By BARRY WEISLEDER and GARY PORTER Q: When should workers oppose nationalization of an industry? A: When it is a bail-out of a nature-destroying, Indigenous rights violating, ruthlessly greedy corporation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision on May 29 to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline is that, and much worse. While the Liberal federal government can’t come…
By ADAM RITSCHER — DULUTH, Minn. — On May 29, by a vote of 7 to 1, the Duluth City Council passed an “Earned Safe and Sick Time” ordinance. The new law mandates that all business owners in the city give their workers time off when they are sick and need time off for other…
By JEFF MACKLER North Carolina teachers capped off two months of unprecedented national teacher militancy as they rallied 20,000 strong at the state capitol on May 16. During their one-day “sick leave” strike, the teachers closed down 40 local school districts with one million students. As with the previous five statewide teacher strikes in 2018,…
A joint statement by Socialist Action (U.S.) and Socialist Action/Ligue pour l’action socialiste in the Canadian state. The recent imposition of a 25% tariff on steel imports to the United States and a 10% tariff on aluminum from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union follow the earlier imposition of these tariffs on the rest of the…
The campaign to elect Socialist Action candidate Fred Linck to the U.S. Senate is gaining steam. At press time, supporters have gathered over 2500 signatures to get him on the November ballot in Connecticut. On June 2, supporters collected 440 signatures at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Hartford, Conn. Especially popular was the demand…
By JEFF MACKLER Executions are scheduled at one minute after midnight at San Quentin Prison, just over the San Rafael Bridge in Marin County and overlooking the San Francisco skyline. On the cold winter night of Feb. 10, 2004, death-row inmate Kevin Cooper was being fully prepped for the hereafter, dressed in a new set…
By LISA LUINENBURG Trump’s views on immigrants are well known. Over the past year and some months that he has been president, Trump has attempted to bully Congress into enacting ever more draconian measures targeting undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. He has threatened to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He…
By MARTY GOODMAN Worsening poverty and attacks on organized labor by South Africa’s neo-liberal African National Congress (ANC) government have ignited a wave of working-class militancy, resulting in a general strike on April 25. The militant action targeted a planned minimum wage of just 20 rand ($1.60) an hour, calling it “slave labor” wages. It…
By GARY PORTER On May 29, Canada’s federal government announced that it would purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline from the American corporation Kinder Morgan—despite opposition from environmentalists and Indigenous people. “The Trans Mountain expansion project is of vital interest to Canada and Canadians,” Bill Morneau, the finance minister, told reporters after a cabinet meeting to…
By CLAUDIO KATZ In the middle of his term, Argentinian president [Mauricio] Macri cannot hide the monumental abyss between his promises and reality. The promise was of an influx of dollars to lower inflation, with high growth, job creation, an entrepreneurial boom and eradication of social assistance. A drastic reduction of the fiscal deficit and…
By BARRY WEISLEDER The world’s debt load has ballooned to a record $164 trillion, a trend that could make it harder for countries to cope with the next capitalist recession and pay off debts if financing conditions tighten, the International Monetary Fund said in April. Global public and private debt swelled to 225 per cent…
UPDATE, May 26 — Votes are still being counted, but exit polls predict that the repeal of the Eighth Amendment has won overwhelmingly. It is expected that the “yes” vote will amount to about 68 percent of those voting. It is a great victory for women’s right to choose. Socialist Democracy urges all socialists and…
By ANDY BARNS The more pervasive and unchallenged propaganda is, the more effective it becomes. As a salesman by trade, I handle a lot of promotional materials for the products we sell at my workplace (booklets and product samples). These range from decking, to fasteners, all the way to kitchen faucets. I have a front-row…
By DEWITT KENNARD The total number of the world’s displaced people is at an all-time high. Fear of persecution caused by war, race, religion, or political affiliation is a force that drives these people from their homelands. El Salvador, a country that lost about 25 percent of its population to migration during its civil war, is…
By JOHN LESLIE The Great Return March culminated on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, known to the Palestinian people as the Nakba (catastrophe). Israel hit Gaza with air strikes and tank fire, claiming to be targeting Hamas positions. A day earlier, a mass mobilization of more than 100,000…
For more than 70 years, Palestinians have endured the crimes of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, disenfranchisement, destruction, and death at the hands of apartheid Israel, with the unqualified backing of the United States, as well as the tolerance of this ongoing trampling on humanity and justice by the international community. As Israelis celebrate the May 14,…
By ERWIN FREED On May 8, CT Bail Fund called a rally outside of York Correctional Institute, a women’s prison in Niantic, Conn. Eleven other groups were listed as co-sponsors on the events facebook page and around 40 people showed up in solidarity. The rally was called in conjunction with the Bail Fund’s successful effort…
By ERWIN FREED — UPDATED, JUNE 19 — At the beginning of 2018, Iran saw the largest uprising of labor militancy in a decade. The Islamic Republic’s armed goons managed to smash the resistance of workers and peasants, killing dozens and jailing hundreds in the process. But Iranian workers have remained mobilized, while the social…
By LISA LUINENBURG When I became a mother three and a half years ago, I began to feel my oppression as a woman in capitalist society more acutely. All of the endless demands on my time began to add up—the sleepless nights, the feedings, child care, cooking, housework, errands and laundry around the clock. And…
By CHRISTINE MARIE “Karl Marx once said that there must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without decreasing its misery.” With these words, the Socialist Action candidate for U.S. Senate from Connecticut, Fred Linck, began his April 28 talk to a roomful of students at the…
By BRUCE LESNICK The U.S. and its Gulf and NATO allies have been fighting a war of aggression against Syria for over five years. Plans to replace the Syrian government with one more subservient to the needs of U.S. corporate interests began well before that. The Pentagon has spent $41.1 billion in Syria since 2001,…
By JEFF MACKLER It’s been a long while since anyone alive has seen working people successfully fight back against capitalist cruelty with winning class-struggle strategies and tactics. Today, teachers, and their allies among state workers and working-class families in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado have set an inspiring example for the entire U.S.…
By DAVID KIELY Our dear comrade Annette Gagne died in Providence, R.I., on March 14, the 135th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death in 1883. In her last moments, Annette was surrounded by friends and comrades. All were people who, as a close friend of Annette said, “meant the world to her.” Annette’s political legacy as…
By JOHN LESLIE The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office continues to stonewall in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. At a court hearing on April 30, prosecutors failed, once again, to produce a memorandum allegedly signed by former Philadelphia District Attorney and retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille. Under the 2016 Williams v. Pennsylvania…
By ANN MONTAGUE — LONDON — Every day here in Britain there is more news about the Windrush scandal. Workers arriving in the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1973 from Caribbean countries have been labeled the “Windrush Generation.” This refers to the ship HMT Empire Windrush, which first arrived in England in June 1948, bringing…
By KEITH COOK Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 1, 2018). I was stationed in Europe 37 years ago when I received the call that all black families dread. My little brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal, had been shot by the police and was fighting for his life. Mumia was the kindest and gentlest of my five…
