Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

No to “Secure Communities” in NY – Stop the ICE Dragnet!
Protest Obama’s Mass Deportations of Immigrants
The federal government of President Barack Obama has announced that it is overriding state objections to impose its “Secure Communities” mass deportation program on New York, Massachusetts and several other states starting on Tuesday, May 15. There should be a massive mobilization against this outrageous attack on immigrant working people. A protest has been announced for Monday, May 14, from 12 to 2 p.m. at the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan. We urge people to attend to show their outrage. But while demonstration organizers call for timid “immigration reform,” we oppose all cooperation with the migra immigration cops, and call for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Protest Obama’s Mass Deportations of Immigrants (May 2012)

Special Issue
(May 2012)

Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Deportation Elections 2012: For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
May Day, the international workers day, since the massive marches in 2006 has become the day of struggle of immigrant workers as well. On May Day 2012, the American presidential election campaign is well underway. In the Republican primaries, each candidate tried to be more reactionary than the other. The virtual nominee, Mitt Romney, has called for immigrants to “self-deport.” Democratic president Barack Obama, meanwhile, is trying to outdo the Republicans in imperialist war abroad and police-state repression “at home.” Even as he appeals for the Hispanic vote by again promising to make immigration reform a priority after reelection, Obama has deported 400,000 immigrants a year, far more than his Republican predecessor ever did, earning him the title “Mr. Deportation”. The Internationalist Group fights for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, to break with the capitalist parties and build a revolutionary workers party. Deportation Elections 2012: For a Revolutionary Workers Party! (May 2012)

Trotskyism vs. Social Democracy and Anarcho-Liberalism
The Left, Labor and Occupy
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist “demands” on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel “black bloc” anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against “ultraleftists” in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers’ struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle. The Left, Labor and Occupy (May 2012)

Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland’s D12 Port Blockade
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
On December 12th, hundreds of activists from Portland, Oregon converged on the Port of Portland to shut it down as part of the West Coast Port Shutdown called for by Occupy Oakland. Many activists had never been on a picket line before, and debates began as the pickets settled in at the entrances to the Port about the strategies and tactics necessary to carry the day. Although the ILWU leadership resisted the shutdown from beginning to end, the membership decisively supported the action by not going to work that day. The intervention of class-struggle trade unionists from the ranks of the picket was key to avoiding a counterproductive confrontation. The lessons from the D12 shutdown are clear: Rather than acting on behalf of Port workers, it’s far more effective to act in solidarity with them. Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland’s D12 Port Blockade (May 2012)

Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin
Outrage over the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin compounds daily as the killer remains free, facing no criminal charges for gunning down the unarmed black youth from Miami Gardens, Florida. On February 26, George Zimmerman, a white self-appointed captain of a “neighborhood watch” team in a gated community in the Orlando suburb of Sanford, shot Martin, a black high-school student, who was returning to the home in the development where he and his father were staying. Police and local prosecutors never charged Zimmerman and accepted his cynical claim that he shot the unarmed youth in “self-defense.” Thousands have demonstrated around the country, particularly after police tapes of 911 calls by Zimmerman were released, showing that he was stalking Martin. But the main thrust of liberals is to divert the protests into a movement for gun control laws and to get rid of “Stand Your Ground” laws. The ruling-class response seeks to take the heat off the police and tries to obscure the key fact that this was racist murder. Trayvon Martin was killed for the “crime” of “walking while black.” Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin (26 March 2012)

Gofers for the ILWU Bureaucracy
SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview
In a recent article, the centrist Spartacist League joined reformists including the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Workers Party in acting as apologists for the bureaucracy of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The SL goes even further, defending an attack by ILWU bureaucrats against ILWU speakers at a January 6 Occupy forum in Seattle to build solidarity with Longview longshore. We warned that the ILWU tops had made major concessions in the contract that capped that key struggle. Now that the terms of the concessionary contract (which has never been voted on by the Local 21 membership) have become known, it is even worse than feared: it allows the company to choose its workers, and a key clause threatens the very heart of ILWU power, the union hiring hall. SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview (March 2012)

Showdown in Alma: To Win, Mobilize the Power
of the Entire Workers Movement
Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan
On January 1, the bosses of the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum plant in the city of Alma, in northeastern Quebec, imposed a lockout in order to stifle the will to struggle of the 787 working men and women. By means of a sharp increase in subcontracting, the world leader of aluminum production wants to drastically reduce the wages of several hundred workers to less than half of what they earn today. The locked-out workers have received many gestures of solidarity, but what counts is action. It is necessary to strike and occupy all of the RTA installations in Quebec and the rest of Canada to cut off its profits at the source. For the workers to win, they must break the chains imposed by the bourgeois courts and undertake determined class struggle to impose the law of the workers against that of the bosses. Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan (20 February 2012)

