"All talk to the effect that
historical conditions have not yet
'ripened' for socialism is the product of
ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for proletarian
revolution have not only 'ripened,' they
have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The
historical crisis of mankind is reduced to
the crisis of the revolutionary
leadership."
Welcome!
The Internationalist Group, section of the
League for the Fourth International, fights
for international socialist revolution, the
conquest of power by the working class, led
by its Leninist party, championing the cause
of all the oppressed. After a decade and a
half in which the ruling class trumpeted the
supposed "death of communism," the
imperialists are bogged down in losing wars
of colonial occupation in the Near East
while a global economic crisis shakes the
foundations of the capitalist order. With
mass unemployment, poverty and hunger
ravaging the planet, once again there is
talk of socialism and revolution. But as in
the past, the key question is that of
forging a vanguard to lead the struggle of
the workers and the oppressed. Read
more...
The
Real “No. 1 State Sponsor of Terror”
Against the Peoples of the World: U.S.
Imperialism Defend Iran Against
Criminal U.S./Israel War,
Defeat Imperialist/Zionist War-Makers Iran
Has the Right to Nuclear Weapons to
Deter Israeli and U.S. Nuclear-Armed
Terrorists!
In a monstrous criminal attack, in the
early morning hours of June 22, U.S.
warplanes bombed multiple sites in Iran on
orders from President Donald Trump. At
least a dozen monster “bunker buster”
bombs were dropped on the Fordo nuclear
site, as well as on other sites. In
announcing his brazen act of war, Trump
called Iran the “bully of the Middle
East,” saying it was to put a “a stop to
the nuclear threat posed by the world’s
No. 1 state sponsor of terror.” In
reality, the world’s No. 1 terrorist power
and global bully is U.S. imperialism,
which has armed to the teeth the genocidal
Zionist butchers of Gaza. Both under Trump
and his Democratic predecessors, the
imperialist U.S. rulers are careening
toward a thermonuclear World War III that
only international socialist revolution
can stop. The League for the Fourth
International and its U.S. section, the
Internationalist Group, stand for defense
of Iran against the criminal U.S./Israel
war, and for defeat of the imperialist and
Zionist war-makers. And we reiterate that
Iran has a right to nuclear weapons to
deter the nuclear-armed imperialist and
Zionist terrorists. Defend
Iran Against Criminal U.S./Israel War,
Defeat Imperialist/Zionist War-Makers
(15 June 2025)
War
on Immigrants: Flashpoint Los
Angeles
Labor
Must Act: Drive I.C.E. Out of
L.A.! Bring
Out Workers’ Power to Stop Mass
Deportations, Police-State
Occupation
Since Donald Trump began his second
term on January 20, pressure has been
mounting on immigrant communities
across the country. On June 6, the
pressure cooker exploded in Los
Angeles. The start of militarized
workplace raids by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police
predictably set off angry protests. In
rapid-fire reaction, Trump federalized
and deployed National Guard troops and
activated Marines to invade Los
Angeles. As Trump rules by decree in a
drive toward a beefed-up “strong
state” regime, he is seeking to get
the population used to seeing the
military repressing civilian
protesters in U.S. streets. Trump’s
war on immigrants is an assault on the
democratic rights of all. The
Internationalist Group calls on labor
to mobilize its power to stop the
police-state occupation and the I.C.E.
raids and deportations. This requires
a fight against both Republicans and
Democrats, capitalist parties of mass
deportations and genocidal war. Labor
Must Act: Drive I.C.E. Out of L.A.!
(13 June 2025)
Not
Democratic “Faux Friends” But a
Revolutionary Workers Party! Against
Trump’s Blitzkrieg of Bigotry,
Labor Must Defend Trans Rights
Starting on the first day of his
second presidential term, Donald Trump
unleashed a series of attacks on one
of the most vulnerable social groups
in the United States: transgender
people. In his inaugural address on
January 20, he proclaimed that “there
are only two genders, male and
female.” With a stroke of the pen,
Trump & Co. seek to erase
transgender people. Trump’s executive
order had many immediate effects,
among them assaulting transgender
health services. For us as
revolutionary Marxists – whose outlook
is based on science and reason, not
obscurantist prejudice – decisions on
such intimate and consequential
questions, and on medical issues in
general, are a matter for the person
and their doctor. We say: Hands off
trans kids! While Democratic liberals
started posturing as trans people’s
“allies” in the recent past (only to
abandon this when they decided it was
electorally expedient), revolutionary
Marxists’ support for gay and trans
people’s democratic rights goes back
well over a century. Remembering that
“an injury to one is an injury to
all,” labor must use its power against
the deadly dangerous offensive
targeting the rights and very
existence of transgender people. Against
Trump’s Blitzkrieg of Bigotry, Labor
Must Defend Trans Rights (May
2025)
For
Workers Action to Stop Mass
Deportations
In neighborhoods
across the U.S., immigrants are
being targeted and seized by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(I.C.E.) police and other federal
agents as the government ramps up
its operations to implement
President Donald Trump’s campaign
threat of the biggest mass
deportations in U.S. history. It is
a war on the working people of this
country. The Internationalist Group
and fraternally allied groups are
organizing in the labor movement to
form committees to defend immigrants
in schools and workplaces. In the
Pacific Northwest, Class Struggle
Workers – Portland put forward a
“Resolution to Defend Immigrants
Against Mass Deportations and Racist
Violence” which was passed by six
area unions. In New York City, a
Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants
(LCDI) was established at a
conference on January 9 attended by
more than 70 members, organizers and
officers from unions,
worker-organizing and
immigrant-rights groups, including
six Teamsters locals. The Committee
has established working groups
including construction and building
workers, education, healthcare,
hospitality, transport and warehouse
workers, students, and outreach.
Class-conscious workers and
immigrants’ rights defenders around
the U.S. are encouraged to undertake
similar initiatives. For
Workers Action to Stop Mass
Deportations (May 2025)
Trump, White House
Witch-Hunters Besiege Academia
The
Gleichschaltung of
American Universities
U.S. universities are under attack
like never before. It began on March
8 with the seizure of Mahmoud
Khalil, a politically moderate
Palestinian graduate of Columbia
University. In the following weeks,
while pushing to deport
international students, the federal
government launched an assault on
academic freedom and freedom of
speech on campus intended to be much
more deep-going than even the
McCarthyite witch hunts of the
1950s. Washington is seeking control
over hiring, enrollment, governance
and course content, while demanding
the expulsion of liberal “activist”
faculty and students. The basic
outlook of the administration can be
summed up by the title of a 2021
speech delivered by now vice
president J.D. Vance: “The
Universities Are the Enemy.” As
Vance put it in a July 2024
interview, the Trump regime seeks to
“replace the existing ruling class
with another ruling class.” As the
U.S. lurches toward authoritarian
rule, we are facing a drive to
control all education, whipping
educators into line to march in
lockstep with the MAGA agenda,
imitating the German Nazis’ Gleichschaltung
(synchronization) of the schools. The
Gleichschaltung of American
Universities (May 2025)
NYC
Higher Education Unions Rally
Against Attacks on Universities,
Immigrants Hunter
Internationalist: “We Are All
Under Attack!”
In early March, the Trump
administration began abducting
pro-Palestinian international
students for deportation,
simultaneously threatening to cut
hundreds of millions of dollars in
federal funding from elite
universities deemed insufficiently
hard on protests against Gaza
genocide. The initial response of
college administrations (epitomized
by Columbia University) was to
capitulate. But when it was
announced that 17 international
students at the City University of
New York had their visas revoked,
the CUNY faculty/staff union
Professional Staff Congress along
with students from the CUNY
Internationalist Clubs sharply
protested. Shortly afterwards, a
national day of action was called by
higher education unions for April
17. A student representing the CUNY
Internationalists and the Hunter
College Committee to Defend
Immigrants spoke at the NYC rally. Hunter
Internationalist: “We Are All
Under Attack!” (May 2025)
Not
the Democrats, But Workers Action
Against Mass Deportations and
Layoffs! Trumpland USA: Lurching
Toward Authoritarian Rule Against
Police-State Repression: Fight
for Workers Revolution!
The second presidency of
wannabe autocrat Donald J.
Trump started with a tsunami
of executive orders, 26 on
Inauguration Day (January
20), now up to 141 by Day
100, an all-time record. As
the barrage of decrees
targeting one group or
institution after another
has kept up, with a new
abomination every day, fear
has spread among vulnerable
populations across the U.S.
First on Trump’s hit list
are immigrants, now facing
mass deportations. Next came
witch hunts in academia,
deporting pro-Palestinian
international students and
slashing budgets of
institutions that failed to
fall into line. Then Trump
declared a trade war against
just about every country on
earth, setting off panic.
The talk is of chaos, but
the avalanche of actions
shows a well-prepared plan:
Trump is systematically
preparing a
counterrevolutionary war on
China. The Internationalist
Group and League for the
Fourth International say you
can’t fight Trump with the
Democrats and fight for
workers action in the
struggle to stop
deportations. Defending
China and Russia against the
imperialist war drive, we
warn that there is no
reformist alternative to the
drive by all wings of the
imperialist bourgeoisie for
a “strong state” based on a
militarized police
apparatus. The answer is to
fight for international
socialist revolution, and to
forge a workers party on the
program of Lenin and Trotsky
to lead it. Trumpland
USA: Lurching Toward
Authoritarian Rule (29
April 2025)
Student/Labor
Protests Stop Immigration
Cops’ Provocation at CUNY
Campus
On February 27, a campaign of
protest and exposure caused the
Customs and Border Protection
agency to cancel a special
recruitment session it scheduled
at one of the main campuses of the
City University of New York
(CUNY). The planned session at the
John Jay College career fair was a
dangerous provocation, seeking to
make the largest urban public
university in the U.S. a
recruiting ground for the Trump
administration’s “mass
deportation” drive. It was stopped
as the result of two protests,
initiated by the CUNY
Internationalist Clubs, demanding
“DHS/ICE, Border Patrol: Out of
CUNY Now!” in front of the campus
building where the job fair was
held. The first, on February 25,
on the opening day of the
“CareerCon” fair, drew some 150
students and faculty/staff union
members. Many students came from
Hunter College, under the banner
of the Hunter Committee to Defend
Immigrants. Linking up with the
power of NYC’s labor movement was
a key theme of the protests. More
than a dozen members of the
Professional Staff Congress (PSC)
faculty/staff union from different
campuses participated, and several
spoke, as did a Teamster warehouse
worker, an NYC teacher, a
restaurant worker and students
from several campuses. Another
important theme was that the
deportation machine Trump relies
on was beefed up by Democratic
“Deporter-in-Chief” Obama and his
successors in the Biden/Harris
administration, point to the need
for a revolutionary workers party.
