By Malik Miah [Editor’s note: The article below is an updated and expanded version of a previous article by the author.} Tyre Nichols, 29, was murdered by police in yet another modern-day lynching in Memphis, Tennessee on January 7. The city is nearly 70 percent African American, including a Black female police chief. What was … Continue reading U.S. Systemic Racism: From Slavery to George Floyd and Tyre Nichols
By JEFF MACKLER After 15 raucous votes spanning almost two weeks, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-California, was elected House Speaker on January 7. The vote was 216-212, a party-line vote with six Republicans voting present. From the beginning, former President Donald Trump pressured his 20 super-supporters, mostly in the Republicans’ “rightwing” Freedom Caucus, to back McCarthy. They refused until several behind-the-scenes deals, and a new “rules package” governing House operations, were negotiated.
By JEFF MACKLER The political score sheet between Republicans and Democrats now appears even, with both investigating and exposing each other’s illegal confiscation of classified documents, implicitly in both cases, to cover up heinous deeds, the least of which involves exposing the truth about the U.S. role in orchestrating the bi-partisan war in Ukraine. No doubt, the lead up to the 2024 elections will see capitalism’s twin parties once again exposing each other’s duplicities to garner votes in the nation’s periodic contests between the billionaire elite. But on critical questions like the “right” and obligation of U.S. imperialism to impose its will on the world’s people, there is no dispute.
By JEFF MACKLER Led by the dominant capitalist-imperialist nations, especially the U.S. and China, the system involves the capture and transfer of surplus value from workers in poorer countries to leading corporations in the advanced countries. Today, global value chain corporations that represent only 15 percent of all trading firms worldwide, capture some 80 percent of total trade.
By BRUCE LESNICK With the imminent demise of the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, discussion has turned to what should come next. Some, including Seattle Socialist City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, have agitated for creating a generic “party of the left.” But what does that mean? As we shall see, it's a troublingly … Continue reading The presidential election: What’s left?
By MIKE PINHO and BILL ONASCH On April 13, nearly 40,000 Verizon workers on the East Coast, from Maine to Virginia, walked off the job. In the largest U.S. strike in five years, workers from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) walked out in response to the … Continue reading Verizon workers fight corporate greed
By JEFF MACKLER That the leading Republican Party presidential candidate, multi-billionaire Donald Trump, is a full-blown reactionary caricature of a capitalist politician is now the common parlance of most major media outlets. Even the relatively conservative Washington Post featured a Dec. 1 Dana Milibank column entitled, “Donald Trump Racist Bigot.” Milibank, reflecting the general unease … Continue reading ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
By DANIEL ADAM Senator Bernie Sanders continues to draw large crowds to his presidental campaign rallies. Now, unfortunately, a growing wing of the socialist movement in the United States is seeking a way in. On July 29, Solidarity published a winding statement approved by its convention entitled, “Connecting Sanders’ Audience’s Aspirations to Clear Working Class … Continue reading Is Sanders campaign a ‘new movement’?
By BILL ONASCH Netroots Nation bills its live body gatherings as the biggest conference of Progressives—by which they mean liberal Democrats. At their annual conclave, held in Phoenix in July, they featured a presidential candidate Town Hall Meeting that included the two top long-shot challengers to Hillary Clinton for the Donkey Party nod—Senator Bernie Sanders, … Continue reading Whose Lives Matter?
By JOE AUCIELLO “… the oppositional criticism is nothing more than a safety valve for mass dissatisfaction, a condition of the stability of the social structure.” — Leon Trotsky in his preface to “The History of the Russian Revolution.” In early June, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a conference organized by Service Employees International … Continue reading Bernie Sanders & oppositional criticism
By DANIEL ADAM If history records any gains for working people in the coming electoral season, the term “sheepdog” might well appear at the top. Its author (or at least, its popularizer), Bruce Dixon, describes with it those leftish candidates who appear in presidential primaries to corral the radicalizing or disillusioned back to the flock … Continue reading Sanders seeks nomination by Democrats
By BILL ONASCH The annual ritual of President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress (SOTU), required by law and custom, comes without any mandate for action. It has evolved into Reality TV viewed by tens of millions—but with less lasting impact than the style decrees of Fashion Police. It is one component of … Continue reading Obama’s lame duck quackery
BY JEFF MACKLER President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address on Jan. 21 represented a verbal departure from the record of corporate subservience that marked his first four years in office. His 2009 inaugural opened with, “I thank George Bush for his service to our nation,” a promise to the corporate elites who run the United States … Continue reading Obama: Corporate politics in disguise
BY JEFF MACKLER The $6 billion U.S. election extravaganza—conducted virtually year round in the modern era to consciously dull the senses of capitalism’s working masses with an unending torrent of myths, half truths, and lies—is over. The mask of a progressive, humanistic, caring, environmentally concerned, if not antiwar president, Barak Obama, has been carefully fitted … Continue reading Obama: The corporate choice
By DAVID BERNT CHICAGO—In the aftermath of the historic Chicago teachers’ strike there are many lessons to be learned. The strike of 26,000 teachers was the most significant strike in the United States since 15 years ago, when UPS workers walked out in a national strike. In striking, the Chicago Teachers Union was able to … Continue reading Lessons of Chicago teachers’ strike
