By JEFF MACKLER Part II. (Part I appeared in August 2018.) In today’s epoch of worldwide imperialist intervention and war, real revolutions are hard to make, even harder to maintain, and sometimes difficult to define in their evolution or degeneration. Today’s antiwar movement debate on the still-unfolding dynamics operating in Nicaragua is a case in…
By JOHN LESLIE Trump’s reactionary immigration policies have created a climate of fear in immigrant communities. Deportations, workplace raids, and hate crimes are on the rise as ICE, police, and far-right vigilantes target immigrant workers and their families. Naturalized citizens are now the object of administration reviews of their citizenship status, based on the expansion…
By ERNIE GOTTA The Connecticut Secretary of State’s office is threatening to rule Iraq War veteran Fred Linck, the Socialist Action candidate for U.S. Senate, off the ballot. Dozens of petitions are still in the hands of town clerks (likely containing hundreds of uncounted signatures), and a cursory examination of a sample of counted signatures…
By KJELL OSTBERG The outcome of the Swedish parliamentary election on 9 September confirms a general European trend: rising right-wing populism and a weakening Social Democracy. The traditional picture of Sweden as the home of a progressive social democratic welfare state has been fading away for several decades now. The outcome of the Swedish parliamentary…
By BRUCE LESNICK Humanity faces a multi-faceted crisis. Endless wars of imperial aggression, both overt and covert—from Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan to Yemen, Palestine, and Central and South America. These conflagrations compel those at the bottom of the economic pyramid to fight and die to protect the wealth and privileges of those at the…
By DON HARMON “Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice” is one of the rallying cries for the march and protest to be held in San Francisco and many other cities on Saturday, Sept. 8. (Sept. 6 in New York City.) In San Francisco, the march will begin at 10 a.m. at the Embarcadero Plaza and continue…
By JEFF MACKLER Analyzing President Donald Trump’s excoriating traditional U.S. trading partners at the Group of Seven’s (G7) May meeting in Quebec, Marxist economist Michael Roberts commented: “What all these Trumpist antics revealed is that the period of the Great Moderation and globalization, from the 1980s to 2007, when all major capitalist states worked together…
By FRED LINCK Below are remarks by Socialist Action Senatorial candidate Fred Linck to an Aug. 25 Connecticut rally in solidarity with the national prison strike. Organizers reported in the first days that incarcerated people in 17 states had joined the strike—risking severe punishment for their effort. Some were engaged in refusals to work, in…
By STEVE XAVIER John McCain, the right-wing U.S. Senator, and war criminal, from Arizona, has died after a struggle with brain cancer. More recently, McCain has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump’s presidency on certain aspects of policy. Predictably, liberals and social democrats have joined with conservatives and centrists to heap praise…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER — PHILADELPHIA — Oral arguments on behalf of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will take place here on Aug. 30 before Judge Leon Tucker of the city and county Court of Common Pleas. Defense activists plan to fill the courtroom and to demonstrate outside to demand a new trial for Mumia and his…
By BARRY WEISLEDER I strongly recommend the latest book by Ian Angus, “A Redder Shade of Green.” This anthology, published by Monthly Review Press (New York, 2017, 198 pages), contains well-written articles, very accessible to non-experts, that first appeared between 2009 and 2017. They summarize the latest scientific findings on the state of the environment and provide…
By MARTY GOODMAN Haitian immigrants face a double-barreled wall of racism, from Donald Trump as well as from the historic racism of the ruling class of the Dominican Republic, which shares its border with Haiti. After decades of racist bipartisan immigration policy toward Haitians, in November 2017 Donald Trump revoked the Temporary Protective Status (TPS)…
By ANDY BARNS The immigration crisis in the United States has two essential forces at play. One is the struggle of immigrant workers to find a better life, away from the horrors created by U.S. imperialism in their home countries. The other deals with the forces of capitalist class rule within the United States, who…