Student/Labor
Protests Stop Immigration Cops’
Provocation at CUNY Campus
(March 2025)
PROTEST – NEW
YORK CITY – TUESDAY, FEB. 25 DHS/ICE,
Border Patrol: OUT OF CUNY
NOW!
Beginning this
Tuesday, February 25, agencies
of the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) – which the mass
deportation machine of
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and Border
Patrol are part of – will be
recruiting at a job fair at the
City University of New York’s
John Jay College. They’re trying
to recruit shock troops for the
anti-immigrant, racist onslaught
of raids and deportations –
right here at CUNY! The CUNY
Internationalist Clubs call on
all defenders of immigrant
rights and opponents of
police-state terror to join us
this Tuesday in front of John
Jay College, 59th Street between
10th and 11th Avenue, Manhattan,
in a rally of protest and
exposure demanding DHS/ICE,
BORDER PATROL: OUT OF CUNY NOW!
We say: Stop the raids and
deportations! ICE out of New
York! DHS/ICE,
Border Patrol: OUT OF CUNY
NOW! (24 February 2025)
For a Revolutionary
Internationalist Workers Party
German Elections
2025: For
Class Struggle Against
Militarization, Austerity,
Mass Layoffs and Deportations! Mobilize
the Power of the Working Class to
Defend Refugees and Immigrants
Against Racist Persecution
The German Bundestag (parliament)
elections on February 23 are taking
place in an atmosphere of generalized
crisis. Hundreds of thousands have
taken to the streets “against the
right.” Brazen U.S. intervention in
the German election campaign. A NATO
crisis over Russia and Ukraine.
Repression of protests against
Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hysteria
about “migrant crime.” But despite the
polarization, all major parties are
for increased militarization, more
austerity cutbacks and stepped-up
deportations. However the usual
coalition dance ends, the next federal
government will continue the
reactionary policies of its
predecessor, only worse. There is
nothing in these war-and-austerity
elections for working people and the
oppressed. From worker/immigrant
mobilization against racist/fascist
attacks and deportations to factory
occupations against the threat of
layoffs, the key is to form the
nucleus of a revolutionary workers
party. German
Elections 2025: Class Struggle
Against Mlitarization, Austerity,
Mass Layoffs and Deportations
(19 February 2025)
MAGA
Regime: Billionaire
“Populists” on the
Warpath
Democrats Reap Bitter
Fruit of Scorning the
Working Class
Trump
2: Gearing Up
to
Rule by Decree
Break
with the Parties of
Capital –
For a Revolutionary
Workers Party
The
2024 U.S. election
is a turning point
in recent history,
the end of an era.
That is the era of
U.S. global hegemony
since World War II.
The “American
Century” is over.
The victory of
Donald Trump was
against the
Democratic Party of
Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris and the
Republican
“establishment.”
Their defeat
reflects the
long-term decline of
the United States in
the world capitalist
economy, and now
also in its failing
military power. The
Democratic Party
lost a large part of
the youth and many
liberals over the
genocidal
U.S./Israel war on
the Palestinian
people in Gaza. The
erosion of
working-class
support for the
Democrats has
reached the breaking
point. But while
Trump got 3 million
more votes than in
2020, Harris got 6
million less votes
than Biden in 2020.
Rather than a sharp
shift to the right
of the U.S.
population, the 2024
election was a vote
– from the right and
the left – against
the Democratic
Party. While Donald
Trump adopts
populist poses, he
is now forming a
government of
billionaires.
The world situation
of extreme danger
cries out for
proletarian
revolutionary
leadership. Trump
2: Gearing Up for
Rule by Decree
(December 2024)
The
Man Who Would Be
“Dictator on Day
One”
Says Hitler Did Good
Things
Is
Donald Trump a
Fascist?
A lot of people in
the United States –
and not only – are
very afraid of what
a second term for
Donald Trump as
president will mean.
At the same time,
many want to fight
the looming
catastrophe. In
order to do so
effectively, it’s
important to have a
clear understanding
of the nature of the
enemy we are
confronting. There
is a lot of talk
about Donald Trump
as a “fascist.” This
loose use of the
term
mischaracterizes the
fascist movement in
Italy, Germany and
elsewhere in the
1920s and ’30s, and
fascist groups
today. It also
builds illusions in
bourgeois
“democracy,” which
can be plenty
repressive. Donald
Trump is a would-be
strongman, aspiring
to command a one-man
authoritarian regime
that intimidates or
crushes any
potential opponents.
The FBI, Justice
Department,
Department of
Homeland Security,
armed forces and
police are to be his
personal army. His
talk of being a
“dictator on Day 1”
tells you all about
Day 2, and after. Is
Donald Trump a
Fascist?
(December 2024)
Republicans and
Democrats Declare War on
Immigrants Mobilize
Working Class
Power to Stop
Deportations
A war is about to be
unleashed on the working
people of the United
States by the government
of the United States.
Fueled by a hysteria
whipped up against
“illegal” immigrants,
depicted as “the enemy
within,” in reality it is
an attack on the working
class and the democratic
rights of all. To carry
out his threatened mass
deportations, the incoming
president, Republican
Donald Trump, is planning
to declare a national
emergency. Constitutional
rights, including to due
process, will be
“suspended” (that is,
eliminated) for a huge
sector of the population.
This assault must be
fought tooth and nail, in
particular by unleashing
the enormous power of the
working class, of which
immigrants are a key
component, that can bring
the deportation machine to
a screeching halt. And
that requires taking on
both of the partner
parties of U.S.
imperialism, Democrat as
well as Republican. Mobilize
Working Class Power to
Stop Deportations
(December 2024)
October
ILA Strike “Suspended”
After Three Days, January Showdown
Over Bosses’ Automation
Threat ILA Longshore Workers: To Defeat Job-Killing
Automation,
Strike for Union
Control of Tech!
After the brief
strike of port
workers on the U.S.
East and Gulf Coasts
in October, the
unresolved issue was
automation. On
December 12, Donald
Trump issued a
statement supporting
the union’s
opposition to the
introduction of
automated machinery
on the docks. But
the shippers have
not relented.
Whatever the odds,
any union “strategy”
that banks on the
whims of a
multi-billionaire
CEO of United
States, Inc. can’t
win lasting gains.
With Trump,
everything is
“transactional.”
What will the unions
give up? A real
victory in the
battle over
job-killing
automation will take
an all-out fight for
union control of
technology, and a
political fight
against the
politicians, parties
and government of
the bosses. ILA
Longshore Workers:
To Defeat
Job-Killing
Automation, Strike
for Union Control
of Tech! (28
December 2024)
Deep-Sixing
Their Own History SL’s
Latest Longshore
Lies
For the last several
decades, the latter-day
Spartacist League has
pursued an unrelenting
vendetta against Heyman.
Almost without fail,
whenever he was leading
struggles, the
“post-revolutionary SL”
would slander and/or
boycott them. The
successful picket of the
Neptune Jade in solidarity
with locked-out dock
workers in Liverpool,
Britain (1997); the
shutdown of all West Coast
ports to demand “Free
Mumia Abu-Jamal!” (1999);
the West Coast port
shutdown against the U.S.
imperialist war in
Afghanistan and Iraq
(2008); the struggle to
unionize the scab Export
Grain Terminal in
Longview, Washington, when
the SL grooved on the
assault on ILWU activists
and supporters by a
bureaucratic goon squad
(2012); the list goes
on... Now a born-again SL
feigns approval of an ILWU
Local 10 motion for the
union to boycott military
cargo to Israel amid the
genocidal war on Gaza, but
then publishes a long
account by a supporter
slamming Heyman, the
author of the resolution.
His letter to the editor
of the SL’s newspaper Workers
Vanguard is printed
here. SL’s
Latest Longshore Lies
(December 2024)
Unionize
Amazon with Class Struggle!
Bring Out
All Labor to Win
Amazon Teamster
Strikes!
On December 19, the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters
launched strikes at seven
Amazon facilities around
the U.S. after the company
ignored a deadline to
agree to begin
negotiations for a union
contract. Amazon is the
world’s third largest
corporation whose
executive chairman, Jeff
Bezos, is the third
richest man in the world.
The e-commerce giant is a
hardline anti-union
employer. Overcoming the
Amazon bosses’ opposition
will take hard class
struggle. It is urgent
that all labor – as well
as students, immigrants
and other union supporters
– come out in large
numbers to build mass
picket lines to shut down
the warehouses and stop
the deliveries. The
Internationalist Group,
Revolutionary
Internationalist Youth and
class-struggle unionists
came out to Amazon picket
lines at several
locations. Many picketers
had illusions that
the National Labor
Relations Board could
force Amazon to the table.
But the NLRB is an agency
of the capitalist
government, set up in the
1930s to regulate and
stifle militant class
struggle and to hogtie
union organizing with a
web of bureaucratic
processes. Strikes, unions
and contract gains are not
won by relying on the
bosses’ government or the
bosses’ parties.
Class-struggle trade
unionists oppose all
government control of the
workers movement and call
to break with all
capitalist parties, to
build a workers party to
fight for a workers
government.. Bring
Out All Labor to Win
Amazon Teamster Strikes!
(21 December 2024)
For Workers
Action Against
Imperialist and Zionist
War
Greek
Workers Block Arms
to Israel and
Ukraine
Brandishing red flares and
chanting “Free Palestine!”
on the night of October
17, dozens of dockworkers
in Piraeus, Greece,
blocked a container with
21 tons of ammunition from
being loaded aboard a ship
bound for Israel, to be
deployed in the genocidal
U.S./Israel war on Gaza.
The ship departed without
its death cargo. The
action was carried out by
the dock workers union
ENEDEP, affiliated with
PAME, the labor federation
associated with the Greek
Communist Party (KKE). A
delegate of the
Palestinian General
Federation of Trade
Unions, (PGFP), which has
appealed to workers
internationally to stop
transport of military
goods to Israel, thanked
the Greek dock workers.
