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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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FBI directed to prosecute and disrupt ‘anti-capitalist & anti-Christian’ groups
By ERWIN FREED
National Security Policy Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) makes explicit the anti-speech, anti-democratic, anti-worker mood of the big billionaires and their political puppets. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was shamelessly used by his political allies and so-called friends to give “rationale” to a document that criminalizes the vast majority of U.S. residents’ political, cultural, and social beliefs.
Released Sept. 25, NSPM-7 directs the FBI’s shadowy “Joint Terrorism Task Force” (JTTF) units to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals” that can be indicated by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity … extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
As journalist Ken Klippenstein has pointed out since breaking the story (reprinted in Truthout, Sept. 29, 2025), mainstream news and Democratic Party politicians have been extremely slow and hesitating in first noticing and then speaking against NSPM-7. In one of the first and only mainstream investigations into these developments, Reuters journalists identified nine liberal organizations specifically targeted by the White House. These included Soros’s Open Society Foundations— ActBlue, Indivisible, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). Even in that otherwise sober article, the authors do not reference NSPM-7 by name.
Statements by many high-level GOP and MAGA spokespeople show that they are attempting to shape a political narrative that rationalizes strict control of liberal organizations. Notably, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, called Oct. 18 No Kings Day demonstrations “Hate America rallies” and characterized attendees as “anarchists, Antifa advocates, [and] pro-Hamas.” The latter characterization has a double effect. On the one hand these statements obscure the fact that being anarchist, an Antifa advocate, or pro-Hamas is not illegal. On the other, by framing No Kings Day in this way, the far right is pressuring liberal organizations like Indivisible to draw a hard line between themselves and people who hold more left-wing views. The administration is hoping that instead of rallying against repression, middle-class Democratic Party activists will begin to engage in red baiting or at least look the other way.
National Security Policy Memorandums have a long history in the bipartisan construction of mass surveillance and militarized political policing. Similar memos and legal opinions, often completely secret, gave the green light for NSA surveillance of virtually all phone and internet use in the United States. By putting this one out publicly, the Trump administration is making clear to all real and imagined opponents of its hyper-reactionary, pro-austerity, and anti-labor program that they are objects of police harassment, infiltration, and disruption.
Under Trump, the FBI, ICE, and other federal agencies are openly working to implement and rationalize the measures laid out in the right-wing Project 2025 document that laid out perspectives for Trump’s presidency. The ruling class has staffed all important offices with supporters of the “unitary executive,” while arranging mass surveillance, and cutting whatever welfare programs and workers’ protection that remains. In order to push through these incredibly unpopular and destructive policies, capital is mobilizing the state to repress the working class and youth and terrorize entire cities under the guise of “deporting illegals” and “fighting crime.”
The basic justifications for surveillance and anti-democratic policing are baked into U.S. ruling-class propaganda, including the media and education system. Combatting “anarchism” and “communism” has been the justification for red squad tactics for as long as there have been police in this country. Creating the myth of “violent extremists” threatening an imaginary “capitalist order” papers over the everyday violence of poverty, underdevelopment, and racist policing felt by working class communities, particularly women and Queer, Black, immigrant, Indigenous, and disabled people within those communities.
The U.S. ruling class feels compelled to use such naked forms of political repression and official corruption because the country is facing imperial decline. Profitability was on the decline well before even the COVID pandemic, and the United States is unable to compete with China in many sectors and places internationally. Domestically, big capital is attempting to give itself additional space for accumulation by drastically slashing the public sector, attempting to restart a version of the Braceros program, and put every union in the country on the defensive.
In order to push through these drastic changes, the ruling class is trying to intimidate people against protesting and to lay down more “national security” infrastructure. NSPM-7 is one part of a long history of the so-called global war on terror. That same “war” is what produced ICE and developed all of the technologies of social control currently being used by the Trump administration.
While the attacks are very real, so are the possibilities of building public and broad opposition to them. No Kings Day on Oct. 18 was one of the largest single days of action in U.S. history. Cities that directly faced military occupation turned out hundreds of thousands of people. ICE is facing daily opposition everywhere in the country.
The basic methods and tactics of building this opposition are not new to the U.S. working class. Ernest DeMaio, head of the United Electrical Workers Midwest District 11, headquartered in Chicago, gave one such example from his own life during the height of McCarthyism: “The big scare was in 1952 in Chicago. On September 2, we struck the International Harvester chain. That’s the day I was called by HUAC. The strike was set for midnight. At nine a.m., I’m in the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some three thousand of our guys took off from the picket line, surrounded the courthouse, and, as I was being sworn, stormed the courthouse, singing…”
Building a labor movement that responds to attacks from the state with mass mobilization has the possibility of creating the self-organization and independence necessary to win real political demands. This means keeping track of, exposing, and organizing against every attempt to further limit the democratic rights of the working class.
Photo: Protest in Minneapolis in 2010 against FBI raid on antiwar groups. (Craig Lassig / AP)
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Joint socialist statement on U.S. attacks on boats in Latin America
Joint statement by revolutionary socialist workers from Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States
We, revolutionary socialist workers’ organizations from Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States, completely condemn the unjustifiable murders of sailors and fishermen from Venezuela, Colombia, and Trinidad by the U.S. Navy. Likewise, we condemn the disgusting, deadly threats and provocations by the Trump administration against the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia, which constitute an imperialist attack and a mortal danger to the entire Latin American region. The Trump administration has acknowledged 14 attacks on vessels suspected of drug smuggling from South America, in which, according to The New York Times, at least 57 people have died, including the attacks on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, which left 14 people dead.
The claims that this is a “war on drugs” are just an excuse for a morally bankrupt imperialist maneuver. There has been no evidence that those killed by the U.S. in recent weeks were drug traffickers—and even if they were drug traffickers, it does not justify their random killing by a military fleet. The history of U.S. interventions shows that its policy has no intention of combating drug trafficking. On the contrary, U.S. federal agencies have collaborated with drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, and their interventions have not served to stop trafficking, but to reorganize it under US control.
By accusing Nicolás Maduro, and more recently Gustavo Petro, of being involved in the drug trade without providing any evidence, Trump is clearly preparing an excuse for military intervention against Venezuela, and possibly also against Colombia. For his part, Trump’s attempt to portray Maduro and Petro as immoral and illegal “drug leaders” ignores his own government’s and previous U.S. administrations’ involvement in drug trafficking, as well as their personal connections to the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Neither Trump nor any other U.S. president has the moral authority to denounce presidents or even entire countries in Latin America as traffickers of any kind. The U.S. government’s intent is to use “gunboat diplomacy”—which can lead to full-scale invasion—to advance an imperialist policy of plunder and oppression against all the peoples of the Americas.
In the United States, we recognize how these imperialist attacks are directly linked to the Trump administration’s attacks on the American working class, as well as to the long history of U.S. interventions against Latin America and the working class in general. We need mass mobilization to stop it in its tracks, and to cancel without compensation all the neocolonial debts controlled by the U.S.
As socialists organizing in the United States, Venezuela, and Colombia, we recognize that we need to mobilize to confront the imperialist war machine with the power of the organized working class. We owe no loyalty to the bourgeois governments of Maduro and Petro.
