    |
"All talk to the effect that
historical conditions have not yet
'ripened' for socialism is the product of
ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for proletarian
revolution have not only 'ripened,' they
have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The
historical crisis of mankind is reduced to
the crisis of the revolutionary
leadership." |
Welcome! The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. After a decade and a half in which the ruling class trumpeted the supposed "death of communism," the imperialists are bogged down in losing wars of colonial occupation in the Near East while a global economic crisis shakes the foundations of the capitalist order. With mass unemployment, poverty and hunger ravaging the planet, once again there is talk of socialism and revolution. But as in the past, the key question is that of forging a vanguard to lead the struggle of the workers and the oppressed.
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The founding statement of the Internationalist Group is available on this site, as well as the LFI's declaration, Reforge the Fourth International, in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog.
Enough is Enough: Stop the Scabs! Defeat the Cable Bosses!
Mobilize Telecom & All NYC-Area Labor to
Win the Spectrum Strike
June 10 marked the 75th day of the bitter strike by 1,800 cable workers against Spectrum, formerly Time Warner Cable. For the past four years, Spectrum workers have been without a union contract. The determination of the strikers is an example to all defenders of workers’ rights. More than that, this battle is a test for the entire labor movement. New York-area union leaders have made speeches about solidarity, while relying on empty promises by Democratic politicians. But what’s needed – and long overdue – is for the unions to use their collective muscle now to help the Spectrum workers win. Bringing together AT&T Mobility and Spectrum workers, and beefing up picket lines with Verizon workers and big (not just symbolic) contingents from building trades, hotel and restaurant, hospital, Teamsters and other key unions can stop the scabs, defeat the union-busters, and win this battle in the interests of the entire workers movement. Mobilize Telecom & All NYC-Area Labor to Win the Spectrum Strike (11 June 2017)
Police Protect Vastly Outnumbered Racists
Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Provocation
Militants from 14 Area Unions Point the Way Forward
The June 4 rally of white-supremacist and outright fascist Trump supporters in Portland, OR was protected by triple lines of heavily armed police. However, it was surrounded by far greater numbers of furious protesters outraged by this brazen provocation barely a week after the double murder by a local Nazi. One of three protests, a mobilization called by Portland Labor Against the Fascists, brought out several hundred union members and supporters, including members of at least 14 area unions. The labor mobilization stood its ground to the very end, with non-stop chants and speeches that reverberated throughout the area for over six hours until the last of the racist and fascist scum exited on buses protected by the police. This marks the first significant working-class action in the U.S. against white supremacists in decades. June 4 points to the potential for organizing workers defense guards that could send the fascist vermin scurrying back into their holes. It was an important first step in bringing out the power of the labor movement in defense of working people, immigrants, Muslims and all those targeted by the all-round reactionary offensive coming out of Washington. And it sharply posed the need for a workers party fighting to overthrow the capitalist system that breeds fascism, and to replace it with the liberating rule of the working class. Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Provocation (8 June 2017)
A Call on NYC Labor to Mobilize
Against June 10 Anti-Muslim Hate Rally
From the Internationalist Group, Class Struggle Education Workers and Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle International Workers)
New York City is a union town, and an immigrant town. We have enormous potential power Workers – black and white, Latino and Asian, Muslim and Jewish, born here or abroad – make every wheel turn. But now we are all being targeted by outright fascists and violent race-hate groups of the “alt right,” who have announced they will hold a vicious Muslim-bashing action on June 10 at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. It is crucial to bring out the power of New York’s multiracial working class and opponents of racist, anti-immigrant bigotry, to shut down the fascists and their June 10 provocation. NYC’s powerful labor movement must not stand by while fascists try to bring their racist terror to our town. Now is the time to bring out the united power of the working class in a massive labor/immigrant mobilization to stop the fascists here in New York on June 10. A Call on NYC Labor to Mobilize Against June 10 Anti-Muslim Hate Rally (30 May 2017)
The Internationalist No. 47
Break with Democrats, Build a Revolutionary Workers Party
(March-April 2017)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
All Out on May Day!
Strike In Defense of Immigrants and All Workers
For Worker/Immigrant Mass Action to STOP Deportations!
Since the moment Donald Trump took office on January 20, a wave of raw fear has swept across immigrant communities that has not abated. The vicious offensive against immigrants has also produced anger and a determination to fight: for immigrant rights, for their rights as workers and for the better life for their children that millions have risked all to achieve. This May 1, there will in effect be a strike by hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers across the United States, perhaps upwards of a million as in 2006. What would be major is for key sectors of U.S.-born workers to walk out in solidarity with immigrants. It is also vital that the struggle to defend immigrants and all workers be waged independently of the Democratic Party. Since Trump’s upset election victory in November, sections of this capitalist party have begun pretending to be an opposition force for the first time in many decades. They’re getting an assist from opportunist leftists eager to be gofers for the latest mass “movement.” While Trump is the immediate enemy, the Democrats are the key strategic enemy whose stranglehold on labor, black and immigrant organizations and populations must be broken. All Out on May Day! Strike In Defense of Immigrants and All Workers (19 April 2017)
Defend North Korea Against Crazed U.S. War Threats
As we go to press, the United States has dramatically escalated its military provocations against North Korea. The actions of President Donald Trump and his erratic regime could at any moment touch off a war, which would rapidly escalate. This should make it clear to all that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is its main deterrent against the crazed nuclear warmongers in Washington. It is crucial to defend North Korea and uphold its right to develop nuclear arms for its defense against predatory U.S. imperialism. Defend North Korea Against Crazed U.S. War Threats (17 April 2017)
Defend Syria! Drive U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East!