Then on November 6 KKE-led
demonstrators blocked a
shipment of ammunition and
rockets to the U.S./NATO
puppet regime in Ukraine.
Italy and Greece are the
only countries where
left-wing unions have
actually blocked war cargo
in response to the PGFP
appeal. Stopping a
container of ammo to
Israel, a convoy of war
cargo to Ukraine, a
one-day strike or port
shutdown – these are first
steps, but they are vital
in pointing the direction
that struggle imperialist
and Zionist war must
take. Greek
Workers Block Arms to
Israel and Ukraine
(26 November 2024)
Claims of
Anti-Jewish “Pogrom” Are
a Lie
Operation
Amsterdam:
Zionist
Soccer Hooligans
Stage Racist
Rampage
On Friday, November 8,
“mainstream” media around
the world exploded with a
story of supposed
“antisemitic attacks” on
Israeli football fans in
Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The showpiece supposedly
illustrating this was a
video that indeed showed a
mob hunting and attacking
defenseless individuals.
But what the video
actually showed was the
exact opposite of what has
been claimed: the
attackers were actually
rioting Israeli “fans” of
the Maccabi Tel Aviv
soccer team, chanting
anti-Palestine slogans,
charging at and beating
Arab local residents.
There were no antisemitic
mobs attacking Jews on
November 7-8, there was no
antisemitic pogrom. What
there was, was an
organized rampaging mob of
Zionist hooligans
marauding through central
Amsterdam, tearing down
Palestinian flags, spewing
out racist filth,
brandishing metal rods and
makeshift clubs, throwing
rocks at passers-by and
buildings, threatening and
assaulting Amsterdamers.
And throughout this, they
were escorted and
protected by the police,
who even led them to
buildings with Palestinian
flags. Operation
Amsterdam: Zionist
Soccer Hooligans Stage
Racist Rampage (12
November 2024)
Mobilize
Workers’ Power to Free
Anti-Austerity
Protesters in
Nigeria and Kenya
In August protests in
Nigeria against drastic
austerity measures,
including elimination of
fuel subsidy leading to
record price increases for
food, 40 people were
killed by police well over
1,000 arrested. Of those,
three months later 29
children were still in
jail, charged with treason
and facing the death
penalty. The Nigerian
protests were inspired by
huge anti-austerity
protests in Kenya, in
which police killed over
50 demonstrators. The
presidents of both African
countries are imperialist
toadies. Kenyan president
William Ruto dispatched
several hundred police to
Haiti, acting as
mercenaries to put down
unrest there. The League
for the Fourth
International supported
protests demanding freedom
for arrested protesters in
Nigeria, and called for
U.S. mercenary Kenyan
police out of Haiti. Mobilize
Workers’ Power to Free
Anti-Austerity
Protesters in Nigeria
and Kenya (7
November 2024)
Argentina:
Drop
the Charges
Against Polo
Obrero,
Stop the Persecution
of the Piquetero
Movement
Ultra-rightist Argentine
president Javier Milei’s
“shock” program of brutal
austerity, massive
cutbacks, layoffs and
wholesale privatizations1
has gone together with
criminalizing protest and
escalating repression
against the left and
broader social movements.
This campaign to “retake”
the streets from
protesters has been
accompanied by a judicial
offensive targeting above
all organizations of the
left. The most prominent
recent offensive has been
an indictment of leaders
of the Polo Obrero
(Workers Pole), the mass
unemployed organization of
the Partido Obrero (PO –
Workers Party). The left
and labor must solidly
oppose all attempts to
persecute and prosecute
those who resist the
depredations of the
capitalist state,
including the deeply
corrupt judicial caste,
both under the
ultra-rightist Milei
government and its
Peronist and conservative
predecessors. At the same
time, it is necessary to
draw a balance sheet of
the “strategy” of acting
as a recipient of
government funds. The
League for the Fourth
International calls to
drop all charges against
the Polo Obrero, and for
complete independence of
the workers movement from
the capitalist state. Argentina:
Drop the Charges Against
Polo Obrero
(September 2024)
No Vote for the
Bosses’ Parties and Politicians!
On Ballot Props:
Vote for Defending Basic
Rights
The Internationalist Group has
called repeatedly to “Break with
the Democrats, Bosses’ Party of
Racist Repression, Imperialist War
and Gaza Genocide,” for “no vote
to any capitalist party or
politicians” and for a
revolutionary workers party. Now
that the elections are upon
us, some who oppose both
major capitalist parties, and the
alternatives, nevertheless feel
the urgency to vote on hotly
contested ballot propositions,
particularly on abortion. In many
states there is a plethora of
initiatives, often confusingly
worded, and we have received a
number of queries about where
revolutionary Marxists stand on
those issues. This article is in
response to those questions. On
Ballot Props: Vote for Defending
Basic Rights (4 November
2024)
Democrats, Republicans vs. Public
Education
We
Need a Class-Struggle Workers
Party
By Class Struggle Education
Workers/UFT
During the past school year in which
Democrats as well as ultra-rightist
Republicans slandered pro-Palestinian,
anti-Gaza genocide protests as
supposedly “antisemitic” and brought
in police to shut them down. Now the
final spurt to the November elections
is in full swing, and teachers unions
are going all out to elect the
Democratic Party slate. After
President (“Genocide Joe”) Biden
dropped out, the American Federation
of Teachers and National Education
Association jumped Kamala Harris.
Adding to the enthusiasm was her
vice-presidential pick, Minnesota
governor Tim Walz, a former high
school football coach and teacher. As
the Democrats posture as supposed
friends of labor, women and educators,
over the years, the historic alignment
of the teachers unions with the
Democratic Party has not put an end
to, or diminished Republican attacks
on public schools and teacher-bashing.
On the contrary, Democrats have chimed
in on the agenda of charterizing,
corporatizing and privatizing public
education. Teachers unions are in the
crosshairs of racist reactionaries
and Wall Street money men, Democrats
and Republicans alike, because they
are an obstacle to the drive to gut
public education.The Democratic Party
is a capitalist party, a party of the
bosses. We need is a fighting workers
party prepared to lead hard class
struggle to defeat the bipartisan
capitalist war on public education. CSEW:
We Need a Class-Struggle Workers
Party (16 October 2024).
Revolution Publication
of the Revolutionary
Internationalist Youth
and of students from the
Internationalist Clubs
at the City University
of New York (click on
masthead to go to Revolution
archive)
Revolution
No. 21 (September 2024) click
or on image
for full list of
articles
All-Purpose
Bigot Trump or Genocide
Joe’s VP Harris? The
Only Choice: Build a
Revolutionary Workers
Party
After Joe Biden’s July 21
withdrawal from the
presidential race and
replacement by his vice
president Kamala Harris, the
mood in U.S. capitalism’s
governing Democratic Party
turned from gloom to what it’s
hyping as an explosion of
“joy.” In Gaza, the explosion
of bombs provided by the
Biden-Harris administration to
Israel continued to obliterate
schools, hospitals and entire
neighborhoods, burying whole
families under the rubble. In
her acceptance speech, Harris
vowed that “as
Commander-in-Chief,” she would
ensure that the U.S. has
the “most lethal
fighting force in the world.”
While Republican ex-president
Donald Trump is, once again,
demonizing “illegal
immigrants,” Harris’
response to Trump’s
provocations has been to try
to outdo him in anti-immigrant
rhetoric. As the genocidal war
on the people of Gaza rages
on, and U.S. imperialism’s
bipartisan drive toward World
War III accelerates, the
Revolutionary Internationalist
Youth and CUNY
Internationalist Clubs say no
to Harris and Trump, no to the
Democrat/Republican war
machine, and call to build a
workers party that fights for
socialist revolution. The
Only Choice: Build a
Revolutionary Workers Party
(August 2024)
Women’s
Liberation through Socialist
Revolution! A Struggle
for Survival: Women in
Gaza Today
Women in Gaza today – under
the bombs supplied to Israel
by U.S. imperialism’s
Biden-Harris administration –
face a desperate daily
struggle for survival. Driven
from one part of the besieged
enclave to another, feeding
their children becomes nearly
impossible. Homes, hospitals
and entire neighborhoods have
been reduced to rubble, with
families buried beneath the
ruins. Famine looms, and the
starvation is intentional. Now
bourgeois feminists who wanted
Hillary Clinton to become
Commander-in-Chief of U.S.
imperialism in 2016 hope to
pass that torch to Kamala
Harris. Many students are
rejecting the “official story”
of the U.S. role in the world
that they were taught, in
which the crimes of the
capitalist rulers around the
globe are presented in
humanitarian garb, “human
rights” rhetoric, or sometimes
in feminist garb. For
Palestinian Arab women today,
the double oppression of women
fundamental to capitalist
society is made even more dire
by this genocidal war,
compounded by the oppression
by the religious/ethnic-based
Israeli state. Zionist and
imperialist oppression and war
can’t be defeated through a
nationalist program, but only
through internationalist class
struggle leading to socialist
revolution worldwide.. A
Struggle for Survival: Women
in Gaza Today (September
2024)
Mass
Arrests Hit Gaza Solidarity
Encampments Across U.S. Flash
Point UCLA: Student
Workers Strike Against
Repression of
Pro-Palestinian
Protesters
On the night of April 30/May
1, the Gaza solidarity
encampment at the University
of California, Los Angeles was
subject to a vicious attack by
Zionist and fascistic thugs.
The organized goon squad
attack was carried out in
tandem with the university
authorities, and followed up
by mass arrests of those
defending the encampment. The
union of graduate student
workers at the University of
California, United Auto
Workers (UAW) Local 4811,
responded to the attack by
voting to strike for free
speech. Tens of thousands of
academic workers took strike
action to defend democratic
rights and to show their
solidarity with the besieged
Palestinian people. But
instead of striking the whole
UC system, UAW leaders called
on select campuses to be shut
down while keeping large parts
of the membership at work. A
class-struggle leadership is
needed to shut down the entire
UC system and bring in other
sectors of labor and the
oppressed, to defend the
democratic and union rights of
all. Flash
Point UCLA (August 2024)
Hunter College
Students, Faculty Demand:
“NYPD, Out of CUNY Now!” Speak-Out
Against Repression of
CCNY Gaza Solidarity
Encampment
On May 1, the Internationalist
Clubs at the City University
of New York held a speak-out
outside Hunter College,
bringing out approximately 200
students and members of the
CUNY faculty/staff union, to
protest the New York Police
Department’s violent dispersal
of Gaza solidarity encampments
at City College and Columbia
University the previous night
and early that morning. Four
members of the Hunter
Internationalist Club were
among those arrested. The NYPD
attacks were part of the
nationwide wave of repression
launched by university
administrations, as well as
state and local politicians
(including Democrats from City
Hall to the state house to
Congress), who unleashed the
cops to brutalize and disperse
campus protests against the
joint U.S./Israel genocidal
war on the Palestinian people.