In Venezuela, we know that Maduro is not a socialist, that he keeps his people mired in poverty, and that he is even willing to hand over all of the country’s natural wealth to satisfy Trump’s demands. In Colombia, despite his correct denunciations of imperialist hypocrisy and interference, Petro remains committed to paying the foreign debt and being a global partner of NATO, bound by commitments that keep Colombia under the yoke of imperialism.
Our commitment is to the working classes of Venezuela and Colombia, recognizing that attempts to overthrow Maduro with imperialist military pressure will do nothing to improve the living conditions of the Venezuelan people; any sanctions by Trump against Colombia will affect workers; imperialist interference will only leave countries more impoverished and dominated by imperialism. This is demonstrated by the long history of U.S. military interventions on our continent and around the world.
A military intervention in Venezuela, Colombia, or any other country on the continent ultimately seeks to bring back “big stick” politics, normalizing direct military incursions to overrule our countries’ policies according to the whims of U.S. imperialism and to reinforce the protection of its political, economic, and military interests in a region that is historically strategic for U.S. imperialism, and which it considers its backyard.
For these reasons, in Venezuela, we call for unified political action to defeat the threat of imperialist attacks. The working people need to mobilize in this struggle, and from there move forward and organize to defeat the anti-worker austerity measures of the Maduro government. Meanwhile, in Colombia, we call for the non-payment of the imperialist foreign debt, withdrawal from NATO, and the rejection of any imperialist threats. Throughout Latin America and around the world, we reject imperialist military intervention and demand the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
We call for the broadest international unity of action, of the working class, the oppressed, and the masses in general, to defeat the imperialist offensive. It is a fact that in the U.S. people are already mobilizing against their government, with 7 million people taking to the streets on Oct. 18, and this popular sentiment needs to be deepened and organized so that it has the strength of the working class to bring about a general strike. In Latin American countries it is necessary to mobilize widely in the same way to defend ourselves both from Yankee attacks and from the masters of our countries who hand us over to these same imperialists. These struggles of our class must also be linked to the struggle of immigrants for the right to live in peace, to join a global struggle against imperialist plunder in general.
Yankee hands off Latin America!
Down with the foreign debt!
Trump must pay for all those killed!
The struggle against imperialism is won through the mobilization and leadership of the international working class!
— Socialist Workers Unity (Venezuela)
— Socialist Workers Party (Colombia)
— Workers’ Voice (USA)
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Millions join No Kings protests: What’s next?
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By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
The No Kings movement is going forward. After millions poured into the streets on Oct. 18 to protest Trump-incited authoritarianism, the organizers of the mobilization announced a plan to carry on the struggle with the launching of a grassroots-based action coalition. The new No Kings Alliance, they said, will help plan and coordinate activities aimed at a “mass defiance of the regime.”
But questions should be raised about the goals and strategy of this quickly developing movement. Is the energy that was displayed on Oct. 18 to be harnessed in order to increase the Democratic Party vote in future elections, and thus aim for a restoration of the pre-Trump status quo? Or will the protests acquire deep roots, gathering the broad ranks of the working class and oppressed people into a movement that has the will and the power to create fundamental changes in U.S. society?
The mobilization was monumental in size
The size of the Oct. 18 mobilization was historic. Some 7 million took part in over 2700 actions in all 50 states. It was the second largest single-day set of protests to ever take place in this country—only exceeded by the number who participated in Earth Day 1970. Just as remarkable is the fact that the current outpouring of protesters came merely nine months after Trump’s second inauguration, whereas previous movements of this scope took years to grow to a massive size.
Rough counts of the Oct. 18 demonstrators in many cities were stupendous—350,000 in several boroughs of New York, 250,000 in Chicago, over 100,000 in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. In most towns and cities, the numbers who responded to the call were well above those who came out for the first No Kings marches last June.
Many of the Oct. 18 marchers carried signs that affirmed their conviction that there is a critical need to counter the erosion of democracy in the United States. Messages ranged from “Liberty, not tyranny” to “We are the power” to “Eff off, fascists!” A protester in Anchorage, Alaska, held a sign reading, “The only kings we want are salmon!”
One protester in Philadelphia told NBC 10 News: “We’re losing our democracy every day that he [Trump] acts, and we have to fight back. America has a long history of protest, and we’re losing our First Amendment rights.”
In other interviews, protesters expressed their belief that an authoritarian regime has been imposed on the country. As evidence, they frequently pointed to the sending of National Guard troops to U.S. cities and the efforts of the Trump administration and its acolytes to silence dissent. The protesters also cited the violent actions of masked ICE officers, who are grabbing migrants (and at least 170 U.S. citizens) off the streets. ICE operatives, acting in partnership with other agencies, appear to be laying the foundations for a national police force under the control of the White House.
A public school teacher told a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer that he came with his nine-year-old son to the demonstration in Havertown, Pa., because “he had to be there for his many immigrant students—some who’ve gone home to find their dads deported—who can’t safely demonstrate themselves.” He added, “There are people in the shadows right now and they’re terrified.”
Trump ideologues bait No Kings protesters
The huge turnout on Oct. 18 showed clearly that protesters have refused to be cowed by the efforts by Trump and his loyalist politicians to mock, slander, and threaten them.
House Speaker Mike Johnson branded the nationwide events as “hate America” rallies, made up of the “pro-Hamas wing” and “Antifa people.” The remarks of some politicians carried the implied threat that violence could be used against the demonstrations. Greg Abbott, the far-right governor of Texas, actually called up the National Guard to stand by in Austin, just as he did for the first No Kings rally in June.
Abbott’s directive was in line with recent actions by the Trump White House, in which protests against the ICE raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and elsewhere have motivated the administration to declare a “war” against “insurrectionists.” That mantra, plus allegations that an uncontrollable surge in crime is taking place in U.S. cities, has been employed by Trump to authorize the use of National Guard troops; he is weighing whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to “justify” those measures. (As we write, mass meetings and rallies have been taking place in San Francisco to oppose the plans floated by the president to send the National Guard into the city.)
Supporters of the No Kings mobilization hastened to answer the violence baiting by Trump and the right wing. “The real threat to this country isn’t peaceful protesters. It’s politicians shutting down our government to protect billionaires and corporate greed,” said Jaime Contreras, executive vice-president for SEIU 32 BJ, which represents 185,000 janitors and other service employees along the East Coast. “What’s ironic to me is you call peaceful protesters ‘terrorists’, but then the people who destroyed our nation’s Capitol building ‘patriots’.
“On 18 October,” Contreras continued, “SEIU members will be in the streets across the country as part of the No Kings [protests], because America belongs to the people, working people, not to billionaires or a few politicians who think they can rule like kings in a democracy like ours” (The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2025).
As it turned out, while the Oct. 18 protests were often boisterous, they remained peaceful (although a couple of fascist Proud Boys leaders tried to stir things up at the march in Miami). Many marchers came dressed as bunny rabbits or cartoon-like frogs; such animal costumes became widespread as non-violent symbols of resistance after ICE agents tear-gassed a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 2.
But the right-wing politicians and media refused to let up in their drive to belittle the demonstrators. Fox News reported that although millions of people had participated in the Oct. 18 mobilization, “several now-viral social media clips have overshadowed the day’s events.” The pro-Trump network proceeded to trumpet the news from Chicago that “a man was captured on video yelling into a bullhorn that ICE agents should be killed.” And among other world-shaking horrors, according to Fox, a woman at the Chicago protest “was captured on video apparently mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination.” Fox assured its viewers that authorities were looking into whether the woman should be removed from her job as a teacher in the Chicago school system.
