration at the Port of Oakland in April 2003, firing the same sort of potentially lethal munitions and injuring at least six longshoremen. This is also the city where Oscar Grant was murdered by BART police on New Year's Day 2009. The workers movement in the Bay Area, with the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the lead, should use its muscle against a threatened attempt to evict Occupy San Francisco and to enable Occupy Oakland to reestablish its camp. An injury to one is an injury to all! Hands Off Occupy Oakland! (26 October 2011)

This Is What U.S. Imperialist-Sponsored “Democracy” Looks Like
The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi
Serial Killer in the White House Carves Another Notch in His Gun
On the morning of October 20, former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was captured, brutally beaten and executed in cold blood by the victorious imperialist-sponsored “rebels” who have taken over the North African country. The murder was quickly celebrated by U.S. president Barack Obama and other NATO leaders, whose warplanes massively bombed Libyan cities under the guise of “protecting civilians.” The victory of the competing gangs of Islamist and monarchist cutthroats armed, financed and “advised” by the Western powers is hardly a blow for democracy but the establishment of neo-colonial rule. The ugly face of that regime can be seen in the grisly cellphone videos of the lynchers as they tormented and then assassinated Qaddafi. The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi (21 October 2011)

Internationalist Solidarity with Chilean Students!
The New Battle of Chile For Free, Quality Public Education
Workers to Power!
Chile is currently experiencing the largest and most sustained mobilization in two decades against the regime inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship. For four months straight, hundreds of thousands of Chilean students and workers have taken to the streets fighting for free, quality public education. They seek to bring down the market-based educational system imposed by the military rulers and the governments of the “democratic transition.” Since May, hundreds of secondary schools and the main universities have been occupied. Hundreds of thousands of people have repeatedly marched in Santiago and the main cities in enormous protests, with thousands of arrests and sharp street battles against the militarized police (carabineros). The response of the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera has been to intensify the repression and to attempt to divert the protest into a treacherous “dialogue.” In this they have counted on the aid of the reformist leaders of the movement, above all those affiliated to the Communist Party and the “center-left” coalition, Concertación. However, more militant sectors of the student movement have opposed the sellouts by the “moderates”. The students have broad popular support, but the government is not backing down. A revolutionary leadership is required to mobilize the power of the working class to achieve the democratic demands of the student movement in the framework of a struggle for socialist revolution. The New Battle of Chile For Free, Quality Public Education (16 September 2011)

Chile: Constituent Assembly and Workers Power (October 2011)