Speak-Out
Against Repression of CCNY
Gaza Solidarity Encampment
(August 2024)
Defend
the Palestinians! Defeat the
Witch Hunters! McCarthyite
Film Ban at Hunter
College Struck Down By
Student-Faculty Protest
As the genocidal U.S./Israel
war on Gaza rages on, it has
been accompanied by a
“war censorship drive” on the
“home front.” Campuses around
the country are being hit with
bans and witch hunts that
bring to mind the McCarthyite
period of the early
anti-Soviet Cold War. At
Hunter College, CUNY
Internationalist activists
were centrally involved in a
fight to defeat the college
president’s attempt to stop
the screening of a film
critical of Israel. McCarthyite
Film Ban at Hunter College
Struck Down By
Student-Faculty Protest
(February 2024)
Spartacist
League: A Weird and
Desperate Frenzy
For Mass
Student/Labor
Action Against
U.S./Israel War
and NYPD
Repression By CUNY
Internationalist
Clubs
After the arrests
in the early hours of
May 1 of hundreds of
participants in Gaza
solidarity encampments
at Columbia University
and the City University
of New York, within
hours, the CUNY
Internationalist Clubs
called an emergency
speak-out at Hunter
College that drew almost
200 students and faculty
to protest the
police/CUNY repression.
In the aftermath, the
Spartacist League put
out fliers calling to
“Strike the Campus!”
When there was no
walkout, it tried to
explain the failure to
suck a “strike” out of
its thumb by trying to
scapegoat the
Internationalist Club.
While the
used-to-be-revolutionary
group going under the
misnomer Spartacist
flits from one stunt to
the next, the
Internationalists fought
for mass CUNY- and
city-wide union/student
march against the
repression and witch
hunts targeting
pro-Palestinian
protesters. For
Mass Student/Labor
Action Against
U.S./Israel War and
NYPD Repression
(11 May 2024) Then and
Now: Democrats’ War
Abroad, Police
Brutality at Home The 1968
DNC Protests
As
the Democratic National
Convention assembled
this August, promoting
“joy” for a new
commander-in-chief of
U.S. imperialism, they
hoped the hoopla would
blot out horrific images
of the U.S./Israel war
on Gaza and of last
spring’s violent police
repression against
pro-Palestinian campus
protests. Yet the fact
that the quadrennial
imperialist shindig was
being held in Chicago
inevitably harkened back
to the infamous DNC of
1968, held amid
nationwide protests
against the mass murder
being carried out by
another Democratic
administration: U.S.
imperialism’s dirty
colonial war on the
workers and peasants of
Vietnam. Despite the
brutal cop attacks on
protesters at the ’68
convention, and the
murder of Black Panther
leader Fred Hampton the
next year, many antiwar
protesters found their
way back to the
Democratic Party with
the 1972 presidential
campaign of Democratic
Party “dove” George
McGovern. The historic
task of breaking the
stranglehold of the
capitalist Democratic
and Republican parties,
and forging a
revolutionary workers
party, remains on the
agenda. The
1968 DNC Protests
(September 2024)
To
Uproot Racist
Oppression: Socialist
Revolution Black
Liberation –
Struggle and
Strategy
For many young people
who have gotten
involved in
revolutionary politics
in recent years, the
protests of 2020 were
a deeply politicizing
and life-changing
experience. It was
clear at the time that
the murder of George
Floyd at the hands of
a cold-blooded killer
cop was only the tip
of the iceberg. We
live in a racist
country where African
Americans are killed
for “walking while
black,” driving or
just being in your
car, or sleeping in
your own home while
black. The 2008
election of the first
black president, while
a social change, was
not a political
change. Marxists
understand that racism
is rooted in the
material reality of
racial oppression,
arising from the
profit-making
mechanisms of slavery
and the slave trade.
It is continuously
reproduced based on
the massive
inequalities of
capitalist society. To
fight racism, Marxists
stand on the program
of revolutionary
integrationism,
rejecting liberal
accommodation to the
racist status quo, and
looking to unite the
working class across
the color line. A
strategy based on
separation, such as
black nationalism in
its various
incarnations, is
illusory. This
illusion, arising in
times of defeat and
despair, cuts against
the actual struggle
for black freedom. Black
Liberation –
Struggle and
Strategy
(September
2024)
What
We Saw – and Didn't
– at Important Met
Exhibit Black
and Red Keys
to Harlem
Renaissance
Story
This summer,
activists from the
Internationalist
Clubs at the City
University of New
York and the
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth visited the
“Harlem
Renaissance and
Transatlantic
Modernism” exhibit
at New York’s
Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It
was exhilarating
to see the
incredible art in
the exhibit, but
the exhibit left
much of the “red”
– the radical
political
connections and
reverberations of
the Harlem
Renaissance – out
of the picture. To
understand the
sources of, for
example, the poems
“If We Must Die”
by Claude McKay
and “White Man” by
Langston Hughes,
it is necessary to
look at the
history of the
“Great Migration”
to the North of
the Southern black
population, the
“Jim Crow” system
of violent racial
segregation and
the explosion of
artistic
creativity and
innovation in the
first years of the
Russian
Revolution. Yet
while displaying a
glorious oil
painting by
Elizabeth Catlett
and Winold Reiss’
portraits of
Hughes, W.E.B. Du
Bois and Paul
Robeson, the
exhibit noted
nothing about
their leftist
radicalism, and
the word communist
was not
mentioned at all.
We have to fill in
the blank spaces
the exhibit left
out. Black
and Red Keys to
Harlem
Renaissance
Story
(September
2024)
Facing
U.S. Rulers’
Democrat/Republican
Duopoly Party for Socialism and Liberation: A
Revolutionary
Alternative? Facing
the “choice”
of Donald
Trump or
Kamala Harris,
a good number
of young
people can’t
stomach
backing
war-criminal
politicians. A
few express
some interest
in the Green
Party, a minor
bourgeois
party whose
purpose is to
pressure the
Democrats. The
Party for
Socialism and
Liberation
(PSL) is
running its
own
presidential
campaign under
the watchword
Vote Socialist
2024. The
fight for a
sharp break
from the
Democratic
Party is at
the center of
genuinely
revolutionary
politics in
the United
States, yet
the PSL’s
actual
politics cut
against that
struggle.
Throughout its
history – and
today – it
advances
“tactics” that
help tie
workers and
youth to the
Democrats. In
2016 and again
in 2020, the
PSL called
called on
people voting
in the
Democratic
presidential
primary
elections to
vote for
Bernie
Sanders, and
this spring it
hailed the
movement
to “vote
uncommitted”
in the
Democratic
primaries.
Moreover, in
Chicago the
PSL joined an
“Abandon Biden
Convention” in
a political
bloc with the
Green Party.
What is
urgently
needed today
is a
class-struggle
workers party
that puts
forward
genuinely
revolutionary
politics
counterposed
to all
capitalist
parties and
politicians,
and
forthrightly
advances a
program of
international
socialist
revolution.
That the PSL
most certainly
does not. Party
for Socialism
and
Liberation: A
Revolutionary
Alternative?
(August
2024) Cosplay
Communism
From Bernie
Boosters to
“Revolutionary
Communists of
America” An
article on the
group’s
website
declares that
“Hundreds of
millions watch
launch of the
Revolutionary
Communists of
America!”
Other articles
bombastically
announce,
“I Built a New
Communist Cell
Over My Spring
Break,” and “I
Met Another
Communist on
the Street and
30 Minutes
Later, He Was
an RCA
Member.” They
plaster
stickers on
street light
posts with an
image of Karl
Marx depicted
as Uncle Sam,
asking “Are
You a
Communist,”
complete with
a QR code for
a form to join
the brand
spanking new
RCA. Actually,
it is the
transmogrification
of the staid
old
International
Marxist
Tendency, now
calling itself
the
Revolutionary
Communist
International,
hyped up with
gimmicks
galore to give
off a “with
it” vibe. This
is the same
outfit that
over years has
supported
“strikes” by
and “unions”
of police and
prison guards,
claiming that
these
professionals
of state
repression are
“workers in
uniform.” It’s
the same
reformist
social-democratic
group that
only a few a
years ago was
among the most
assiduous
boosters for
Democratic
presidential
candidate
Bernie
Sanders, was
“excited” to
be best
builders of
the Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America, and
avoided the
word
“communist”
like the
plague. After
the makeover,
the facade is
different but
the politics
are still
reformist. A
genuine
communist
party is not
built by such
self-aggrandizing
posturing and
unserious
stunts From
Bernie
Boosters to
“Revolutionary
Communists of
America”
(September
2024)
New
Members Not
Supposed To
Know About It
RCA/IMT’s
Long History
of Supporting
Cop “Unions”
When
new members of
the recently
rebaptized
“Revolutionary
Communists of
America” are
confronted
with their
organization’s
longstanding
support for
police
“unions” and
“strikes” they
tend to voice
angry denial,
or sheer
disbelief.
Older members,
more
experienced in
the twists and
turns of
opportunist
politics, try
to change the
topic. Yet
these social
democrats in
Trotskyist
garb wrote a
30,000 word
diatribe
against the
Internationalist
Group
defending
their call to
include the
protection
societies of
the
professional
strikebreakers
in the labor
movement. Real
Trotskyists
call for “cops
out of the
unions.”
Providing the
proof, we cite
the RCA’s the
shameful
record on the
armed fist of
the bourgeois
state. RCA/IMT’s
Long History
of Supporting
Cop “Unions”
(September
2024)
Fight
for Socialist
Revolution! On Joining the Revolutionary Internationalist
Youth The
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth (RIY),
youth section
of the
Internationalist
Group, was
founded in
2017 by young
activists
radicalized by
the clash
between
illusions of
“hope and
change” under
liberal
Democrat
Barack Obama
and the harsh
reality of
unending
racist
oppression,
which
continues
today under
his former
vice president
Joe Biden. A
key source of
RIY’s growth
has been its
consistent
struggle
against
illusions that
opportunist
“leftists”
pushed in
capitalist
politicians
from Obama and
Biden to
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America idols
Bernie Sanders
and “AOC.”
