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Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran is a major escalation in the Middle East that has dangerous implications for working people everywhere. The brutality of the imperialist assault internationally is paired with the attack on civil liberties by the Trump regime inside the U.S. This includes the continued operations of ICE and Border Patrol, the threats to the 2026 mid-term elections, environmental rollbacks that deeply impact the Black community, and unchecked police brutality.
Our editorial in this issue warns us: “There is a great danger of underestimating the determination of the U.S. corporate elite to drive through this effort. We cannot rely on court rulings or upcoming elections to save us. We must organize now, not only for mass demonstrations and community networks against ICE violence, but to find our way to building a new working-class party through which we can organize our political defense on every plane and on every day.”
In this issue we also have articles on the Epstein files and the ruling class, the San Francisco teachers’ strike, and a review of the new album by U2.
The March–April 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:
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April 25 in Philadelphia: THE SOLUTION IS SOCIALISM conference
Screenshot April 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A full-day conference filled with camaraderie and learning
All sessions held at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
Capitalism is in deep crisis. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, working-class and oppressed peoples have faced a relentless attack in the U.S. and around the globe. The advent of the second Trump regime has seen an unprecedented attack on workers, immigrants, women’s rights, civil rights, education, and democratic rights. Now Trump is waging another war overseas. Working-class living standards have been degraded by almost 50 years of one-sided class war waged by Wall Street. Working people are plagued by low wages, high rents and high food prices. Work is more precarious and workers are likely to be stuck working more than one part-time job in order to merely survive. The high cost of student debt is a shackle around the throats of an entire generation. These topics will be addressed at the Socialism is the Solution educational conference in Philadelphia on April 25. Join us for a day of discussion and education.
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Struggles intensify against AI data centers
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By M.A. AL-GHARIB
The explosion of artificial intelligence over the past couple of years has been breathtaking. Seemingly from nothing, it has now become the carrier not only of Big Tech’s most unhinged fantasies but also that of capital more generally. The claims of its most fervent believers—that it will replace most human labor and that it will initiate a new age of unlimited capitalist growth—will inevitably fall short of expectations. But even if we won’t see multibillion-dollar corporations run entirely by AI agents anytime in the near future, the future AI capital foresees for the rest of humanity reveals itself in its new “satanic mills,” the AI data centers popping up like weeds all over the United States. Marx once wrote that mechanization under class society provides new weapons by which the ruling class can dominate the working class.
AI’s increased role in U.S. and global capitalism
Companies like Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon, “all of which have staked their futures on the use of artificial intelligence,” now make up about 30 percent of the S&P 500. AI spending is not only a main driver of global profitability; it is propping up the real economy in both the U.S. and globally. Spending by tech companies on AI infrastructure was $375 billion globally in 2025 and is projected to rise to over $700 billion in 2026. Moreover, as The New York Times reported last summer, asset management firms estimate such spending to reach $7 trillion in the next decade.
The ancillary industries forecasting AI-data center related growth include infrastructure analytics and imaging, energy suppliers (for example, battery makers) and storage services, nuclear energy, construction and building materials, as well as electrician services, engineering, and heavy-equipment firms. All of this enthusiasm, however, has industry insiders already warning of an imminent bust.
Similar to other cycles of “irrational exuberance,” the AI boom rests on a house of cards: debt, speculation, and financial chicanery. In reality, the industry is groaning under hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. Tech giants are accruing this debt through the same “highly securitized” financial instruments that brought down the 2008 housing bubble. It’s an understatement to say that their profit expectations are highly optimistic and that a bust would devastate not only the aforementioned industries servicing it, but the wider real economy as well.
Opposition to data centers is spreading and intensifying
The top tech firms, or “hyperscalers” as they’re referred to in industry jargon, are expected to spend approximately $710 billion on data centers across North America in 2026. To outcompete their rivals, hyperscalers must construct data centers as quickly as possible. The computing power needed for this is gargantuan, putting enormous burdens on existing power grids and water sources. Alternatively, hyperscalers can opt to build their own onsite power generation facilities. But either way, they are usually required to go through local permitting application processes.
That’s where the resistance has come in places as diverse as the central valley of California, Georgia, Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—along with sovereign Indigenous lands. So far there are moratorium bills in over a dozen state legislatures, and the number is set to grow. A Pew Research poll recently found that Americans have more negative views of AI than people in any other country it has polled.
In 2025, local protests in the U.S. succeeded in blocking 48 projects worth over $150 billion. Grassroots local protests have stiffened the backs of local councils and legislative bodies, which have put up increasingly disruptive (from the perspective of corporate hyperscalers) legislative hurdles to new centers. One industry insider, Aniket Shah, a managing director at the investment bank Jefferies, expects even deeper resistance and mounting legislative pushback in the future.
The most sweeping legislation so far comes from Maine, where the Democratic Party-controlled legislature passed an 18-month statewide moratorium. The press has somewhat exaggeratedly called this the “first statewide ban,” but it is more accurately a moratorium and only on “large” centers, those using more than 20 megawatts of power. Nevertheless, the scope and the timeline of the moratorium are an indication of the resistance of Mainers. Localities all over the state have pushed back not only on the potential environmental impacts of proposed centers, but also on potential blackouts and lack of transparency and community participation. However, at the time of writing, Democratic governor Janet Mills has yet to say whether or not she will veto the bill and has made statements on the importance of the centers in bringing jobs to the state.
Virginia is another telling example. The commonwealth was one of the earliest places in the U.S. where data centers—servicing federal government cloud computing demands—were built. However, as the centers’ enormous demands on electricity and water along with their negative impacts, such as increased noise levels and poorer air quality, became clearer to local communities, they rose up in resistance, “some of the fiercest,” according to a recent New York Times article. One prominent slogan in the Virginia data center protests has focused on community control of local policy.
The many harms of data centers
It is not just their electricity demands that are raising these communities’ hackles, though these are eye-watering. One such center consumes as much energy as 100,000 households, the largest as many as 2 million. These energy “needs” indirectly promote other polluting and dangerous forms of energy, such as coal and nuclear. These centers run super hot and require oceans of water: by 2028, it is estimated that data centers will consume as much water as the indoor needs of 18.5 million U.S. households (a U.S. household, it should be remembered, is itself an enormously disproportionate contributor to the global carbon footprint). The residents of one Georgia county expect their water bills to rise over 33 percent over the next two years. A typical annual increase is 2 percent.
Air pollution, dumped by centers sited in working-class and racialized communities; the depletion of public funds owing to tax breaks by “business friendly” state legislatures; the e-waste and heavy metals that will likely be dumped onto semicolonial and Global South workers; the undermining and imminent devastation of working conditions—material and psychological—among white-collar workers. These are only some of the harms that data centers and the AI craze are already causing.
Environmental racism and colonialism
As a result of the aforementioned resistance, tech companies are increasingly targeting more vulnerable racialized, rural, and Indigenous communities as locations for new data centers.
In Mississippi and Tennessee, the NAACP is suing Elon Musk’s X, whose xAI data centers are dumping massive amounts of methane and other toxins in historically Black communities with long experience of environmental racism. The region’s “Colossus” and “Colossus II,” the xAI data centers running on makeshift power plants, are gargantuan facilities. Colossus II covers 1 million square feet in Southaven, Miss. The Guardian points out that Colossus I, in the industrial zone of Memphis, Tenn., is only a few miles from “residential neighborhoods that have long dealt with harmful pollution, including Boxtown, a neighborhood that was established by formerly enslaved people after emancipation in the 19th century.” The over two dozen gas turbines at Southhaven, “each one the size of a large bus” as noted in the Guardian report, together have capacity to emit 1700 tons per year of chemicals, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde. Community members and organizers have been mobilizing protests at both sites around slogans such as the right to clean air.
Hyperscalers also target Native American communities who have experienced centuries of colonial violence and environmental racism. These companies see Indigenous sovereignty practices and laws as opportunities to evade the legislative resistance mentioned above. While companies promise to bring new employment to such communities, in fact these centers threaten displacement and the undermining of Indigenous food and care systems. As reported in a recent article in Mother Jones, this has been the experience of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, whose Looped Square Ranch, “a 5,570-acre plot of land where the tribe runs its food sovereignty initiative” is currently under threat.
Activists with Honor the Earth, an Indigenous nonprofit, explain that there are currently “at least 106 proposed data center projects near or on Native lands.” Native activists see proposed data centers as a part of the long history of ongoing colonialism, of Indigenous dispossession, and the despoliation of Indigenous lands, a recent example being the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.
Similar to other parts of the United States, Indigenous communities have organized to fight what they rightly see as colonial invasions. Along with founding the Stop Data Colonialism coalition, Honor the Earth has helped organize local Indigenous resistance movements with some success: under pressure from the movement, the movement has won moratoriums or outright bans passed in both Tulsa and Coweta, Okla., and in the Seminole Nation in the northern part of the state.
Some General, Provisional Theses
Since 1980, we’ve seen a widening split between white-collar wage workers and blue collar wage workers. As the U.S imperial project began to decline in the 1970s, the latter grouping was hit particularly hard, seeing wage stagnation and even regression along with massive declines in unionization. The former, white-collar wage workers, actually benefited as a sector of the working class, partaking in the rise of financialization (debt) to power its credentialing in universities and its consumerism. However, since the 2008 financial crisis, white-collar wage earners too have started seeing their gains disappear under the neoliberal regime, with more and more members of this sector falling into unpayable debt and unemployment.
Now, with the emergence of AI as a mass consumer technology over the past two to three years, we see increasingly onerous disruptions of the work process and threats of imminent mass unemployment in the white-collar sector. Figures like OpenAI chief Sam Altman are becoming more open and vocal about their ultimate goal: corporations valued in the multibillions run entirely by AI agents.
