Home

  • Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition

    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:

  • Workers’ Voice Newspaper: September – October Edition

    Workers’ Voice Newspaper: September – October Edition
    The authoritarian march of Trump expands to include a troop deployment in Washington D.C., the expansion of ICE, and attacks on federal workers and their unions. Why are trans youth being denied access to health care? What about the tech bro alliance with Trump? What way forward for working people and students?  Read the socialist viewpoint in the current edition of  Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

    The September – October 2025 edition of our newspaper is now 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.

  • A banner for all of humanity: ‘The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine’ reviewed

    A banner for all of humanity: ‘The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine’ reviewed

    By M.A. AL-GHARIB

    Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Revolution of 1936 – 1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis,” is a concise and densely argued book, translated with clarity and beauty by Hazem Jamjoun and contextualized with a helpful introduction and afterword by, respectively, Layan Sima Fuleihan and Maher Al-Charif. Originally published in 1972, the Peoples Forum-affiliated 1804 Books reissued it in the annus horribilis of 2023, just as Israel began the genocide of Gaza.

    Kanafani’s book is a must-read to deepen our knowledge about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and to arm our solidarity movements with the knowledge to combat Zionist hasbara.

    Kanafani began writing “The Revolution in Palestine” in 1969. This was a turning point in Arab history, the aftermath of the great defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. As his subject, Kanafani took up another major defeat, that of the Palestinian revolution of 1936-1939, both to recuperate the heroism of the early struggle against Zionist colonization and to assess its lessons for contemporary political work.

    Kanafani was born in Acre in Mandatory Palestine in 1936 into a middle-class professional milieu. After the Zionists expelled his family during the Nakba, they fled to Syria, where they experienced proletarianization and its attendant precarity. His father, a lawyer in Palestine, was so devastated by the Nakba that he was unable to work again. Kanafani, educated early on in French, began seriously studying Arabic literature at Damascus University. There, he also joined the Arab National Movement (ANM), a network of reformists and revolutionaries, many of whom were disillusioned with the soft-Zionist politics of the Palestine Communist Party. Expelled from Syria because of his membership of ANM, he decamped to Kuwait, which would become the setting for one his most important novels, the devastating and brilliant “Men in the Sun.” By 1960, he had moved again, this time to Beirut. It was there that he composed “The Revolution of 1936-1939.”

    Kanafani’s thesis in brief

    British authorities search passengers of Palestinian bus in 1938. (Library of Congress)

    Kanafani sees the Revolution of 1936-1939 as perhaps the decisive moment that sealed the Zionist-imperialist victory over the forces of Palestinian national liberation. The reasons were fourfold: the weakness of the Palestinian working class and bourgeoisie, the hegemony of the feudal-clerical stratum over the Palestinian movement, the failure of the landless peasants—the vanguard of the revolution—to achieve class independence, and the British-Zionist alliance with its huge advantages in resources and violence. With respect to the last item, Kanafani is brutally honest. The main reason that the British sided with the Zionists was because the latter were more competent and effective imperialist collaborators than the often equally amenable Palestinian feudal elite.

    Kanafani wrote his book after his political conversion to Marxism-Leninism, albeit a version of it that was critical of the Stalinist USSR and allied parties, such as the Palestine CP. In spite of its name, the PCP was dominated by Jewish members and had failed to “Arabize” or to build a base among the peasantry. Kanafani’s conversion to Marxism enriched his secular Arab nationalism by increasing the materialist rigor of his method. Specifically, it allowed him to appreciate the political evolution of the landless peasantry in the 1930s as central to the story of the revolution.

    The landless peasants: Origins and politicization

    The emergence of this class was a phenomenon produced by Zionist settlement. As Kanafani acknowledges, it was Hitler’s persecution of European Jews that led to the explosion of Jewish migration to Palestine between 1933 and 1936. Between 1926 and 1932, 7201 Jews were migrating to Palestine annually. This number increased to nearly 43,000 per year between 1933 and 1936 (p. 5).

    Moreover, by 1930-1931, Jewish organizations’ landownership had risen to around one-third of arable land, causing widespread impoverishment among both the peasantry and the bedouin. In this process, the Zionists expelled around 20,000 peasant families from their land, such that, by 1941, around 80 percent of Arab peasants were either landless or owned land insufficient for subsistence. With expanding Zionist settlement and the forced transition toward Jewish-controlled industrialization, Arab smallholding peasants bore the brunt of “extortionist” taxation designed to offset tax exemptions for Jewish settlers and to encourage Jewish industry. An example of the latter can be seen in the British tariff regime: high tariffs on imported retail goods, low tariffs on raw materials, unfinished goods, coal etc. (pp. 15-19).

    By the time that the British assassinated Shaikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam in November 1935, the landless peasantry was at a boiling point. Al-Qassam was unusual for his class: a leader who advocated Arab unity and Palestinian liberation and who was a talented organizer, a disciplined fighter, and uncompromising in the struggle against Zionism-imperialism.

    For all its self-sacrifice and heroism, about which Kanafani is clear, this class-in-formation’s inability to become a class for itself, independent of the reactionary Palestinian leadership, was a main reason for the revolution’s failure. This made it increasingly difficult to defend the movement against Palestinian liberation’s two other implacable foes, the collaborationist Arab regimes and the Zionist – imperialist alliance (p. 1).