Several young
activists
explain why
they joined
the RIY. On
Joining the
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth (September
2024)
Labor: All
Out to Support Boeing Machinists
Strike!
On Friday, September 13, some 33,000
workers of the aircraft manufacturing
giant Boeing near Seattle, Washington
went out on strike for the first time
since 2008. The strikers are members
of the International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Workers
(IAM), and although the union
leadership had negotiated a tentative
agreement with the company, the deal
was overwhelmingly voted down (with
over 94% of the members voting against
it while 96% voted to strike). This is
a key class battle for unions and
working people not only in the Pacific
Northwest but nationwide, and all of
labor should pitch in to help win it.
Key demands are a greatly increased
pay scale (right now, starting pay for
Machinists is below that of fast food
workers in Seattle) and to bring back
defined-benefit pensions, which the
IAM tops negotiated away in 2013. A
strike to restore pensions would
galvanize the labor movement
coast-to-coast. Given Boeing’s abysmal
safety record, another key demand
would be for union control of safety.
Labor:
All
Out to Support Boeing Machinists
Strike! (15 September 2024)
Israel
Out of Gaza, the West
Bank and Golan – U.S. Imperialists
Out of the Middle
East!
Gaza
Genocide Made in USA
For International
Workers Action to
Defend Palestinians,
Defeat U.S./Israel
Slaughter
Day after day, people
around the world see
photos and videos of
harrowing scenes from the
Israeli invasion and
gruesome war on the
Palestinian Arab
population of the Gaza
Strip. What is happening,
and what millions are
witnessing, is an actual
genocide unfolding, aiming
at the destruction of an
entire population. The
Zionist militarists are
waging a one-sided war to
drive out and decimate the
2.3 million Palestinians
in Gaza – who for decades
have been locked up in the
tiny enclave on the shores
of the Mediterranean –
while preparing a possible
sequel in the occupied
West Bank. And in carrying
out this slaughter, the
Israeli forces are
dropping monster bombs,
manufactured and supplied
by the United States, from
fighter jets built and
supplied by the U.S.
Without the U.S.
armaments, it would be
impossible for Israel to
carry out mass murder on
this scale. A detailed
analysis of the planned
genocide underway in Gaza,
and the U.S. role in it. Gaza
Genocide Made in USA
(10 August
2024)
For
a Class-Struggle Workers
Party Break
with the Democrats,
Republicans and
All Capitalist
Parties
From the beginning of
July, the world’s interest
suddenly shifted from the
horror show of the
genocidal U.S./Israel war
on Gaza, and the
continuing U.S./NATO war
against Russia over
Ukraine, to focus on the
upcoming elections in the
United States. The
faltering, almost
paralyzed performance of
Democratic president
“Genocide Joe” Biden in
the first presidential
candidates’ debate on June
27 threw Democrats into a
panic. Under pressure from
billionaire financiers and
Democratic Party grandees,
three weeks later Biden
withdrew from the race. In
two days, Vice President
Kamala Harris nailed down
the nomination. Meanwhile,
Trump picked a fascistic
ideologue, JD Vance, as
his running mate. So in
November, U.S. voters will
have the “choice” between
immigrant-bashing
fascistic Republicans
preparing to introduce
police state measures, and
a Democratic ticket that
smears pro-Palestinian
protesters as
“antisemitic” and is
careening toward a
thermonuclear World War
III. “Pick your poison” is
no answer. The
Internationalist Group,
which calls to defend
Russia and China against
the U.S. imperialist war
drive, and to defend the
Palestinians and defeat
the Israeli mass murderers
in Gaza, says: no vote to
any capitalist party or
politicians. Break
with the Democrats,
Republicans and All
Capitalist Parties
(20 August 2024)
Marjorie
Stamberg
(1944-2024)
Revolutionary
Trotskyist,
Marxist Educator,
A Leader of
Struggles for All
the Oppressed
Our comrade Marjorie
Stamberg died on May
29 after a
three-year battle
with ovarian cancer.
She was 79 and had
been active in the
New Left, was a
pioneer fighter for
women’s liberation,
a Trotskyist
activist and leader
since her ’20s, a
teacher for the last
quarter century, and
a revolutionary all
her adult life.
Throughout, she
fought tirelessly
for the working
class, for black
people, women,
immigrants and all
the oppressed. In
different arenas,
she defended all
those exploited and
downtrodden by
capitalism. She was
the candidate of the
Spartacist League
for New York state
assembly and New
York City mayor.
Later, as an
educator and
delegate of the
United Federation of
Teachers, she
defended immigrant
students and
families. Up to her
last days, as a
central leader of
the League for the
Fourth International
and its U.S.
section, the
Internationalist
Group, Marjorie
continued the
struggle for
international
socialist
revolution, which
was her life. She
never stepped back
from that goal. It
was a measure of
Marjorie’s fortitude
that in November
2023, when it was
increasingly
difficult for her to
walk, she
participated in
three Gaza
solidarity protests
in one week. She was
determined to show
her opposition to
the slaughter by the
Israeli Zionists and
U.S. imperialists;
to refute the
slander by the
purveyors of
genocide who equate
anti-Zionism with
antisemitism; to
speak out on behalf
of the Palestinian
Arab people under
attack, and to
defend the rights of
others to do so as
well. Firm in her
communist
convictions, she was
also a warm
collaborator, mentor
and friend of so
many who worked with
her. Her comrades
and colleagues
cherish her great
contributions, which
will continue to
inspire us and
hopefully many
others in years to
come. Read an
extensive account of
Marjorie’s
revolutionary life.
Marjorie Stamberg, Revolutionary
Trotskyist,
Marxist Educator
Who Led Struggles
for All the
Oppressed
(June 2024)
Women’s Liberation and the Class Line A
Voyage of
Discovery and
Rediscovery By
Marjorie
Stamberg
A
historical account
of the rise of
what is now called
“second wave
feminism” out of
the New Left, and
what it meant in
practice. Marjorie
outlines how the
most
class-conscious
fighters against
the oppression of
women came to
grips with the
contradiction
between feminism
and Marxism.
Reading Engels and
rediscovering the
work of pioneering
communist women,
suppressed by the
Stalinists, they
were won to the
program of women’s
liberation through
socialist
revolution. Women’s
Liberation and
the Class Line
(October
2015)
Marjorie
Stamberg
Protests Gag
Order, Speaks Up
for Palestinians
In
November 2023,
when she was
already having
trouble walking,
Marjorie went to
three Palestinian
solidarity events
in one week. She
spoke at a protest
called by Class
Struggle Education
Workers on the
steps of the
headquarters of
the NYC Department
of Education,
against an order
by the schools
chancellor trying
to intimidate
teachers, students
from protesting
the genocidal war
on Gaza. Here is
what she said
(video link in
article). Marjorie
Stamberg
Protests Gag
Order, Speaks Up
for Palestinians
(16 November 2023)
Mobilize
Workers Action
Against
U.S./Israel
Genocide in
Gaza! “BDS” Dead End: Liberal
Divestment
Schemes, No
Road to
Liberation of
the
Palestinian
People
Calls for
“boycott, divestment
and sanctions” (BDS)
against Israel were
a main demand of
just about all of
the 100+ encampments
that sprang up on
college campuses
across the United
States this spring
to protest the
genocidal war on
Gaza. The
encampments served
to keep antiwar
protests going and
even, in a certain
sense, represented
an escalation from
the innumerable
marches calling for
a ceasefire, which
did not diminish the
relentless
slaughter. Many in
the Gaza solidarity
encampments were
desperately looking
for some way to take
action against
Israel’s oppression
of the Palestinians.
But the liberal
“divestment” call,
while it provides a
“hook” to raise
demands on local
authorities, diverts
attention from the
most immediate
issue: the role of
the United States in
jointly carrying
out, together with
the Israeli
warmongers, a
monstrous genocide
in Gaza. And it does
not point to a way
forward in
liberating the
Palestinian people
from Zionist
domination. The
fundamental issue is
what force to look
to: the rulers of
U.S. imperialism who
liberals think can
be pressured into
being a force for
good, or the power
of the international
working class. “BDS”
Dead End (22
July 2024)
Women’s
Liberation Through
Socialist Revolution! Claudia
Sheinbaum, Mexico’s
First Woman President
New
Face, Same Old Ploy of
the Bourgeoisie
The landslide victory of
Claudia Sheinbaum, candidate
of the National Regeneration
Movement (MORENA) in Mexico’s
June 2 presidential elections,
has generated enormous
enthusiasm in vast sectors of
the country. In a country of
rampant machismo (male
chauvinism), in which the
oppression of women takes on
blatant forms, the fact that a
woman has been elected
president represents, and
reflects, an important social
change. Her election victory
also reflects that she is seen
as the guarantor of the
continuation of the policies
of President Andrés Manuel
López Obrador (AMLO) and his
bourgeois populist government,
in particular the increases of
the minimum wage and the
welfare measures of AMLO’s
social programs. Nevertheless,
in the Mexican elections of
June 2, the three candidates
for the presidency all
represented the capitalists.
Their differences are at most
tactical. Their common purpose
is to maintain the system of
exploitation of this
semicolonial country, in the
service of the imperialists.
Thus the Grupo
Internacionalista, Mexican
section of the League for the
Fourth International, called
for “Not one vote for the
bosses’ parties: MORENA, PRI,
PAN, PRD, MC, etc. Whoever
wins, the exploited and
oppressed lose. Forge a
revolutionary workers party!”
Claudia
Sheinbaum, Mexico’s First
Woman President (July
2024)
Argentine Economy in
Freefall, Brutal Austerity On the Way Argentina
Elections: Mr. Chainsaw vs.