White-collar workers now see a near future, if not a present, of deskilling, mass unemployment, and material and mental devastation. As this sector becomes proletarianized, it loses the privileged place it once had under neoliberalism and joins blue-collar workers already thrashed by decades of neoliberal deindustrialization. This opens the possibility for a truly powerful united movement of the two sectors, around slogans like “democratic” or “community” control of tech, democratic control of the economy, the centering of human needs over profits, universal socialized health care and other care work, etc.
Despite the splits that Trumpism has been causing between the two ruling-class parties and the real contradictions between the respective social bases of those parties, the U.S. capitalist class and the bourgeois parties are united in their promotion of artificial intelligence and the tech sector more broadly as weapons in the inter-imperialist conflict with China. We mean weapons in both the literal and metaphorical senses: AI is at the vanguard for development of military and surveillance technologies for use in current and future military confrontations and is also seen by the U.S. ruling class as an instrument for the maintenance of U.S. hegemony. Dystopian phenomena like AI-agents/cops and “predictive” warfare have surged beyond the borders of speculative fiction into contemporary reality for colonized and working-class people.
Marx argues in Capital, vol. 1, that it is possible to compose a “whole history” of innovations in machinery since the early days of the industrial revolution “for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt” (Capital vol. 1, p. 563, Penguin Classics). This insight resonates with the existential level of threat felt by the entire working class, regardless of credentials, in our own times. But more than this, data centers and the larger explosion of exuberance around AI are symptomatic of a more general crisis, a crisis expressed not only by the devaluing of work, but also in attacks on local communities and the environment along with attacks on Indigenous and racialized communities.
In Capital, Marx already saw the emerging “metabolic rift” caused by machinery and large-scale industry as the deepest contradiction of capitalism. This was expressed during Marx’s time, and to great extent also during our own, in the industrialization of agriculture and in the overproduction crises in the capitalist heartlands that, in turn, impel capitalist powers to engage in colonialism.
We can extrapolate directly from agricultural mechanization in the 19th century to robotics and AI in our own time. As Marx writes in Capital, “Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and earth […] Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker” (vol. 1, pp. 637 – 638). Presciently, Marx saw that this dynamic, set loose by the capitalist mode of production, would inevitably lead to ever more devastating crises.
The inherent tendency of capitalism toward crises, along with the far more frequent and severe crises since the 1970s, relative to the post-World War II Keynesean trente glorieues, is well known. The dynamics we see today with AI not only echo the post-1970s era. Like seemingly everything else AI touches, it speeds these up: already, more sober economists and business strategists are warning of an imminent collapse. The madness of AI’s boosters and sobriety of its skeptics are nearly simultaneous. The attacks that AI visits on communities, the working class, and the planet—the deep disruptions so obviously benefitting only the wealth few—are so broad and widely felt that these have the potential to unite all sectors of the working class along with Indigenous and racialized communities across disparate national regions and international borders.
The task for revolutionaries is to clarify these connections and articulate these sentiments into a unified struggle. Only a unification of these struggles under a revolutionary program for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a system that serves human needs and planetary health over the profits of a tiny minority can lead our class, and our planet, out of the crisis.
Photo: NBC News
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Iran war: a global environmental catastrophe
By B. COOPER
In the imperialist war initiated by the U.S. and Israel, the environmental consequences have been particularly vile for Iranian people. Although, at the moment of writing, a temporary and fragile ceasefire has been arranged, these consequences will last for decades and affect the whole region. Indeed, Israel and Iran continue to trade fire over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, while the U.S. has imposed a naval blockade while threatening to break the ceasefire. Regardless, we can expect more environmentally destructive to be waged by U.S. imperialism in the near future, powered by AI and justified by genocidal rhetoric.
Tehran oil depot bombing
Israel’s bombing of Tehran’s oil depot on March 8 will be remembered as one of history’s worst environmental disasters and war crimes. Four storage sites and one logistics hub were hit, which caused huge amounts of oil to burn and enter the sky as thick black smoke. It returned to the Earth as acidic oil rain. This is because the oil chemically converts to sulfur and nitrogen compounds when mixed with rain.
Immediately, this resulted in life-threatening effects for working people, who were advised by Iranian health and environmental authorities to shelter indoors to protect themselves from the acid rain, protect or discard exposed food, and wear masks if it were necessary to go outdoors. Horrid accounts from working people (Tehran alone has a population of 10 million) complain of black rain, difficulty breathing, burning eyes and throats. One woman said that it was “apocalyptic” and “a crime against humanity”.
Much of the city was covered in a thin layer of soot. There are cancer risks associated with lung and skin exposure to fossil fuels and their byproducts, especially if these byproducts enter the municipal water system or exposed surface water (a problem for communities located near oil production in the U.S.).This attack also led to longer term environmental harms. The whole region will also have to contend with the possible long-term effects on agriculture. Several locals observed the disappearance of local wildlife, mainly birds.
Middle East conflagration spreads ecocide
Due to retaliatory attacks on regional oil production by Iran (not being in a position to directly retaliate against the U.S. militarily), these direct environmental harms have engulfed the Middle East. Fuel production in Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Oman have been attacked, as well as multiple tankers in the Persian Gulf. So besides the direct environmental harms to people described above, this war—whose responsibility lays totally at the feet of the U.S. and Israel—adds unacceptable levels of CO2 emissions to the Earths’ atmosphere as a whole, and thus represents an attack on the health of the whole planet, not simply on any given nation or set of nations.
The U.S. military is estimated to have released over 2 billion metric tons of CO2 during the war, so far. That is in military operations, not including the much higher emissions of exploded oil tankers. It also does not include the emissions from either Israeli or Iranian operations. In a period when all the world’s nations should be working in concert to reduce fossil fuel emissions and safeguard the vitality of future generations, the insanity of capitalism leads us to do the opposite; fossil fuel pollution explodes, as do Israeli bombs, over the heads of the children of the Middle East.
Other pollutants: Plastics, rubber, metals and fallout?
Explosions and burning of industry or agriculture can release untold chemical compounds into the atmosphere or the soil. Experts are concerned by the possible long-term implications of hitting ammonia plants, rubber production, storage for fertilizers, burning building materials (like asbestos), etc. The U.S. to date has hit over 16,000 separate targets in Iran, and Iran in turn has retaliated on thousands of targets across the region.
The question of nuclear material still lingers. After all, the previous round of attacks on Iran in June 2025 were for the stated purpose of ending Iran’s nuclear program (a program they have every right to pursue!) which had only questionable success. After those strikes, Trump absurdly claimed on “Truth” Social that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated” and “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”
Vital water infrastructure threatened
Today, in 2026, both the Iranian authorities and Trump (in several harangues on Truth Social) have made threats against civilian infrastructure, notably water desalination plants and power plants. The people of the Gulf states, including Iran, live in arid climates, and it is a technical and cultural achievement in itself that millions of people can get potable water in a desert. That requires desalination plants, which take seawater and convert it to drinking water and the energy that keeps them going. Anyone attacking a desalination plant would be committing a war crime.
What’s worse is that the Persian Gulf states, including Iran, are facing an historic drought. Iran already claims that the U.S. attacked one desalination plant, so far. A mass attack on desalination plants and their power plants in Iran by the U.S./Israel would be a direct attack on the lives of the people of Iran. Furthermore, given Iran’s current position militarily and its prevailing tactic of targeting U.S. proxies in the region, such a move by the Trump administration could provoke a counterattack by Iran on desalination plants regionally.
It would constitute one of history’s worst humanitarian crises, laid again at the feet of the U.S. and Israel. Working people in the U.S. must oppose this with all their might!
Wildlife under attack; rainforests on the chopping block
In addition to humans, the animal and plant inhabitants of the region suffer from the war as well. Marine biologists are concerned for several critically endangered species of marine wildlife in both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Normal container/tanker traffic alone produces plenty of noise and collisions that injure or kill marine animals.
But exploding bombs and ships on the surface of the water produce enormous shockwaves that cause injury, disorientation, and even deafness in animals. Of course, if the ships carry oil, fertilizer or other chemical compounds not normally found in the ecosystem, this puts life at risk.
Several species that use the Strait of Hormuz as a migration route, such as whales, manatees, sharks, turtles, and dugongs are under attack. Species of fish vital to local fishing may be at risk too, with over 700 species in the Persian Gulf, including mackerels and tuna. The ecosystem of the Persian Gulf is also home to mangrove trees and seagrass.
Worse still is how war causes the economics of capitalism to chew away at the environment, which we see with global deforestation occurring because of the Iran war. How so? Because of rising fuel costs due to the war (and market volatility due to tariffs that impact U.S. farmers), the Trump administration is mandating a boost in biofuel production. Biofuels require the growth of more crops like soybeans and corn, crops which generally require the cutting of forests (and encroachment on prairie lands) to make room. The U.S. doesn’t have enough domestic production of vegetable oil and so must import vegetable oil. Research finds that this will encourage 7 million additional acres of global deforestation. Here’s the kicker: that would create more carbon emissions than the added biofuels would save.
Under global capitalism, nature is considered a “free lunch” as it were, external to production, rather than a vital component of reproduction. So go-getting entrepreneurs look at any war as another opportunity to make a profit, which our government encourages. Because ordinary people—the working class—do not control production democratically, the social and environmental consequences of capitalist production go continually out of control.
Workers’ organized response can stop the madness
One of the obvious evils of imperialism and Zionism is that these horrors are not a concern from their point of view. Their goal is the strategic defeat of “the enemy,” and the devastation to either civilian life (of which Israel and Trump make no distinction) or to the health of the Earth as a whole does not enter the calculation.