In the early morning hours of April 7, the United States launched a missile attack on a Syrian air base, supposedly in reprisal for a chemical weapons attack that killed up to a hundred people. There is no proof that the Syrian government launched this attack, and considerable circumstantial evidence suggesting otherwise. The U.S. imperialists are the biggest mass murderers on the face of the planet. This is the kind of incident they have typically used to launch their wars, from the U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1898 to the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” used to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq. War hysteria against Syria is being whipped up in unison by the imperialist media, retailing propaganda from jihadi groups in Syria and echoed by an array of capitalist politicians. Trump’s missile strike has united Democrats and Republicans in banging the drums of war. War hawk and (well-paid) defender of Wall Street Hillary Clinton called to destroy the Syrian air force. In the face of this blatant imperialist aggression, the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call for defense of Syria against U.S. attack, and to kick the U.S. and its NATO imperialist allies out of the Middle East. Defend Syria! Drive U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East! (7 April 2017)
Milo Yiannopoulos, “Free Speech”and the Assault on Universities
The election of Donald Trump marked a renewed push by reactionaries waging a “culture war” to cleanse America of “foreign” elements. With them, professional witch-hunters are revving up a drive to purge leftist and liberal professors from academia, salivating at the prospect of returning to the McCarthy era of the 1950s. A February 1 appearance by the self-described provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley was part of this operation. His speech was canceled after some 1,500 demonstrators came out to protest this provocation. Trump tweeted from the White House threatening to cut off funds to the university. Liberals and the mainstream media complained free speech rights being violated. Nonsense. Yiannopoulos’ declared purpose was to target undocumented immigrants. Such actions are not exercising free speech but deliberate provocations, targeting individuals and groups with the intent of causing injury to them. Yiannopoulos posed an imminent threat, and it was correct to seek to drive him out. But we do not call on university administrators, who represent the ruling class and its state, to ban them. We are for mobilizing mass action – by students, workers, immigrants and all defenders of democratic rights, including the right to free speech – to thwart such dangerous provocations and defend those who would be victimized. Milo Yiannopoulos, “Free Speech”and the Assault on Universities (April 2017)
Revolutionary Struggle for Women’s Liberation,
Not (Capitalist) Welfare State Feminism
Italian Trotskyists on International Women’s Day
A century ago, an uprising that began on International Women’s Day brought down the Russian tsar and led to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the founding of the first workers state in history. The “global women’s strike” called by feminist groups this past March 8 had a very different character. This varied from country to country. In Italy, the main focus was on individual “masculine violence against women,” and the appeal was to the capitalist state. Non Una di Meno, affiliated with the Argentine Ni Una Menos, called on the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights to protect women, and organized meetings with bourgeois women politicians. They call for “welfare for all, based on women’s needs,” and call on the government to exercise feminist censorship of the media. In short, what the organizers seek is a kind of capitalist welfare-state feminism. Theirs is a utopian reformist program that would subordinate the struggle for women’s rights to the capitalist state, the biggest enemy of women. And it ignores basic economic demands which go beyond the limits of capitalism, including collectivization of housework, childcare and food service, which are crucial to liberating working women from all-sided social oppression. Italian Trotskyists on International Women’s Day (April 2017)
Break the Corporatist Shackles to Unleash the Power of the Proletariat!
The Mexican Steel Workers Strike and the Struggle Against Corporatism
In March 2016, Section 271 of the National Union of Miners. Metal and Steel Mill Workers (SNTMMSSRM) at the ArcelorMittal steelworks in Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Michoacán, Mexico struck without authorization by the government labor board. This was a strike that the Mine and Mill leadership didn’t want and did everything to avoid. They postponed it 16 times, and the walkout only occurred because “certain workers decided to occupy this workplace,” as the federal Labor Department complained. The strike was over threatened layoffs. But already in August 2015, the SNTMMSSRM leaders had given the company a list of 120 union workers who could be fired, supposedly for being “considered ‘troublemakers’ and low-productivity.” This is the outlook of “corporatist unionism,” subordinating and integrating the unions to the machinery of the capitalist state. Today the SNTMMSSRM is a semi-corporatist union, but the leadership has invariably demanded that the workers submit to the mechanisms of state control embodied in Mexico’s fascist-inspired labor law. This has led to fissures with traditionally militant sections, like the miners of Cananea and the steel workers of Lázaro Cárdenas. The strike underscores that the industrial proletariat must break out of the straitjacket represented by the corporatist apparatus of labor control, and forge revolutionary leaderships in struggle against all wings of the bourgeoisie. The Mexican Steel Workers Strike and the Struggle Against Corporatism (April 2017)
SL’s “Alternative Facts” in the Service of Social-Chauvinism
Spartacist League vs. Refugees
The 10 February issue of the Spartacist League’s Workers Vanguard has a front-page article on “Trump Escalates Obama’s War on Immigrants.” which raises several slogans, with one notable exception: the it makes no demand to let refugees in. Since 2015, the SL and its misnamed International Communist League have been pushing a chauvinist line of opposing calls for asylum for those fleeing the depredation wrought by U.S. and European imperialism. In order to mask its refusal to call to let refugees into the U.S., and in its frenzy to attack the Internationalist Group, the same issue contains a polemic accusing the IG of promoting illusions in the Democrats with our call to defend sanctuary cities. Thus the SL opposes resistance to Trump’s reprisals against cities that don’t fully cooperate with the I.C.E. police, and doesn’t give a damn whether it is easier or harder for the migra to deport immigrants. The Internationalist Group more than any other organization on the left has protested against the Democratic Party for its record-breaking deportation of immigrants. We have called and undertaken initiatives to mobilize workers independent of the capitalist state, parties and politicians to stop deportations and racist attacks. The social-chauvinist SL/ICL, in contrast, puts forward no program for workers action and recognizes no rights for refugees. Spartacist League vs. Refugees (27 February 2017)
Defend Leftist Lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil!