Bloody Bogalusa, 1919: When Four White Unionists Died
Defending Their Black Comrades
In November 1919, black and white workers joined in struggle for their rights at the Great Southern Lumber sawmill in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The company, founded by Northern investors, was determined to defeat unionization at all costs and keep the predominantly black workers down. When a posse of lynchers came for the leading black organizer, Sol Dacus, he escaped and the next day marched down the main street of town accompanied by two white unionists with shotguns. The company dispatched a horde of 150 gunmen from its private army who attacked the union offices, killing four white members of the Carpenters union, J.P. Bouchillon, Stanley O'Rourke, Lem Williams and Thomas Gaines. The company won, but the example of black-white labor solidarity set the background for the rise of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in the 1960s and continues to inspire today. Labor cannot unionize the South without rooting out the bloody legacy of slavery and the Confederacy. Honor the heroes of Bogalusa 1919! Bloody Bogalusa, 1919 (February 2012)

All Honor to Our Comrade Marília,
A Communist and Poet of Struggle
Sadly, comrade Marília Costa Machado died today, 15 February 2012. It was an irreparable loss of a communist comrade who during her career of 30 years as an educator was always in the vanguard of the teachers of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Marília had been a director of the SEPE teachers union and as a writer she published two books of poems. In 1997 she was named Muse of Poetry of the city of Rio de Janeiro, notably for her poems against the military dictatorship. As a member of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (Fourth Internationalist League of Brazil) and the Comitê de Luta Classista (Class Struggle Committee), her internationalism placed her in the forefront of the campaign to free Mumia Abu Jamal. All Honor to Our Comrade Marília, A Communist and Poet of Struggle (February 2012)

Poems and Photos of Comrade Marília Machado [in Portuguese] (February 2012)

Scabs Are Out, But ILWU Concessions
Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost
The drive to break International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) jurisdiction on Pacific Coast grain shipping has been beaten back after months of explosive labor struggle. A multinational consortium, EGT, built and began operating a new $200 million grain terminal with scab labor. Last week, EGT recognized the union as bargaining agent and on Thursday the membership of ILWU Local 21 approved a contract. But this has come at a cost, as the union leadership made significant concessions in the bargaining. This could set the stage for future battles as other shippers demand similar terms. Nevertheless, ILWU workers are in the plant and the scabs are out. Credit for this is due to the militancy of Longview and other longshore workers and their supporters who would not be intimidated by the capitalist courts and cops. The showdown in Longview is a harbinger of sharp class battles to come. Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost (12 February 2012)

Open Letter to Supporters of the ISO
“Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum
The January 6 furor in Seattle has highlighted the increasingly charged relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the official leadership of trade unions. The violent disturbance by officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was directed not only against Occupy Seattle but particularly targeted ILWU militants speaking at the forum. Outrageously, several self-described socialist groups took up cudgels for the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. The egregious apology for the bureaucratic disrupters by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) has caused an uproar, including inside the ISO. Basically, there was a clash of opportunisms: two different “constituencies” the ISO was tailing after (Occupy and labor leaders) came into conflict. The ISO came down on the side of the labor bureaucracy. From Wisconsin to Washington, these social democrats seek to push the bureaucrats ever so slightly to the left. But when the capitalists and the pro-capitalist bureaucracy crack the whip, the ISO obeys. “Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum (February 2012)

ILWU Bureaucrats Target Union Militants, Attack “Occupy” Solidarity Meeting
January 6: An Outrage in Seattle
On January 6, 2012, a labor solidarity forum called by Occupy Seattle was held to support International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 (Longview, Washington) in its battle against union-busting by the giant EGT consortium. However, a couple dozen right-wing bureaucrats and hangers-on from the Seattle, Tacoma and Portland ILWU locals physically disrupted the meeting with yelling, pushing, shoving and punches, in attempt to prevent its democratic functioning. The bureaucratic union misleaders seek to intimidate solidarity actions by claiming they would violate the slave labor Taft-Hartley Act, which outlaws most effective strike tactics. Some Occupy activists falsely portrayed this attack as demonstrating the bankruptcy of unions. However, speakers and many in the audience made clear that these bureaucratic thugs did not represent the ranks of labor, chanting "ILWU, ILWU" against the disrupters. The meeting ended with an appeal for all supporters of labor rights to come to Longview to protest the anticipated arrival of a ship to load the scab grain. January 6: An Outrage in Seattle (January 2012)

Video: Seattle Labor Solidarity Forum Disruption (12 January 2012)

Solidarity with Longview Longshore Workers
Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting
Chanting “What’s disgusting? Coast Guard union-busting,” some 75 protesters demonstrated for an hour and a half in soaking rain in front of the Federal Building in downtown New York City on January 23. The united-front protest brought together supporters of a number of area unions, student and left groups. They were denouncing the government’s announced plan to use the U.S. Coast Guard against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Longview, Washington. For the last year, the ILWU ranks have militantly fought against an attempt to break their union by a giant consortium, EGT, which has opened a new $200 million grain export terminal in the West Coast port which it is operating with scab labor. This government/employer attack on the strongest and most combative union in the U.S. is a threat to all labor. Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting (23 January 2012)

Exchange with Spartacist League on the January 23 Protest (23 January 2012)

