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…
By JEFF MACKLER “Nobody said regime change was going to be easy,” read the first line on the front-page New York Times article of May 2 entitled, “Pressure Rises After Failure In Venezuela.” The article, billed as “news analysis,” continues, “President Trump’s top advisers woke up Tuesday [April 30] believing that a rebellion in…
By ERWIN FREED and ERNIE GOTTA The UFCW’s historic 11-day strike that involved over 31,000 Stop and Shop workers and covered all stores in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts came to an end on April 21. As covered at socialistaction.org (April 11), the demand of the union was to maintain all wage, benefit, and work…
By BARRY WEISLEDER Federal Secretary, Socialist Action (Canada) May Day is OUR day. “Labour Day” treats Labour like a commodity. May 1 honours workers as a class, as a conscious, fighting movement. We are a living, creative force with the power to change the world. On May Day, even in the pouring rain in downtown…
By STEVE XAVIER Mass protests leading to the downfall of long-term rulers in Sudan and Algeria have evoked memories of the Arab Spring protests eight years ago. That wave of protests began in Tunisia with the December 2010 self-immolation suicide of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi. The Tunisian government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali…
By JOHN LESLIE On the evening of April 30, a contentious meeting of the Falls Township Board of Supervisors denied the site plan application for the Israeli-based Elcon Recycling to build a 32-acre toxic waste “treatment” plant in lower Bucks County, Pa. Hundreds of area residents turned out to oppose construction of the toxic facility.…
By JEFF MACKLER Two months in the planning, the April 6 public forum at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley represented a profound contribution to renewing the justice and freedom struggle of the innocent and framed for murder political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. A capacity-filling multi-racial and multi-generational crowd of 400 people, including a broad range…
By LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE and ADA RITSCHER The Twin Ports of Superior, Wis., and Duluth, Minn., have had to confront several incidents by white nationalist groups in recent years. In one notable event, in 2012, one of the groups had a public event at Duluth City Hall, which was protected by the police when some…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup,” by Dana Frank. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018). Activist and scholar Dana Frank has given us a useful book to help us understand the present events in Honduras, at the U.S.-Mexico border, and elsewhere in Latin America.…
By JOHN LESLIE In the suburban Philadelphia neighborhoods surrounding a two now-closed U.S. Navy air bases, residents are faced with a drinking water crisis. Groundwater contaminated with carcinogens linked to a fire fighting foam forced the closing of both public and private wells. The Department of Defense (DoD) knew as early as 2001 that fire…
By JEFF MACKLER The sensational news on April 17 that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner withdrew his appeal of Superior Court Judge Leon Tucker’s granting of new appeal rights to Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a major breakthrough in Mumia’s 37-year freedom struggle. Krasner’s decision opens the door wide to re-building a broad and decisive movement in…