Germany: Anti-Palestinian Witch Hunt Targets
Leftist and Jewish Activists
In recent months, there have been several incidents of persecution of Jewish and leftist groups and individuals in Berlin, Germany for their pro-Palestinian views. The attackers range from right-wing German nationalists to the peculiar self-described (and grossly mislabeled) “Anti-Germans.” A case of anti-Palestinian censorship that gained international attention is the exclusion of Free University lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil, who taught a class on “Racism under Capitalism.” University authorities canceled her teaching contract after rightist German nationalists slanderously accused her of anti-Semitism. This entire campaign is a Zionist witch hunt against a leftist, and goes hand-in-hand with attacks on Jewish and Israeli civil rights and gay rights activists. Trotskyists defend the proponents of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against right-wing and Zionist attacks and censorship. But rather than looking to the imperialists, we call for international workers action in defense of the Palestinian people, and for Hebrew/Arab workers revolution. Germany: Anti-Palestinian Witch Hunt Targets Leftist and Jewish Activists (22 March 2017)
“Anti-German” Witch-Hunters Support Zionism and German Imperialism (22 March 2017)Mobilize NYC Labor to Smash Union-Busting
De Blasio Administration Complicit in Closing of B&H Warehouses
On January 12, the owners of B&H Photo announced plans to close its two warehouses in Brooklyn and shift the work to a site in south New Jersey. This is a transparent move to break the union organization of the B&H workers. The unionization of the largest independent supplier of photo and video equipment in the United States was a stunning gain for immigrant workers in New York. The bosses have been working non-stop ever since to undo their defeat. But there is more to the story than that. Democratic NYC mayor Bill de Blasio is running for reelection calling for “good-paying jobs.” Yet his administration is complicit in the planned closure which would throw 350 union workers out of work. City Hall has been working to expand a major film and TV studio that is pushing the warehouse out of the city-owned Navy Yard. The fight for union jobs at B&H must be a class struggle to win. That means breaking with the Democratic Party and mobilizing the powerhouses of NYC labor in defense of immigrant workers. De Blasio Administration Complicit in Closing of B&H Warehouses (3 March 2017)
The Internationalist No. 46
Post-Traumatic Election Shock
(January-February 2017)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
To Defeat Trump … And the Democrats
Fight for Workers Revolution
After all the media hype, suddenly it turned out that Republican Donald Trump was elected. The racist, sexist, immigrant-bashing, woman-molesting Trump would be the next CEO of the United States and commander-in-chief of U.S. imperialism. In deep shock and disbelief, tens of millions asked, how could this happen? In Muslim, Latino, African American and immigrant families there was raw fear. Soon mass protests began, with many chanting “Not My President” (as if Democrat Clinton, a certified warmonger, would have been?). At the same time, racist incidents multiplied. It is urgently necessary to fight back, but the question is how? The answer depends on understanding what happened, and why. Trump certainly mobilized the hard-core racist vote, and better-off middle class voters. But what put him over the top was the vote of residents of dying small towns and white workers in the Rust Belt, who have seen their jobs destroyed and cities devastated. The fact is that with their economic policies, the Democrats pushed millions of workers into the arms of Trump. What is urgently needed is to break from the Democrats, Republicans and all capitalist parties and build a class-struggle workers party. Such a party would fight for a program of mass workers action against the deportations, for workers defense guards against racist attacks, and to oppose the imperialist war drive in a struggle leading to workers revolution. To Defeat Trump … And the Democrats, Fight for Workers Revolution (10 November 2016)
Democrats and Bureaucrats Lament Their Defeat
The Myth of a “White Working Class”
“Identity Politics” at a Dead End
As the Democratic Party licks its wounds in the aftermath of the elections, it has sought to pin responsibility for defeat on sinister forces from the FBI to Vladimir Putin and Russian hacking. Another of its pathetic attempts at self-justification is to blame the “white working class” for Trump’s victory. Meanwhile, union bureaucrats, who tried to force Hillary Clinton with her “free-trade” policies down the throats of their members, blame the Democrats for ignoring the “white working class.” They want to work with Trump pushing protectionist economic policies which set U.S. workers against their class sisters and brothers abroad. But there is no specific “white working class.” There are not a multitude of working classes identifiable by race, gender and ethnicity. There is a single multiracial working class in the United States. Identity politics have become the default position in the U.S. in the absence of sharp class struggle. By projecting the working class as just another identity, the Democratic politicians imagine that they can compete for racist votes. Opposition to identity politics can come from two radically different directions. “Color-blind” liberals and Democrats like Bernie Sanders (and some pseudo-socialist groups) are resisting raising any special demands against black oppression. In contrast, revolutionary Marxists (Trotskyists) call for class struggle against racism, sexism and all forms of social oppression. Defeat is pretty much assured if the capitalist oppressors wage class war while workers are divided by identity-driven politics. Victory is possible when those divisions are overcome on the basis of a revolutionary program and leadership that champions and organizes all the oppressed. The Myth of a “White Working Class” (January 2017)
Turn Protests into Workers Revolt Leading to the Struggle for Power
For Workers Mobilization to Smash the Gasolinazo!
On New Year’s Day, the Mexican population was hit by a 20% increase in fuel prices in what has become known as the gasolinazo (gasoline coup). This set off explosive protests, with clashes between residents and police around the country. The gasolinazo is a direct result of the escalating privatization of the energy sector. The government of Enrique Peña Nieto and the Pact for Mexico coalition of the PRI, PAN and PRD voted for elimination of fuel subsidies in the framework of the “energy reform” to make the state oil company Pemex more profitable and thus more attractive to imperialist investors as the privatizers sell it off. Meanwhile the bourgeois populist opposition party, MORENA, is trying to capitalize on the protests. The Grupo Internacionalista calls for a national strike against the privatizing “structural reforms” and for the oil workers (who are threatened with mass layoffs) to seize control of fuel distribution. This is a key moment to break once and for all the shackles of corporatism that have kept the oil workers under the control of the bourgeois state for decades, and to break the political stranglehold of the bourgeois parties over the Mexican working class. For Workers Mobilization to Smash the Gasolinazo! (6 January 2017)
Donald Trump, the “Alt-Right” and Fascism
Is Donald Trump a fascist? Quite a few liberals have said so. So do some establishment “neo-conservatives.” You can hear the same thing from various reformist leftists, notably Maoists and other Stalinists who want to form an “anti-fascist popular front” with sections of the ruling class, like supporters of Democrat Bernie Sanders. But being a vicious anti-Mexican, anti-Arab, anti-black race-hater, a sexist and national chauvinist, a union-basher and advocate of unfettered police power, does not in itself make Trump a fascist. Some throw around the term as an all-purpose epithet meaning “very bad” or “very repressive.” This prettifies bourgeois “democracy.” What is happening is a drive toward increasing military/police power, which has been promoted by the Clinton/Obama Democratic administrations no less than by the Bush/Trump Republicans. It is the product of decaying capitalism which increasingly discards its “democratic” trappings. But while Trump is not a fascist, all sorts of racists and real fascists are crawling out of their holes, such as the “alt-right” neo-Nazis. Revolutionists should seek to organize mass labor-centered mobilizations to crush the fascist provocateurs as they attempt to make forays into urban centers of the multiracial working class. Donald Trump, the “Alt-Right” and Fascism (17 January 2017)Portland Union Calls to Mobilize Against the Ku Klux Klan and Other Racist Forces (January 2017)Cops, Feds, Pipeline Companies – Get Out of Indian Lands!