Following Dec. 12 West Coast Port Blockade
Longshore Workers, Truckers:
Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast!
Class War on the West Coast Docks
Ports up and down the West Coast were blockaded, from Seattle to San Diego. Despite a barrage of hostile propaganda in the media, opposition from union bureaucrats and heavy police repression in some places, overall the blockade was successful – this time. The blockade was called in solidarity with longshore workers fighting a union-busting assault in Longview, Washington and with port truckers seeking union recognition in the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach. This support should have been greeted. Instead, the union bureaucracy attacked the port blockade, although longshore workers respected the picket lines. But now the class war on the West Coast docks is coming to a head, and it can’t be waged from the outside. Bay Area labor has called for a caravan to Longview. The goal should be a real occupation of the terminal by the workers to prevent the loading of the scab cargo. Longshore militants have called on the longshore unions to shut down every port on the West Coast, and the East and Gulf Coasts, to smash EGT’s union-busting. Can it be done? Yes, but only though sharp struggle against the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. Longshore Workers, Truckers: Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast! (28 December 2011)

Redouble the Fight to Free Mumia Now!
Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
The Philadelphia district attorney has announced that he is giving up on the decades-long crusade by the state to carry out a death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal. But even after three decades in jail, the racist rulers are still dead-set on silencing this courageous defender of the oppressed who became known as the “voice of the voiceless.” Millions around the world have come out in support of Mumia, who has become the symbol of the struggle against the racist death penalty in the U.S. The determined international protest certainly played a key role in saving him from the state executioner. But instead, he is sentenced to life without parole. While the legal lynchers were set back, we cannot proclaim victory until Jamal walks free. Every day that he is in jail, his life is in danger. Rather than looking to the capitalist state with calls for a “new trial” and appeals to the Obama administration, we have called to mobilize the power of the working class to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The fundamental fact is, there is no justice for the oppressed in the racist, capitalist courts. We must redouble our efforts to free Mumia now! Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal (8 December 2011)

BoT Meeting at Baruch: Cops Run Wild Against Student Protesters
CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY!
Abolish the Board of Trustees – No Tuition, Open Admissions!
On November 21, the City University of New York unleashed its campus cops on a crowd of several hundred students, shoving, beating and arresting 15. The protesters were clamoring to attend a “public hearing” of the Board of Trustees dealing with plans for a tuition increase, from which all but a few dozen people (many of them campus administrators) were excluded. Students chanted “CUNY is not a jail” and “Cops out of CUNY.” The police assault, following the NYPD eviction of Occupy Wall Street, is part of nationwide ramp-up of repression, including the sadistic pepper-spraying of student protesters at the Universithy of California Davis campus. CUNY Internationalist Clubs have long called for all cops off campus, for abolition of the Board of Trustees, for student-teacher-worker control of the university and for no tuition and open admissions. To win these demands, we have have called, in signs and chants, “Workers and students, shut the city down!” On November 17, thousands took up this chant. It will take convulsive student struggles in conjunction with a powerful mobilization of the working class and the oppressed to defeat the ruling-class attack. CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY! (22 November 2011)

“99%” Populism Is No Solution
Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution
Occupy Wall Street: A Marxist Analysis
In the two months since Occupy Wall Street burst onto the scene it quickly swept the nation. There have been over 600 occupations in cities across the U.S., and many more around the globe. In New York City, “All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street” is not just a protest chant but an accurate description of local politics. The “Occupy movement” has crystallized a popular mood of anger and frustration as the world enters the fourth year of a full-fledged economic depression. Thousands of students burdened under a mountain of debt and college graduates unable to find work have taken to the streets to protest. Unions have given different kinds of support. But while denouncing the filthy-rich “1%” in the name of the other 99% of the population, it has not put forward any program for what is to be done. And the various demands and proposals floated by Occupy proponents do not challenge the capitalist system. While there are diverse tendencies among the occupiers, the ideological glue that has held them together is bourgeois populism. But in the course of the struggle, particularly under the blows of repression, political outlooks can change sharply. Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution (14 November 2011)

Revolution
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 9
(November 2011)
click above or on image to right
for full list of articles

Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
At 1 a.m. on November 15 New York City police descended on Zuccotti Park in the city’s financial center to shut down Occupy Wall Street. Ordered by billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the dead-of-night police attack is the culmination of two months of mounting pressure from NYC authorities and the recent unrelenting propaganda barrage against OWS from the media, both conservative and liberal. The eviction was part of a nationally coordinated crackdown, coming just a day after a similar attack on Occupy Oakland in California, and weekend raids in Portland, Oregon, Denver and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Democratic and Republican mayors have been united in their determination to put an end to the occupations. In the face of the cop assault on OWS, what is urgently called for is a massive mobilization of labor’s power to bring New York to a standstill over this police-state repression. Within hours of the police attack, the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) together with Class Struggle Education Workers and the IG distributed hundreds of leaflets calling for “Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!” Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street – Workers and Students, Shut the City Down! (15 November 2011)

Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution!
NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital
Students and Workers: Shut the City Down!
On October 1, the New York Police Department lashed out at the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, arresting over 700 demonstrators as they marched into a police trap on the Brooklyn Bridge. Coming after the arrest of 85 OWS protesters a week earlier, and the videotaped pepper-spraying of trapped women marchers by a top police official, the mass bust provoked outrage in the NYC population. On October 5, tens of thousands came out at the call of the labor unions in solidarity with the protesters and against the wanton police brutality. CUNY Internationalist Clubs marched, chanting “Students and workers, shut the city down!” Many OWS demonstrators have huge illusions in the police, calling on them to join the protests. Cops are not fellow workers but the armed fist of capital. Despite vituperation in the right-wing media, the vast majority of the protesters are not radicals but angry liberals. The occupation’s list of grievances points toward a slightly reformed, “green” capitalism, while protesters have been waving the American flag, symbol of U.S. imperialism. Yet tinkering with financial regulations will not solve mass unemployment, racist repression and imperialist war. Most of the left has written gushing articles about the occupation, refusing to tell the truth, that capitalism cannot be reformed to “serve the people,” it must brought down through a struggle for workers power. NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital (5 October 2011)

Video of Internationalist intervention at OWS protest against mass arrests (1 October 2011)

Isn’t That the American Flag They’re Waving? (6 October 2011)

Internationalists Protest Imperialism’s “Dr. Shock”
What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street?
On October 7, economist Jeffrey Sachs spoke at the Occupy Wall Street protest in the New York financial district. High-flying academic Sachs is notorious for implementing free market capitalism with a vengeance. He made his reputation with economic “shock treatments” that produced misery and death for untold numbers of working people in Bolivia, Poland and the former Soviet Union. When Internationalist supporters learned of his appearance at OWS, we rushed to the square to expose this economic hit man and inform those present of his crimes. Here is some of the evidence. The fact that this top capitalist privatizer and imperialist criminal was invited to spout off at OWS says a lot about the agenda of those who invited him. What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street? (9 October 2011)

Georgia to Carry Out Legal Lynching
Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
On September 20, the Georgia State Board of Pardons turned down the appeal of Troy Davis to commute his death sentence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989 shooting death of an off-duty Savannah police officer. There have been worldwide demonstrations demanding that he not be executed. Last week more than 630,000 letters were handed to the Board asking to stop the execution of Davis on the grounds that there is “too much doubt” about this case. In fact, massive evidence shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt Troy Davis is innocent. If Georgia carries out the death sentence, it will be nothing less than state murder, a legal lynching. It will show, as a number of black Georgians bitterly remarked to the press, that racist Jim Crow “justice” is alive and well in the state that was the lynching capital of the South in the 1920s. It will demonstrate that for the racist U.S. injustice system, innocence is not a defense – especially for a black man accused of killing a white cop. It will prove, once again, that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. But the legal lynchers can be stopped, by mobilizing the power of the working class. It will take nothing less than socialist revolution to sweep away this rotting system that lives on death. Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (21 September 2011)

Not a General Strike, But 30,000 Occupied the Port…
And Then the Cops Struck Again
Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland
Following the brutal police raid before dawn on October 25 and the bloody assault on protesters later that day, Occupy Oakland called for a “General Strike” on November 2. Tens of thousands came out and blockaded the port in the evening, but the union bureaucrats refused to call strike action. This robbed the mobilization of much of its power. Soon after the demosntrators went home, an army of 400 police retaliated, attacking the occupation of an empty building. To answer this naked display of police power, it is necessary to show that the working class has far greater power, by striking at the cops’ capitalist masters where it hurts: the source of their profits. In the face of the continuing police threat, workers defense guards together with Occupy Oakland are needed, as well as real strike action to shut the city down in the face of a new attack. No “reforms” will change the character of the police as enforcers of racist bourgeois order. Since police are the backbone of state power, it will take nothing less than a socialist revolution to get rid of cop brutality, which is endemic to capitalist rule. Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland (9 November 2011)

The General Strike and the “Occupy Movement” (November 2011)

Militant Class Struggle Like You Haven’t Seen in Years:
ILWUers Defy Federal Injunction, Block Train, “Storm” Scab Terminal
Showdown on West Coast Docks
The Battle of Longview
Since early this year a bitter struggle has been waged in the small West Coast port of Longview, Washington. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is fighting a vicious union-busting attack by a new grain shipping conglomerate. The battle got national attention when on September 8, some 800 union supporters “stormed” the new Export Grain Terminal, as the big business press put it. As security guards cowered, thousands of tons of grain were dumped on the tracks and railroad cars disabled. That morning more than 1,000 longshoremen refused to show up for work, shutting down the major ports of the Pacific Northwest. The day before, hundreds of ILWUers blocked a train carrying grain to the scab terminal and held off police. So far there have been more than 200 arrests in Longview. It all harked back to the militant union action that built the labor movement and which has seldom been seen in recent years. It gave a taste of workers’ power that needs to be mobilized in sharp class struggle today. This battle affects the entire maritime industry: to win it, the dock unions must prepare to shut down ports on all three coasts. The key is to build a class-struggle leadership. Showdown on West Coast Docks: The Battle of Longview (4 November 2011)

Oakland Port Shutdown
Workers Refuse to Work the Docks
Today thousands of working people are refusing to go to work in response to a call for a “General Strike” by Occupy Oakland. This includes many port workers who, in response to an appeal from rank-and-file members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, refused to load and unload ships, effectively crippling the port. Many will be joining the late afternoon march on the port denouncing the brutal police attack on Occupy Oakland demonstrators last week, ordered by liberal Democratic mayor Jean Quan. Report from longshore activist Jack Heyman at the Oakland docks. Oakland Port Shutdown: Workers Refuse to Work the Docks! (2 November 2011)

