Peru: Election conflict during COVID

June 29, 2021

A Peruvian post-presidential election battle is raging between Pedro Castillo, a union activist and former schoolteacher, and Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing neoliberal and daughter of the jailed authoritarian former President Alberto Fujimori.

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World in View: Africa in the crosshairs of world imperialism

May 8, 2021

The capitalist world remains in a deep crisis and now faces a crossroads. U.S., Chinese, and European imperialism all have aging populations and mounting debt . They need to find new sources of labor and natural resources to plunder. Africa, with the youngest population of any major region and abundant mineral wealth, is a target.

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Unemployed workers organize and march, demanding relief

Newly organized as Northern California Unemployed Committee, people marched to draw attention to the disparities within capitalism exacerbated by COVID-19. They demanded the federal government stop taxing unemployment benefits and that it restore the $600 per week unemployment supplement.

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Thoughts from the outside: Lucky I have a job?

What is essential for capital to reinforce its authority and what is essential for people to live as human beings are very different things. Seeing through the rhetoric of the “privilege of having a job,” the reality of life under capitalism becomes clear.

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Karen Lewis, 1953-2021

The City of Chicago lost a powerful voice for teachers, and for workers in general, with the death of Karen Lewis, former President of the Chicago Teachers Union.

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Readers’ views, November-December 2020: part one

Election battles, reaching for the future, and the pull of the past; Sabotage of the post office; Food recycling workers strike; Anti-labor statue downed; Oil and biden; COVID-19: where’s the vision?; Racism and fascism; Polish women’s revolutionary moment; News & Letters is back in print!

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Black-led revolt ensures defeat of Trump’s racist campaign

November 27, 2020

Racism and the resistance to it permeated the election, from the Trump campaign’s appeal to white supremacy to the outpouring of Black organizing and votes, energized by the new stage of revolt sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. However, grave questions remain about where the U.S. and the world are heading. Movements from below will be challenged to resist the calls for “unity” under the capitalist umbrella and to continue to deepen their revolt against a “return to normal.”

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The USPS is a continuing crime scene

August 28, 2020

Postal workers find themselves on the frontlines of three fronts: saving their jobs under attack from the United States Postal Service under Postmaster Louis DeJoy; saving the USPS from the sabotage of DeJoy and Trump, and saving the integrity of U.S. elections.

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COVID-19 has generated a lot of “free time” for workers, but how can we create full, human “free time”?

May 12, 2020

The measures adopted in the face of the spread of COVID-19 in the world have caused billions of people to suddenly have excess “free time.” But this is not a full “free time,” conducive to the enjoyment and development of new skills, but a “time without work” that is exacerbating the enormous economic contradictions already existing in our society. Is it possible to imagine and bring about a form of free time that is truly human time?

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Global pandemic indicts capitalism

May 2, 2020

The economic system leaves us all vulnerable and requires sacrificing healthcare workers, delivery drivers and other people doing essential work. I hope that this experience wakes more people up to the dangers and inhumanity of living under capitalism.

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Meatpacking workers sacrificed

May 1, 2020

Workers in meatpacking plants across the country are being sacrificed to what Karl Marx called capital’s “werewolf hunger for surplus labor” as packing companies try to reap the benefits of the prevailing level of automation—but substituting intensified sweated labor for the capital investment of automation. If workers die from COVID-19, the capitalist doesn’t care.

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II. The true pandemic war

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.

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Copper miners strike

The strike of more than 1,500 copper miners and smelters in Arizona and Texas against Asarco/Grupo Mexico has entered its fifth month, part of a new wave of labor solidarity and revolt.

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#FixTheElevators

March 4, 2020

A coalition of students and workers at Wayne State University in Detroit have been conducting a campaign since November 2019 for the elevators on campus to be repaired. It is a disability, safety, and working conditions issue.

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Workers strike Aptiv!

More than 18,000 workers at the U.S. company Aptiv’s maquiladora plants in Mexico walked out because, after a 120-peso wage increase, Aptiv withheld much more than that for taxes.

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Honda workers sit in

January 21, 2020

Report on the strike by Honda workers in Faridabad, India, in opposition to the company’s demand for signing a good conduct bond before entering the factory.

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Iran workers jailed

September 1, 2019

Abbas Goya denounces the incarceration of Esmaeil Bakhshi, leading figure of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory strike, along with Ali Nejati and worker-journalist Sepideh Gholyan and the editors of Gaam, a pro-worker paper in Iran.

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Hong Kong masses fight rulers’ grab for power

August 31, 2019

An account of the development of the Hong Kong protests to block a proposed extradition bill, which could send residents of Hong Kong to face pre-determined injustice before Beijing courts, tracing them back to the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre.

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