The Battle Over Standing Rock
The struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota is not just against a profit-greedy consortium of oil companies. It poses a battle against a ruling class which established its sway through enslavement of African Americans and genocide against the Native American peoples, and has persecuted them ever since. The 1,172-mile pipeline would cross the Missouri River just north of the current boundaries of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, potentially polluting the water supply to the population in case of a spill. In addition to country sheriffs and state police acting as guard dogs for the oil companies, the protests of Native Americans have been repressed by a multi-state paramilitary force such as previously used to suppress the upheaval of African Americans over racist police murder in Baltimore in 2015. The battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock is a blatant case of environmental racism, as the route was shifted away from the state capital, Bismarck. In this conflict over Indian rights facing powerful corporations and the racist repressive forces of the capitalist state that does their bidding, class-conscious workers and revolutionaries must stand squarely on the side of the Standing Rock Sioux. The Battle Over Standing Rock (7 January 2017)
Standing Rock and the Revolutionary Fight for Native American Rights
Over the past nine months, hundreds and then thousands of Native Americans from around North America converged on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to stand with the Sioux “water protectors” in resisting the attempt to push a pipeline through their lands. It has been the largest mobilization to defend Indian rights since Sitting Bull smashed the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under General Custer in 1876. Rather than a fight over fossil fuels, the battle of the Standing Rock Sioux is about confronting the systematic dispossession of the Indian peoples dating back to the first European settlement of the American continent. The owners of Dakota Access, the state of North Dakota and the Army Corps of Engineers all hold that the pipeline does not cross the territory of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and therefore the tribe has no right to veto the project. But in fact it’s on stolen Indian lands. The unparalleled Native American solidarity and widespread public support for their cause may spark a broader struggle for Indian rights. But to win this must be a class battle against all the capitalist rulers. Standing Rock and the Revolutionary Fight for Native American Rights (7 January 2017)Pipelines, Oil Trains and CapitalismFree Mumia Abu-Jamal
The push to ram through the Dakota Access Pipeline reflects the frantic pace of the oil boom over the last decade. In the space of six years, production in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota more than quintupled. But shortage of pipeline capacity has led to bottlenecks. Enter Kelcy Warren, boss of Energy Transfer Partners and of Sunoco Logistics, who is hell-bent on pushing through DAPL. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe resisted. So you have residents of an impoverished Indian reservation struggling to protect their water supply against a pipeline cowboy in the casino-like energy industry. Ecology groups have latched onto the Native American protest seeking to turn it into opposition against fossil fuels. Their call to “keep carbon in the ground” is a reactionary demand that would mean shutting down industry, electrical energy, heating and other vital sectors. And by focusing on pipelines, which are relatively safer, the environmentalists (financed by sectors of the capitalist class) are effectively supporting the far more dangerous alternative of oil trains. Class-conscious workers would fight for union safety committees and labor action to shut down unsafe operations (North Dakota is the most dangerous state in the union in terms of worker safety). But to counter global climate change it’s necessary to sweep away the capitalist system, embraced by the reactionary oil moguls and “progressive” environmentalist NGOs alike. Pipelines, Oil Trains and Capitalism (7 January 2017)
Spartacist League: Land Surveyor Socialists
In the struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline, the reformist left as usual has tailed along after the environmental groups who are opposed to any pipeline, and in the more extreme cases opposed to using oil or fossil fuels at all. On the other hand, the centrist Spartacist League (SL), in a knee-jerk reaction to the environmentalists, ends up echoing the line of some of the most retrograde, chauvinist sectors of the bourgeoisie. But you don’t have to oppose pipelines to protest the drive to run one through Indian lands. While calling to “Defend Native American Protesters” against state repression, the SL denies that the protesters had any legitimate reason to protest in the first place. It entirely disappears the blatant environmental racism, and argues that the native people have no legal right to control what happens on the pipeline route. Echoing the pipeline company, that since it doesn't cross reservation property, the SL argues that the Standing Rock Sioux have no land rights affected. Yet the land crossed by the DAPL was stolen from the native inhabitants, even violating an 1868 robber-treaty. The skewed portrayal of the fight by these ex-Trotskyists is a smokescreen to hide anti-Marxist indifference to the fate of the Standing Rock Sioux. Spartacist League: Land Surveyor Socialists (7 January 2017)
And All Black Panther and MOVE Prisoners!