Fox commentator Laura Ingraham quipped: “Half of the goofballs out there didn’t know what they were protesting. … Like a bad high school production, where the kids just didn’t rehearse enough.”
Trump himself called the huge protests a “joke… paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics.” The people who took part were “whacked out,” Trump said. To make his diagnosis more graphic, Trump issued an AI-generated video on Truth Social, which portrayed him wearing the crown of a king and sitting behind the controls of a jet fighter. The aircraft then took off and dumped what looks like human excrement over a protest demonstration below.
Trump’s infantile tantrum came just days after he had declared at a fund-raising banquet with ultra-wealthy supporters that he would decorate Washington, D.C., with a grand triumphal arch, in the style of the Roman emperors, and as demolition began on the historic East Wing of the White House in order to make way for Trump’s palatial $300 million ballroom.
Toward the No Kings Alliance
The major national organizing groups of the No Kings mobilization conducted a wrap-up of the Oct. 18 events at an online event attended by close to 40,000 people. During the hour-long session, held on Oct. 20, the moderators announced the formation of the No Kings Alliance. They said that the new coalition characterized itself as the “rapid response arm of the movement,” which would “push back in real time against authoritarian attacks” and provide “new and different tactics to fight authoritarianism.” The organizers also said that their objective is to build a mass movement against fascism.
The activity of the Alliance is summed up on the No Kings website: “There will be more mass protests in our future, but before that there will be authoritarian overreach to defend against … and quickly. What we do will change week to week. Whatever the moment requires, we’ll adapt. Because authoritarianism doesn’t stand alone—it survives on silence, complicity, and cash flow. The No Kings Alliance is simple: make it impossible for anyone—in power, in profit, or in denial—to quietly capitulate.” The Alliance plans to send out weekly calls for mass action in order to respond to threats as they arise.
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.
The major organizers of the new Alliance appear to be associated with Indivisible—an organization that was started by “progressive” Democratic Party staffers as Trump took office in 2016 and is still closely tied to the Democrats—along with 50501, the ACLU, and a few other organizations. In addition, we might expect that most of the over 200 organizations who signed on as “partners” in sponsoring the Oct. 18 events will have input into the new coalition. Most of those “partners” seem to be non-profit formations that advocate progressive reforms and have backed causes such as protecting the climate and education, as well as defending voting rights, free speech, and other civil liberties.
A key role for organized labor
Compared to earlier pro-democracy actions this year, Oct. 18 saw the increased presence of organized labor in some areas. A labor feeder march in Portland, Ore., reportedly brought out close to 1000 people; SEIU took the lead in organizing the contingent. In New York City, unions helped to mobilize thousands of workers for the massive march through Manhattan. In addition, a dozen unions organized a feeder march that went up Sixth Avenue to Union Square. In addition, a handful of union locals and federations—such as the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—were listed as national “partners” for building the No Kings marches.
In many cities, however, while union officials might have spoken from the podium, the labor movement had no other organized presence, with just a scattering of union banners visible in the crowd. It appears that relatively few unions made much of an attempt to publicize the actions among their members, let alone to mobilize them to attend.
If the No Kings protests are to continue to grow in size and power, and to reach deep into workplaces and communities, activists must reach out with increased effort to organized labor—as well as to other formations that are organizing within the various sectors of the working class, such as Black and immigrant community groups. Of course, such groups would be more likely to join a coalition if they believe that they would have a significant voice in organizing actions and that their own issues and concerns would be reflected in the demands.
In addition to the weekly action responses that the No Kings Alliance is organizing, the No Kings leadership promises that another national mass mobilization—similar to the marches and rallies on Oct. 18—will take place in the spring of 2026. In the months of preparation proceeding those events, it would be important for local and national coalitions to sponsor meetings and assemblies that can agree on raising demands that have a clear focus.
In an article that this author wrote after the first No Kings marches in June, it was pointed out that “‘No Kings!’ was fine as a general defensive slogan to unite people against the rise of authoritarianism. But rather than merely protesting for the restoration of things that the Trump administration has removed or is threatening to abolish, we should go on to demand far-reaching measures that can achieve true economic and social justice for all people. To do this, we must present clear and concrete demands to the government—the entire government, not just Trump and not just the Republicans.”
Similarly, it would be a mistake to call for millions of people to mobilize again in the spring, while signaling that the main goal of the demonstrations would be to get out the vote in order to gain a Democratic Party majority in the 2026 elections for Congress and other political offices. History has shown repeatedly that such a strategy leads to a dead end for movement building. If this movement can unleash the earthshaking power that it is capable of—effectively challenging the anti-democratic actions of the federal government—it must remain independent and in the streets!
Photo: Part of the crowd in Times Square, New York City, on Oct. 18. (Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)
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Morocco: ‘We are the youth; we are not parasites’
By CESAR NETO
A clear wave of struggles is shaking Africa. Initially localized in sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, and Madagascar), these struggles are now spreading northward with mobilizations in Morocco. These struggles are all explosive and radicalized, and they lack class leadership. Tired of paying for the capitalist crisis, Moroccan youth are loudly and clearly saying: “We are the youth. We are not parasites.” There is also a strike by oil workers at the largest and most modern refinery on the continent, which is located in Nigeria.
The protests began on Sept. 27 and were called for by Generation Z, who are known as Generation Z 212 in Morocco. The 212 refers to the country’s international dialing code.
The protests grew day by day, reaching their peak on Oct. 2 with clashes with police in almost all of the country’s major cities.
The road connecting Agadir Airport to the coastal metropolis in southern Morocco still bore the scars from the 48 hours of violence leading up to Thursday, Oct. 2. Passing through Inezgane, a town on the outskirts of Agadir, blackened marks from tires burned by protesters on Tuesday night could be seen on the road. The riot police deployed that day had to retreat when angry youths threw stones; some of these youths had participated in setting fire to a post office.
Further on, the Marjane hypermarket in Inezgane was targeted; its imposing facade was pockmarked with stone impacts. The GenZ 212 movement had managed to contain this violence during the first days of mobilization, but it intensified on Wednesday night after police fired shots in front of a gendarmerie brigade in Lqliaa, leaving three people dead. (Le Monde, Oct. 4, 2025)
Bourgeois analysts are shocked by how young people have responded to their problems. Demonstrations of this magnitude are rare in Morocco, which is seen by imperialist powers as a beacon of stability in the Middle East and North Africa. Over the next few years, the authorities plan to invest $35 billion in infrastructure, earmarking a considerable portion for infrastructure projects and soccer stadiums. In 2030, the World Cup will be held in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco simultaneously.
The structural reasons for the protests
Morocco is one of the world’s largest producers of phosphate and a major exporter of fruit and food. It also manufactures cars and auto parts. These factors rank the country as the 60th largest economy in the world, among 216 countries. Morocco also has large oil reserves that remain largely untapped. Morocco is considered an emerging country because its companies have been privatized since 1993, and several sectors have been liberalized from state monopolies. Morocco has free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.
While the economy is doing well, the same cannot be said for the living conditions of workers and the general population.
Health: “The stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?”