Only narrow strategic calculations matter to our immoral ruling class. Their outlook and their actions will by necessity lead to our mutual and collective destruction. The modern world cannot long survive this lack of wisdom and lack of respect for nature.
These ecological and humanitarian concerns are reason enough why working people in the United States must organize to dismantle the military machine and also end all aid to Israel. At the same time, Iranian workers need to mobilize in defense of their country. The warmongers who have rained death on Iran and who wish to plunder its resources and ravage its environment must be defeated in order to secure any sort of real freedom or liberation.
• Stop the war on Iran! U.S. Out of the Middle East!
• Dismantle the U.S. military! No to military AI!
• End all U.S. aid to Israel! Free Palestine! Free Lebanon!
• Victory to Iran’s working people against U.S./Israeli aggression! Women, life, freedom!
• No to attacks on life-giving infrastructure! Water is a human right!
• Protect Earth’s wildlife and ecosystems! For public control and management of all land and seas under workers, farmers, and Indigenous control to achieve real sustainability!
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Working people are paying for Iran war costs
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Trump: “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.”
By JOHN LESLIE
Six weeks into Trump’s Big Iranian Misadventure, fuel and food prices are soaring because of massive supply chain disruptions caused by the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. In the context of the U.S.-Israeli war and Iranian retaliatory attacks, the price of oil rose worldwide.
The Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut down with no end in sight. Approximately 20.3 million barrels of petroleum and crude oil, 25% of the world’s maritime oil shipments, passes through the Strait of Hormuz daily. Currently, about 95% of all traffic through that vital waterway is stopped.
Working people worldwide are the ones who will pay the price for this war of choice by U.S. imperialism and its Israeli watchdog state. The average price of a gallon of regular gas is now more than $4 in the United States, a dollar more than at the beginning of the conflict. Increased oil prices have a ripple effect in the economy, causing prices of consumer goods, airline tickets, and food to increase. U.S. consumer prices rose in March to an average yearly gain of 3.3%, the highest surge in inflation in the last two years.
The imperialist attack on Iran has benefited investors as they bet on market volatility using prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, or shift money to highly profitable arms manufacturing companies. In fact, the accuracy and timing of some of these bets have led to speculation of insider knowledge of administration war decisions. In some cases, newly created accounts made massive, well-timed profits on high-stakes bets right before major announcements or military attacks These include bets placed before the February 2026 U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran and before the announcement of a two-week ceasefire on April 8, 2026.
Indeed, the “ceasefire,” which hasn’t stopped Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, is a much-needed respite for the U.S. empire’s military, which was quickly depleting its stockpiles of weapons and exposed the weaknesses of U.S. manufacturing supply chains. The manufacturing sector, which relies on overseas sources for raw materials and components, has been affected. Manufacturers, reports the Center for American Progress, “rely on complex supply chains to provide inputs such as materials and component parts to produce in the United States. According to a recent survey, U.S. manufacturers were expected to see input prices rise faster in March 2026 than at any time since pandemic-era supply shocks. Industries that rely on materials produced at scale in the Persian Gulf region are likely to face the steepest and most immediate challenges.” The full effects of this war on the US economy have yet to be felt.
The story for working-class households is very different. Many are already suffering from a crisis of “affordability” with an economy that has been stripped of any real sense of security, and with some working more than one job just to survive. Now, the impact of inflation caused by this war means that working people and farmers are struggling even more. Fuel prices are just one aspect of this problem. Grocery bills, medical insurance and health care, mortgage rates, and fertilizer costs have also surged.
Working-class people are having to choose between home repairs, transportation expenses, paying utility bills, and eating. Mechanic Justin Thaemert told the St Cloud Times that his auto repair shop has seen a substantial reduction in business. “Everybody’s kind of tightening their belts. … Folks are putting off repairs and doing other things just to make ends meet. Everything’s at a standstill.” Thaemert continued, “We can’t do a lot of things right now. … The money’s just not there.”
A librarian from Massachusetts told The Guardian that her husband, “currently works a delivery job where he uses his own vehicle and has to pay for gas that isn’t fully reimbursed by his employer. Between rising fuel prices, insanely high rent, rising groceries, health insurance, utilities and other basic living costs, we are drowning. The past few weeks, he has had to pick up shifts at a second delivery company just so we can make ends meet.” She continued, “Sometimes he works 12 to 14 hour days. I also work full time and despite having two full-time incomes, we still are barely covering the roof over our head and the food on our table. … Forget retirement, I’m worried we won’t even be able to make it through the next few years.”
A Pennsylvania man who was forced to close his tattooing business due to lack of demand told The Guardian, “It seems our president is hell bent on making everything more expensive, from groceries, gas and energy. And now I have to worry about my 401k and whether or not my sons might get drafted to fight a war that is completely unnecessary.”
The rise of fertilizer costs for farmers will necessarily be passed on to the prices on grocery store shelves. According to The American Prospect, “The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz carries implications for not only oil but also fertilizer, right at the height of the spring planting season. About one-third of the world’s fertilizer ships through the strait, and without access, prices have jumped and farmers are anxious. Yet there are enough natural resources in the United States—nitrogen, phosphate, potash—to serve all our fertilizer needs; in fact, in the 1930s and ’40s one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world was the Tennessee Valley Authority. This production was wound down in the 1970s; today the industry is dominated by two to four firms, and that may end up having existential implications for hungry people the world over.”
Bloated Pentagon
The daily cost of the war with Iran so far has been in excess of $1.6 billion per day; at least $11.3 billion was spent in the first week. This figure, based on a Pentagon congressional briefing, may be grossly underestimated. What does that $1.6 billion spent daily mean to the average person? For example, the average cost of a newly constructed elementary school is between $20 million to $50 million; that’s the equivalent cost of 32 new schools per day being used to slaughter Iranian civilians and bomb critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is seeking an additional $80 billion to $100 billion (down from the original request of $200 billion) to defray war costs on top of the already staggering $800 billion allotted to military spending.
On April 3, an American F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down by Iranian forces, leaving two crew members stranded in Iranian territory. The U.S. launched what has been described as the most expensive search and rescue effort in history, with a cost in excess of $2 billion when you include destroyed or damaged aircraft and equipment. According the Defense Security Asia website, “By the end of the mission, the United States had lost an F-15E Strike Eagle, at least two HC-130J Combat King II rescue aircraft, an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter (possibly two), one A-10 Thunderbolt II and possibly multiple MQ-9 Reaper drones, while two HH-60 rescue helicopters were damaged and several other aircraft reportedly declared emergencies.”
Estimates of the cost of the war do not include Israeli expenditures since the beginning of the Iran campaign and Israel’s illegal invasion of Lebanon. Israel received $21.7 billion in U.S. aid between Oct. 7, 2023, and September 2025. During the first 20 days of the war on Iran, Israel spent $6.4 billion.
How will they pay for it?
It’s a fair question to wonder how this war will be paid for. Whenever some program or expenditure that helps working people is proposed, politicians cynically ask, “How are you going to pay for it?” It’s a question they almost universally forget to ask when it comes to war. The most likely scenario is more austerity and budget cuts. Education, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Forget it, we have a war to fight!
According to The Hill, “Trump during an Easter lunch at the White House said states should fully take over the responsibility of child care, adding states [should] raise taxes to offset the cost. ‘The United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people,’ the president said.
“‘We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to make up for it,’ he added. Child care, Medicare and Medicaid should be handled by the states while the federal government focuses on ‘military protection,’ the president said.”
Branko Marcetic reported in Jacobin (“Trump Is Robbing You to Pay for His Dumb War”), “Trump’s 2027 budget request—cooked up by his Office of Management and Budget director, lifelong anti-government zealot Russell Vought—envisions a massive 44 percent hike in military spending, taking the defense budget to a hard-to-believe $1.5 trillion. With Trump’s near-trillion-dollar military budget last year, the United States was already spending more on the military than the next nine of the world’s biggest military spenders combined. But this increase would mean U.S. taxpayers would be footing the bill for a military budget that’s more than double that of the next five countries combined.”
Trump’s henchman Marco Rubio displayed a lack of any sense of irony by saying, “Imagine if instead of spending billions on weapons, Iran spent that money on its people. They’d have a much different country.”
Human costs of war
Iran is suffering many civilian casualties, with the rights group HRANA reporting, “3540 people have been killed since the war erupted. It said 1616 of those were civilians, including at least 244 children.” Additionally, Iranian military forces have sustained more than 6,000 fatalities and 15,000 wounded. U.S. and Israeli air strikes have displaced an estimated 3.2 million Iranians internally as civilian infrastructure and housing have been targeted. An additional 1.6 million Afghan refugees who took refuge in Iran are facing hardship.
The regional expansion of the war has meant more deaths in Iraq (108 killed), Lebanon (1,461 killed including 124 children; this does not count the close to 300 killed by Israeli bombing in the last few days), and Israel (19 killed, not counting 10 IDF deaths in Lebanon), as well as more casualties in the Gulf States. At least 1.3 million have been displaced by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Many of these refugees were already refugees from Palestine or from the Syrian civil war. Israel has been bombing civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools, bridges, and housing, in a campaign reminiscent of their destruction of Gaza.
Defend the people, defund the Pentagon!
Decades of a one-sided class war waged against workers and the oppressed by the capitalist class and their political servants have left working-class people leading more precarious lives. Rents are too high, food is more expensive, and health care is too-often priced out of reach. The United States is the only industrialized country where a major illness can bankrupt families. Trump campaigned for office promising to end forever wars, but he broke that promise. Neither of the political parties of the establishment, Republicans and Democrats, will fight for working-class people.
