By LAZARO MONTEVERDE “A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the working class shaped the guerrillas’ victory,” by Steve Cushion. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016.) This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Given its durability, revolutionaries should pay close attention to both its successes and failures. This is not always … Continue reading The Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution
By JOHN LESLIE Elcon Recycling, an Israeli-based company, has proposed the construction of a toxic waste processing plant in suburban Philadelphia. The plant would boil toxic chemical and pharmaceutical waste to remove the water from it, reducing the materials to a toxic sludge. The resulting muck, which could contain elements such as lead, cadmium, and … Continue reading Pa. waste facility is a threat to waterways
By MARTY GOODMAN “We have a little minority (of) rich people in this country, running this country, earning everything, and we have the mass of the population dying, hunger, and misery like this. It’s impossible,” said a Haitian protester, Valckensy Dessin, last month. Feb. 7, 2019, marked 33 years since nationwide protests forced the 1986 … Continue reading Haitians say president must go
BULLETIN — APRIL 11 — At 1 p.m. this afternoon, Stop and Shop workers in three New England states walked away from their cash registers, shopping aisles, and stockrooms in a coordinated strike action affecting thousands of workers. Picket lines immediately went up outside the stores. The strike includes workers at about 163 stores in … Continue reading Stop & Shop workers authorize a strike
By BARRY SHEPPARD Chelsea Manning, a transgender U.S. soldier who blew the whistle on U.S. war crimes and spent 2013 to 2017 in an army stockade as a result, is back in prison again. This time, it is because she refuses to join a bipartisan campaign against Wikileaks that seeks to bring Julian Assange from … Continue reading Chelsea Manning jailed — again
By KYLE HARRINGTON and RYAN BALBONI On Feb. 7 and 8, two leading feminists toured Connecticut. Audiences heard Lucía Cavallero, a member of Ni Una Menos, an Argentine feminist collective that has repeatedly put hundreds of thousands of women on the streets in protests against femicide, and Julia Cámara, a member of the coordinating body of … Continue reading International Women’s Strike: ‘If we stop, the world stops’
By ERWIN FREED The Haymarket/Jacobin/Verso jointly edited collection of articles titled “Socialist Strategy and Electoral Politics: A Report” is timely and interesting but ultimately does not put forward what its title promises. Almost the entire history of the electoral practices of independent socialists, the working class, and oppressed nationalities in the United States is missing … Continue reading Books: A round-table discussion on socialist electoral strategy
By JEFF MACKLER and BRUCE LESNICK The relentless U.S. imperial beast has embarked on a full-scale, openly declared, bipartisan regime-change war aimed at overthrowing Venezuela’s democratically elected government headed by President Nicolás Maduro. Top U.S. officials—from President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Adviser John Bolton and special envoy Elliot Abrams of Iran/Contra … Continue reading U.S. gears up for war on Venezuela
By JEFF MACKLER Facing a pro-charter school board intent on closing or consolidating 24 schools in the next five years, presumably to replace some with private for-profit charters, 3000 teachers represented by the Oakland Education Association (OEA) began a district-wide strike on Feb. 21. On the seventh day of the strike, March 1, a tentative … Continue reading After week-long strike, Oakland teachers’ contract falls short
By MARTY GOODMAN On Feb. 14, Amazon, owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos ($166 billion), announced that it was pulling out of a deal made with top New York Democrats for a second Amazon headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, near Manhattan, due to opposition from local politicians. But the resistance was much … Continue reading Protests bust up New York’s Amazon deal
By LISA LUINENBURG On Feb. 15, President Trump declared a National State of Emergency in order to appropriate billions of dollars to build his much-touted wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Even though Congress had granted him $1.375 billion for the border wall in the latest federal budget bill, this wasn’t enough for Trump. He wanted … Continue reading Trump declares fake ‘National Emergency’ to build his border wall
By ANN MONTAGUE Lesbians resist and rebel against institutions and belief systems that oppress us. Starting as young girls we fight against the tyranny of pink. Today, the situation is worse than ever for all girls, as multi-million-dollar corporations become the enforcers of oppressive sex stereotyping. Over the last 10 years, Disney has marketed over … Continue reading Lesbophobia past and present
By OKDE-SPARTAKOS Greek section of the Fourth International Τhe Prespes agreement between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia imposes in the clearest manner the hegemony of the Greek state over the neighboring Macedonian state and constitutes an overwhelming diplomatic and political victory for the Greek bourgeois class. According to the agreement, the Republic of Macedonia … Continue reading Greece & Macedonia: Regarding the Prespes Agreement and the nationalist rallies