The health system has precarious infrastructure and lacks human and financial resources. Morocco spends 885 dirhams per capita on health care, while neighboring Tunisia spends 2,900 dirhams per person per year. Due to the shortage of resources, hospitals lack medicine and supplies.
There are only four doctors for every 10,000 people. Waiting lines are endless, and when people do receive care, hospitals lack equipment, so patients must pay for tests at private clinics.
The situation is so dire that eight women died during childbirth in Agadir, sparking widespread outrage and mobilization.
This is why young people are protesting in the streets: “The stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?”
Education: “I’m not studying to emigrate”
The official unemployment rate is 13.3%, a figure that is widely disputed. The contracting economy is unable to absorb university graduates. Among people aged 15 to 24, unemployment has reached a record high of 36.7%.
The crisis in the automotive industry, which employs 200,000 people directly and indirectly, is likely to worsen the high unemployment rate. The service sector, which includes 800 call centers and 90,000 workers, is also threatened by new French laws because France is its main customer.
In addition to being angry about unemployment, young people are upset about a bill on higher education and research that was presented to Parliament at the end of September. This bill essentially limits the right to organize within universities, which undermines students’ freedom of expression and political affiliation. Furthermore, this law paves the way for the privatization of public universities.
Funds are allocated to soccer stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup or investments in health and education
The last straw for the youth uprising was the huge contradiction between the deplorable health and education conditions, rising unemployment and inflation, and the substantial funds allocated to constructing stadiums for the 2030 World Cup. Three new stadiums are being built while others are being renovated and expanded to host the African Cup of Nations next December.
This has led to the slogan, “The stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?”
The participation of the working class in the mobilizations
Their participation was not collective, but rather individual. For example, there has been no news of major factories stopping work in support of Generation Z’s struggle. On the contrary, the trade union federations maintain a complicit silence with the government.
On the contrary, the Union Marocaine du Travail proudly displays on its website that they received an important delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and called on the Fund’s leaders to adopt a social approach that breaks with top-down impositions that do not consider Morocco’s economic and social reality.
A strong appeal must be made to workers in industry and phosphate mines to join the protests. Only the unity of youth and workers can lead to a great victory.
Youth at the forefront, but without revolutionary leadership
In recent protests in sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, and Angola), the significant participation of youth was evident, and this trend has now been confirmed in Morocco.
Two common points are the heroic fighting strength of the youth, which must be recognized, and the great weakness represented by the lack of revolutionary political leadership.
Generation Z is calling for the mobilizations through social media, using the skull from One Piece as its symbol and a bourgeois democratic program. In Morocco, they declare: “We demand the resignation of the current government for failing to protect the constitutional rights of Moroccans,” said GenZ 212.
An important feature is that, in countries where Generation Z has played a leading role, the question of overthrowing the government has always been present, as seen in Kenya, Nepal, and Madagascar.
Overthrow the government of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch!
Morocco’s political structure is based on a constitutional monarchy, and the government is headed by the prime minister. If Akhannouch falls, the two ministers most criticized by protesters will fall with him: Amine Tahraoui, the Minister of Health; and Mohamed Saad Berrada, the Minister of Education. Both are members of the Rassemblement National des Indépendants and are close to Akhannouch.
There is no confidence in the monarchy
According to the local news site Aldar, Generation Z 212 is a movement that does not demand social justice beyond national values. The group explicitly declares its commitment to respecting the royal institution under the leadership of King Mohammed VI and maintaining Moroccan territorial unity.
While fighting for the fall of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, it is important to have no illusions about the monarchy or Mohammed VI (Mohammed bin Hassan). It is important to understand that the Moroccan regime of domination consists of the prime minister and the monarchy, which determine the direction of the country.
Extending the struggle to neighboring Arab countries
The bourgeoisie is enormously concerned that these demonstrations could inspire other Arab peoples in North Africa to rise up and create a new Arab Spring. A wave of protests and popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring began in Tunisia in 2010 and spread to several other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Morocco, Oman, and Sudan.
A new Arab Spring and the struggle in defense of Palestine
The elements for combined action in the Arab countries are already present. The economic crisis, collapse of foreign exchange reserves, fuel shortages, inflation, and rising unemployment set the stage for a new Arab Spring.
A new Arab Spring would destabilize regional governments that remain passive in defending Gaza. The masses in the streets would surely raise the banner of a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
(Photo:) Protesters set fire to a building during anti-government protests in Salé, in the Rabat metropolitan area, Morocco, on Oct. 1, 2025. (Abdel Majid Bziouat / AFP)
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Mexican government negligent in preventing catastrophic floods
It was not a “natural disaster”; it was a social catastrophe!
By CST, Mexico
Mexico is once again at the center of global news. This time, however, it is not due to the capture or extradition of drug lords. Nor is it due to the migration crisis on the U.S. border or Trump’s latest threats against the government of the country he considers his most submissive colony. This time, the international media’s attention is focused on the tragedy experienced by the people of Poza Rica and other municipalities in Veracruz and other Mexican states. These floods have caused hundreds of deaths, a similar number of missing persons, and thousands of victims. Additionally, thousands of homes have been destroyed. Many students are among the dead and missing. The destruction and irreparable losses are enormous. It is still difficult to quantify. As always happens in such disasters, the working class and the impoverished are the most affected.
As always, governments at all levels, other institutions, and companies were negligent in preventing the disaster and absent in assisting the victims. They only appear to be trying to evade their responsibilities. Four days after the disaster, it is deplorable to see that the “servants of the nation” — the officials from the ruling Morena party — are barely registering victims in order to process requests for aid. It is repugnant to witness the actions of some “opposition” politicians who show up for “the photo” and speculate on electoral gains. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press conference was also regrettable. She is more concerned with measuring the number of “bots” that criticize her than with the number of victims, missing persons, and the real magnitude of the disaster.
The city of Poza Rica deserves special attention
It is an industrial municipality in the northern part of the state of Veracruz. Decades ago, it was one of the most important oil and petrochemical centers in the country. It is also a historical landmark in the Mexican oil industry. The collective memory of Poza Rica contains many workers’ struggles and catastrophes with heroes and martyrs.
This is in memory of Luis Arturo Aguirre, the other anonymous heroes, and all the victims of the October 10, 2025 flood. A former worker at the Gas Processing Complex (CPG) offers an eloquent testimony:
“The CPG has historically suffered floods, the most memorable of which was on October 5, 1999, and devastated the region. But nothing compares to what happened this time.” Based on that experience, workers were instructed to be alert to the rising waters of the Cazones River, which borders the facilities. They were given a crucial instruction: keep the bunker doors open. Had they not done so, the force of the water would have sealed them shut, turning them into death traps.”
Shortly before 5:00 a.m. on October 10, 2025, the water burst in with unexpected fury, taking everyone by surprise. They immediately followed emergency protocols: shutting down the plants and putting them into “safe mode.” This action was heroic. Had this not been done, the systems would have released gas into the atmosphere, creating a toxic cloud due to its sulfur compounds (SO₂, H₂S), which are highly explosive. Instead, the gas was diverted in a controlled manner to the burners, safeguarding the facilities and the city’s safety.
While this was happening, other workers were fighting for their lives inside the flooded complex.