The working class and its allies must wage a united fight against Trump’s authoritarianism and warmongering. We need an alternative to business as usual that puts the interests of workers and the oppressed first. We need a politics that puts people over profits and human needs over the needs of the very wealthy. We need education, housing, health care, and jobs, not more weapons systems.
• Stop the wars at home and overseas!
• End all aid to Israel now!
• Money for jobs, education, health care, and housing—not for war!
• Defend the people, defund the Pentagon!
Photo: War preparations on board the U.S. aircraft carrier Gerald Ford.
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Trump and Netanyahu fall short as two-week ‘ceasefire’ begins
While details of the ceasefire and its longevity remain unclear, the fact that this deal was even on the table is a significant setback for imperialist ambitions.
By FABIO BOSCO
After threatening to “wipe out Iranian civilization,” Trump backed down. He accepted a 15-day truce, signaling the possibility that he might accept defeat. Israel accepted the truce in theory, but in practice has already broken it by bombing a refinery in Lavan, Iran, [while continuing its military action in Lebanon—editor]. Since this is a truce, and not an agreement ending the war, everything could change. Furthermore, the outcome of this war could directly and profoundly influence the crisis of the world order and the trends of the class struggle in much of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to wait for its definitive results before drawing conclusions. But it is undeniable that the terms of the truce point to the possibility of a defeat for imperialism.
After 40 days of aggression against Iran, with over 15,000 bombings, widespread destruction, and 2000 Iranian deaths, virtually none of the imperialists’ main objectives were achieved.
Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, the Iranian regime may have lost more than 40 leaders, but it survived and grew stronger both within and, especially, outside the country, while also consolidating the IRGC’s power over the entire regime.
The nuclear and ballistic missile programs are still up for negotiation, but it is unlikely they will be eliminated. They may be limited in exchange for the total or partial suspension of heavy sanctions and the unfreezing of millions in Iranian funds abroad.
Israel asserts that Lebanon is not part of the agreement. This is an important issue, and we will see how it materializes. The reality is that Hezbollah’s resistance has not been defeated to date, and a retreat of imperialism in Iran does not favor Israel, even though, regrettably, this has not been a priority for the Iranian regime in the negotiations.
U.S. control over Iranian oil has not been established, contrary to Trump’s previous statements. Could this change in the negotiations? It is possible, to the extent that Iran is interested in modernizing its oil industry and selling oil at market prices, which are significantly higher than the prices paid by China. But nothing here resembles the Venezuelan example from January.
The full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will take place under Iranian control, and there is a possibility of tolls being imposed by Iran and Oman, which did not occur before the attacks.
This provisional outcome weakens imperialist policies in the region and around the world.
The imperialist-Zionist dream of a new Middle East under Israeli hegemony is slipping away. Iran emerges stronger and keeps its sights set on Israel’s main ally in the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates, as well as other signatories of the shameful Abraham Accords, which normalized relations with Israel at the cost of Palestinian lives.
Another regional power, Saudi Arabia, is moving away from normalization with Israel and is betting on military agreements with Pakistan and Turkiye, in addition to building alternative routes for oil exports. It is also possible that it will seek a necessary accommodation with Iran, despite Iranian attacks on the country.
The future of Israeli territorial expansion in Lebanon and Syria is uncertain. Zionist leaders wish to proceed with their plans to seize southern Lebanon, expel the population, and turn it into a permanent occupation. They also aim to expand the occupation into southern Syria, integrating the occupied territories from the Golan Heights all the way to Sweida, passing through parts of the Quneitra and Daraa provinces. However, Israel depends directly on the military, political, financial, and diplomatic support of U.S. imperialism, which places the future of war in the hands of President Trump, but also makes Israel dependent on Arab regimes’ own desire to resist or capitulate. The example of Iran strengthens the option of resistance. The Zionist failure in the war against Iran is likely to weaken Al-Hajri and the Druze leaders who are banking on relations with the Zionists.
As for Palestine, the end of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and al-Quds/Jerusalem is not yet in sight. Despite the weakening of imperialism/Zionism, the Palestinian issue has not been given central prominence in negotiations with the United States. Issues such as the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the West Bank, and Al-Quds/Jerusalem, and border control between Gaza and Egypt, and between the West Bank and Jordan, remain unresolved.
Finally, Netanyahu will face a tough electoral test in the elections that are expected to be called by October at the latest. The failure of the aggression against Iran weakens his position.
Global impact
On the international stage, the global capitalist economy is weakening. The World Bank forecasts lower growth and higher inflation due to the war.
Transatlantic relations between the United States and Europe are strained. It is possible that European imperialism, battered by U.S. impositions, will attempt to develop alternative energy sources (nuclear and renewable) and its own armed forces (including an expansion of France’s nuclear arsenal) to reposition itself in the international inter-imperialist struggle.
Russian imperialism, one of the main beneficiaries of the war, saw its profits rise from oil and gas exports at higher prices. Oil prices fell with the ceasefire, but are likely to remain higher than pre-war levels for some time. However, Russian gains may remain limited by the Ukrainian military offensive, which reduced Russian production capacity by 20% to 40%.
Chinese imperialism has fared well. It has avoided inflation in oil and gas prices, strengthened energy alternatives (coal and renewables), pressured Iran to accept the ceasefire, and bolstered its image of predictability in contrast to U.S. imperialism. While U.S. aggression against Iran opens the door for other imperialist powers to follow suit, the costly U.S. military failure temporarily rules out any attempt to take Taiwan by military means and strengthens efforts to pressure the Taiwanese bourgeoisie and the population regarding the “benefits” of unification (despite the dictatorship).
Overall, the U.S. failure demonstrates that no superpower is invincible, echoing the example of Russian imperialism in Ukraine. And it strengthens the struggles of oppressed peoples around the world.
Furthermore, it accelerates the inter-imperialist arms race, the energy transition in imperialist powers that are not self-sufficient in oil and gas (China, Japan, and Europe), and new techniques of conventional warfare with the widespread use of missiles and drones, as well as asymmetric warfare tactics.
Trump has suffered a blow. And he is likely to try to retaliate.
The negotiations will confirm (or not) the trends that stem from the proposed 14-day ceasefire. In any case, Trump will seek to win at the negotiating table what he failed to achieve through war. One of these goals for him is access to Iranian oil, which is strategic in the dispute with Chinese imperialism. Trump may try to trade the lifting of sanctions for some degree of access to this strategic energy resource.
Trump is also likely to seek to impose his will on other countries, particularly in Latin America, in order to throw a smokescreen over his failure in Iran. Cuba, suffocated by the energy blockade imposed by Trump, will likely be the next target. Other countries holding elections, such as Hungary, Colombia, and Brazil, are also likely to be the target of efforts to influence their outcomes in favor of far-right candidates.
Domestically, in the United States, his situation is more complicated due to the outcome of the war, likely crises between bourgeois factions, and a loss of popularity stemming from inflation, the violent actions of ICE, and the pedophilia and influence-peddling scandal involving his friend Epstein. All of this comes on the eve of the midterm elections, in which Trump will likely attempt to interfere to prevent an electoral defeat from undermining his presidency.
The Iranian working class will have to resume the struggle against dictatorship and capitalism.
The ceasefire, if extended indefinitely, will eliminate the scenario of the destruction of life and the country through imperialist-Zionist military action. In this scenario, the working class will benefit from the end of military intervention, and from the consequent erosion of support for imperialist military aggression among the population and the diaspora. Reza Pahlavi and the MEK will return to their rightful irrelevance.
But just today, Iranian judicial authorities called for the acceleration of executions. Therefore, the working class will have to resume the struggle for an end to executions and for the release of political prisoners (more than 50,000), as well as for democratic freedoms of expression and organization, and for social justice. This will only be achieved with the end of the dictatorship and capitalism.
To this end, it will be necessary to strengthen the independent organization of the working class through trade unions, the student movement, organizations for women’s rights, and those of oppressed nationalities (Kurds, Balochis, Arabs, …), as well as the large diaspora capable of building international solidarity with these democratic and social struggles.
Our position
The IWL-FI supports the struggles against all forms of imperialism (U.S., European, Chinese, Russian, or Japanese) and welcomes the potential military defeat of imperialism-Zionism at the hands of the Iranian military forces.
If the balance of power allows the Iranian regime to take a clear stance in negotiations with Trump for the end of U.S. bases in the region, for an end to aggression and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Syria and Lebanon, and for an end to the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, a more decisive victory over imperialism and Zionism will have been achieved.
At the same time, we will support all forms of self-organization by the working class and Iranian social movements in their struggle to end the executions of political prisoners and secure their immediate release, and for democratic freedoms and social justice.
Finally, we reiterate the call to take to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We will have a comrade from the IWL present on the Sumud Flotilla to Gaza and will strengthen solidarity activities such as Palestinian Political Prisoners’ Day (April 17) and the Nakba anniversary on May 15.
First published here in Portuguese by the IWL-FI
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Defend Tom Alter and fight the New McCarthyism!
By JAMES MARSH
Dr. Tom Alter, a respected and tenured university professor, was fired by Texas State University (TSU) President Kelly Damphousse on Sept. 10, 2025, for remarks he delivered at a socialist conference in his capacity as a private citizen. After clips of his comments were taken out of context and circulated online by a self-described fascist streamer, they came to the attention of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who politically pressured TSU to fire Dr. Alter. He was fired without due process, in violation of both Texas State University policy and Texas state law.
This attack is another in a wave of politically motivated attacks on professors and teachers as part of what is often called the New McCarthyism (referring to the Red Scare-era attacks on free speech in the 1950s). These attacks today are attempting to strangle free speech in schools and academia by rewriting history and restricting what can be taught to ideas that are palatable to the far right.