December 9 marks the 35th anniversary of the arrest and attempted police assassination of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the foremost class-war prisoner in the United States. For three and a half decades, Mumia has been held behind bars – almost 30 years in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s Death Row. The former Black Panther and renowned radical black journalist has been the target of an unrelenting vendetta by the capitalist state. A potential legal opening for Jamal could come from a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a powerful precedent of throwing out a conviction based on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. Even as lawyers pursue every legal avenue, we cannot look to the capitalist courts or politicians and parties for justice against the cops. Mumia has millions of supporters around the world. The point is to mobilize an effective force that can win his freedom. To jam the gears of state repression we must mobilize workers’ power not just to block some streets and highways, important as that can be, but to impede the functioning of the capitalist system. And that requires above all a program for revolutionary class struggle. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal And All Black Panther and MOVE Prisoners! (9 December 2016)
“For Mass Labor/Immigrant Mobilization to Stop Deportations, Defend Muslims and the Rights of Us All!
Defend Immigrant Students
Immigration Police and All Cops Out of CUNY
By CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group
The election of arch-racist Donald Trump to the presidency of U.S. imperialism has set off a wave of fear among immigrant workers and students. There has also been a dramatic spike in racist attacks, including on university campuses. This has given rise to the “sanctuary campus” movement. But to defend immigrant and Muslim students and their families, we must be clear about who we are fighting against. While Republican Trump vowed to deport all undocumented immigrants (underestimated at 11 million people), the Democratic Obama administration during its first seven years deported over 5.5 million undocumented immigrants, plus another 2.7 million “voluntary departures.” Marxists join in calling to ban ICE from campuses, forbidding campus authorities from cooperating with them, and keeping information about undocumented students secret. But we do not look to the campus administration – which runs the universities on behalf of the ruling class. What’s needed is mass labor-immigrant action prepared to defy the capitalist laws to defend those at risk and stop deportations. Unions should be ready to flood the streets to block the migra thugs; schools should be shut down if immigrant students or their families are picked up. But working-class resistance can only succeed if it is independent of the bosses’ state, their parties and politicians. And we must begin to organize it now. Defend Immigrant Students, Immigration Police and All Cops Out of CUNY (30 November 2016)
The Internationalist
Communism Lives … Just Not in the SL/ICL
Special Supplement
(May 2016)
SL/ICL: Haunted by
Revolutionary Trotskyism
Joint Statement of the Expelled Better-Late-Than-Never Faction and the Internationalist Group/League for the Fourth International
On April 16, the Better-Late-Than-Never (BLTN) Faction of the International Communist League (ICL) put forward its Declaration of Faction calling to “Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism” and to “Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of Their Revolutionary Continuity!” The very next day they received a response from the Spartacist League’s Los Angeles local, falsely claiming that the declaration was written in collaboration with the IG and cynically saying it considered the declaration a statement of resignation. The BLTN responded that claims they couldn’t have written the document were not only untrue but an insult to the intelligence of the ICL membership. The Faction notably exposed how the party that had uniquely waged a principled struggle to defend the DDR (East Germany) and USSR responded to defeat by dumping Trotsky’s analysis of the dual nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy and whitewashing the role of the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic agents in the capitalist counterrevolution. It also independently investigated key political differences between the ICL and the LFI on Brazil and Mexico, as well as challenging the SL on key issues concerning the class line and black oppression in the U.S. The Better-Late-Than-Never Faction Declaration is a challenge to those in the SL/ICL who truly want to make a revolution. The report on the latest conference of the Spartacist League/U.S. makes clear, the SL is a dying party. It is crucial to understand that the decline of the SL/ICL is a direct result of its political/programmatic degeneration. An agreement between the BLTN and the IG/LFI calls for carrying out common work aiming at an early fusion. SL/ICL: Haunted by Revolutionary Trotskyism (13 May 2016)
Forward to Reforge the IV International, World Party of Socialist Revolution
Back to Trotskyism!
By Giulia and Carlo
Two comrades who were the principal leaders of the Lega Trotskista d’Italia (LTd’I), Italian section of the International Communist League (ICL) from 1993-1999, with 21 and 27 years in the Spartacist tendency respectively, have declared their political solidarity with the League for the Fourth International. In 1999-2001 they were subjected to vicious political persecution involving grotesque accusations of faking illness, making false charges against the ICL leadership and hiding political differences. After a change of the leading cliques, the ICL concluded that the persecution was a “bureaucratic witchhunt” based on “gross exaggerations or outright falsifications,” but it never informed the comrades of this. They detail how the ICL’s abandonment of the revolutionary program in Italy reflected the broader political degeneration of the ICL, from dropping the call to defeat its own imperialist bourgeoisie after 9/11 (and supporting U.S. invasion of Haiti in 2010, later repudiating this social-imperialist betrayal) to trade-union issues in the U.S. to Greece and Syria today. Their document puts forward an internationalist program of class struggle, notably on women's oppression and for full rights for immigrants and refugees, a burning issue in Italy today in the fight for a socialist united states of Europe. They conclude: “The present ICL is no place for a communist. For those in the ICL who may still want to be communists, we urge you to read and study the literature of the League for the Fourth International, as we did and in doing so recognized the genuinely Trotskyist program we were won to years ago.” Back to Trotskyism! (11 May 2016)
Declaration of the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction
Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism!
Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of Their Revolutionary Continuity!
