Coronavirus is demonstrating the essential basis upon which our society exists: the working class and the necessity of labour. Workers and their unions must take the lead and control this lockdown.
Jeremy Dewar reviews From BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Millions of Americans hoping to evict Donald Trump from the White House have turned to the Democratic Party’s contest to determine their next presidential candidate for the 2020 election. While Trump has been blocked from enacting many of his pledges, he has done tremendous damage from the Oval Office: detention prisons locking up immigrant children […]
Donald Trump has just signaled a dramatic shift in US policy in northern Syria, betraying his erstwhile allies the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the Kurdish YPG militia are the dominant force. The 60,000 SDF fighters had provided him – and Obama before him – with the boots on the ground that defeated the […]
Car workers in the US are entering their fourth week of all-out strike action as we go to press. The largest auto strike since 2007 is solid so far. In fact the strikers have elicited solidarity action from Mexican GM workers, and have now been joined by others in South Korea. On 16 September, 48,000 […]
Our perspectives on the current global situation, League for the Fifth International Congress in Berlin, June 2019
Cohabiting in the Democrats will inevitably lead socialists to compromising with the representatives of capital who lead it
The 10-week textile strike in 1912 is one of the greatest strikes in US labour history and unlike many others it was a victory.
By Tobi Hansen They have been on the road since October 12, a “caravan” of more than 7,000 refugees from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, heading for Tijuana on the US-Mexican border. Now they have reached southern Mexico. They have chosen this course of action because they no longer see any hope of a minimally […]
Image Credit: C. Suthorn SATURDAY 6 October 2018, United States Senate Chamber. Vice President Mike Pence, a man who has stated that it is his express goal to make abortion illegal in the US “in our time”, presides over the final vote to confirm alleged sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh as the next Justice of the […]
By Marcus Otono NASHVILLE, TN – In April of this year, inmates at the Lee Correctional Center in South Carolina took strike action in protest at the brutal conditions in the prison. As if to prove their point, seven men died as a result of the authorities’ actions to break the strike. In response, prisoners […]
By Jeremy Dewar, Lambeth Unison delegate (pc) and Marcus Otono, Workers Power USA. THREE THOUSAND trade unionists assembled in Chicago for Labor Notes’ biennial conference on 8-11 April. Many there claimed it was the biggest Labor Notes conference ever. But numbers alone cannot convey the energy, the diversity, the militancy on display. Workers’ struggles At […]
By Markus Lehner “Trade wars are good” – Donald Trump Though Donald Trump’s tweets often seem mere clowning, the decrees he signed imposing import duties on steel and aluminium, and subsequent threats of further punitive duties on Chinese imports, do have to be taken seriously. The US president has used a loophole that allows him […]
By Mekdela Ejigu THE limited legal abortion and women’s reproductive rights available in the United States exist in a permanent state of siege enforced by the Republican party and religious conservatives across the country. During President Obama’s terms, Republican House and Senate members repeatedly attempted to block abortion clinics from operating in their districts with […]
ERICA GARNER, the Black Lives Matter activist and Bernie Sanders campaigner, has died after a heart attack, aged just 27. Erica was thrust into political activism when white New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo killed her father Eric Garner in an asphyxiating chokehold in 2014, months after the murder of Michael Brown provoked US-wide protests. […]
HUNDREDS OF thousands took to the streets in cities across the US on January 20 and 21 to mark the anniversary of the huge protests against the inauguration of Donald Trump and the threat he poses to women’s rights. This year authorities estimated that well over 100,000 people attended the New York rally and that […]
THE DEMOCRATIC socialists of America (DSA) grouping has witnessed astonishing growth over the past year, going from around 5,500 members to 26,000. It now claims 2,000 members in New York City alone. The DSA’s growth began with the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015, thanks in part to Sanders’ self-designation as a “democratic socialist” and his […]
By Dave Stockton NORTH KOREA’S Hydrogen bomb test has underlined once again not only the capacity of Kim Jong-un’s regime to achieve its nuclear ambitions, but also the failure of all attempts to stop that with threats. As futile as US President Donald Trump’s bluster has been, however, it ramps up the danger that either […]
FOR 800,000 DREAMERS the morning of 5 September saw their American Dream turn into a nightmare. Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced the end of Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme. Introduced in 2012, this allowed undocumented migrants under the age of 16 to obtain residence and work permits lasting two […]
IN THE US, a president’s first 100 days in office is always a test of the change in direction, if any, from one administration to the next. That’s especially true this year, with the Republican sweep of both houses of the US Congress as well as the Presidency, plus holding on to most of the […]
Donald Trump’s presidency has galvanised opposition. But turning resistance into victories will not be easy. Republicans control both houses of Congress, the Presidency and hardline conservatives will undoubtedly soon control the Supreme Court. At a state level they hold power in 32 state legislatures plus 33 governorships, covering 61 per cent of the U.S. population. […]
ANYONE WHO doubted that Donald Trump’s arrival as 45th president of the United States heralded a major change in both the country’s internal and external relationships must surely have been forced to think again by his inaugural address and the barrage of executive orders issued in his first week. Many political commentators and leader writers who put their […]
WHEN PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump selects one of the most notorious climate sceptics, Scott Pruit, to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) you know the planet is in trouble. Pruitt, is part of the team waging a legal action by 28 states against the EPA to halt Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, an attempt to […]
ON 8 NOVEMBER Donald Trump rode a wave of anti-establishment anger to become the 45th president of the United States in the bitterest campaign of modern times. Trump used blatant distortions and outright lies to convince voters that only he was telling things as they are, only he recognised the sufferings of ordinary Americans, only […]
By Marcus Otono Karl Marx once said, when discussing the realities of politics and elections in the bourgeois state, that: “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and oppress them”. Although this has always been true, it seems that it’s never been […]
By Marcus Otono We have compared the police and vigilante terror against black people in the United States to a horror version of the film “Groundhog Day” before. The overt murder of unarmed, black citizens killed by police is a recurring theme in the news and on social media. And it’s on social media that […]
By Andy Yorke In this year’s US presidential race, a month is a long time. March saw the tensions in American politics stretched close to breaking point. The billionaire demagogue Donald Trump widened his lead, forced out the Republican establishment’s favourite, Marco Rubio, whipped up support with his racist, jingoistic campaign to “Make America Great […]
Can Bernie Sanders do more than pave the way for Clinton? By Andy Yorke THE 2016 US Presidential election was expected to be boring, from predictable start to status quo finish. It was supposed to be Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton: both insiders from Republican and Democrat political dynasties, both with strong ties to big […]
The images of the Black Panthers – black berets and leather jackets, afros, guns, the pouncing panther – and their enduring inspiration are so great that it’s hard to believe that this is only the second full length film documenting their rise and fall. However, it is well worth the wait. The footage and interviews […]
By Marcus Otono 6 August 2015 The slaughter of six Black women and three men by 21 year-old Dylann Roof at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on 17 June was an act of terrorism motivated by race hate. The reluctance of media and politicians to use the T word, that otherwise they use so […]