Speaking about his termination at a forum at Haymarket House in Chicago this March, Dr. Alter stated, “Damphousse fired me over comments I had made three days earlier in a presentation I gave during an online socialism conference. And I made this presentation on my own time, in my personal capacity, online from my home office on a Sunday morning…”
“In his Facebook post announcing my immediate termination, Damphousse claimed I was inciting violence. … The student newspaper at Texas State University published a transcript of my conference talk, and the overwhelming public opinion from those that read the transcript or happened to view my talk online was that I was in no way inciting violence.”
The clip in question of Dr. Alter had plainly been edited to cut from a discussion of his politics to an off-hand comment about working at TSU. The footage was doctored so that far-right commentators could fabricate claims that he was advocating violence in his capacity as a Texas State professor. The claim is fundamentally false.
In short, President Damphousse carried out a flagrant political attack that misrepresented Dr. Alter’s comments and trampled on his right to speak as a private citizen as part of a far-right witch hunt.
At another talk, at a community bookstore in Chicago in January, Dr. Alter discussed the hearing he was given by President Damphousse in which he presented evidence in his defense. “After I explained to him that the fascist video was edited to make it seem I was discussing my employment at Texas State, he asked me, ‘But what does it look like?’ As if the truth does not matter, just how things appear on the internet.”
Dr. Alter is one of many teachers, professors, and student activists on the front lines of attacks under the New McCarthyism, especially targeting the teaching of ideas about gender, race, and settler colonialism in Palestine. These attacks are only escalating as the ruling class increasingly turns to authoritarian methods.
Why does his fight matter?
The stakes of fights like these are clear. If progressive forces cannot defend themselves and their right to openly organize, then the movement can be dismantled.
But the forces of the working class that can defend civil liberties from far-right attacks are powerful. The vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Jackson Potter, speaking alongside Dr. Alter at Haymarket House, provided one such example of far-right attacks on civil liberties: ”I think it’s high time that we start thinking about what Tom has got fired for. … How do we protect and defend the remnants of democracy, and then how do we advance them? And this election is not guaranteed.”
Potter went on, “So, what are you willing to do about it? When we asked that question the last couple of weeks in mass trainings, everyone says, if there is election interference, we’re ready to shut it down.
“And that’s what they did in South Korea, right, in 2024, when a similar situation occurred? A president declared martial law, the union movement leadership was the first arrest warrant they issued, and the general trade-union movement then shut down that country in a general strike—and 10 days later that guy was in jail where he belonged. So I think we know our trajectory, don’t we?”
The working class must defend its power to speak freely and organize openly. Civil liberties were not written into the Constitution with the working class in mind. The freedom envisioned by many of the drafters of the Constitution was freedom for slave owners. But these civil liberties were seized on by the working class, and it has been a long hard fight to defend every inch of maneuvering room for the movement for workers’ power.
The New McCarthyism threatens these civil liberties inside schools, universities, and elsewhere while a broader range of attacks on the free expression of activists threatens the working class as a whole. An injury to one is an injury to all. The fight for free speech must extend to everyone in the working class, inside and outside of the classrooms, or the rollback will erode the rights of anyone trying to organize.
Dr. Ellen Schrecker, a historian of McCarthyism in the 1950s, spoke alongside Dr. Alter about this New McCarthyism. “People keep asking me…” she said, “You know, how is what’s happening today different from McCarthyism? Is it a replay?”
“I’m a trained historian, and I believe in nuance and complexity, and putting everything into context. And now I have to say, no more context, no more nuance. It’s worse. It’s much worse than it’s ever been. … And I’m talking mainly about higher education here, but it’s applicable everywhere, and we know it.”
This New McCarthyism is targeting many sectors of progressive social movements. Palestine activists like Leqaa Kordia, only recently released after a year in ICE detention for peacefully protesting at Colombia University, or Dr. Idris Robinson, also fired from TSU by President Damphousse for speaking about Palestine in his capacity as a private citizen, have faced sustained repression on and off campus. Professors of race and gender presenting critical viewpoints have been purged from teaching positions, as at the New College of Florida, where a far-right purge attracted media attention when one of the college’s newly appointed board members announced he was abolishing the gender studies program and dumping the books in the garbage, and where Dr. Erik Wallenberg was dismissed in 2023 for writing publicly about how this purge restricted students’ ability to learn Black and Queer history.
Dr. Wallenberg, speaking alongside Dr. Alter, stated that this purge was part of “the right-wing dream of remaking education,” and warned of the likelihood that “there’s going to be a lot more firings. There’s going to be a lot more intimidated people. … It’s not just a question of Texas and Florida. This is happening across the country. … It’s not just a Southern problem.”
These attacks are part of a general strategy by the far right to exert political control over educational curricula and silence free speech by intimidating teachers and professors—restricting educators who would challenge the ruling-class interests in keeping the working class divided, in controlling what is included in acceptable discussion, in limiting how students understand their histories and their futures.
The University of Texas Board of Regents this February called for limits to university programs so that students can graduate without confronting “unnecessary controversial subjects,” but without defining what constitutes a controversial subject. This strategy targeted everything from Queer filmmakers to Plato, which a professor at Texas A&M University was ordered to remove from their curriculum this January for touching on “gender ideology.”
The New McCarthyism in our schools is only one front in far-right attacks on civil liberties and free expression as the ruling class grows more authoritarian in repressing challenges to its power. In the streets, immigrant rights activists have seen cases from Dr. John Caravello, who faces a misdemeanor charge baselessly escalated to a felony for protesting against ICE, to Alex Pretti and Renée Good, murdered by ICE agents for their resistance to ICE raids in Minneapolis. Entire cities from Chicago to Los Angeles have been occupied by the National Guard as part of the creation of a quick reaction force to quell imagined “civil disturbances,” while Washington, D.C., continues to be occupied. The Trump administration is threatening to “nationalize” local elections, and his advisors recommend sending ICE to police polling stations, disrupting the electoral process and threatening democracy.
This is where Dr. Alter’s firing connects to the struggle against capitalist authoritarianism in this country. This wave of repression must be fought at every turn or the civil liberties the working class has fought so hard for will be dismantled.
The movement in the streets must defend itself. The path to establishing this capacity is by building as broad a base as possible to defend against these attacks on civil liberties, establishing connections between unions, civil liberties advocacy groups, grassroots community organizations, socialist organizations, and all groups invested in the defense of the ability of the working class to speak and demonstrate freely and openly.
Dr. A. Naomi Paik, the co-founder of the community organization Sanctuary For All, spoke alongside Dr. Alter in Chicago about the importance of organizing to defend civil liberties in the face of ICE terror. She underlined that “one of the most important steps” to prepare for ICE attacks and attacks on civil liberties in general is “relationship building. … None of the other shit matters without relationships.”
What can we do?
Dr. Alter’s defense campaign provides a model that only grows louder when people like President Damphousse try to silence progressive political views in flagrant attacks on the free speech of private citizens. This turns attacks into a chance to bring new people into the movement to defend civil liberties, to establish relationships between defense groups, and to organize a powerful fightback against the New McCarthyism and the rise of capitalist authoritarianism underway in this country.
Dr. Alter’s defense campaign includes whoever stands for free speech for all. It aims to defend the power of the working class to organize freely and openly. Check out the Committee to Defend Tom Alter to donate (helping support Tom and his family in this difficult time) or join the defense campaign.
Dr. Alter’s speaking tour, which has taken him to events across the country from California to Chicago to Texas to speak alongside other activists part of the struggle to defend civil liberties, will continue in Connecticut next week, Austin on April 22, Philadelphia on April 25, New York City on April 27, and elsewhere in the months to come. For details, see the Committee to Defend Tom Alter website.
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No Kings rallies brought millions of protesters into the streets
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
March 28 at the San Francisco Civic Center. (Jeanne Marie Hallacy / Mission Local) The No Kings mobilization on March 28 was a powerful outcry against the forces of war and reaction. It was the largest single-day outpouring of street protests in U.S. history. The massive flood of people was fueled by widespread opposition to the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, as well as by the resistance to ICE’s immigrant roundups shown by the people of Minneapolis in the winter.
The March 28 events signaled that millions of people are ready to go into action against the authoritarian and criminally destructive policies of the Trump administration.
Simultaneously, the No Kings / No Tyrants movement saw rallies taking place in at least 15 other nations. Demonstrators came out not only to resist the spread in their own countries of far-right movements and authoritarian politicians—who are generally allies of the MAGA movement in the U.S.—but to protest Trump’s war on Iran. Some 500,000 marched against racism and the far right in London; protesters also came together in Rome, Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Sydney, Tokyo, Berlin, Toronto, and other big cities.
In the United States, the size and geographic spread of the protests were remarkable. Over 8 million people marched and rallied in more than 3300 cities, suburbs, and small towns in every state. No Kings organizers reported that two-thirds of participants who signed their lists lived in small town or rural areas—a 40% increase in this demographic over the last No Kings marches in October.
Leah Greenberg—a founder of Indivisible, the major group in the No Kings coalition—commented on this statistic in an interview with “Democracy Now” host Amy Goodman: “Well, what we’re seeing with this march, and all of our data suggests the same when we look at who is organizing new Indivisible groups or new activist collectives around the country, is that the resistance to Trump and to MAGA is reaching farther and deeper and more significantly into red and rural areas than it ever has in the past, in the first Trump term or ever before.”
This was the fourth massive nationwide mobilization since Trump took office for his second term. Each outpouring has been successively larger than its predecessors. Some 3 million people took part in the “Hands Off” protest in April 2025; that was followed by “No Kings” rallies in June 2025 (5 million) and October 2025 (7 million)—surpassed once again by this past Saturday’s over 8 million people.
