No. 63, April-June 2021  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

George Floyd’s Murderer Convicted, Police Impunity Remains One Year After George Floyd, Racist Killer Cops Keep Killing Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! On the first anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by killer cop Derek Chauvin, it is clear to all that, despite the massive protests against racist police brutality that swept the country, there has been no change in the treatment of black people at the hands of the enforcers of “law and order.” Year in and year out, wanton police killing of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, as well as hundreds of white working people goes on and on.  All-round racist president Donald Trump incited police terror with his incendiary rhetoric about shooting “looters,” but in the first hundred days of the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, more than 650 people died in police actions. The fact that one badge-toting killer was convicted of murder changes nothing. Racist police brutality is not a matter of a few “bad apples,” or even a barrel full. Police impunity is built into the system, and that system is racist American capitalism. To stop it will take nothing less than a revolution to sweep away the capitalist system, and with it, its murderous thugs in blue. One Year After George Floyd, Racist Killer Cops Keep Killing (25 May 2021) Jury Convicts Cop Who Murdered George Floyd, But Thousands of Killer Cops Have Gone Free Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! A jury in Minneapolis found killer cop Derek Chauvin, who lynch-murdered George Floyd last May, guilty on all counts. Given the massive upheaval last summer, the capitalist rulers calculated that they had to give up one of their murderous killers in blue, or else. Last year alone, police in the U.S. killed 2,206 civilians, and now one has been convicted of murder. Justice? The capitalist rulers will claim that “things are beginning to change,” even as they impose unprecedented massive police and National Guard occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, ordered by Democratic governors and mayors. Racist police terror is systemic in U.S. capitalism, and will only end when this system is overthrown. Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! (20 April 2021)

Biden, Sanders, Democrats Arm Zionist Butchers Defend the Palestinians Against Israeli War  For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution! The storming of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by hundreds of Israeli police on May 10 was the opening shot of renewed Zionist war on the Palestinian Arab people. While the imperialist media talk of military conflict between Israel and Hamas in the besieged enclave of Gaza, the reality is a one-sided slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli war machine. Added to this is the terror unleashed by Zionist-fascist vigilantes against Palestinians in Israeli cities of mixed Arab and Jewish population. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party of U.S. imperialism has provided the weapons Israel uses to rain death on the Palestinian people. The horrific images – of apartment buildings in Gaza flattened by bombs, of a father staring at his dead children in a morgue, of an Arab being lynched by Jewish pogromists – have set off protests of tens of thousands worldwide. In the face of the new outbreak of the unending Zionist war, the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call to defend the oppressed Palestinian people, to drive the Israeli army and all Zionist settlers out of occupied Palestinian territory,  for labor action against the Zionist/imperialist war on Palestinians, and for an Arab-Hebrew Palestinian workers state, as part of a region-wide socialist federation of the Near East. Defend the Palestinians Against Israeli War  – For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution! (18 May 2021) The Birth of the Zionist State, Part 1 (November 1973) The Birth of the Zionist State, Part 2 (May 1974)

Oppose G7/NATO Imperialist War Drive Against China, Russia In back-to-back summit meetings in mid-June, imperialist leaders of the Group of 7, meeting in Cornwall, England, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Brussels, Belgium, issued a pair of sabre-rattling communiqués demonizing China and denouncing Russia.The G7 (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States) went after Beijing for cracking down on anti-China rioters in Hong Kong, echoed Washington’s Big Lie about supposed “genocide” against Uighurs and took up the U.S. call for an “investigation” of the origins of the coronavirus. We repeatedly warned that Biden’s election would bring U.S. war moves against China, one of the few areas of “bipartisan” agreement between Republicans and Democrats. While much of the left parrots imperialist anti-China war propaganda, Trotskyists call to defend the deformed workers state against the threat of imperialist aggression and internal counterrevolution. Oppose G7/NATO Imperialist War Drive Against China, Russia (June 2021) CUNY Union Denounces U.S. Anti-China Drive (June 2021)

Lula 2022 Campaign and the “Broad Front” in the Streets, the Bourgeoisie in Deep Trouble Over COVID Catastrophe Brazil: “Bolsonaro Out” Is Not Enough Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government! Vaccines For All – For Workers Control of Public Health! Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Party In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has now killed half a million in Brazil, protests against the bonapartist government of Jair Bolsonaro were held on May 29 in more than 200 cities, bringing out more than 100,000 demonstrators with the slogan “Fora Bolsonaro!” (Bolsonaro out). Then the labor federations along with the two popular fronts called for a day of protest on June 19, with the same insipid program. This time an estimated 750,000 marched. Meanwhile, Brazil’s Supreme Court nullified the rigged trial of former president Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, who can now run for president again. Most of the left is now the left is trying to build a broad front, including even right-wing bourgeois parties. But to break the infernal cycle of military/police-type regimes and corrupt bourgeois democracies, to get out of the nightmare of the COVID pandemic and the pandemic of police terror, it is essential to break the “Bolsonaro Out” framework in order to attack the roots of these capitalist plagues, by fighting for a revolutionary workers and peasants government. Brazil: “Bolsonaro Out” Is Not Enough (18 June 2021)