Washington’s Favorite Peronist Workers Left Front (FIT) Tailing
After the Peronists
On November 19, Argentine voters went to the
polls in the second round of presidential
elections in the midst of an economic crisis
that has hit the most vulnerable sectors of
the working class, while the dramatic fall
in purchasing power and real wages affects
all but the elites. The election was won by
Javier Milei, an ultra-conservative,
free-market economist and supporter of
dollarization, running against Sergio Massa,
the minister of economy of the incumbent
Peronist government and the official
candidate of “stability” (i.e., more of the
same). Milei is a supporter of former U.S.
president Trump (and of his Brazilian
counterpart Bolsonaro) while Massa has
collaborated closely with the Biden
administration. For the working class, the
programs of both bourgeois candidates would
result in an economic crisis even more
brutal than the current escalation of prices
bordering on hyperinflation. There was no
choice for the workers in the election.
However, in the face of the hysteria of
sectors of the government and the left about
a supposed “Argentine fascism,” not one of
the components of the Workers and Left Front
(FIT) called for a “no” vote (blank ballot).
This electoral cartel only serves as a left
pressure group on Peronist bourgeois
populism. Argentine workers should have cast
a blank ballot while preparing for sharp
class struggle against the coming austerity.
Argentina
Elections: Mr. Chainsaw vs. Washington’s
Favorite Peronist (16 November
2023)
Class
Struggle Education Workers Protest D.O.E.
Attempt to Ban Opposition to U.S./Israel
War Down
with the Gag Order Against NYC
Teachers! By Class Struggle Education Workers
Almost immediately after Israel launched its
massive bombing campaign against Gaza,
Israel’s imperialist backers went on the
warpath to squelch opposition to the
unfolding Zionist slaughter. In the United
States the repressive campaign was directed
at universities in particular, where support
for the Palestinians is widespread, but also
against K-12 schools. Any and all protests
against Israel’s mass murder were labeled
anti-Semitic. In New York City, as
Palestinian solidarity protests mushroomed,
ex-cop mayor Eric Adams and his schools
chancellor David Banks issued a joint
statement blasting “toxic rhetoric and
division at educational institutions.” Then,
on the day before a November 9 day of
action, walkout and after-school rally,
which was endorsed by several teacher
groups, Banks fired off an email decreeing
that teachers and staff “should not express
their personal views about political matters
during the school day” or while on school
grounds, or “even outside of the workplace
and via social media posts or otherwise.”
Class Struggle Education Workers responded
with a protest outside the Department of
Education headquarters on November 16.
Down
with the Gag Order Against NYC Teachers!
(30 November 2023)
Voces del
Epicentro Un
folleto de
Trabajadores
Internacionales
Clasistas
(click on image
to download
pdf)
As the coronavirus
pandemic erupted in the United
States, the first epicenter was
in the neighborhoods of New York
City with the highest number of
immigrants, where Trabajadores
Internacionales Clasistas (Class
Struggle Immigrant Workers) has
been active. Read the reports
from TIC activists and teachers
in Class Struggle Education
Workers on the impact of this
capitalist disaster, and the
lessons to be drawn from it.
Also reports from the strike of
packinghouse workers in Yakima
Valley, Washington. (In Spanish)
Defend
Combative
Immigrant
Workers
Against
Repression
Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment
and Death
Mobilize the
Entire Working
Class to
Defeat
All-Sided
Attack!
No
to Dead End of
Reformism –
Forge a
Revolutionary
Workers Party!
In the ongoing
emergency of
this second
year of the
coronavirus
pandemic, the
Italian
bourgeoisie
decided to
dump the weak
and unstable
coalition
government of
the Democratic
Party and
Cinque Stelle
(Five Stars)
movement,
replacing it
with Mario
Draghi, the
former head of
the European
Central Bank.
The first
shots of the
Draghi
government
have been to
increase
repression
against the
workers
movement, in
particular
against the
S.I. Cobas
“rank-and-file”
union of
mainly
immigrant
workers. Some
of the most
deeply
exploited
sectors of the
working class
have
undertaken
trade-union
and solidarity
actions,
centered on
logistics. The
response of
much of the
ostensibly
socialist left
has been to
form an Action
Pact with
political
supporters of
S.I. Cobas, a
political
coalition of
heterogeneous
forces based
on a reformist
15-point
political
program. This
program
consists
overwhelmingly
of appeals for
the capitalist
government to
take action,
rather than
for workers
themselves to
enforce their
demands. What
genuine
communists
must say to
the masses in
the harrowing
coronavirus
crisis is that
the working
class must
establish its
revolutionary
class rule,
seizing and
collectivizing
the means of
production and
organizing
production to
satisfy human
need, not the
profits of the
few. This
fight requires
above all the
forging of a
revolutionary
workers party.
Italy:
Draghi
Government of
Repression,
Impoverishment
and Death
(26 April
2021) For
Black Liberation
Through Socialist
Revolution!
Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
Long ago and
far away in
the B.C.
(Before
Coronavirus)
era, bourgeois
politics in
the United
States fixated
briefly on
impeachment.
The Democrats
leading the
lower house of
Congress did
not, of
course,
impeach Donald
Trump for his
crimes against
the oppressed,
for example
his vicious
persecution of
immigrants in
the U.S. After
all, the
record
deportations
under the
Democratic
administration
of
“deporter-in-chief”
Barack Obama
paved the way
for Trump.
Trump was
“brought up on
charges by the
wrong class
for the wrong
crimes,” we
noted at the
time. One
generation
after another
is brought up
with the
mythology of
the
Constitution
as an
embodiment of
“democracy” in
general, to be
worshiped
alongside the
“Founding
Fathers.” Yet
the authors of
the
Constitution
understood
very well that
they
represented
not “the
people” in
general but
the ruling
class of
planters and
merchants, and
wrote it to
safeguard
their
interests, in
particular to
bolster and
uphold the
power of the
slaveowners in
the newly
established
American
republic. The
U.S.
Constitution
established a
series of
institutions
that are
strikingly
anti-democratic.
They remained
so even after
slavery’s
abolition
through the
Civil War.
Revolutionaries
explain the
need for a
revolutionary
workers party
to lead a
socialist
revolution to
overthrow the
entire
capitalist
system. Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
(August 2020)
PSL
Targeted for
Marches Against
Cop Murder of
Elijah McClain Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
On Thursday,
September 17,
police raids
were carried
out in Denver,
Colorado
against the
organizers of
protests
denouncing the
racist murder
of Elijah
McClain, a
young black
man, by police
in suburban
Aurora in
August 2019.
Six of the
protest
leaders were
arrested,
including four
members of the
Party for
Socialism and
Liberation
(PSL), which
has played a
leading role
in the
protests. They
have
outrageously
been charged
with multiple
serious
felonies,
including the
absurd charge
of
“kidnapping.”
Following
Trump’s failed
attempt at
imposing
martial law in
Washington,
D.C. and the
subsedquent
the dispatch
of federal
agents to
Portland,
Oregon, and
Kenosha,
Wisconsin, the
Denver arrests
mark a new
escalation of
police-state
measures that
are a threat
to the civil
liberties of
all. The
Internationalist
Group
and
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth denounce
this ominous
attack on the
right to
protest. We
demand that
the arrested
activists be
immediately
released and
that all
charges
against them
be dropped. Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
(18 September
2020)
“We’re All in
This
Together.” You
Think?
Top
Ten Lies in
the Time of
Coronavirus
and Mass
Protests
By Charles
Brover
U.S.
capitalism is
in the midst
of a triple
whammy crisis
– economic,
social, and
public health.
Inspiring
massive
protests
against racism
and cop terror
not seen in
their size and
scope since
the 1960s have
set this
nation’s
cities aflame
day after day,
and have
spread
internationally.
The historic
protests are
occurring
against the
backdrop of
unconscionable
government
delay,
deception,
ignorant happy
talk, and
anti-scientific
incompetence.
Official
public health
malpractice
has driven the
confirmed
death toll
from COVID-19
to over
160,000. This
plague is
disproportionately
ravaging
black, Latino,
and immigrant
working class
communities.
For Marxist
revolutionaries
the racist
system that is
at the root of
the oppression
of black
people in the
U.S. (and
elsewhere) is
class-based
capitalism.
While the
cities are in
paroxysms of
rage, grief
and plague;
while millions
are fighting
to save their
livelihoods
and their
lives, the
capitalist
rulers, their
politicians,
and tamed
pundits
promote lies,
damn lies, and
even more
murderous
lies. Here are
our top ten
picks. Top
Ten Lies in
the Time of
Coronavirus
and Mass
Protests
(8 August
2020) Millions
of
Undocumented
Immigrants and
Their Families
Facing the
Abyss
New
York: We
Demand Equal
Treatment and
Emergency
Support for
Excluded
Workers!
Declaration of
Class Struggle
International
Workers (TIC)
In the sixth
month of the
health crisis
unleashed by
the COVID-19
pademic,
infections are
spiking in
much of the
country while
mass
unemployment
continues to
grow and
marches
against racist
police
brutality
continue. New
storms of
crisis are
coming for the
working class,
and for
immigrants in
particular,
beginning with
a threatened
wave of
evictions.
Nationally,
undocumented
immigrants are
denied
“stimulus”
aid,
unemployment
benefits or
any official
support. In
New York some
200,000
undocumented
workers have
lost their
jobs or cannot
find work,
while over a
million
workers
considered
“essential,” a
majority of
them
immigrants,
receive
poverty wages
while running
great risk of
contracting
the virus.
Class Struggle
International
Workers
demands that
the state of
New York
include all
workers,
particularly
the
undocumented
and those in
the “gig
economy,”
among those
eligible for
unemployment
benefits; that
state and city
governments
make up for
the exclusion
of immigrants
from federal
support; and
that rent be
canceled and
all
residential
evictions be
prohibited
during the
pandemic. New
York: We
Demand Equal
Treatment and
Emergency
Support for
Excluded
Workers!
(11 August
2020)
Urgent:
Protest Arrest
of Leftists in
Bolivia
The
rightist de
facto
government of
Bolivia that
seized power
in last
month’s
“civic-police-military”
coup has
carried out a
new act of
repression,
arresting
Carlos
Cornejo,
correspondent
of leftist
Internet
publication La
Izquierda
Diario,
and the artist
Leonel Jurado,
charging them
with
“sedition.” They were seized yesterday afternoon in
the city of El
Alto, where
they were
helping
prepare an
event in
solidarity
with families
of the at
least ten
people killed
in the police
massacre
against a
protest at the
Senkata gas
plant there on
November 19.