Hands Off Occupy Oakland!
Mobilize Labor's Power Against Racist Police Repression!
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
In the pre-dawn hours of October 25, police in Oakland, California violently evicted protesters camped out in Oscar Grant Plaza in front of city hall, and from a near-by satellite camp, arresting close to 100 people. That evening, facing an angry protest demonstration of several thousand the cops responded with repeated volleys of tear gas as well as concussion grenades, bean bag canisters and wooden slugs and possibly rubber bullets. The Oakland police are the same force that attacked an antiwar demonstration at the Port of Oakland in April 2003, firing the same sort of potentially lethal munitions and injuring at least six longshoremen. This is also the city where Oscar Grant was murdered by BART police on New Year's Day 2009. The workers movement in the Bay Area, with the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the lead, should use its muscle against a threatened attempt to evict Occupy San Francisco and to enable Occupy Oakland to reestablish its camp. An injury to one is an injury to all! Hands Off Occupy Oakland! (26 October 2011)

This Is What U.S. Imperialist-Sponsored “Democracy” Looks Like
The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi
Serial Killer in the White House Carves Another Notch in His Gun
On the morning of October 20, former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was captured, brutally beaten and executed in cold blood by the victorious imperialist-sponsored “rebels” who have taken over the North African country. The murder was quickly celebrated by U.S. president Barack Obama and other NATO leaders, whose warplanes massively bombed Libyan cities under the guise of “protecting civilians.” The victory of the competing gangs of Islamist and monarchist cutthroats armed, financed and “advised” by the Western powers is hardly a blow for democracy but the establishment of neo-colonial rule. The ugly face of that regime can be seen in the grisly cellphone videos of the lynchers as they tormented and then assassinated Qaddafi. The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi (21 October 2011)

Internationalist Solidarity with Chilean Students!
The New Battle of Chile For Free, Quality Public Education
Workers to Power!
Chile is currently experiencing the largest and most sustained mobilization in two decades against the regime inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship. For four months straight, hundreds of thousands of Chilean students and workers have taken to the streets fighting for free, quality public education. They seek to bring down the market-based educational system imposed by the military rulers and the governments of the “democratic transition.” Since May, hundreds of secondary schools and the main universities have been occupied. Hundreds of thousands of people have repeatedly marched in Santiago and the main cities in enormous protests, with thousands of arrests and sharp street battles against the militarized police (carabineros). The response of the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera has been to intensify the repression and to attempt to divert the protest into a treacherous “dialogue.” In this they have counted on the aid of the reformist leaders of the movement, above all those affiliated to the Communist Party and the “center-left” coalition, Concertación. However, more militant sectors of the student movement have opposed the sellouts by the “moderates”. The students have broad popular support, but the government is not backing down. A revolutionary leadership is required to mobilize the power of the working class to achieve the democratic demands of the student movement in the framework of a struggle for socialist revolution. The New Battle of Chile For Free, Quality Public Education (16 September 2011)

Chile: Constituent Assembly and Workers Power (October 2011)

From the Current Issue

The Internationalist No. 33
(Summer 2011)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Defend Libya – Defeat U.S./U.N./NATO War!
Imperialist Marauders in the Quicksands of North Africa
“Antiwar” Social-Democrats Back Pro-Imperialist Rebels,
Paving the Way for Bombing
The United States and its NATO allies have embarked on a war of imperialist domination against Libya – yet despite their overwhelming firepower, they could soon be caught in the shifting sands of North Africa. The initial pretext was to protect civilian lives, but that cover story was soon blown. The purpose of the war is to topple (and possibly murder) Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and nail down imperialist control of this strategically placed, oil-rich North African and Mediterranean country – or failing that, to dismember it. From the beginning the uprising in Libya, although it fed on the frustrations of youth and working people with the authoritarian Qaddafi government, was in fact led by pro-imperialist forces. The prominent role of Islamists, many of them former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is perfectly evident. The monarchists and civilian and military leaders with CIA ties of long standing, play a leading role. So long as it was a civil war between them and the Qaddafi regime, Trotskyists took no sides. But since the French/British/U.S. began military operations under the cover of the United Nations and now formally run by NATO, the Libyan insurgents are effectively agents of imperialist domination who must be defeated. Imperialist Marauders in the Quicksands of North Africa (8 April 2011)

Clinton and Obama’s Afrikakorps (8 April)
Qaddafi and the Imperialists: On and Off (April 2011)
Libya and the Opportunist Left (April 2011)
Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack! Defeat U.S./U.N./NATO Assault! (18 March 2011)
Libyan Showdown (15 March 2011)
Egypt: Mubarak Gone, Workers to Power! (13 February 2011)
Egypt, Tunisia: Turn Popular Uprisings into Workers Revolution (4 February 2011)

