By MARTY GOODMAN — NEW YORK — The 2014 chokehold murder of Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old African American man, by a city cop, Daniel Pantaleo, finally got its first public hearing in June—not in a court of law but at an NYPD hearing! The charges against Pantaleo were brought by the semi-independent Civilian Complaint…
By ROZWELL SIMMONS — NEW YORK — In the years since Stonewall, corporations have jumped on the opportunity to use Pride as a means of profit; it has been perverted into a cash grab for companies. This corporatization has played a large role in the depoliticization of Pride. Naturally, it is in the best interests…
By NICK BAKER As U.S. imperialism ceaselessly spreads its tentacles around the globe, its latest victim, yet again, is Iran, the strategically located oil-rich Middle Eastern nation that has resisted U.S. and British colonial domination for over a century. Since its 1979 Revolution that ousted the murderous dictatorship of Shah (meaning “King”) Reza Pahlavi, imposed…
By NICK BAKER Twenty Democrats faced off during two nationally televised “debates” last month, each armed with a few stock phrases they hoped would instantly boost their poll ratings and associated capacity to win additional hundreds of millions of dollars sufficient to defeat Donald Trump for the presidency. The combined 2020 presidential election expenditures are…
By STEVE XAVIER — UPDATED JULY 6 — Reports indicate that the military and civilian opposition forces have reached an accord to end the months of unrest. Under the agreement an 11-member Sovereign Council (SC) would be formed, consisting of five civilians and five representatives of the military. The 11th member would be a civilian…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER Days after a devastating oil-refinery fire and explosion, Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) announced on June 26 that it would close the facility in 15 days. PES is the largest refinery on the East Coast, turning heavy shale oil from North Dakota into gasoline. But it is ridden with debt and only emerged…
By STEVE XAVIER Political prisoner Eddie Goodman Africa, a member of the MOVE 9, was released from prison on the morning of June 2, after 40 years of unjust incarceration. Janet Holloway Africa and Janine Phillips Africa were also released recently (on May 25), becoming the third and fourth MOVE members to be set free…
By ERNIE GOTTA The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has launched multiple attacks in the last seven months against Chinese assets in Balochistan, Pakistan. On Sunday May 12, gunmen from the Majeed Brigade of the BLA claimed responsibility for an attack on a hotel in Gwadar. This most recent attack occurred days after an attack at…
By HEATHER BRADFORD Zillah Eisenstein, “Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution” (New York, Monthly Review Press), 2019, 160 pp. Heather Bradford is the Socialist Action candidate for vice president of the United States in the 2020 elections. An astonishing three to five million people participated in the 2017 Women’s Marches in the United States,…
By RUWAN MUNASINGHE On May 25, the day of the swearing-in of incumbent Prime Minister of India Nahrendra Modi, a 30-year-old man from Bihar, Mohammad Qasim, was bedridden in a hospital in Begusari. A bullet had to be removed from his back. Qasim was one of many victims of a wave of violence against minorities…
By BARRY WEISLEDER On Saturday, May 18, the first Pan-Canadian Day of Action for Palestinian rights took place. In Toronto, close to 500 people rallied and marched to demand justice for the Palestinian people. Shortly after 2 p.m., the gathering at Yonge and Dundas heard the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, listened to music, then speeches…
By JEFF MACKLER We reprint here the introduction to Socialist Action’s new pamphlet entitled, “The Worldwide Crisis of Capitalism and the Relevance of Socialism.” Authored by Socialist Action’s 2020 candidate for the U.S. presidency, Jeff Mackler, the article reviews the central ideas adopted by Socialist Action at its October 2018 Eighteenth National Convention in Minneapolis.…
By BRUCE LESNICK On April 7, 2018, the U.S and its NATO allies accused the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma, outside Damascus. A week later, President Donald Trump, with the support of French and British allies, ordered the launch of 103 missiles. ABC News quoted Defense…
By CAROLINE WINSLOW America has long lauded its school system as a Great Equalizer—a tool that provides all students, regardless of social standing, with the tools necessary to succeed. Thus, goes the narrative, all differences in outcome can be attributed to individual choices, absolving capitalism and the structures tied to it of their responsibility. Education…
By ANN MONTAGUE Almost two years ago, LGBTQ activists in New York City decided that the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion was the time to start organizing to take Pride back from the corporations and return it to being the civil rights and liberation march it was in the past. For many in New…
By ROB LYONS From the 6th to the 8th of May, the first International Academic Conference examining the life and ideas of the great Ukrainian revolutionary and leader of the Russian revolution Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, now universally known as Leon Trotsky, was held in Havana, Cuba. The Conference was organized by the Juan Marinelo Cultural…
By EUROPE SOLIDAIRE SANS FRONTIERES On May 26, 2019, a peaceful procession in the Waziristan region led by Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar, both Members of National Assembly (MNAs), was fired upon by army men, leaving at least 13 dead and over 40 injured. Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar were elected as Members of the…
By STEVE XAVIER “The strike is our revolutionary duty!” Sudan’s government responded with violence after a two-day general strike, demanding a transition to civilian rule, rocked the country. As we go to press on June 3, reports stated that at least 36 were killed as army troops broke up a weeks-long sit-in in Khartoum. CNN…
By MARTY GOODMAN “We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions” — Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron. I was in Washington, D.C., most of the time between May 7 to May 19 to support the Venezuela solidarity activists of…
By JEFF MACKLER (UPDATED FROM EARLIER REPORT) It took some 34 days for the Donald Trump administration to decide on May 18, 2019, to forcefully evict from the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., four antiwar activist members of the Embassy Protection Coalition. The four were there with the formal and express consent of the Venezuelan…
By HEATHER BRADFORD On May 15, the most restrictive abortion law in the United States was signed into law in Alabama by Governor Kay Ivey. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act, which passed the Alabama Senate 25-6, makes abortion illegal at all stages of pregnancy and makes no exception for rape or incest. The bill…
By MARTY GOODMAN — NEW YORK — Jose Lasalle of the Bronx’s Copwatch Patrol Unit (CPU) was awarded a $925,000 settlement with the NYPD on two lawsuits he filed. Cops were caught with their pants down because Lasalle had audio and video to prove his case against the Bronx’s PSA 7 police station. Lasalle had…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE “America’s War for the Greater Middle East,” by Andrew J. Bacevich. (New York: Random House) 2016. In Joe Haldeman’s award-winning 1974 science fiction novel “The Forever War,” elite United Nations troops fight an alien enemy that they don’t understand for reasons that are obscure. Haldeman based the novel on his own experience…
By LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE April 26, 2019 marked the one-year anniversary of the day that the Husky Refinery, in Superior, Wis., exploded and caught fire. For nine hours, toxic fumes blew 30 miles to the south. Eleven workers were injured but soon recovered. Most of this city along the shore of Lake Superior had to…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, “Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto” (London and New York: Verso, 2019), 85 pp. Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser have a mission. They are collaborating to bring the lessons of a new global feminist uprising to the United States. Their latest effort is…
By NICK BAKER “The U.S. ruling-class multi-billionaire elite have two parties, the Democrats and Republicans—the twin parties of war, racism, poverty, and environmental destruction,” said Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action’s 2020 candidate for the U.S. presidency. “We need a party of our own—a mass working-class party based on an independent, reinvigorated, democratic, fighting trade-union movement allied…