The platform of the BLTN Faction takes the leadership of the International Communist League to task for its revisionism in four key areas: “The Russian Question,” “The Class Line,” “The State” and the struggle to “Reforge a Fourth International That Trotsky Would Call His Own.” It devastates the latter-day ICL’s claim that “the Stalinists led the counterrevolution,” underscoring that this effectively renounced its own intervention in the DDR/USSR in 1989-92, and is counterposed to revolutionary intervention against looming counterrevolution in China, Cuba and the other remaining deformed workers states today. Although many ICLers believe this anti-Trotskyist line was corrected in 2003, the Declaration exposes how it has remained the official policy of the ICL. The BLTN painstakingly examined the ICL’s lies and desertion from the struggle to oust the police from the unions in Brazil and its apologies for state-controlled corporatist pseudo-unions in Mexico, demonstrating the correctness of the LFI positions and struggle. It also raised the question of “walking bosses” in the West Coast ILWU dock union, foremen who although members of the union directly represent the shipping bosses, an issue the IG had not previously considered. In calling for regroupment with the IG/LFI on the basis of its revolutionary continuity, the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction noted that this continued the historic program of the Spartacist tendency that the SL/ICL has been abandoning step by step in every major crisis. Declaration of the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction (16 April 2016)Attachments: Letter of Los Angeles SL “Resigning” the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction (17 April 2016)
BLTN Faction Letter to All Members of the ICL (18 April 2016)
Letter of Los Angeles SL Expelling the BLTN (23 April 2016)
Bernie’s A-List
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)
Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty, Part 2
On February 19, over 300 people, including members of some 20 NYC unions, labor and community groups, turned out to protest union-busting at Bröd Kitchen. Addressing the crowd were fired Hot and Crusty Workers Association president Mahoma López; B&H Photo warehouse workers, and workers from the B&H store in Manhattan who four days later voted by 46 to 14 in favor of union representation. Also speaking were representatives of the Laundry Workers Center; Verizon phone workers (CWA); United Steel Workers; Teamsters Local 814; GSOC and UCATS at NYU; Domestic Workers United; Metro Postal Workers; Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Internationalist Group and activists who worked intensively to build the rally. Members of DC37, Local 768, TWU, Workers Center Federation and other unions and groups also came out, helping fill the streets with chants and speeches. See link below for a video of the February 19 protest.
Video: Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty (29 February 2016)The State of Pennsylvania Seeks to Bar His Lawyer
The Frame-Up of Corey Walker
By Charles Brover
Corey Walker was arrested in July 1996 on a bogus murder charge from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been behind bars ever since. Evidence of his innocence was withheld. He is the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal representation. Lorenzo Johnson, who was arrested in the same case, also remains in prison even though a federal appeals court recognized the insufficiency of the evidence against him, but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the state is trying to deny Walker the attorney of his choice, Rachel Wolkenstein, who has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania authorities will stop at nothing to cover up lying and manufacture of evidence, coercion of witnesses and suppression of evidence of innocence by police and prosecutors. This requires silencing Corey Walker and short-circuiting his legal appeal. In seeking to disqualify Wolkenstein from representing him, the state attorney general's office cites her political views that the judicial system is an organ of racist oppression that must be overthrown by socialist revolution. This witch-hunting attack and the continued incarceration of Walker and Johnson go to the heart of Jim Crow “justice system.” Free Corey Walker and Lorenzo Johnson! The Frame-Up of Corey Walker (4 February 2016)
Jim Crow Justice and the Capitalist State (4 February 2016)Company Threatens to Close Restaurant,
Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016)
Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016)
Fires Union President Mahoma López
All Out to Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty!
In a blatant escalation of the anti-union campaign launched earlier this month, on January 29 Bröd Kitchen management fired Hot and Crusty Workers Association president Mahoma López and union activist Marcelino Cano. This retaliation came less than 24 hours after a mass protest in solidarity with the Bröd workers, where 200 unionists, immigrant rights activists and students demanded “Stop union-busting at Bröd Kitchen!” The company has announced its intention to shut down the store (formerly called Hot and Crusty) on Manhattan’s Upper East side, a tactic the owners also used in 2012 when immigrant workers waged a historic struggle that won union recognition and a contract including a union hiring hall. The turnout of union and student support at repeated protests at the company’s second, non-union, location shows that the Bröd/Hot and Crusty workers are far from isolated. In the face of the aggressive drive to destroy this combative union, all defenders of worker and immigrant rights must take up this vital struggle. All Out to Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty! (29 January 2016)
Video: Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty (3 February 2016)
There’s No Negotiating With the Couillard-Coiteux Gang – Extend the Mobilization to the Private Sector, Prepare a Real General Strike!
Shut Down Quebec to Bust the Union-Busters!
The Only Way to Get Rid of Austerity Is to Overthrow Capitalism
Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
For more than a year, public sector workers in Quebec have been mobilizing to defend themselves against the abuses and anti-worker austerity policies of the Liberal Party government. After the massive mobilizations of the Refusons l’Austérité (We Refuse Austerity) coalition and the student marches this spring, throughout the fall there have been a series of rolling strikes, demonstrations and picketing in response to calls by the inter-union Common Front. Following the postponement of the strike planned for December 1-3, and faced with the refusal of the government to negotiate anything concerning wages and salaries, a strike by the 400,000 unionized public sector workers was called for December 9 in conjunction with a three-day teachers strike. In the course of the struggle against austerity in Quebec, there have been quite a few plans presented to redistribute wealth, for “more equitable taxation,” etc. They are all doomed to defeat. There is no solution to austerity under capitalism. The question of leadership is key. For a an all-out fight it is necessary to replace the pro-capitalist bureaucracy with a class-struggle leadership and to forge a revolutionary workers party. Shut Down Quebec to Bust the Union-Busters! (December 2015)
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)
Would-Be Witch Hunters Cannot Silence Protest at CUNY
On Thursday, November 12, a student rally was held at Hunter College as part of nationwide protests calling for free tuition at public colleges and the cancellation of student debt. Even before the rally occurred, a smear campaign was launched by rightist and pro-Israel groups and individuals slanderously claiming that it was some kind of anti-Semitic event. In response to an editorial in the rabid New York Post accusing protesters of being “hatemongers,” the Hunter College administration issued a statement smearing the student protest as supposedly presenting “bigotry, harassment, intimidation, exclusion and intolerance.” This menacing statement is part of a nationwide drive targeting critics of Israel on campuses around the country. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) call on all defenders of basic democratic rights to oppose this latest effort to whip up a Joseph McCarthy-style witch hunt against campus protest and dissent, and to defeat the attempt to silence defenders of the Palestinian people. Would-Be Witch Hunters Cannot Silence Protest at CUNY (14 November 2015)
“Million Student March”: Pressuring Democrats Is a Dead End
Getting an Education Seems Almost Impossible? It’s the Capitalist System!