A fundamental clarification is in order: At no time had Civil Protection, at either the municipal or state level, requested that PEMEX prepare an audible warning protocol for the population in the event of an emergency of this nature. The enormous mass of water from the San Marcos River in the Puebla Mountains continued its deadly advance toward neighborhoods such as Morelos. No warning was issued until approximately 5:30 a.m., when officials from the former Northern Region Production Subdirectorate (formerly PEP) were awakened and asked to authorize the activation of an alarm inside the field. By that time, the order came too late. The flood had already overtaken the city without warning or alert.
There was no effective evacuation plan. There were no visible preventive measures. The future of the CPG deserves special mention. It may not recover from the damage it suffered. Even if it does, it could take at least eight months to recover, which would compromise the future of the new plant in El Escolín.
Had the CPG workers not acted professionally and panicked, not following their procedures before leaving their workplace, the city would have awoken under a toxic cloud. This would have been reminiscent of the tragic 1950 hydrogen sulfide gas leak that plunged Poza Rica into mourning. Thankfully, that did not happen. However, the tragedy took the life of an excellent worker, a good friend, husband, and father who fulfilled his duty until the very end.
Those who did not know—or did not want to know—what could happen, whether due to inexperience, ineptitude, or other reasons, were the municipal, state, and federal governments. They had satellite images to monitor the flooding minute by minute, monitoring stations from the National Water Commission, and personnel throughout the river basin. However, they limited themselves to issuing a generic warning of possible flooding without mobilizing assistance for the population beforehand.
While the Ministry of Education suspended activities until Friday, other institutions, such as the Universidad Veracruzana, did not. The bus station and central market, usually bustling at that time of day, received no warning. While the CPG was drowning, most of the population was asleep, unaware that death was approaching. We already know the outcome, even though authorities, including state Governor Rocío Nahle, are trying to downplay the catastrophe by minimizing the number of deaths, damage, and losses.
They cannot claim that this disaster was unpredictable!
Twenty-six years ago, a similar catastrophe occurred for the same reasons: the Cazones River overflowed, flooding the western part of the city. In 26 years, no infrastructure has been put in place to protect the densely populated area from flooding. The Pemex company is clearly responsible for contaminating the Cazones River with hydrocarbons, and the so-called “authorities” are clearly negligent! All levels of government must respond: municipal, state, and federal.
The rector of the University of Veracruz must also respond. There are several conflicting reports: on Facebook, surviving medical students mention thirteen deceased classmates. Other reports speak of 192 missing UV students, but the rector claims that “only two” are missing. The collective Familiares en Búsqueda María Herrera will begin searching the disaster areas with the help of the Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda.
To prevent concealment, simulation, and electoral manipulation of this tragic event, we demand the establishment of an Independent Investigation and Expertise Commission. This commission should include student and worker representatives to objectively verify the absence of prevention measures, the magnitude of the disaster, and the number of victims and affected families.
The most urgent and indispensable task
In the face of the absence, insensitivity, and ineffectiveness of state institutions, the effective and spontaneous solidarity of the workers and people of Veracruz and other states is once again omnipresent. Food collection centers, humanitarian aid, and rescue brigades are being set up. One notable initiative is the Conference of Resistance, led by CNTE teachers, which established a collection center for non-perishable food, medicine, clothing, and personal and household items. The center is located at Belisario Domínguez 32, Col. Centro, CDMX.
Despite difficult economic conditions, the actions of Mexican society, led by working people, are at the forefront. Workers always lend a helping hand. However, it is urgent to demand that northern Veracruz and other regions be declared a humanitarian emergency:
• A special emergency tax should be imposed on large capitalist businesses and transnational corporations, especially those in the state of Veracruz.
• The state should use these resources to provide all necessary aid, including medicine, food, clothing, and basic supplies, to the thousands of victims. Special equipment must be guaranteed for search crews looking for the missing.
• The self-organization of surveillance brigades by working-class neighborhood inhabitants must be developed to defend against looting, which occurred quickly in the absence of police amid prevailing misery and chaos.
• All hotels, vacant houses, schools, and official facilities should be made available to house, feed, and assist those who have lost everything.
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Connecticut forum protests repression against immigrants, Palestine activists
By YAYA MARIAH
“I heard the tires screeching to a halt, and I ran to the window. And that’s when I saw the masked men. I heard a scream,” one neighbor told Channel 3 Eyewitness News in describing an Oct. 15 ICE raid in Hamden, Conn.
The video is terrifying: Two unmarked vans pull to a stop in front of a car wash. About ten burly men in black masks emerge from the vehicles and sweep into the building. Video from inside the car wash shows ICE agents in black masks chasing and tackling a young woman who had tried to get away.
In all, eight people—seven employees and one customer—were taken out in handcuffs. Most of the victims were young women; some had children stranded at home or in school.
Incidents like this are increasingly common throughout the United States as ICE is given free rein to disrupt and terrify immigrant communities. The fury of the Trump administration’s war against immigrants and other so-called “enemies” underscores the importance of the community forum that took place at Central Connecticut State University several weeks before the Hamden raid, on Sept. 25. The event, “Freedom Under Fire: Defending Our Rights, Past, and Present,” was co-sponsored by CCSU Social Justice Minor and CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee.
The panel discussion began with video taken that very day: “Help! Help me! Ayúdame!” Speakers crackled with the cries of a man forcefully pushed to the ground by two officers in Hyattsville, Md. The audience watched on, muffling their tears.
Juan Fonseca Tapia, member and leader of the Greater Danbury United for Immigrants, shared videos of ICE attacks throughout the country, his personal encounters, and confrontations with ICE agents and police in Danbury, Conn., the “epicenter for ICE activity in the state,” long before the Trump administration.
Back in 2006, Fonseca Tapia told the group, a sting operation had been set up in which 11 day laborers were lured into a van of an undercover cop posing as a contractor, promising them work. They were then detained and turned over to federal immigration agents. The detained workers became known as the “Danbury 11,” and community members organized a historic, successful struggle to win their release.
The movement to free the Danbury 11 was largely independent from and antagonistic to the Democratic Party and local police. Actions were organized through mass assemblies of hundreds and sometimes thousands of migrant workers. Local campaigns like “Free Danbury 11,” along with the May Day “Day without Immigrants” strike, were the context for new support of immigrant justice organizing. The effort pushed back some of the most reactionary goals of the bipartisan war on immigrants.
Despite important class-struggle victories, migrant workers are currently facing a massive campaign to spread feelings of fear, isolation, and deep demoralization. Juan’s talk continued by highlighting local resistance from community organizers in Connecticut. One example is the Danbury Unites for Immigrants’ (DUFI) Rapid Response Team, a trained sector of the group that can quickly respond to ICE activities, warning others of ICE’s presence, videoing detainments, and bringing La Migra out of the shadows.
A few videos that he showed pertained to the arrests in Danbury on Aug. 14, when an estimated 40 to 50 agents ambushed the parking lot courthouse, and arrested three people. One of those arrested was a young man, no older than 20, for a noise complaint. Danbury community members legally recorded and spoke with the group of officers. This operation was part of the statewide “Operation Broken Trust,” which arrested over 60 migrants over the course of three weeks.
The majority arrested during “Broken Trust” had no criminal allegations against them of any kind. In DUFI’s video from Danbury Court, ICE agents are dressed in tactical gear, most wore masks, and all refused to respond to repeated calls to identify themselves. They physically pushed members of the Response Team and threatened to tase, pepper spray, and arrest them.