By JOHN LESLIE Facing poor working conditions and mistreatment that made workers feel “like slaves,” workers at Jasic Technologies are attempting to form a union in Shenzhen, China. On May 10, a delegation of workers delivered a petition to the company and the officially recognized Workers Union. After first expressing support for the workers’ effort…
By RUWAN MUNASINGHE “The structuring of the LSSP leadership … showed itself best during the August 1953 Hartal (general strike). The LSSP leadership appeared as a really revolutionary team at the head of insurgent masses, fighting in the streets simultaneously for immediate material gains for the impoverished masses and for the socialist overthrow of the…
HARTFORD, Conn. — On Aug. 8, volunteers for the campaign to elect Fred Linck turned in more than 10,900 signatures to the Secretary of State to secure a ballot line for U.S. Senate in the November elections (7500 are required to qualify). Fred Linck is an antiwar Iraq veteran, a climate justice activist with 350…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Since April, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have taken to the streets in protest of the policies of the government led by FSLN President Daniel Ortega. The protests at one point escalated to road blocks and occupations and have been fiercely resisted by the government. Undoubtedly, Nicaraguan society is in crisis. Here,…
By JEFF MACKLER The unfolding events in Nicaragua over the past three months pose two critical questions for socialists and antiwar activists. Where do we stand on the critical issue of U.S. imperialist intervention and where do we stand with regard to the dynamics of the still-unfolding confrontations? That U.S. imperialism is intervening in Nicaragua…
By STEVE XAVIER On Aug. 4, the Patriot Prayer group, led by Joey Gibson, the GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Washington state, organized a mobilization of far right and neo-fascist groupings in Portland, Ore. This rally included the proto-fascist Proud Boys, an organization that has repeatedly, and violently, attacked the Occupy ICE camp in Portland.…
By ANN MONTAGUE Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. In the early morning hours, gay men and lesbians fought back against the police raid of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. After that event, which began in the early morning of June 28,1969, Gay Liberation had joined the lexicon of Women’s…
By CLAUDIO KATZ Writing about Nicaragua is as painful and sad as it is absolutely necessary. Memories of the Sandinista revolution are still alive among the generation who knew this feat. Remaining silent would be an affront to those who participated in that memorable insurrection against Somoza. The events of recent months offer little doubt:…
Por CLAUDIO KATZ [1] Escribir sobre Nicaragua es tan doloroso y triste como indispensable. Los recuerdos de la revolución sandinista todavía están vivos en la generación que conoció esa gesta. El silencio sería una afrenta a los que participaron en esa memorable insurrección contra Somoza. Los hechos de los últimos meses ofrecen pocas dudas.…
By FOURTH INTERNATIONAL BUREAU Children separated from their families and caged in Trump’s USA, thousands drowning as they cross the Mediterranean, boats transporting migrants refused the right to dock by Salvini’s Italy, Orban’s Hungary declaring that helping refugees is a crime, 370 thousand Rohingya fleeing from to Bangladesh after another military raid and massacres by…
By BARRY WEISLEDER The June 7 election of the Doug Ford-led Progressive Conservative Party to government in Ontario means an escalation of the class war against working people, visible minorities, and impoverished social layers. The former right-wing Toronto city councillor and brother of deceased Mayor Rob Ford cloaked his fiercely anti-labour agenda in populist rhetoric…
By MARTY GOODMAN “Technique is a weapon to do whatever must be done.”— Cecil Taylor “Conquistador” was the first Cecil Taylor jazz album that I ever heard. It astonished me, and the title piece nailed me to the wall with its dangerous, urban sound. Taylor’s sideman, Jimmy Lyons, blew amazing sax riffs; the coolest, hippest,…
By MARTY GOODMAN A showdown between capital and labor in France over the privatization of the national railroad will extend into the summer and possibly beyond. France’s nationalized railroad, SNCF, is a source of pride for most French people—and in particular, for rail workers, who recognize the landmark rights they’ve won by striking over many…