Indivisible, the major nationwide coordinator of the No Kings rallies, called for “No ICE, no wars, no kings” as the themes of the day—and each of those issues was prominent on the hand-drawn signs that people brought to the marches. Indivisible came together in 2016 by people that had been associated with the campaign of Bernie Sanders and the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party; since then, it has grown to encompass thousands of local affiliates. Other major forces in the No Kings Alliance include 50501, MoveOn, the ACLU, Public Citizen, and dozens of other organizations, including some national unions. Nationally, some 500 groups sponsored and organized actions.
Huge crowds in the big cities
The turnouts in major cities were immense. According to the organizers, about 200,000 joined the flagship event in St. Paul, Minn.—despite the bitter cold and a sharp wind. It was the largest in Minnesota history, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin announced from the stage. The rally took place outside the Minnesota State Capitol in solidarity with the many people from the state who mobilized against ICE several months ago.
The chair of the rally, comedian Liz Winstead, co-creator of “The Daily Show” and founder of Abortion Access Front, stated, “You chased out of this state pure evil. … You chased out the fun-sized fascist Greg Bovino. You chased out that evil Kristi Noem. She’s so evil, I’m starting to think that her dog took his own life.”
Bruce Springsteen performed his song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” inspired by the January killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents. “King Trump’s private army from the DHS, guns belted to their coats, came to Minneapolis to enforce the law—or so their story goes,” he sang. In his introductory remarks, Springsteen mourned the deaths of Good and Pretti but said people’s continued pushback against ICE has given hope to the rest of the country. He concluded, ”This reactionary nightmare, and these invasions of American cities, will not stand.”
Joan Baez and Maggie Rogers sang Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Baez told the crowd that she first sang it at the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. “I am honored to be standing in resistance with all of you today in this city on this day in this moment,” Baez said. “Thank you, Minneapolis.”
Large marches were held in all five boroughs of New York City; the major one in Manhattan stretched for over a mile down 7th Avenue and through Times Square. The organizers claimed that 350,000 people participated in the Manhattan march. About 180,000 filled Boston Common, according to estimates by both the police and the rally organizers. An initial count from Indivisible put the crowd in Seattle at from 90,000 to 100,000, and the participants in Los Angeles were expected to top 100,000. Police said that 40,000 marched in San Diego.
Tens of thousands marched in Washington, D.C., crossing the bridge from Arlington Cemetery—where Trump wants to construct a towering victory arch—past the Lincoln Memorial and into the National Mall. Signs read, “Put down the crown, clown!” and “Regime change begins at home!”
Various estimates put the number of marchers in Philadelphia at from 40,000 to 80,000. The total seemed smaller than at the No Kings mobilizations of last year; this was perhaps partly due to the fact that additional marches took place this time in suburban cities and towns—as well as to the unseasonably cold weather. This writer spoke to a woman at the Philadelphia march who told me that her son, a soldier in the Army, had been sent to Bahrain. She was clearly terrified that Trump’s threats to deploy U.S. troops in an invasion of Iranian territory might be carried out and that her son could soon be mobilized in the action.
Several large demonstrations took place in the Bay Area, including 20,000 in Oakland and from 60,000 to 100,000 estimated in San Francisco. Workers’ Voice members in San Jose report that about 10,000 participated in that city’s protest: “We talked with many of them; when we asked what had brought them out, the answer was ‘everything!’ We discussed the cost of the war, and how that could be used for things such as health care and education.”
Most sources state that about 200,000 marched in Chicago; the march extended for over a mile. According to a Workers’ Voice reporter in Chicago, the crowd seemed smaller than last October, which took place soon after the National Guard had occupied the city. On the other hand, our reporter wrote, “There were politically sharper signs” than in October, with a younger crowd; “the chants seemed to be largely about abolishing ICE and against war with Iran.”
Around the country, many marchers spoke out for the rights of immigrants. Chants of “ICE out now!” and the earthier “Fuck ICE” were frequently heard on the marches. The necessity to protect civil liberties and democracy—such as the right to vote—was another common theme that was reflected in signs, chants, and interviews.
Many signs addressed the economic problems that working people are facing. Even before the war on Iran, people were increasingly beleaguered by higher prices for food and other necessities, a shrinking job market, and large cutbacks in government spending on social benefits. Signs reminded people: “Gas is over $4!” Another slogan at the rallies was “Money for health care, not for war!” In Atlanta, where a group of trade-union leaders led the thousands who marched toward Georgia’s Statehouse, demonstrators demanded a $25-an-hour minimum wage.
Trump was often the direct target of the slogans that people carried on their signs. This reflected the plummeting poll numbers for Trump as president. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from March 20 to March 23 gave him a 36% favorable rating for his performance in office, compared to a 62% unfavorable rating. The New York Times daily average of polls showed 40% approval and 56% disapproval as of March 27.
Many blasted Trump’s corruption, narcissism, warmongering, lying, sexual assaults and association with pedophiles (i.e., with Epstein), actions against trans people, and racism. A sign in St. Paul had a little square mustache scrawled on a Trump face and proclaimed, “Heil Trump!” Another in Indianapolis demanded, “Maybe next time, don’t let a child molester start WW IV.” A woman in Atlanta held a sign that pointed out, “A felon married to an immigrant is telling us that the problem is immigrants and felons.” Others stated, “Make America kind again!” and “Make the guillotine great again!” “No faux king way!” said one. A number of signs merely stated, “Shame!”
The Democratic Party
Democratic Party politicians frequently appeared as speakers in the No Kings actions. The flagship rally in St, Paul, for example, featured at least six elected Democrats—including Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, and Rep. Ilhan Omar—plus Senator Bernie Sanders, who is an “independent” who supports and caucuses with the Democrats. The prominence of Democrats at the rallies is not coincidental. The major organizational sponsors of the No Kings mobilization are now turning their attention to the midterm elections; they hope to work for Democratic Party candidates in order to “win back” both houses of Congress.
Indivisible, for its part, encourages its chapters to endorse and work for candidates “who align with your values” in elections, and prints a guide to help instruct people how to do that. Of course, these candidates are generally Democrats, since undemocratic restrictions allow few candidates other than the nominees of the two major parties to get on the ballot. Moreover, only candidates with a large amount of money behind them can usually win elections, making the overwhelming majority of politicians—Democratic or Republican—beholden to wealthy capitalist donors.
But supporting Democratic or other big-party politicians places limits on how far a struggle can proceed with its demands and strategies. The Democratic Party, which like the Republicans represents the interests of the U.S. capitalist class, will resist any demands that upset the regular workings of U.S capitalism. For example, most congressional Democrats voted for the almost $1 trillion war budget and have regularly approved measures to deport and “close the border” against immigrants. They have rejected demands to abolish ICE, merely calling for minor reforms like body cameras, judicial subpoenas, and removing the masks. The Democrats will only bend to important and fundamental demands when the power of a mass movement or an aroused working class forces them to make concessions.
The role of labor
The AFL-CIO and the the National Education Association, the Service Employees (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers, and AFSCME (government workers)—all actively endorsed No Kings Day, as did Unite HERE, UE (Electrical, Radio, and Machine workers), the Postal Workers, Communication Workers of America, and a number of city and state labor councils and union locals.
In January, at the height of the ICE raids and violence in Minnesota, National Education Association President Becky Pringle said: “Educators know ICE does not belong in our schools—its presence creates fear and trauma for students and communities. As educators, we have a moral and professional duty to protect every student, no matter where they were born. That is why the 3-million-member National Education Association is partnering with the No Kings Coalition, standing with parents, neighbors, and faith leaders to mobilize against the brutality we are witnessing in Minneapolis and across the country.”
At the same time, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler issued a statement supporting the No Kings movement and blasting Trump’s “Anti-Worker Agenda.” She pointed out: “The Trump administration has committed the single biggest act of union-busting in history, attacked good jobs across the country, launched a brutal assault on immigrants, ripped health care from millions, jeopardized the essential services that working families rely on, and threatened our fundamental freedoms.”
Last month, Schuler reissued her statement, which concluded: “The Labor Movement is taking action, speaking up and fighting back! Union Members across the country will be in the streets on Saturday, March 28th, for No Kings Day to powerfully say that our government doesn’t answer to a king—it answers to Working People.”
Despite the endorsements and ringing testimonials by top labor officials, however, just a few unions put any effort into organizing their members to participate in the No Kings marches. AFSCME promoted No Kings on its website and included a downloadable flyer advertising the March 28 events, but most unions did not even do that. And major industrial unions, such as the Steelworkers, Auto Workers, Transport Workers, and Teamsters appear to have mostly ignored No Kings—at least, on the national level.
In some cities, groups of workers marched behind their union banners, but in general, organized union contingents were rare. For that reason, the power of the organized working class, which could provide real muscle for the movement against the Trump administration’s reactionary policies, still remains muted.
Building for May Day Strong
The groups in the No Kings coalition are urging people to now mobilize for May Day Strong, a nationwide event of “collective action” (see maydaystrong.org). The May 1 action is being organized under three pledges: “No work, no school, and no shopping.”
In addition to Indivisible, several large unions, including the AFT, AAUP, NEA, Starbucks Workers United, and the UE say that they are mobilizing. According to Payday Report, “Dozens of local union groups, including the North Carolina AFL-CIO, the Milwaukee Labor Council, and UFCW 3000, have signed on to support the May Day actions.”