The
Internationalist
Group and
League for the
Fourth
International
demand the
immediate
liberation and
dropping of
all charges
against Carlos
Cornejo,
Leonel Jurado
and all
victims of
rightist
repression in
Bolivia! Urgent:
Protest Arrest
of Leftists in
Bolivia
(17 December
2019)
Left
Reformists
in Existential
Crisis An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click
on image to download
pdf)
With
the Bernie
Sanders
candidacy and
the dramatic
growth of the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America, the
left
reformists
have been
thrown into
crisis.
This 84-page
pamphlet
features
documents from
oppositionists
who fought
inside left
groups to
uphold the
revolutionary
politics of
Lenin and
Trotsky.
Socialist
Action’s
“Solidarity
with
Solidarity”
How
Fake
Trotskyists
Carried the
Bags for
Imperialism
While the
reformist left
in the United
States is in
profound
crisis,
tripping over
each other as
they chase
after the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America,
Socialist
Action has
remained
relatively
stationary and
appears more
red in
comparison
with those
social
democrats who
are now being
devoured by
their own
opportunism.
In reality,
SA’s program
is pink social
democracy. At
every key
juncture where
defense of the
degenerated/deformed
workers states
has been posed
point-blank,
Socialist
Action has
lined up with
imperialism,
from Poland in
1981 to the
USSR in 1991
and continuing
today. Poland
was a key
episode in the
imperialist
drive against
the Soviet
bloc, which
led to
capitalist
restoration
whose
devastating
consequences
continue to be
felt around
the world.
Today SA
denounces
China as
imperialist
and North
Korea as
capitalist
while genuine
Trotskyists
defend them
against
imperialist
threats and
attack. And
it’s not just
words. When
the chips were
down, these
fake-Trotskyists
hailed their
comrades’
direct and
concrete role
in delivering
vital
CIA-financed
equipment to
counterrevolutionary
Polish
Solidarność.
Read the
details here.
How
Fake
Trotskyists
Carried the
Bags for
Imperialism
(April 2019)
“American Apartheid” by Design
A
Review of
Richard
Rothstein, The
Color of Law:
A
Forgotten
History of How
Our Government
Segregated
America By
Charles
Brover, Class
Struggle
Education
Workers After
more than a
decade of hard
struggle and
the passage of
laws in the
mid-1960s
against
official Jim
Crow
segregation,
the civil
rights
movement
suddenly
stopped. What
was termed de
facto segregation
was deemed
off-limits, or
at least had
to be left for
another day.
Rothstein’s
book
conclusively
proves that
rigid
residential
segregation
and
discrimination
against
African
American,
Latino and
Asian
minorities was
always de
jure,
officially
sanctioned.
This has had a
devastating
effect on
everything
from school
integration to
murderous
police
repression.
But while
laying out key
elements of
the structural
foundation of
black
oppression in
the U.S., The
Color of Law
fails to go to
their root in
the system of
racist
American
capitalism. In
the United
States in 2016
there were 2.3
million
evictions:
6,300 a day,
four every
minute. And
with over 3.5
million
homeless
people in the
country, there
are 19 million
unoccupied
dwellings.
This powerful
essay from
Class Struggle
Education
Workers
demonstrates
that it will
take nothing
short of a
socialist
revolution to
solve the
housing
question. “American
Apartheid” by
Design (21
November
2018)
While
“Democratic
Socialist”
Ocasio-Cortez
Chimes In
Bipartisan
War Criminals
Celebrate War
Hawk John
McCain
U.S.
imperialism
lost one of
its most vocal
and active
warmongers on
August 25 –
Arizona
Republican
senator John
McCain.
Universally
praised by
ruling-class
politicians as
a “war hero”
and
“maverick,”
McCain’s
funeral at the
National
Cathedral was
attended by
some of the
most infamous
mass murderers
of this and
the last
century, from
Henry
Kissinger to
former U.S.
presidents
Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush
and Barack
Obama. Far
from being a
“war hero,” a
“man of honor”
or paragon of
“human
decency,”
Senator John
McCain was a
war criminal
who bombed
civilians. He
was shot down
over North
Vietnam on a
bombing run
against a
civilian
factory. But
McCain’s most
valuable
service to
U.S.
imperialism
was as an
inveterate war
hawk in
Congress. From
Afghanistan to
Iraq to
Ukraine, Libya
and Syria, he
beat the drums
for murderous
imperialist
intervention.
What’s
striking about
McCain’s war
crimes and
endless
warmongering
is that in
virtually all
cases, he was
joined or
supported by
Democratic
politicians.
And, notably,
among those
praising
McCain was
Democratic
Socialists of
America (DSA)
superstar
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.
Her eulogy was
consciously
paying the
price of
admission to
the bipartisan
imperialist
club of the
U.S. Congress.
Bipartisan
War Criminals
Celebrate War
Hawk John
McCain
(September
2018)
As
The Boss,
Mayor Rahm
Emanuel,
Blames Black
Community for
Violence
Chicago:
Democrat-Led
Cops Continue
Racist Killing
Spree For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14,
Chicago police
gunned down
yet another
black person,
Harith
Augustus, a
barber.
“Snoop”
Augustus,
known as a
peaceful man,
was stopped on
the pretext of
exhibiting the
“characteristics
of an armed
person,” and
was shot dead
even though he
had a valid
gun license.
For the police
in this
rigidly
segregated
city, and
throughout
this country
founded on the
bedrock of
slavery, it is
always open
season on
black people.
And on
Latinos,
immigrants,
Native
Americans …
the list goes
on. Moreover,
in Chicago and
almost every
other big
city,
Democrats are
the bosses of
the racist
killer cops.
This is all
coming to a
head in the
upcoming trial
of killer cop
Jason Van Dyke
for the murder
of Laquan
McDonald in
October 2014.
And Democratic
mayor Rahm
Emanuel,
running for a
third term, is
stoking racist
reaction by
blaming lax
“morals” in
the black
community for
the violence
engendered by
rampant
poverty,
unemployment
and brutal
police
occupation.
Yet some of
the same
themes are
echoed in
protests,
where instead
of denouncing
racist police
repression the
focus is on
opposition to
“gun violence”
in general.
Talk of
“reforming”
the police or
controlling
guns only
serves to
divert protest
away from a
revolutionary
perspective
and to
strengthen the
repressive
agencies of
the capitalist
state, while
leading
protesters
into the
dead-end of
bourgeois
pressure
politics. The
stark fact is
that there is
no solution to
war, poverty
and racist
repression
under
capitalism. Chicago:
Democrat-Led
Cops Continue
Racist Killing
Spree
(August
2018)
DSA: Fronting for the
Democrats An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click
on image to
download pdf)
A 70-page
pamphlet
analyzing the
organizational
and political
history of the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America. Includes
articles on:
Bourgeois
Populism and
Social-Democratic
Reformism: A
Dead End Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria
The
campaign for
the March 4
Italian
elections has
been dominated
by vile
xenophobic
anti-immigrant
chauvinism.
All the
competing
bourgeois
parties and
coalitions
attack the
bogeyman of
“illegal
immigration.”
The racist
Lega
(ex-Nord)
rails about
the “invasion
of aliens,
drug pushers,
delinquents
and illegals,”
raising
slogans such
as “Italians
first! Now or
never! Stop
the invasion!”
With the
populist
Cinque Stelle
(Five Star)
movement
running first
in the opinion
polls, its
historic
leader, Beppe
Grillo,
recently
called for
immediately
deporting all
“illegals.”
The strategy
of the
Democratic
Party
government has
been to put
itself at the
head of the
anti-immigrant
hysteria by
aggressively
extending the
sway of
Italian
imperialism in
the
Mediterranean,
Libya and to
the south.
This
imperialist
drive to the
south is
accompanied by
a campaign of
all-sided
racist
repression
against
immigrants and
refugee
seekers in
Italy. What
the
domesticated
left is
counterposing
to the three
main bourgeois
coalitions of
Forza
Italia/Lega,
Cinque Stelle
and the PD
with its
various
appendages of
homeless
bourgeois
politicians,
is a mixture
of bourgeois
populism and
social-democratic
reformism. in
the present
climate of
anti-immigrant
hysteria and
fascist
attacks, what
is needed are
mass
mobilizations
bringing out
the power of
the working
class to stop
the fascists.
Above all, we
must forge a
genuinely
Leninist-Trotskyist
vanguard.
Italy:
Anti-Immigrant
Election
Hysteria
(24 February
2018)
Boston:
Let Siham Byah
Come Home! No
Deportations! By
Class Struggle
Education
League
On January 27,
hundreds of
defenders of
immigrant
rights from
many leftist
organizations,
labor unions,
churches and
sanctuary
networks
rallied in
Boston to
protest the
deportation of
Siham Byah. A
prominent
Occupy Boston
activist and
single mother,
Byah was
grabbed by the
Immigration
and Customs
Enforcement
(I.C.E.)
police last
November 7,
torn from her
son, beaten in
a local jail,
driven to
Virginia and
then deported
to Morocco.
The Class
Struggle
Education
League, based
in Lowell,
Mass. and New
Hampshire
participated
in the
protest,
emphasizing
the importance
of mobilizing
the power of
workers action
to stop the
I.C.E.
deportation
machine. It
also noted the
parallel to
the struggle
against
slave-catchers
under the 1850
Fugitive Slave
Act, a battle
which came to
a head in
Boston and set
the stage for
the U.S. Civil
War. The CSEL
is undertaking
joint work
with the
Internationalist
Group. Boston:
Let Siham Byah
Come Home! No
Deportations!
(4 February
2018)
Guess Who’s
Bernie
Sanders’
Foreign Policy
Go-To Guy, and
What Power
Bishop Is His
Vatican Fixer
But, of
course, one
and the same
Jeffrey Sachs
who designed
the
post-counterrevolution
“shock
treatment” in
Poland. Also
in Bolivia
where it led
to tens of
thousands of
workers fired
and brutal
anti-union
repression. In
preparation
for the
no-photo-op
pope-meet-and-greet,
Bernie and
Jeffrey dined
with Cardinal
Óscar Andrés
Rodríguez
Maradiaga of
Honduras, “the
pope’s
right-hand man
and one of the
Vatican’s top
power
players.” This
is the same
cardinal who
helped
engineer
(together with
Hillary
Clinton) the
2009 Honduran
coup, and
before that
covered up for
bloody
massacres and
“disappearances”
in the 1980s.