These experiences aren’t unique, confessed the next panelist Jacqueline Rose, an organizer involved in the fight for Palestinian liberation. Citing the case of their friend and comrade, Isett, an international student who was targeted and stalked by police after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. Fearing for her safety, Isett ultimately left the country, forced to miss her own graduation.
Isett’s story is just one example of a much larger and coordinated crackdown on student activism for Palestine. Rose explained how across the country, universities suppress student organization through suspensions, mass disciplinary hearings, police surveillance, and collaboration with federal agencies. These attacks are part of a nationwide strategy to delegitimize and criminalize the broader movement for Palestine liberation—backed by both Zionist lobbying groups and government pressure—to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
According to Rose, this kind of targeted repression signals a broader shift: universities are ground zero for silencing dissent before those same tactics are deployed against the wider public. From the suppression of pro-Palestinian groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), increasing attacks on faculty fired or placed on leave for their support for Palestine and LGBTIA+ studies, the criminalization of the trans community, designating ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization, to the outright cancellation of anyone who critiques the current administration—like Jimmy Kimmel.
“An injury to one is an injury to all,” Rose emphasized, adding that the administration fears the stories of resilience and revolution. “It’s up to us [the people] to defend each other.”
Christine Marie, a movement historian and activist with CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee, picked up where Rose left off. She concluded the panel by drawing parallels between current struggles and earlier waves of political repression. She explained how, despite setbacks and apparent “defeats,” civil liberty activists persisted, inspiring public engagement and resistance. She outlined key moments of state repression, starting with the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. A critical touchstone was the “Palmer Raids” in 1919, when the U.S. government cracked down on trade unionists, socialists, and anarchists, culminating in the deportation of hundreds of working-class organizers.
Marie wove together stories of repression and resistance in the United States, including the “little red scares” during the 1920s and the Great Depression. These lesser-known moments of authoritarian drift help to highlight the class dynamics of repression and need for mass working-class defense organizations. Throughout the 1920s, for example, thousands of union locals were affiliated with the International Labor Defense (ILD), initiated by the Communist Party. The ILD brought solidarity against political repression into working-class life all over the country through its newspaper, fundraising, and nationwide speaking tours.
She also gave important and often overlooked victories against repression and censorship. These included the case of James Kutcher. Often known as “The Case of the Legless Veteran,” due to Kutcher’s having lost his legs to mortar fire in Italy during World War II, this episode began when Kutcher was fired from his job at the Veterans Administration for his political support of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948. Supporters of democratic rights immediately began mobilizing a massive defense campaign, which exposed the government’s lies about Kutcher and the SWP, and spoke at meetings of thousands of workers, veterans, and other progressive activists. Ultimately, after a 10-year campaign, Kutcher was rehired with full back pay. This represented an important and rare defeat of the red scare attitude of the bosses and their political organizations.
While talking about the strategies that have won real struggles for democratic rights, Marie also explained how U.S. imperialism, with the support of sections of the union leadership, used the systematic targeting of radical union members and unions to create the long-term deradicalization of American labor movements since the 1970s. Her closing message was clear: learn from past defeats and use the legacy of liberty movements as “tools in defense of immigrant workers, free speech, and economic rights.” The time has come, she said, to get organized and to develop strategies that can win.
During the panel’s discussion, one audience member expressed a desire to see “more faces” at rallies, which sparked a conversation about the necessity of building not just larger protests, but deeply organized mass-action defense campaigns that are capable of protecting communities and winning real change. Rallies, it was noted, are a valuable starting point for networking, drawing in new people, and experiencing the power of collective action. But history shows that confronting the far right will require far more than protests themselves. In order to really push back the MAGA-led offensive, workers and oppressed people need strategy, structure, and sustained organizing. The task ahead is urgent, but not unprecedented.
Photo: Chants of “No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state” echo in the courtyard of the federal courthouse in Hartford, Conn., as protesters call out against ICE raids in Connecticut and across the country on June 9, 2025. (Ryan Caron King / Connecticut Public)
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For a Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada and Palestine
By TAYTYN BADGER
This article is based on a speech delivered by the author at a Palestine solidarity rally in Saskatoon on Oct. 4.
Good afternoon! My name is Taytyn Badger. I’m a two-spirit Nehiyaw man from Sucker Creek First Nation, and I hope folk could figure out from the placard, a member of Workers’ Voice. I’d like to start by thanking all of you for taking the time to come out today, on Oct. 4, 2025, in opposition to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian peoples, and its vast escalation over the past two years.
But Oct. 4 also marks the National Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people. So, I would like to speak for a moment on gender-based violence against Indigenous people, and its connections with Zionist gender-based violence against Palestinians.
Indigenous women and Queer folk on the land occupied by Canada face far higher rates of violence than the general population. Just going by the data available, Indigenous women are murdered at more than five times the rate of non-indigenous women, are more than three times as likely to go missing, and more than four times as likely to experience sexual assault. Verbal, physical, and sexual violence against indigenous women and Queer folk by settlers is considered socially acceptable and tolerated by law enforcement when they aren’t the ones committing it. Rather than incidental, this gender-based violence originates from ongoing settler-colonial invasion and occupation of our land.
So long as Indigenous peoples continue to exist, we are seen as a real or potential obstacle to settler capitalist exploitation and occupation by both the state and the settlers won to their side by a cut of the loot.
Indigenous women who do not fit the “Indian Princess” stereotype of normative settler beauty and submission to settler desires are stereotyped as promiscuous, subversive, and potentially threatening. Thus, they are transformed into valid targets of settler discipline and violence to perpetuate our subjugation and Indigenous genocide.
Gender-based violence’s roots in settler-colonialism are especially clear on the front lines of extraction. Witness the wave of sexual abuse, harassment, and sex trafficking that accompanies the arrival of settler extraction workers in man camps. See the Highway of Tears, built to facilitate the exploitation of the land via resource extraction. Look at the joint violence by settler workers and law enforcement targeting Wet’suwet’en land defenders and matriarchs.
But Palestinians on the land occupied by Israel are also Indigenous peoples. Palestinian Women and Queer folk, before and after Oct. 7, have been subjected to constant settler-colonial violence, abuse, and murder. Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, on patrol, and in detention centers subject Palestinian women to humiliating strip searches accompanied by verbal, physical, and sexual violence. Israeli settlers are given free rein to berate, assault, and murder Palestinian women and Queer folk with the aim of terrorizing them into submission or expelling them from their homes. All that before considering the tens, likely hundreds of thousands of Palestinian women and Queer folk that lie buried under the rubble of Gaza.
Some people will attempt to justify settler violence by saying, “What about the violence that Indigenous men commit against Indigenous women?” Zionists take a similar tact with insane claims that Palestinians are inherently misogynistic or Queerphobic, unlike supposedly progressive Israelis. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone’s asked me, “Why do you support Palestine? Don’t you know what they would do to you?” One starts to wonder whether they think the IDF is firing missiles that only hit straight men, or that Queer folk don’t need to eat during a famine.
But even this violence within our communities is shaped by and develops from the imposition of settler-capitalist patriarchy and gender norms. According to these norms, men are breadwinners, possessing dominion over their families, women provide food and shelter to their families free of charge, and anything else simply doesn’t exist. We’re told these roles are traditional, but they’re more often pseudo-traditional, used by those who occupy and exploit us to blame their victims for oppression.