The Chicago Teachers Union is pushing to have the mayor and the Board of Education declare May 1 as a “Day of Civic Action.” CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said in a statement, “If we still want to have democracy in the midterms this November, public schools that provide our students with quality education, and unions to defend workers’ rights, then it is up to every Chicagoan to stand up for what we believe in and show the authoritarian billionaire in Washington that when he breaks every rule, we will not go along with business as usual.”
May Day Strong is inspired by the Jan. 23 action by Minnesota residents to skip work and school in protest of ICE. The event had support from major unions and labor federations across the state. Some 75,000 to 100,000 marched through Minneapolis on that day. The upcoming action also recalls the May 1, 2006, work stoppage by immigrants, which involved millions of working people across the country.
Speaking on March 31 at a No Kings online follow-up session, Neidi Domínguez, the executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, stated that over 1300 actions were scheduled last year on May Day. This year, she said, will be even bigger. The activities will stress themes such as “Expand democracy, not corporate power,” as well as “No ICE!” “No war!” “Tax the rich!” “Hands off our vote!”
Indivisible leader Ezra Levin addressed the March 28 rally in St. Paul with a similar message: “The next major national action of this movement is not going to be just another protest. It is a tactical escalation. It is an economic show of force inspired by Minnesota’s own [Jan. 23] Day of Truth and Action. We all saw this—thousands of teachers and nurses, community leaders and faith leaders, showing up in sub-zero temperatures and showing that they were not going to put up with business as usual while a secret police goon squad was murdering Americans in the streets. We need to do that nationally, y’all. We need to do that all over the country.
“So on May 1, on May Day, across the country, we are saying, ‘no business as usual! No work, no school, no shopping!’ We’re going to show up and say, ‘we’re putting workers over billionaires and kings!’”
The need for democratic coalition building
Following the last No Kings mobilization in October, we wrote: “The organizers appear to be taking a step forward in looking to form partnerships with local grassroots activist organizations around the country. However, true coalitions are built when people feel that they have a real voice in decision-making, and when the course of action is agreed upon democratically.
“Moreover, the leaders of coalitions should be representative of and accountable to the participants. Unfortunately, at this point, the national leadership of the No Kings Alliance still seems rather obscure (nobody elected them), and their decisions on what, when, and how to conduct activity seem to be made from the top down.”
Today, the proliferation of chapters of Indivisible, 50501, and other groups is a sign that democratic planning and organization is continuing to take place on the local level around the country. However, these chapters are most visible in smaller communities and are mainly active in planning relatively small local activities. To all appearances, the larger marches and rallies in major metropolitan centers are still planned in a predetermined and top-down manner.
When building for May Day Strong and subsequent marches, rallies, and strikes, activists should realize that the value of mass mobilizations takes place in part during the planning stage. That is the period of coalition building, when alliances can be made among activists and organizations, and when the participants have the opportunity to democratically discuss and determine key items such as the movement’s goals and demands. These coalitions should aim at including a broad range of groups, trade unions, and communities, while organizing meetings and assemblies that ensure the ability for all participants to have a voice and a vote.
All out on May Day! Into the streets!
Top Photo: March 28 in Chicago. (Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP / Getty Images)
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Freedom for Guillermo Medina Reyes!
By VALENTINA SALGADO and MAURICE M.
The recent detention of Guillermo Medina Reyes by ICE agents in San Jose, Calif., is a direct attack against immigrants and against the entire working class of this country. His arrest is part of a state offensive that combines immigration repression, the criminalization of protest, and a detention apparatus that clearly serves the interests of the ruling classes.
Guillermo’s case cannot be understood outside the concrete functioning of the capitalist state—a set of institutions (police, courts, legislatures, national and local executive bodies, prisons, ICE) designed by the boss class to control, divide, and discipline the working class, particularly its immigrant sectors.
Guillermo was born in Mexico and arrived in the United States at the age of six. His entire adult life unfolded in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he became a tattoo artist, a worker, an artist, and a community organizer deeply committed to the defense of immigrants. This trajectory explains why the state targets him: because he has demonstrated that immigrants not only have the right to live here but can also organize, fight, and challenge the very structure of immigration repression.
From a young age, Guillermo faced a system of punishment that left him marked in the eyes of the government. At 16, he was convicted as an adult of attempted homicide and served over 12 years in prison. After completing his full sentence, instead of reclaiming his life in freedom, the state transferred him directly into ICE custody. This practice constitutes a form of double punishment imposed on immigrants after their release from prison.
But Guillermo’s criminal record does not nullify any of his rights. No offense or crime justifies deportation, persecution and surveillance, or immigration-related incarceration. Immigrants, regardless of their past, possess fundamental rights, including due process, the right not to be arbitrarily detained, and the right to organize politically. Workers Voice defends these rights and organizes all workers to win the full and unconditional right to citizenship for all immigrants.
In 2022, Guillermo was detained at the Golden State Annex immigration detention center in California, which, like 90% of all immigration detention centers, is run by corporations that profit from suffering, in this case the GEO Group. There, he organized his fellow detainees through a hunger strike and a work stoppage and participated in a class-action lawsuit against ICE and that corporation for abusive conditions and retaliation. Through this, Guillermo demonstrated that collective organization and struggle can emerge even under the most adverse conditions. That experience made him a leading figure in the fight for immigrants’ rights and a target for persecution.
Finally freed in 2023, Guillermo “turned [his] life around” from his teenage years. But this did not end the persecution, and Guillermo continued to draw ICE’s ire as he participated in protests, stand in solidarity with other detainees, and publicly denounce the repressive and exclusionary immigration system.
In May 2025, he faced a misdemeanor vandalism charge related to a mental health episode. ICE attempted to use that incident to imprison him again. A federal judge issued an order preventing that arbitrary arrest. Subsequently, a court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting ICE from detaining him without judicial review.
In August 2025, Reyes was arrested again and accused by Alameda police of attempted carjackings. Reyes has said that the arrest occurred following a mental health episode caused by the stress of the deportation proceedings. The community in San Jose has continued to rally behind him, supporting him at immigration hearings through late January 2026. But on Feb. 13, the judge issued a decision ordering his re-detention without bond.
The following day, federal agents violently apprehended him outside his home in San Jose. He was transferred to the California City Detention Center, where hundreds of immigrants await deportation in degrading conditions. This detention is part of ICE’s deployment as a political police force, reinforced by the current administration with astronomical budgets, dozens of new private detention centers, and a model of repression that seeks to prevent any form of organization among immigrants, workers, students and communities.
Guillermo’s persecution highlights the political nature of immigration detentions. It is no coincidence that those who lead strikes, protests, or speak out, like Guillermo, are the first to be targeted by repression. The state seeks to sow fear, discourage resistance, and isolate activists.
But our response cannot be fear. The recent experience of the working class shows that where there is organization, there is strength. In Minneapolis, in January 2026, 50,000 protesters brought the city to a standstill and drove out 700 ICE agents. The recent massive and militant strike at the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Col., demonstrates the power of workers’ joint action across national boundaries: there, 3000 immigrant workers managed to launch a joint action against their employers despite speaking more than 57 different languages.
Such mass actions are capable not only of halting repression, but also of demonstrating that the working class has the potential to dismantle the tools of the state and win all kinds of rights when it acts in unity.
The struggle for Guillermo’s immediate and unconditional release is part of a broader battle for the rights of the working class. This includes defending all immigrants, securing the full and unconditional right to citizenship, and building a multinational workers’ movement independent of the capitalist parties. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are allies in this struggle. Both have built and financed the repressive apparatus that today detains, deports, and imprisons.
Our task is clear. We must unite unions, community organizations, and popular movements, independently from the Democrats and Republicans, in a national campaign capable of confronting the state and securing the freedom of Guillermo and all the regime’s immigration and political prisoners.
Immediate and unconditional freedom for Guillermo Medina Reyes!
Full and universal right to citizenship for all immigrants!
Abolish ICE!
Workers’ organization to defeat immigration, labor, and political persecution and exploitation!
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March 28 in London: The biggest British protest ever against the far right
By MARTIN RALPH
Half a million people marched in London on 28 March against the far right and for many other reasons. It was organised by Together Alliance, a coalition formed in 2020 to oppose racism and the far right, which brought together over 80 organisations from trade unions to community groups, anti-racist organizations, and environmental activists.
Most of the participants marched in their blocks. Many unions campaigned to build the march as a target for the far right or fascist targeting migrant and immigrant workers and communities, promising to target unions and have a chance of winning many local elections in May.
Many people marched for Palestine against genocide, against the war on Iran and Lebanon, against Trump and the privatisation of the NHS and its huge debt transferred to patients, and against austerity. Many said they were marching for a future without war and oppression and expressed their horror at the climate catastrophe that capitalism and imperialism have created. There were many Palestinians and Iranians on the march alongside all those people who are losing benefits, such as disabled people and many others.
The far right/fascists have put themselves forward as defending women, but in the weeks leading up to 28 March, many packed meetings to defend women from the fascists and sexism took place; such feelings were strongly expressed during Ramadan in Iftar events.
We should not forget another aspect: the role of youth. It was difficult to estimate the number, as many very young people on the march had, for the first time, pushed their parents to take them. These were part of the mobilisation of many social movements, including youth, Black, and LGBTQ+ movements, alongside organisations of precarious workers and poor communities. The artistic community also mobilised singers, songwriters, playwrights, actors, and many others.
It was the biggest and most diverse march since the Iraq marches in the early 2000s, and the biggest-ever UK march against the far right. As the ‘Together Alliance” said, “Our members represent over 15 million people. We are teachers, firefighters, care workers, cleaners, midwives, engineers, and so much more.”
Perhaps all left-leaning political parties supported the demo. Your Party and the Green Party were part of that and may see a resurgence if the main leadership stops trying to control from above.