The November 12 “Million Student March” targets the high cost of tuition, student debt and low-wage jobs. The official demands are supportable in themselves, but why is there no mention of the racist cop terror that brought tens of thousands into the streets last year, and why is this coming up now? Because election season has begun, and this latest would-be movement is designed to pressure the Democrats. The truth is, the Million Student March organizers are acting as student auxiliaries of the Bernie Sanders campaign, to put heat on Hillary Clinton and get students to vote for the Dems in 2016. Like the endless police killings of African American men, and women, and Latinos, the root cause of endless tuition hikes, unpayable student debt, low-wage, dead-end jobs is the capitalist system. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York call for open admissions with no tuition and living stipends so working-class students can afford to study. We call to abolish the Board of Trustees and for student-teacher-worker control of the universities. But we also tell the hard truth: that capitalism is decaying, and it will take hardcore struggle, based on the power of the working class and leading to a revolution, to get this. Pressuring the Democrats is a dead-end. Getting an Education Seems Almost Impossible? It’s the Capitalist System! (14 November 2015)
The Haitian Revolution and U.S. Imperialism
July 28 marks the 100th anniversary of the first U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1915, under Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. This led to an occupation of 19 years, as well as occupations of the Dominican Republic next door, of Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Veracruz, Mexico, and followed the 1898 U.S. invasion and occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines. But the occupations didn't stop there. In 1994, Democrat Bill Clinton invaded Haiti a second time, and in 2004 Republican George Bush II invaded a third time. Haiti today continues under imperialist occupation, this time outsourced to a United Nations “peacekeeping” force. As proletarian internationalist opponents of imperialism, on this centenary we republish articles from Workers Vanguard when it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism on the 1915-34 U.S. occupation, and a two-part series on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution that led to the first black republic in history, as well as sparking slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and in the United States. (30 July 2015)
Yankee Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 1
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 2
On July 10, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American activist and education worker, was driving from Illinois to her new job at the historically black Prairie View A&M University in Texas, her alma mater. Sandra was pulled over by a Texas Ranger, supposedly for changing lanes without signalling. The trooper abusively demanded she get out of the car, theatening to use a Taser electric shock on her. After having her head slammed on the ground, Sandra was arrested for supposed “assault on a public servant,” for insisting on her rights. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell in Waller County, Texas. The authorities claim she committed suicide. We say the police are guilty. Sandra was lynched by the cops. On July 22, hundreds gathered in New York City's Union Square to protest the police murder of Sandra Bland. Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group joined in. Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland (22 July 2015) (video)
Liberato Lashes Out as Restaurant Workers Fight for Their Rights
On June 22, some 70 demonstrators came out for an emergency rally to defend three immigrant workers fired for leading a bitter fight against wage theft and sexual harassment at the Liberato Restaurant in the Bronx. At the protest, Mahoma Lopez, co-director of the Laundry Workers Center and leader of the successful struggle of workers at the Hot and Crusty bakery in Manhattan, received a death threat. The Liberato bosses are lashing out after suffering legal setbacks in their attempts to stop the workers’ campaign. Speaking of the struggles at Hot and Crusty and Liberato, an Internationalist speaker emphasized the need to bring out the power of all the workers to win these fights. Liberato Lashes Out as Restaurant Workers Fight for Their Rights (25 June 2015)
NYC May Day 2015
The Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education workers had a spirited contingent in the May Day march in New York City. Leading the contingent was a group with red flags with the hammer, sickle and 4 of the Fourth International. Then came a banner made by the Hunter Internationalist Club, proclaiming:“Ayotzinapa-Ferguson-NYC, Smash the Racist Capitalist State, Workers to Power. Signs emphasized the call to Defend Black Baltimore following the occupation of the city by the National Guard to squelch the upheaval over the police murder of Freddie Gray, and to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, who faces execution in prison by deliberate medical neglect. Also highlighted was the call for workers action against police terror, noting the historic action by ILWU Local 10 that shut down the port of Oakland on May Day and marched on City Hall calling to stop police terror.NYC May Day 2015 video (9 May 2015)Drop the Charges Against Steve Kirschbaum,
NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015)
NYC May Day 2011 video
NYC May Day 2010 video
Reinstate Fired Boston School Bus Union Activists!
Boston: A Crucial Battle Against Racist Union-Busting
In Boston, a union leader is going on trial March 3 for the “crime” of holding a union meeting, and four union activists are fighting for their jobs. The Democratic Party establishment of Boston is pressing on with its years-long drive to break the school bus drivers union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8751. The felony charges against long-time union activist Stevan Kirschbaum, on top of the firing of him and the other union activists, stem from an October 2013 lockout of the drivers for protesting company contract violations, harassment and abuse. In response to a strike by the drivers the year before, the city hired a notoriously anti-union company, Veolia. This union-busting attack goes hand in hand with the drive by capitalist politicians in Boston to eliminate the last vestiges of busing for school integration. All of labor, education workers, supporters of racial integration and defenders of black rights have a stake in this fight. We urge unions and others to demand that the frame-up charges be dropped and the union activists reinstated. Boston: A Crucial Battle Against Racist Union-Busting (February 2015)
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)
Uproot Racism – Only Revolution Can Bring Justice!
From Ferguson to New York: All Out Against Police Terror!
Across the country, hundreds of thousands anxiously awaited the news from Missouri. Then came the dreaded announcement: white killer cop Darren Wilson would face no charges for gunning down 18-year-old black youth Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb last August. Mixed with the outrage, fury and indignation, many felt devastated by the inescapable truth: there is no justice in racist America. That night, November 24, thousands protested in at least 90 U.S. cities; by the next night there were tens of thousands of protesters in 170 cities nationwide. And they haven’t stopped. The grand jury gave a green light for police brutality and murder of black and Latino youth, particularly young men. Many chant that “the whole damn system is guilty.” We say that system is capitalism, which from the days of chattel slavery to Jim Crow segregation to mass incarceration today has been built on black oppression. And the only way to end cop terror is through revolution – socialist revolution – to bring this racist system down. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY), along with the Internationalist Group and Class Struggle Education Workers, marched in the protests from the outset and called a speak-out the next day which drew over 100 students, faculty and workers at Hunter College. We put forward a revolutionary, working-class program, declaring “No Justice in the Capitalist Courts” and calling for worker/black/immigrant mobilization against police terror. We linked cop terror in Ferguson with the police massacre of students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico. While many repeated, “No justice, no peace,” we chanted “Only revolution can bring justice.”From Ferguson to New York: All Out Against Police Terror! (December 2014)
Racist Outrage: NYPD Cop Who Killed Eric Garner Walks
“Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the Whole System Down!”