Greek Revolt Against Bankers’ Diktat
Upheaval in Europe Over Capitalist Austerity
The Only Solution: Europe-Wide Socialist Revolution!
After a series of workers struggles in 2010 in Greece, France and elsewhere, and the revolts in North Africa earlier this year, a new wave of mass struggle has broken out in Europe in response to the drive by the capitalist rulers to saddle the workers with the costs of the global economic crisis. On June 5, 100,000 gathered in Syntagma Square, followed by several days of rolling strikes in state-owned companies, a one-day general strike on June 15, and a two-day general strike – the first since the overthrow of the military junta in 1974 – on June 28-29 as parliament voted the austerity/privatization package. But the PASOK government succeeded in ramming its bill through parliament. Despite hundreds of thousands in the streets and thousands camped out in central squares, capital is winning round two of its offensive against labor. With the parliamentary “left” implementing the capitalists’ program, the “extra-parliamentary” left calls for limp trade-union tactics (more marches and symbolic “general strikes”) that are doomed to failure, while default and exit from the euro would hit workers with runaway inflation and even more massive unemployment. The only real answer to the capitalist crisis is Europe-wide socialist revolution. Upheaval in Europe Over Capitalist Austerity (12 July 2011)

Portugal, Spain: Unemployed Youth Take the Plazas
Rebellion of the Outraged
Not Empty “Real Democracy,” But Fight for Workers Power!
For the last two months, across southern Europe hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to denounce economic policies which have produced misery on a scale not seen since the last Great Depression in the 1930s. Rather than limiting themselves to the usual mass marches, from Portugal and Spain in the west to Greece in the east, tens of thousands, mainly youth, have occupied city centers for weeks in an upheaval that has taken the name of los indignados, “the outraged.” What particularly sparked their rage is that in all three countries, the ruinous policies have been imposed by governments calling themselves “socialist,” who were elected because they claimed to defend the population against the plutocrats. The initiators of the Spanish protests have seized on this sense of betrayal to pose the issue as one of “democracy,” saying that the rules must be wrong in a system where no matter what the people vote for, governments obey the dictates of the banks. With such bourgeois electoral demands and populist appeals, the “movement” for “Real Democracy Now” has attracted some unsavoury rightists. But although many protesters say today they are not “against the system,” in the course of the struggle some will discover that the root of the problem is capitalism. Rebellion of the Outraged (12 July 2011)

The “Icelandic Revolution” Hoax (June 2011)

Barack Obama’s 2012 Reelection Campaign Has Begun
U.S./NATO Murder, Inc.
On May Day weekend, the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went on a killing spree in North Africa and South Asia. On April 30, NATO warplanes bombed a residential compound in Tripoli where Muammar Qaddafi was present in a blatant but unsuccessful attempt to murder the Libyan leader. The next day, U.S. commandos assaulted a residence in a suburb of the Pakistani capital and proceeded to execute Osama bin Laden. The U.S. and its NATO imperialist allies are in the assassination business big time. The last thing the U.S. wanted is to have Osama bin Laden alive in its possession, and it sure didn’t want him in front of a court where he could tell all about how he and the CIA and the Pakistani ISI worked hand-in-glove in their covert war against the Soviet “infidels” in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Bin Laden is held responsible for the deaths of some 2,600 civilians in the 11 September 2001 attack on NYC’s World Trade Center, but the U.S. has wantonly slaughtered far, far more innocent civilians in nearly a decade of war since then. The “war on terror” is in reality a war to terrorize the world into submission to the dictates of U.S. imperialism, and it’s part of the capitalist war being waged against poor, oppressed and working people here. U.S./NATO Murder, Inc. (11 May 2011)

Break from the Democrats and All Capitalist Parties!
Unchain Labor’s Power – Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
What It Will Take to Defeat the War on Public Workers Unions
Against Mass Layoffs: Labor and Students, Shut NYC Down!
Across the United States and around the world, labor is under frontal attack by capital. In the worst economic crisis since the last depression, the bankers and capitalists who set it off are trying to make their victims pay. Wisconsin teachers and most government workers have had their right to collective bargaining canceled. This marks a decisive moment for unions across the country, equivalent to Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the PATCO air controllers union in 1981. And it is not just coming from the far right: in New York, liberal Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo is spearheading attacks on public sector unions. On May 12, a march on Wall Street was called by NYC labor, but while protesting threatened teacher layoffs and budget cuts, its political message was to support the DemocraticParty. The labor misleaders back the capitalist system while the entire capitalist class is waging war on labor. In Wisconsin, the union tops squelched momentum for a general strike. It is necessary to break with the Democrats and oust the bureaucrats, to forge a class-struggle workers party. In the face of mass layoffs, labor and students should shut NYC down with a citywide strike, and shred the no-strike Taylor Law. What It Will Take to Defeat the War on Public Workers Unions (12 May 2011)

Defeat Governor’s Legislative Coup d’État

Wisconsin: For a General Strike Now!

Break with the Democrats, Republicans and All Capitalist Parties!
Build a Class-Struggle Workers Party!