Someone can’t be a breadwinner when they can barely support themselves. When you can’t find or afford food and shelter, it’s impossible for anyone to provide it. But the expectation that men must maintain financial and social dominance, and that women and those constructed as feminine are to blame for shortfalls in the necessities for life—food, shelter, and home care—serves to redirect rage and violence inward, driving the victimization of women and Queer folk within our communities.
So, I invite folk, on one hand, to see the violence against Indigenous women and gender-nonconforming folk here in the same light as the violence against those in Palestine, and on the other, to extend our definition of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Queer Folk to include Palestinians. Both are
rooted in ongoing settler-capitalist projects, Canadian and Israeli, and their perpetual need to exploit, expropriate, and eliminate Indigenous peoples and lands for profit, and both can only be resolved by ending these projects and returning control of the land to Indigenous peoples on their terms, via right of return, land back, and decolonization.
Photo: The eighth annual March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, held in Montreal, on Oct. 4, 2013. (Erin Sparks)
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Black political power is a casualty of the drive to redraw voting districts
By BRIAN CRAWFORD
Texas, on the command of Donald Trump, fashioned a new congressional map with the intent of gaining five additional seats to secure the Republican Party’s majority in the House of Representatives. Republican legislatures already envision permanent majorities in their states—why not in Congress? In response, governors in Democratic states, most notably California, are responding in kind. The process of drawing congressional districts to favor one’s own political party is called “gerrymandering.” It has been used by both political parties since the 19th century, and often Black political power is its casualty.
From Reconstruction to the present, African Americans have been engaged in a perpetual struggle for the franchise and the political power implied by its possession. While the ballot is fundamental to democracy, it has never been the main instrument of political power for Black people in U.S. history.
In order to possess the franchise, you must wage a battle against the state. From its inception the United States of America has engaged in all manner of manipulations, legal and extralegal, to prevent Black people from voting.
Reconstruction was a moment with revolutionary potential. It offered full rights of citizenship after abolition. But the promise of the period was squandered to reconcile with the former slaveholders. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, was one of the three amendments to the Constitution addressing the conditions of the freed slaves. Section 1 states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But laws are reduced to ink on a page without enforcement. In the former slave states, not only were the laws not enforced, but the opposite was true. The Old Confederacy violated the letter of the 15th Amendment using various methods, including gerrymandering.
The process of redrawing districts is generally conducted every 10 years in accordance with the census. The process varies by state. In some states an independent commission is in charge while in others it is left to the legislature, which often has partisan intentions. Gerrymandering usually involves either “cracking”—splitting one or more Black districts and incorporating them into majority white districts—or “packing”—consolidating multiple Black districts. In both cases, the intent is to reduce Black influence in the electoral process.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was a defense against gerrymandering, but in 2013, the Supreme Court removed federal oversight, which allows states with a long history of racial discrimination to redraw congressional districts to their liking. Some states’ minority populations have significantly increased, yet congressional districts do not reflect this change. Texas is a case in point. Districts as drawn do not represent the increase in the Latino population. Meanwhile, two Black districts disappeared with the most recent version of the congressional map.
In the meantime, in Louisiana v. Calas, a case that the Supreme Court heard on Oct. 15, the justices will decide the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. As Leah Litman writes in The Guardian, the Supreme Court “is being asked to find section two illegal—to say that considering political equality is a kind of discrimination. The argument is that prohibiting legislatures from discriminating against Black voters, by denying them political opportunities, actually discriminates against white voters.”
What is to be decided is whether race can be considered in drawing congressional districts even in cases to address racial discrimination. In the Southern states, gerrymandering for party advantage is synonymous in practice with dilution of Black political power. Steve Menendian in “Race, Racism and the Law,” writes: “Racial gerrymanders are subject to strict scrutiny judicial review whereas partisan political gerrymanders are not subject to judicial review whatsoever.”
States that wish to limit Black political power through the electoral process can simply argue that their intent is partisan and not racial. In essence, the legal arguments rests on how to rig an election legally. The Supreme Court in a ruling in 2019 washed its hands of the issue of partisan-motivated gerrymandering. While agreeing it was undemocratic, the highest court in the land decided it was not an issue for the court to decide.
The California response has been to counter Texas’s gerrymandering with its own. Proposition 50 would redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 mid-term election, overruling the commission designated for the process. The new districts would be in effect until the next census in 2030. The proposition that will appear on the November ballot would ask Congress to amend the Constitution to institute independent commissions to oversee redistricting. In their feckless efforts to inspire their base, the Democratic Party is once again mimicking the GOP. If you can’t beat them, join them! A history of rightward turns to compete with the Republican Party is the history of the last 40 years. In the heat of battle, Republicans and Democrats are seeking to entrench their majorities.
Should these efforts succeed, fewer congressional districts will be competitive. According to Fair Vote, 81% of the 2026 congressional election has already been decided. Further gerrymandering increases the number of uncompetitive districts. It will hardly revive the fortunes of the Democratic Party.
For the Democrats, postmortems of the 2024 election continue. What were the causes of its death? How can it avoid repeating this? How can the party be resurrected? But opportunism is a malady with no cure. The Democratic Party has no program for the working class. Its efforts are expended soliciting votes from its otherwise neglected base, paying consultants millions and chasing after Republican votes.
As a party whose benefactors are billionaires that expect their interests to come first, but which portrays itself as the “party of the people,” it must try to reconcile this contradiction. The problem is that it can’t be reconciled. Millions of people have abandoned the party because they realize the party is disingenuous, two-faced, and has no program to alleviate their misery. Thus, rather than producing a program for the working class (we should not expect one from either party), the Democrats are engaged in a fruitless battle over gerrymandering.
Rather than ingesting the poisoned promises of politicians, we must free ourselves. The precedent has been set in the history of African American struggle; we begin and the masses follow. So must it be again within this period of right-wing consolidation of power. While the Democrats and Republicans engage in dueling election rigging, we will bring together the masses. The working class is the only agent of change. We are the answer—multiracial and independent.
Photo: ACLU
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Wilson Honório Silva (1961–2025): Toward socialism today and always!
Faremos Palmares de novo!
By UNIFIED SOCIALIST WORKERS’ PARTY, Brazil (PSTU)
Our malungo**, Wilson Honório Silva, left us on Sept. 17, 2025. This is an irreparable loss, given the immense scope of his political activism, spanning countless fronts of struggle. He was committed to workers’ struggles and played a key role in the Brazilian black movement. He was also a tireless advocate for LGBTI rights and a pioneer in this field.
In addition, he was a man of enormous culture and erudition, as evidenced by his lectures, books, and articles, which were always marked by his wit, irony, and brilliance. Wilson’s militant trajectory is intertwined with the history of the movement against oppression in Brazil, always within the framework of a socialist and revolutionary perspective.
As he often quoted in his decades-long contributions to Opinião Socialista and the newspapers of organizations that preceded the PSTU, “there is no capitalism without racism,” to paraphrase Malcolm X. His book The Myth of Racial Democracy (Editora Sundermann) became a reference on the subject for a generation awakening to the struggle and Black consciousness.
Those who knew Wilson or read his extensive body of work will remember him not only for the pain of this moment, but also for his teachings and his example of how race, class, LGBTIphobia, sexism and all forms of oppression are inseparable from the struggle against capitalism. There is also the internationalism intrinsic to his socialist and revolutionary activism.