A week after the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri, a Staten Island grand jury announced that no charges would be filed against the NYPD cop who chokeholded Eric Garner to death in late July. The fact that the murder of Eric Garner was caught on video and still the murderers got off exposes all the phony talk by NYC Democratic mayor de Blasio and Democratic president Obama about “retraining” police and putting body cameras on cops. As tens of thousands went into the streets nationwide in the next days, protesters chanted Eric’s last words, “I can’t breathe.” The CUNY Internationalist Clubs joined in the protests from the first hour and held a speak-out the next day to denounce this racist atrocity. Our chants, “Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the whole system down!” and “Only revolution can bring justice!” were widely picked up. The stark fact is that to do away with racist police terror for good, we must kick out the racist ruling class that the police “serve and protect.” “Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the Whole System Down!” (December 2014)
Bourgeois Feminism vs. Women’s Liberation
Democratic Party: Faux Friends of Women
As the 2014 election campaign got down to the wire, the Democrats appealed to their base, desperately trying to get out the black and women’s vote. Yet attacks on women’s basic democratic rights have accelerated with Obama in the White House, and not just because the Republicans are determined to undermine the Democrats. There have been 231 state laws restricting abortions in the last three years alone. What is behind the Democrats’ faux-passionate appeals to “feminism” and women’s rights? The Democratic Party poses as the “friend” of women, labor and every oppressed group in order to control their struggles in the interest of capital. While capitalist politicians hack away at these basic democratic rights of women, the Democrats “triangulate” by posing soft-core versions of Republican policies, and then cynically trying to get votes as defenders of women. A prime example is Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton a friend of women? Ask the women workers at the Haitian sweatshop she sponsored. Democratic Party: Faux Friends of Women (December 2014)
CUNY Students, Faculty Speak Out Against Racist Repression
The heinous police murder of Eric Garner in Staten Island, followed by that of Michael Brown and the military/police occupation of Ferguson, Missouri, brought a wave of outrage across the United States and around the world. Thousands of anti-racist young and working people of all ethnicities took to the streets in solidarity with the besieged African American population of Ferguson, and with the families of Brown, Garner and others targeted by deadly police brutality. On September 3, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs got a strong response to our call for a “Speak-Out Against Racist Repression” at CUNY’s Hunter College in midtown Manhattan. Here is a report on the protest, with photos and excerpts from the remarks of participants. CUNY Students, Faculty Speak Out Against Racist Repression (8 September 2014)
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)
A Victory for Workers Solidarity
Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty!
At a trial today, June 27, in Clark County District Court in Vancouver, Washington, Wyatt McMinn, the vice president of Local 10 of the Painters Union and a class-struggle trade unionist, was found not guilty of first degree criminal trespass. He stood up to an anti-union lobbying outfit which under the phony slogan of “right to work” would take away workers’ right to unionize. This is a victory for labor rights, democratic rights and workers solidarity. Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty (27 June 2014)
Drop the Charges Against Wyatt McMinn Now! (January 2014)Defend North Korea and China Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution
Defend Wyatt McMinn, Defeat “Right to Slave”! (November 2013)
U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink
For the Revolutionary Reunification of Korea, North and South!
Over the last month and a half, the United States and South Korea have engaged in an escalating series of military provocations against North Korea. Simultaneous “war games” have simulated a nuclear aerial bombing of the North, a ground invasion from the South, annihilation of the leadership and the “insertion” of tens of thousands of U.S. troops searching for nukes. While the imperialist media are, as usual, strenuously demonizing the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and playing up blustering statements coming out of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has been laying the basis for a military strike against the North. The whole operation is part of detailed plan elaborated by the Obama administration, dubbed “the playbook,” for U.S. shows of force. But this is no football game. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International defend North Korea, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, against the war provocations, economic blockade and any attack by U.S. imperialism and its South Korean junior partners, no matter how it starts. We also defend North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its main deterrent against a war by the power which laid waste to the North in the Korean War. U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink (13 April 2013)
The founding statement of the League for the Fourth International
La Declaración de la Liga por la IV Internacional se encuentra aquí en español.
La Déclaration de la Ligue pour la Quatrième Internationale se retrouve ici en français.
A Declaração da Liga pela Quarta Internacional é disponível aqui no português.
Deklarasyon ng Liga para sa Ika-Apat na Internasyonal.
Introducing
The InternationalistEl Internacionalista
es el órgano en español de la Liga por la IV Internacional.Vanguarda Operária
é o jornal da Liga Quarta-Internacionalista
do Brasil.Liga für die Vierte Internationale
Artikel und Erklärungen der LIVI auf Deutsch.Contact us at the following addresses:
U.S.A.
To contact the League for the Fourth International write to: Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212) 460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711
E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.comBRAZIL
To contact the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write to: Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-970, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil
Caixa Postal 3982, CEP 20010-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
E-mail: lqb1996@hotmail.com
GERMANY
To contact the League for the Fourth International in Germany, write to: Postfach
80 07 21, 21007 Hamburg, GermanyITALY
To contact the Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia, write to: Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy
E-mail: it_internazionalista@yahoo.com
MEXICO
To contact the Grupo Internacionalista/México write to: Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, Mexico D.F, Mexico
E-mail: grupointernacionalista@yahoo.com.mx
We would like to hear from you. If you are interested in learning more about the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, contact us at: internationalistgroup@msn.com 