A law challenging the very existence of unions of government workers has just been rammed through the legislature in Wisconsin. In addition, wages have been slashed by up to 10 percent to make up for cuts to health insurance and pensions. The labor movement and workers nationwide and internationally are vividly aware of the stakes. There has been a lot of talk in the last three weeks about a general strike. The Wisconsin South Central Labor Federation even voted to authorize one. But now that the moment of truth has arrived, the union bureaucrats have gotten cold feet. They are doing everything to prevent strike action and instead to divert anger at this vicious law into a drive to recall Republican senators, to be replaced by Democrats, whose “alternative” budget bill would also have drastically slashed wages and benefits. There should be no delay: this is the hour for powerful labor action. A general strike is needed to shut down Wisconsin now! Wisconsin: For a General Strike Now! (13 March 2011)

Wisconsin: Mobilize Workers’ Power to Defeat Union-Busting Bill! (18 February 2011)

Report from Madison: Wisconsin, Epicenter of the Battle Over Workers’ Rights

(19 February 2011)

Report from Madison: To Win, Prepare to Strike Wisconsin! (20 February 2011)
Report from Madison: Wisconsin Unions Vote to Prepare a General Strike – The Time to Act Is Now (22 February 2011)

From the Previous Issue

The Internationalist No. 32
(January-February 2011)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

From Resistance to Counteroffensive to the Struggle for Workers Power
Focal Point Europe: Capitalism in Crisis,
Class Struggle Erupts

Over the past year, a wave of class struggle has swept across Europe. In country after country, working people are facing devastating attacks on their livelihoods, their past gains, and their futures. And they are fighting back. On December 15, Greece had yet another one-day nationwide strike. On November 25, more than 3 million workers walked out in the biggest strike in Portugal’s history. All fall, France was in turmoil as millions of workers and students repeatedly mobilized against the government’s pension “reform,” with numbers and militancy not seen in years. In Britain, angry student protests against drastic fee hikes could spark working-class resistance to the government’s program of vicious cuts. But demonstrations in the streets, no matter how massive, have not stopped European governments – whether of the right or “left.” Nor will they in the future, for this is a concerted capitalist assault on the working class. To defeat it, we must go from resistance to a struggle for power.The burning question is how to get there. Focal Point Europe: Capitalism in Crisis, Class Struggle Erupts (26 December 2010)

Workers Revolt: Government Wage Slashing, Jobs Massacre “Could Lead to Civil War”
Greece on the Razor's Edge
Economist Trade Unionism and Left Electoral Coalitions No Answer
Build a Leninist-Trotskyist Party to Fight for Socialist Revolution
Greece is where the current wave of European workers’ struggles against a massive capitalist assault on their livelihoods first broke out this past January. It is also where they have gone the farthest, bordering on a full-scale revolt. Protesters have repeatedly fought police during national strikes and last May hundreds of workers tried to occupy the Greek parliament to prevent the notoriously corrupt bourgeois politicians from voting for an “austerity” law that would destroy their lives. While Greek workers have shown their determination to fight back, most of the left is mired in bourgeois parliamentarism and coalitionism. Instead, Trotskyists seek to mobilize the working class on a transitional program to turn defensive struggles into a proletarian counteroffensive leading to socialist revolution. What’s called for is an international struggle to bring down the EU/NATO imperialist alliance and fight for a socialist united states of Europe. Greece on the Razor's Edge (27 December 2010)

50,000 March in London Against Conservative/Liberal Cuts
Fury of Student Revolt Shakes Up Britain
Workers: The Time for Strike Action Is Now!
Break with Labourism – Build a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!
When over 50,000 students marched through London on November 10, their mobilization ended up shattering not only the windows of Conservative (Tory) Party headquarters at Millbank Tower but also the eerie calm that had enveloped the country following elections last April. The incoming Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition vowed to impose “painful” cuts to what’s left of Britain’s once extensive social programs. So where was the resistance? Now it has broken out. “This is only the beginning,” said a text message from protesters on the roof of the Tory HQ. The government, media and official student leaders bemoan the “hijacking” of a peaceful demonstration by an “unrepresentative minority” of anarchists and others. Yet the occupiers were cheered by thousands of protesters. Lashing out at such symbols of an upper class elite, while thoroughly understandable and justified, cannot break its power to cause misery for the masses. Much more is needed to hit the capitalist rulers in their pocketbooks where it counts. To really defeat the cuts and fee hikes, it is necessary to mobilize working-class power to take on not only the government parties but the capitalist system itself, among whose most ardent defenders over the century have been the Labour Party, “New” and old. Fury of Student Revolt Shakes Up Britain (19 November 2010)

French Battle Over Attack on Pensions Continues
To Drive Out Sarkozy & Co.,
Fight for Power to the Workers
Build a Workers Party on the Revolutionary Program of Lenin and Trotsky

More than 3.5 million people responded to the call of unions, striking and demonstrating in cities around France in the sixth “day of action” in the last seven weeks protesting the government’s pension “reform.” The strike of French refineries and the blockade of fuel depots are beginning to bite as service stations run out of fuel. But the reformists (including the so-called “far left”) are looking to electoral politics. The Socialist Party (PS) want to channel the protests into the 2012 elections. The Communist Party wants a new popular front, while the New Anti-Capitalist Party is calling the protests a movement for the resignation of Sarkozy. It is possible to bring down a bourgeois regime, especially one as widely hated as this one, but this can only done by driving it out through sharp class struggle leading to a fight for a workers government. To Drive Out Sarkozy & Co., Fight for Power to the Workers (26 October 2010)