But then, Pope
Francis
himself is a
veteran of
Argentina’s
1970s dirty
war. Guess
Who's Bernie
Sanders’
Foreign Policy
Go-To Guy, and
His Power
Bishop Vatican
Fixer (17
April 2016)
A
Question of
Whose Class
Interests
Prevail Flint
Water Crisis:
Capitalism Is
Poisoning Us
The residents
of Flint,
Michigan have
been living a
nightmare ever
since in early
2014 the
city’s
state-appointed
“emergency
manager” and
the governor’s
office decided
to switch the
water supply
from Lake
Huron to the
Flint River.
As a result,
the population
has been
subjected to
lead
poisoning,
particularly
affecting the
very young and
elderly. The
levels of
contamination
are
astronomical.
For almost two
years
Republican
state
authorities
and Democratic
federal
officials
refused to do
anything about
complaints.
Now an
emergency has
been
proclaimed,
but the water
is still
undrinkable.
Meanwhile, the
same
“emergency
manager” has
been
overseeing
Detroit
schools as
they descend
further into
the abyss. The
emergency has
been created
by decaying
capitalism:
industrial
pollution,
closing
factories and
a bipartisan
attack on
teachers and
public
education. The
dictatorial
managers must
be kicked out,
but changing
parties will
change
nothing. The
bottom-line
issue is which
class is in
power.
Capitalism is
literally
poisoning our
futures. Flint
Water Crisis:
Capitalism Is
Poisoning Us
(3 March 2016)
The
State of
Pennsylvania
Seeks to Bar
His Lawyer
The
Frame-Up of
Corey Walker By
Charles Brover
Corey Walker
was arrested
in July 1996
on a bogus
murder charge
from
Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
He has been
behind bars
ever since.
Evidence of
his innocence
was withheld.
He is the
victim of
prosecutorial
misconduct and
incompetent
legal
representation.
Lorenzo
Johnson, who
was arrested
in the same
case, also
remains in
prison even
though a
federal
appeals court
recognized the
insufficiency
of the
evidence
against him,
but was
overruled by
the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Now the state
is trying to
deny Walker
the attorney
of his choice,
Rachel
Wolkenstein,
who has
defended Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
Pennsylvania
authorities
will stop at
nothing to
cover up lying
and
manufacture of
evidence,
coercion of
witnesses and
suppression of
evidence of
innocence by
police and
prosecutors.
This requires
silencing
Corey Walker
and
short-circuiting
his legal
appeal. In
seeking to
disqualify
Wolkenstein
from
representing
him, the state
attorney
general's
office cites
her political
views that the
judicial
system is an
organ of
racist
oppression
that must be
overthrown by
socialist
revolution.
This
witch-hunting
attack and the
continued
incarceration
of Walker and
Johnson go to
the heart of
Jim Crow
“justice
system.” Free
Corey Walker
and Lorenzo
Johnson! The
Frame-Up of
Corey Walker
(4 February
2016)
Occupation
of Hundreds of
Schools Blocks
Threatened
Closures
Student
Revolt Shakes
São Paulo,
Brazil
By Class
Struggle
Workers/UFT
For the last
three weeks,
the city of
São Paulo,
Brazil has
been convulsed
by a combative
upheaval of
high school
students
protesting the
state
government’s
plan to close
92 schools and
order hundreds
of thousands
of students to
change
schools. When
the state
governor tried
to ram through
this plan
without
consultation,
students
responded by
occupying
almost 200
schools. Then,
when military
police began
clearing out
occupied
schools this
week, students
took chairs
and tables and
set up class
in busy
intersections
and highways.
The students,
backed by
teachers, also
refused to
take
high-stakes
test. After
several days,
the governor
backed down.
This is
a dramatic
example of how
the
international
capitalist
offensive
against public
education
should be
fought – by
mass action in
the streets,
bringing out
students,
teachers,
parents and
mobilizing the
power of the
working class.
Student
Revolt Shakes
São Paulo,
Brazil (4
December 2015)
The
Haitian
Revolution and
U.S.
Imperialism
July 28 marks
the 100th
anniversary of
the first U.S.
invasion of
Haiti in 1915,
under
Democratic
president
Woodrow
Wilson. This
led to an
occupation of
19 years, as
well as
occupations of
the Dominican
Republic next
door, of
Nicaragua,
Panama,
Honduras and
Veracruz,
Mexico, and
followed the
1898 U.S.
invasion and
occupation of
Cuba, Puerto
Rico and
Philippines.
But the
occupations
didn't stop
there. In
1994, Democrat
Bill Clinton
invaded Haiti
a second time,
and in 2004
Republican
George Bush II
invaded a
third time.
Haiti today
continues
under
imperialist
occupation,
this time
outsourced to
a United
Nations
“peacekeeping”
force. As
proletarian
internationalist
opponents of
imperialism,
on this
centenary we
republish
articles from
Workers
Vanguard
when it was
the voice of
revolutionary
Trotskyism on
the 1915-34
U.S.
occupation,
and a two-part
series on
Toussaint
Louverture and
the Haitian
Revolution
that led to
the first
black republic
in history, as
well as
sparking slave
revolts
throughout the
Caribbean and
in the United
States. (30
July 2015)
Protest
the Police
Lynching of
Sandra Bland
On July 10,
Sandra Bland,
a 28-year-old
African
American
activist and
education
worker, was
driving from
Illinois to
her new job at
the
historically
black Prairie
View A&M
University in
Texas, her
alma mater.
Sandra was
pulled over by
a Texas
Ranger,
supposedly for
changing lanes
without
signalling.
The trooper
abusively
demanded she
get out of the
car,
theatening to
use a Taser
electric shock
on her. After
having her
head slammed
on the ground,
Sandra was
arrested for
supposed
“assault on a
public
servant,” for
insisting on
her rights.
Three days
later, she was
found dead in
her cell in
Waller
County, Texas.
The
authorities
claim she
committed
suicide. We
say the police
are guilty.
Sandra was
lynched by the
cops. On July
22, hundreds
gathered in
New York
City's Union
Square to
protest the
police murder
of Sandra
Bland. Class
Struggle
Education
Workers, CUNY
Internationalist
Clubs and the
Internationalist
Group joined
in. Protest
the Police
Lynching of
Sandra Bland
(22 July 2015) (video)
NYC May Day 2015 The
Internationalist
Group, CUNY
Internationalist
Clubs and
Class Struggle
Education
workers had a
spirited
contingent in
the May Day
march in New
York City.
Leading the
contingent was
a group with
red flags with
the hammer,
sickle and 4
of the Fourth
International.
Then came a
banner made by
the Hunter
Internationalist
Club,
proclaiming:“Ayotzinapa-Ferguson-NYC,
Smash the
Racist
Capitalist
State, Workers
to Power.
Signs
emphasized the
call to Defend
Black
Baltimore
following the
occupation of
the city by
the National
Guard to
squelch the
upheaval over
the police
murder of
Freddie Gray,
and to free
Mumia
Abu-Jamal, who
faces
execution in
prison by
deliberate
medical
neglect. Also
highlighted
was the call
for workers
action against
police terror,
noting the
historic
action by ILWU
Local 10 that
shut down the
port of
Oakland on May
Day and
marched on
City Hall
calling to
stop police
terror.
Sunset
Park Fights
Back Against
Police Attack
It’s
been only two
months since
Eric Garner
was
chokeholded to
death in
Staten Island
by the racist
cops, and
barely a month
and a half
since the
police murder
of 17-year-old
Michael Brown
in Ferguson,
Missouri. But
despite the
national
outcry and a
thousands-strong
march in New
York in late
August, two
incidents in
the Sunset
Park
neighborhood
of Brooklyn
show once
again the face
of racist
police
violence under
liberal
Democratic NYC
mayor Bill de
Blasio. The
first involved
a heavy‑duty
arrest of a
vendor after a
festival in
the park; in
the second, a
cop slammed a
pregnant woman
on the
pavement on
her abdomen
and her son
and husband
were arrested.
The residents
of this
heavily
immigrant
neighborhood
feel singled
out for
aggressive
enforcement
under NYPD
chief William
Bratton’s
“broken
windows”
strategy of
massive
arrests for
minor
infractions.
On Saturday,
September 27,
some 300
people came
out to protest
against the
brutal police
siege. While
many called
for Bratton’s
resignation,
racist cop
terror is
endemic in
capitalist
America. To
put a stop to
it will
require
nothing less
than workers
revolution. Sunset
Park Fights
Back Against
Police Attack
(28 September
2014)
Defend North Korea and China
Against
Imperialism
and
Counterrevolution
U.S.
War
Provocations
Push Korea to
the Brink For the Revolutionary Reunification of Korea, North
and South!
Over the last
month and a
half, the
United States
and South
Korea have
engaged in an
escalating
series of
military
provocations
against North
Korea.
Simultaneous
“war games”
have simulated
a nuclear
aerial bombing
of the North,
a ground
invasion from
the South,
annihilation
of the
leadership and
the
“insertion” of
tens of
thousands of
U.S. troops
searching for
nukes. While
the
imperialist
media are, as
usual,
strenuously
demonizing the
North Korean
leader Kim
Jong Un and
playing up
blustering
statements
coming out of
the North
Korean capital
of Pyongyang,
the Pentagon
has been
laying the
basis for a
military
strike against
the North. The
whole
operation is
part of
detailed plan
elaborated by
the Obama
administration,
dubbed “the
playbook,” for
U.S. shows of
force. But
this is no
football game.
The
Internationalist
Group and
League for the
Fourth
International
defend North
Korea, a
bureaucratically
deformed
workers state,
against the
war
provocations,
economic
blockade and
any attack by
U.S.
imperialism
and its South
Korean junior
partners, no
matter how it
starts. We
also defend
North Korea’s
development of
nuclear
weapons, its
main deterrent
against a war
by the power
which laid
waste to the
North in the
Korean War. U.S.
War
Provocations
Push Korea to
the Brink (13
April 2013)
To contact the League for the Fourth
International write to: Internationalist
Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station,
New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212)
460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711
E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.com
BRAZIL
To contact the Liga
Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write
to: Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-970,
Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil
Caixa Postal 3982, CEP 20010-974,
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
We would like
to hear from you. If you are
interested in learning more
about the Internationalist
Group and the League for the
Fourth International, contact
us at:
internationalistgroup@msn.com