A life dedicated to the socialist revolution
Wilson (seated), age 14, in Sao Paulo. In a recent text, Wilson recalls the day he decided to join Convergencia Socialista, the main organization that would later form the PSTU (Socialist Workers’ Party), and consequently the struggle for socialism and revolution.
The occasion was highly symbolic: the 1980 event was held at the São Paulo Chemical Workers’ Union to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination. Organized by Convergencia Socialista (CS) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) at the time, the event brought together a broad vanguard at a time of effervescence in the labour movement, student struggles, and the reorganization of movements against oppression.
Wilson himself was the best person to describe this moment: “In the midst of all this, there I was. An ‘I’ exploding in all directions: recognizing myself as a young black man, understanding myself as a gay man, beginning to realize that my ‘history’ extended beyond the sixteen years recorded on my ID. By day, I was an office worker; by night, I was the director of a ‘civic centre’ at the high school, where, since 1978, I had received weekly visits from CS activists who gave me the newspaper and talked about everything.”
Wilson himself said, “It was then that I made a conscious and committed choice to live as a revolutionary Marxist militant. This makes me fully aware that practically everything that happens to me can only be understood from a collective perspective, and has an impact in the same way, whether within the party itself, in the movements I am involved in, or in terms of organized and collective action in the dynamics of the class struggle. This is true even if it is only through producing articles and theoretical material, and the training activities on which I have focused my militancy in recent years.”
Notes:
- “Faremos Palmares de novo” (“We will make Palmares again”) is a reference to the Quilombo dos Palmares, a 17th-century community of escaped enslaved people in Brazil. The phrase evokes resistance and the struggle for freedom.** “Malungo” is a term from Kimbundu (Angola) used among enslaved Africans in Brazil to mean “friend” or “comrade.”
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Justice for Tom Alter now!
By JOHN LESLIE
Dr. Tom Alter, a respected and tenured university professor, was fired by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse on Sept. 10 for expressing his political views during an online socialist conference. His participation as a member of Socialist Horizon was unrelated to his role as an educator and done on his own time—not under the auspices of the university. The supposed grounds for his dismissal were allegations that Dr. Alter had advocated violence during his talk; the claim was made by a self-described fascist, Karlyn Borysenko, who doctored the video taken of Dr. Alter’s talk.
After the initial firing, a judge ruled that the university had violated Dr. Alter’s due process rights and ordered him reinstated. Alter was “reinstated,” but barred from teaching until a hearing had been held. The hearing took place on Oct. 6, but the university waited until Oct. 13 to tell Dr. Alter that he was permanently terminated.
This is a flagrant violation of Alter’s First Amendment rights. In the days following Dr. Alter’s initial firing, a network of labor and socialist activists formed the Committee to Defend Tom Alter, with the purpose of fighting for his job and protecting his right to free speech.
Supporters of the Committee to Defend Tom Alter are committed to building the broadest possible defense of his democratic rights by including labor, faith communities, and student organizations in a fight that affects all of us. The state is banking on fear to keep us quiet. If Tom’s firing goes unchallenged, anyone targeted by the state can be victimized and marginalized.
Following the announcement of his firing on Oct. 13, Dr. Alter issued this statement: “I stand in opposition to Texas State University’s attack on democratic rights that are protected by the Texas and United States Constitutions as well as the academic freedom that was once the hallmark of Texas higher education.
“To be clear, my termination is part of a broader political attack being carried out by the authoritarian far-right to crush democracy and democratic institutions in the United States in general and Texas in particular. But the charges leveled against me by the Texas State University administration do not stand up to the facts; I have truth on my side and I look forward to my day in court.
“My termination, in clear violation of my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and of assembly, brings shame, embarrassment and a heavy blow to the academic reputation of Texas State University. This hurts not only faculty, staff, current students and alumni but the San Marcos community as well.
“This fight did not start with me, and it does not end with me. I want to thank my unions, the Texas State Employees Union, American Association of University Professors, and Texas-AFT; the broad coalition of democratic rights supporters in the Committee to Defend Tom Alter; the Texas State chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America; Socialist Horizon; and all those who value basic democracy.”
A statement from the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU) was quoted in the University Star, a campus newspaper: “In a deeply troubling move that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment, Damphousse has upheld the termination of Dr. Tom Alter, a tenured history professor, after a coerced and fundamentally flawed due process hearing.”
This campaign comes in the context of a generalized attack on democratic rights by the Trump administration, including a new McCarthyism on campuses, a frenzy of union busting unlike anything seen since the Reagan era, the threatened suppression of progressive social movements, and a marked increased in the size and scope of the state’s repressive apparatus.
The rise of the far right and increasing anti-democratic actions of the state are a function of the multi-pronged crisis of the capitalist system—the lingering capitalist economic crisis, a profound political crisis, and the growing competition between the U.S. and rising imperialist powers that coincides with the loss of U.S. hegemony on the world stage. All of this is compounded by the looming climate catastrophe. It’s in this context that a section of the ruling class has decided that liberal democracy is an inconvenience and dispensable.
Defense policy
The U.S. left has a long history of building defense campaigns for victims of state repression. From the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to the communist and socialist movements, the left has stood up to repression with unconditional solidarity and an unflinching commitment to preserving the democratic rights that our forbearers fought and died for. As we wrote elsewhere, “If members of any organization or social movement—from Black Lives Matter, to the labor movement, to anti-fascists, to left political organizations—are targeted for repression, violence, or spying, we must stand together in solidarity regardless of any political or tactical differences.”
Socialist Workers Party writer and educator George Novack wrote, “Let me summarize the fundamental features of defense policy which the pioneers of our movement worked out and which have guided all our subsequent activities and achievements.
“The democratic, constitutional and legal rights of the American people are the most valuable political acquisitions of their past struggles. Socialists must staunchly uphold these indispensable instruments of the workers’ struggle for emancipation against any encroachment, assault or erosion by the forces of reaction. A strong defense of existing rights is the best way of extending them.”
Socialists defend the democratic rights of all victims of the U.S. capitalist system and its state apparatus. This does not mean that we have illusions in their Constitution or the capitalist government’s rhetoric about democracy and freedom. We know that their concept of freedom does not really extend to the working class and oppressed. However, we have to use whatever scant protections the veneer of democratic rights in the U.S. offers us to defend our right to speak, organize, and fight. This is why we must defend one another against repression unconditionally and regardless of political differences. Once again, we raise the old labor slogan: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Tom Alter’s attorneys are filing a lawsuit, but we know that lawsuits alone will not preserve our freedoms. It is what we do every day in our organizations and in the streets that will make a difference.
What you can do
There are several concrete steps that you can take to join the fight for Dr. Tom Alter’s democratic rights. First, you can sign the statement issued by the Committee to Defend Tom Alter. If there is a local defense committee in your area, join it and help out. Take Tom’s case into your faith community, union, or student organization and ask them to endorse the campaign. If you can, make a donation to help Tom Alter and his family pay for their basic living expenses while we take this fight forward. Post about Tom’s case on social media and follow our Instagram page. Finally, you can email or call Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse at president@txstate.edu or 512-245-2121.
We demand:
Reinstate Dr. Tom Alter now!
No to the new McCarthyism!
Defend free speech and all democratic rights!
Protect academic freedom!