Adam Toledo, Anthony Alvarez and So Many Others Chicago Cops’ Killing Machine Grinds On For Workers Action Against Racist Repression! In the early hours of March 29, 13-year-old Adam Toledo was murdered by a police officer who chased him down an alley in the Latino neighborhood of Little Village, on Chicago’s Southwest Side. The incident was set off by an automated gunfire locator. The app registered shots, sent an automatic alert to police, and less than three minutes later, a white cop had executed a seventh-grader with his hands up. The CPD today is an automated racist murder machine. When the video of George Floyd’s murder went viral in May 2020, the thousands who spontaneously went into the streets of Chicago to protest were met with armed battalions of cops in full riot gear. Most dramatically, the nearly two dozen bridges over the Chicago River were suddenly raised to trap protesters in the Loop, where over 1,000 were arrested. The growing use of such police-state methods and a militarized police apparatus are a function of the growing inequality and increasingly sharp class polarization in decaying capitalism. “Democratize the police,” “disarm the police,” “abolish the police”? Not possible under capitalism. The Internationalist Group calls for powerful workers mobilization and strike action against racist repression, pointing the way to socialist revolution. Chicago Cops’ Killing Machine Grinds On (April 2021)

Smash the Fascist Networks with Worker/Immigrant Action Germany: The “Neukölln Complex” –  State Apparatus Complicit with Fascists The Berlin district of Neukölln is under siege, by the coronavirus and by the bourgeois state – which in Berlin is administered by the coalition of the SPD, Left Party and Greens – especially by its racist crusade against alleged immigrant “clans” and against shisha bars (hookah lounges). This state repression has always had its fascist outriders, although officially classified only as “right-wing extremists.” The “Neukölln Complex” ominously reveals the entanglement of the political, judicial and police apparatus with Nazi fascists. This phenomenon, of which there are an untold number of examples nationally, can be seen in this Berlin district as only one facet of a comprehensive network, of systematic cooperation of the state with fascist and fascistic forces. The task of revolutionaries is not to lure the masses into the dead end of an impossible “denazification” or even “democratization” of the bourgeois state, but to lead them to hard class struggle on the road to revolution. Today, in besieged Neukölln, this means fighting for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, and for joint worker/immigrant defense to mobilize working-class power against the fascists and their official protectors. Germany: The “Neukölln Complex” –  State Apparatus Complicit with Fascists (April 2021)

For Workers Control of Safety – End Poverty Wages – Expropriate For-Profit Chains Nursing Home COVID Horror Show: Health Care Workers Held Hostage For the last three weeks, over 6,000 unionized healthcare workers in Connecticut nursing homes and group homes have been preparing to strike. Long-term care (LTC) workers in Connecticut, both in nursing homes and group homes for adults and youths with developmental difficulties, have been working right through the COVID-19 pandemic in some of the most deadly conditions in the U.S. Almost one-third of all deaths from COVID-19 over the last year were of residents in long-term care facilities. At least 1,800 healthcare workers in these facilities died. This was murder, a monstrous crime fueled by the profit system that discards those it cannot exploit profitably, warehousing seniors in jam-packed quarters with woefully inadequate staffing, and then infecting them with a deadly disease by bringing back COVID patients in order to save the hospitals from collapse. We call for expropriation without compensation of the LTC chains and slumlords for control of scheduling, hiring and safety in every facility by union-led workers committees, and for socialized medicine to provide high quality free health care for all. It will take a revolution to get it. Nursing Home COVID Horror Show: Health Care Workers Held Hostage (7 June 2021) The Pandemic in Connecticut Group Homes: Not Just the Virus, It’s the Capitalist System (7 June 2021)

Cover-Up for SL Boycott of Protests Against Racist Police Terror Spartacist League’s Lockdown Lunacy Breaking months of sepulchral silence from the Spartacist League/International Communist League, a croak from the crypt: a bizarre ICL statement on “Down with the Lockdowns!” The tract admits that lockdowns “may” slow the rate of infection, but dismisses this. Not a word about necessary public health measures to stop the spread of the deadly plague. The degeneration of the once-revolutionary Spartacist League and its affiliates has led it to take refuge in its own “alternate reality.” Back in the real world, the SL/ICL’s statement is a disingenuous attempt to excuse its boycott of the massive protests against racist police terror last summer. So the SL “accepted” and evidently obeyed the lockdowns – yet the Internationalists and millions of people in the United States did not. The ICL “repudiates” its acceptance of the lockdowns, and now pleads guilty to capitulating to “national unity” appeals. It wouldn’t be the first time, on both counts. The SL/ICL is seeking to put a “working-class” gloss on its sharp turn to the right in recent years as it has increasingly oriented to chauvinist forces. And what about lockdowns in China? Spartacist League’s Lockdown Lunacy (3 June 2021)

Right-Wing Recall Campaign Targets Kshama Sawant Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant, a supporter of Socialist Alternative (SAlt), is facing a recall campaign fueled by right-wing forces. The recall grew out of a call by Seattle’s Democratic mayor Jenny Durkan last June (2020) to investigate the council member after Sawant had demanded Dukan’s resignation or impeachment for unleashing police brutality against anti-racist demonstrators. We are opposed to the reactionary recall campaign, while making clear the counterposition between our communist standpoint and the politics upheld by SAlt and the arch-reformist  Sawant, who had voted for and vociferously supported Police Chief Carmen Best. Right-Wing Recall Campaign Targets Kshama Sawant (June 2021)

Pickets Shut Down Job Sites Daily Portland Painters Gearing Up: Now’s the Time, Strike to Win! By Class Struggle Workers – Portland After voting by 95% to authorize a strike, in June, members of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 10 in Portland, Oregon, staged a series of a unfair labor practice (ULP) pickets that have successfully shut down or greatly reduced work at several job sites across the metropolitan area. These were the biggest painters pickets seen in Portland since the 1970s, and other construction trades locals have respected the lines. Supporters of the CSWP pushed for a full-scale strike with an elected strike committee. After the membership voted 3-to-1 to turn down a tentative agreement, the contractors associations made significantly higher wage and benefit offer. The enthusiastic participation of the membership in the pickets was key to making these gains. Portland Painters Gearing Up: Now’s the Time, Strike to Win! (21 June 2021)