Dateline Paris:
Reports on French Worker-Student Upsurge

French Students Mobilize: “Sarkozy, You’re Screwed, The Youth Are In the Streets!” (26 October 2010)
With the Paris Student Blockades, Assemblies and Marches (27 October 2010)
Guadeloupe On Strike! (27 October 2010)
Seventh Day of Action in France: 2 Million in the Streets Against Sarkozy Attack (29 October 2010)
And Now Comes the Stab in the Back (31 October 2010)
Paris Workers’ Assemblies Declare “We’re Continuing to Fight,” Call for General Strike (3 November 2010)
Eighth Day of Action in France: The Unions and the “Interpro” Assemblies (8 November 2010)

Let NYC Muslim Center Be Built!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Mobilize Against Racist Attacks on Muslims and Immigrants
Defeat U.S. Imperialist War on Afghanistan, Iraq
Over the last few months there has been a concerted drive by reactionary forces to whip up hysteria against a project to build a Muslim community center in New York City, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, target of the 11 September 2001 attack. The uproar is part of the violent racist campaign targeting Muslims and immigrants for attack ever since 9/11. The frenzy is also a blatant electoral ploy by the reactionary forces that coalesced in the so-called Tea Party movement. Yet from Obama on down, the Democrats are pandering to the Muslim-bashing mob. The whole issue of location of the Islamic center is a phony: there have also been chauvinist outbursts against mosques elsewhere in New York City and around the U.S. The imam under attack is a supporter of U.S. imperialist and Zionist war and occupation which communists seek to defeat. But we defend the building of an Islamic cultural center and place of worship near the World Trade Center and defend immigrants and religious minorities under attack. The bigots plan a major Muslim-bashing event at the WTC site for September 11. This provocation must be met with a vigorous labor/immigrant countermobilization to defend Muslims and drive out the racists. Mobilize Against Racist Attacks on Muslims and Immigrants (5 September 2010)

Marxism and Education

Pamphlets and Articles from The Internationalist
The Battle for Public Education,
Stop CUNY's “War Purge,”
The UNAM Strike and Workers Revolution

Recent articles on Education:
Stop Privatization of Public Schools – Not Corporate Fake “Reform,” We Need an Education Revolution!
No to Teacher-Basher McCain and Education-for-War Obama
Break with the Democrats – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party
From the outset of the 2008 presidential election campaign, teachers and teachers unions have been mobilized to the hilt for the Democratic Party. While the American Federation of Teachers first backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, it and the National Education Association are now overwhelmingly for Barack Obama running against John McCain for the Republicans. Most teachers are going for the Democrats, but the Democrats are not going for them – nor are the Republicans, to be sure. The fact that for the first time a black man is the top candidate of one of the major parties and could likely be the next U.S. president, and that a woman was his chief opponent in the primary elections, marks a significant social shift in this country that will be widely seen as a breakthrough. Yet this does not change the fact that the Democrats and Republicans are bourgeois parties who govern by and for the capitalist class. Both candidates will continue the imperialist occupation of Iraq and both promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan. There isn’t the slightest doubt that McCain is bad news for teachers and students in every way. The issue is over Obama, who while promising to “work with” teachers says he wants to introduce “merit pay,” increase charter schools, and remove teachers who administrators decide are “doing a poor job.” These points just happen to be the three-pronged attack plan of the corporate interests for whom “educational reform” means union-busting. No to Teacher-Basher McCain and Education-for-War Obama (3 November 2008)

Hard Class Battle Coming
Puerto Rico: All Out to Defend the Teachers’ Struggle!
We are on the threshold of a major class battle in Puerto Rico. Every day new preparations are announced for the coming strike of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR). With 42,000 members, a majority of them women, the FMPR represents almost all of Puerto Rico’s teachers and is by far the largest union on the island. The Shock Force of the Puerto Rican Police and National Guard are being readied to go after the strikers. The struggle of the Puerto Rican teachers affects everybody. The working class as a whole, students and parents, teachers and defenders of workers’ rights around the world must come out in defense of the FMPR! If there are mass arrests, the response must be massive blockades and spreading the struggle to the point of shutting the island down. In order to win this strike, it is necessary to prepare for a struggle not only of the teachers but within the whole workers movement against the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy that sabotages the workers’ struggle. Above all, it is necessary to fight against illusions in and ties with bourgeois parties and politicians. It’s high time to begin building a revolutionary internationalist workers party. Puerto Rico: All Out to Defend the Teachers’ Struggle! (14 February 2008)

En español: Puerto Rico: ¡Todos a la calle en defensa del magisterio en lucha

Report from San Juan
Tens of Thousands March in Puerto Rico on Eve of Teachers Strike
“La huelga va, la huelga va” (the strike is on the way), sang thousands of teachers as they marched through the streets of Puerto Rico’s capital today in preparation for the massive strike that is shaping up as a major class battle. Victory to the Puerto Rican teachers! Tens of Thousands March in Puerto Rico on Eve of Teachers Strike (18 February 2008)