By BARRY WEISLEDER “Other Diplomacies, Other Ties: Cuba and Canada in the Shadow of the U.S.,” Luis Rene Fernandez Tabio, Cynthia Wright, and Lana Wylie, ed., 363 pages, University of Toronto Press, 2018. In the wake of Ottawa’s vocal support for the latest U.S.-backed attempt at a coup d’etat in Venezuela, studies on foreign relations … Continue reading Cuba-Canada relations: Diplomacy from below
By GARY PORTER The Canadian state brutally violated the Rights of Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, in the interests of the Oil and Gas Barons. Demonstrations immediately occurred in over 30 cities as thousands of Canadians showed they are fed up with Official Racism. The RCMP moved to enforce a B.C. Supreme … Continue reading RCMP ambushes Indigenous defenders of the land
BY LAZARO MONTEVERDE A review of “What went wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis,” by Dan La Botz. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.) When I visited Nicaragua in 1983 as part of a delegation of religious activists from the Central America Movement, I thought I was witnessing a miracle. The country was radically transformed both … Continue reading The Nicaraguan revolution betrayed
By AUTUMN RAIN and ERWIN FREED On Jan. 28, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing and anti-LGBTQIA group, hosted a panel titled, “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns From the Left.” The speakers were trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) who argued against rights for transgender people, ostensibly “from the left.” Yet one would rightly ask why … Continue reading Self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ on Heritage Foundation panel speak against transgender rights
By ANN MONTAGUE The new wave of teachers’ strikes suggests one way that the fight for women’s liberation from the privatized tasks of social reproduction may unfold. The recent one-week strike in Los Angeles, which featured demands to arrest the privatization of public education and improve student health services, reaffirms the potential of political strikes … Continue reading Teachers’ strikes are women’s strikes
By JEFF MACKLER After seven solid days on the picket lines in drenching rains and in the face of a poor-mouthing school district that swore they were dead broke, 34,000 Los Angeles teachers voted overwhelmingly to approve a three-year contract. Most teachers saw the agreement as an important first step toward stemming the decades-long tidal … Continue reading L.A. teachers’ strike: Gains, losses, and perspectives
By BRUCE LESNICK Ruling elites have united behind the Trump administration in its illegal, unjust, and brutal attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Democrats and Republicans alike have fallen in line, revealing the degree to which the two parties march in lock step when the geopolitical prerogatives of the one percent are … Continue reading Corporate titans target Venezuela
By AUTUMN RAIN The Supreme Court of Japan upheld an abhorrent law that explicitly requires trans people to be sterilized in order to have their gender recognized by the state—a terrible blow to trans people’s rights, and reproductive rights generally. Trans people are denied the right to have their gender legally recognized in many … Continue reading Japan’s highest court upholds sterilizations for trans people
By MARTY GOODMAN On Nov. 13, after long secret negotiations, two New York “progressive” Democrats, Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, jointly announced that Amazon will place one of two new corporate “headquarters” in New York City and the other in Arlington, Va. Virtually kissing the feet of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, whose … Continue reading New York Democrats shower Amazon with $billions
Once again, the Wall Street-captured, war-promoting, servants of the one percent—who administer the U.S. government at the pleasure of, and solely in the interest of, corporate America—have deigned to command a sovereign nation as to how to handle its internal affairs. In a further escalation of the U.S. government’s long-running campaign against the elected Venezuelan … Continue reading U.S. hands off Venezuela!
By ERNIE GOTTA Across the country, teachers in their thousands are fighting back against poor working conditions, low wages, overflowing classrooms, and unusable health care. Following teachers in Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia, Los Angeles teachers erupted in a strike last month. They are 34,000 teachers strong and ready to take a stand against … Continue reading Hartford teachers union fights school board’s assault
By STEVE XAVIER On Jan. 19, there were reports of threats and intimidation against women’s rights events in several cities, including Boston and Orlando, Fla. According to a source, Proud Boys and allied rightists attacked the Portland, Ore., Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) hall and a Democratic Socialists of America meeting in the same … Continue reading Mobilizing against the far right