The police challenged the march’s numbers, saying there were 50,000, but they could not be sure! With the helicopters, drones, and AI, of course, they knew but just decided not to let us in on their secrets. This march outnumbered any the far right had organised, such as the Tommy Robinson event, which got 110,000 last September and was the biggest ever far right demonstration.
There are many questions raised now about how to continue this great demonstration as a democratic united front to defeat the far right and capitalism. To do that, trade unions must seek deep alliances with other forces on the demonstration and assist communities in defending themselves and defeating any attempted far-right attacks. This means organizing training in self-defence. More importantly, it means continuing to build mass actions and organizing them broadly in local union meetings and neighbourhood or city assemblies and offering a concrete political alternative to the government parties.
Campaigning in the May local elections is underway, and Farage’s Reform Party hopes to do well. If they get elected, they will try to cut services for immigrants, push for all ‘illegal’ immigrants to be expelled, and support the war by Trump and Israel against Iran and support genocide (although the feeling is so strong against the Iran war, over 59% in a recent YouGov poll, they try to hide their real policies).
The Together Alliance can build alliances among workers, youth, and people in all cities, fight for the ideas of class mobilisation, and build for a general strike that would help remove the fascists from the streets. The demonstration showed the strike wave had not been forgotten; in fact, it began with a 60,000-strong demonstration bringing together many trade unions pledged to fight. At that time, union leadership did not organise to combine all their separate issues into one national general strike, but they could have done it.
Now the support for a general strike from all those different forces in Together Alliance would be huge. It is time to challenge the racist Labour government and all their pro-Zionist support and war efforts for the USA against Iran, and their goals of privatisation.
The Together Alliance and the unions must open this discussion to prepare for the future and build the resistance. That 220,000 have joined the Green Party is a sign of the desire for a real change, but for both the Greens and Your Party the central problem is that they are unable to assist the working class to take the lead in these struggles and help the class to build links with all the social movements with the aim to end capitalism. While the Greens’ programme is very radical in regard to Palestine, Trans people, and against Trump, it is pro-capitalist.
The youth and millions of others are looking for a future. That future is socialism, workers’ power, and the socialist revolution. Only the power of the working class can defeat the far right by removing profit and the private ownership and control of land and big business.
Photo: Reuters
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25 days since attacks on Iran began: Take to the streets to defeat Trump and Israel!
By FABIO BOSCO
Twenty-five days after the start of the U.S.-Israeli military aggression against Iran and Lebanon, President Trump has found no easy solutions to overcome the international oil crisis and Iran’s surprising military strategy.
On Sunday, March 22, Trump made statements indicating negotiations to end the war and a five-day postponement of attacks on Iranian power plants. The aim of these statements was to prevent a runaway rise in the price of oil and to buy time to decide next steps—whether to end the war or to escalate the aggression.
In reality, Iran’s tactic of attacking Arab countries hosting U.S. bases—all of which are major oil and gas producers—and blocking the Strait of Hormuz is currently prevailing over the overwhelming military superiority of the United States and Israel. The prospects for a negotiated ceasefire are very slim. Trump presented Iran with a list of demands amounting to total surrender, which does not correspond to the current state of the conflict.
Trump wants nothing less than the complete end of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, an end to support for allies in the region such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iraqi Hashd Shaabi, and the Yemeni Ansar Allah (better known as the Houthis), as well as the unrestricted opening of the Strait of Hormuz. All this in exchange for a ceasefire and some relief from the heavy imperialist economic sanctions. On the other hand, the Iranian regime, strengthened by the international energy crisis which it currently controls, demands just war reparations for all the deaths and destruction caused by the aggression of the United States and its Zionist acolytes, as well as an end to the criminal economic sanctions, and guarantees that the United States and Israel will not attack the country again, which requires the closure of U.S. bases throughout the Middle East.
The negotiations are being conducted through intermediaries: the governments of Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Oman. But there are no clear signs that they can bear fruit in the short term without resulting in a defeat for one of the sides.
Alternatively, Trump is awaiting the arrival of a naval reinforcement with 2000 Marines scheduled for this Friday (March 27). And in this way, he could possibly attempt a ground invasion of the strategic island of Kharg, the main terminal for Iranian oil exports, or of other islands and territories around the Strait of Hormuz. He could also attempt the risky deployment of military commandos to Isfahan in search of the 404 kg of enriched uranium whose whereabouts are unknown, but which is likely to be in the city’s underground facilities.
However, this gamble on escalating military aggression is very risky, as Iran has demonstrated that it can not only strike the region’s main oil and gas production centers but also launch missiles against less-protected Israeli targets, as occurred in the cities of Dimona and Arad in the Naqab Desert, or even targets 4000 km away, such as the British base at Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There is still conflicting information regarding the sinking of a U.S. battleship in the Indian Ocean or the downing of a modern, U.S.-made F-35 aircraft in the skies over Tehran, which would be a major blow to the cowardly aerial aggression of Trump and Netanyahu.
Israel continues territorial expansion and the genocide in Palestine
For the State of Israel, this war has so far borne some fruit. On the one hand, the genocide and ethnic cleansing being carried out against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank continue at full speed, supported by Donald Trump’s “Peace Plan” and the smokescreen provided by the aggression against Iran.
Furthermore, the Zionists are planning territorial expansion in southern Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon, they have already killed more than a thousand Lebanese and displaced a million people, in addition to the destruction of neighborhoods and villages in the south of the country, in the capital Beirut, and in the Bekaa Valley.
Their plan is to occupy Lebanese territory up to the Litani River and, ultimately, continue on to Beirut. They are counting on the inaction of the Lebanese government, which limits itself to calling for negotiations with the aggressor, while also threatening to crack down on the Lebanese resistance, instead of calling on the Lebanese people to confront the Israeli invasion with arms in hand.
In Syria, the Israeli plan is to occupy the south of the country, from the Golan Heights to the province of Sweida, passing through the provinces of Quneitra and Daraa. The Syrian government is banking on diplomatic aid from its Turkish allies and the Arab League, whose support has failed to halt the Zionists’ steady advances. Meanwhile, it is negotiating with Putin for the extradition of Bashar al-Assad and the recovery of part of the hundreds of billions of dollars he embezzled, in exchange for Russia being allowed to maintain its bases in Tartus and Hmeimim.
It is clear that to carry out this plan for a Greater Israel, the Zionists depend on the military, political, diplomatic, and financial support of U.S. imperialism, and on the traditional international complicity of the 62 countries denounced by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.
Russian and Chinese Imperialist Opportunism
Russian imperialism, one of the main beneficiaries of the war, maintains its role as a major oil exporter to the Zionist genocide machine. In addition, it is negotiating with the Trump administration to halt the supply of logistical information to Iran in exchange for the United States halting the supply of logistical information to Ukraine. However, this benefit is limited because more than 40% of Russia’s oil and gas production capacity has been reduced as Ukraine has intensified drone strikes on its reservoirs and port terminals.
Chinese imperialism is already becoming another beneficiary of the war. Iranian oil continues to flow to its refineries, and its extensive strategic reserves guarantee, for now, the functioning of the economy. At the same time, it is consolidating its energy transition policy to avoid dependence on fossil fuels, and it benefits from the loss of credibility of U.S. imperialism, presenting itself as a “more predictable and reliable” imperialism (though it remains imperialism).
The Iranian people: against imperialist aggression and against the dictatorship
The Iranian people face a very difficult situation. On the one hand, the death toll from imperialist aggression has already surpassed two thousand, in addition to the widespread destruction of schools, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, oil reservoirs, and gas production and distribution centers, which threatens the survival of the population. On the other hand, the dictatorship executed three political prisoners who participated three months ago in a wave of popular protests.
The extent of the destruction is so great that even the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, criticized the bombing of his former residence in northern Tehran. For this man, his former palace is far more important than the lives of the two thousand Iranians killed, or the ten million residents of Tehran suffering from acid rain, or even the 175 victims of the bombing of a school, most of whom are girls aged seven to 12.
Reza Pahlavi supports the military aggression against Iran, and for this reason, the monarchist forces he leads are losing credibility among the population both inside and outside the country. On the other hand, the social base of the Iranian dictatorship is being galvanized and strengthened by the events in defense of the country.
The working-class and popular sectors opposed to the dictatorship are already opposing the criminal imperialist attacks and understand that an end to the aggression is necessary to resume their struggle for democratic freedoms and living conditions.
Take to the streets against imperialism!
For the PSTUB and the International Workers’ League (Fourth International), the military defeat of the United States and Israel will represent a step forward for the struggle of the Iranian people and all Arab peoples. This will also demonstrate that not even the most powerful nations are invincible. For this reason, all workers and oppressed people of the world must stand on the side of the military victory of the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance against the criminal U.S. and Israeli aggression.
But this in no way implies political support for the Iranian dictatorship, or for the so-called “axis of resistance.” On the contrary, the Iranian regime could, at any moment, strike a deal with imperialist and Zionist forces to ensure its survival, abandoning the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, just as it did in October 2023 and 2024, respectively, amid the genocide in Gaza and the massacres in Lebanon.
Therefore, we cannot place any political trust in the Iranian dictatorship; rather, we must demand the release of political prisoners, arms for the people to confront a potential imperialist ground invasion, as well as wage increases and the distribution of food to the entire population—particularly the one million displaced people—to address the food shortage.In any case, it is essential that the working class and youth in all countries take to the streets to defeat imperialist aggression and in solidarity with the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian peoples. This weekend we have the “No Kings” protest on March 28 in the United States, and Palestinian Land Day around the world; these are opportune moments to express workers’ and popular support for the oppressed peoples against imperialism.