    Zionism and fascism

    The Jews flowing into Palestine by the mid-1930s counted among their ranks a much higher number of capitalists, professionals, and intellectuals than could be counted among the Palestinian side. The land grabs of the settlers were in the service of transforming Palestine from an “Arab-agrarian” to a “Jewish-industrial” economy and were facilitated “through capital concentrated in Jewish hands [which] simultaneously aimed to provide this transition with a Jewish proletariat.” Deploying the slogan “exclusively Jewish labor” and led by the reactionary Zionist labor federation, the Histadrut, this process drove “Jewish settler society in the direction of fascism” (p. 6).

    Kanafani here is both launching a clear-eyed critique of what would later become known as liberal Zionism and entering into the Marxist debate on fascism. A rejection of liberal Zionism is now so accepted by the Palestine solidarity movement that is easy to forget how hegemonic it was, at least in the West, until the Gaza genocide revealed the true logic of Zionism to a mass audience. At the time he was writing the book, the understanding that Zionism was a form of racism and colonialism tending toward genocide of indigenous peoples was only widespread among people in the Global South, particularly Muslim-majority countries.

    Regarding whether Zionism inevitably leads to fascism, or whether it is fascist from the start, is a more complicated question. Engaging Kanafani on this would require a separate article, on which this reviewer is currently working. For now, it suffices to say that Kanafani’s discussion of fascism here remains undeveloped, though it resonates with understandings of fascism generally more aligned with, for lack of better terms, “postcolonial” and “Black radical” currents of the left than it does with those within the Trotskyist tradition.

    There have too few instances of these two currents engaging in debate. With the far right and neofascists running rampant across the political terrain of a declining Western imperialism, such a debate can highlight both overlaps and differences in theory and strategy. It is much needed today, and Kanafani’s work on Zionism would undoubtedly play an important role.

    Marxism and culture

    Kanafani’s analysis of the relationship between art and the revolution is one of the more engaging parts of the book. During the revolution, a generation of artists and intellectuals came of age who, though mostly born into the feudal-clerical or professional middle classes, rejected their class and instead solidarized with the armed peasant masses.

    Poetry, in particular, was the genre that best played what Kanafani calls the dialectical role of a truly revolutionary art form. Experimenting with both fusha (classical Arabic) and vernacular forms, a “wave of patriotic poets” (p. 29) such as Ibrahim Tuqan, Abu Salma, and Abd al-Rahman Mahmoud expressed the militancy of the revolutionary zeitgeist and politically intervened to raise consciousness.

    Kanafani’s discussion of Palestinian patriotic poetry is one the most compelling parts of the book—a sophisticated, materialist and dialectical analysis of the role of organic intellectuals in a revolutionary process—by an organic intellectual himself. Echoing Trotsky’s discussion of the ways that active participation in the Russian Revolution propelled the vanguard of the Russian empire’s working class beyond religious consciousness into a higher, socialist consciousness, Kanafani highlights the role of revolutionary Palestinian poems in combatting “the abject fatalism under the banner of religious loyalty” that defined the cultural world of the pre-revolutionary peasantry (p. 26).

    The importance of 1936-1939 in understanding the Nakba

    For Kanafani, the armed peasantry, representing the vast majority of the Palestinian population of the 1930s, was the class with both the objective capacity and the developing subjective consciousness to seriously disrupt if not defeat Zionist colonization. Its failure to do so set the stage for the eventual Zionist victory of 1948, the Nakba.

    By 1939, the movement was exhausted. The British consolidated their alliance with the Zionists by, among other things, implementing a vicious regime of repression against the Palestinian toiling classes, from year-long prison sentences for the most minor transgressions against the colonizers to campaigns of physical violence enacted both by the British military and the Zionist gangs under their aegis to a policy of “widescale home demolition” (p. 50). The feudal-clerical leadership and the Arab collaborationist regimes—most notoriously exemplified by Abdullah of Transjordan, Nuri Al Said of Iraq, and Ibn Saud—actively betrayed the Palestinian masses by, among other things, imprisoning and deporting Palestinian revolutionaries back to the British authorities, where they faced execution.

    The crushing of the revolution allowed the Zionist movement to pursue its main aim, alongside that of allying “with the British to the greatest extent possible.” This was to establish “the foundations of a military society and providing it with its martial and economic instruments” (p. 67). Freed from competition with Arab agriculture, the Jewish bourgeoisie was also freed to develop its economic capacity. The defeat of the revolution, for example, allowed the Zionists to build roads and ports to integrate their economy into emerging postwar capitalist order, a process helped along by monopolies granted by the British, such as for provisioning British troops in Mandatory Palestine.

    Equally if not more importantly, the British actively supported, through personnel and training, the expansion of Zionist military capacity. For example, the imperial patrons employed Jewish auxiliaries as part of their police force as well as Jewish troops to defend the Mediterranean pipeline that transported crude oil from Kirkuk in Iraq to the port of Haifa. They also deployed those troops to violently repress the revolution (pp. 69-71). “Such an escalation in the role and activity of Zionist military units would not have been possible,” writes Kanafani, “had it not been jointly planned and orchestrated between the British and the Zionists” (p. 70).

    “He went to battle with his pen”

    “The Revolution of 1936-1939” is essential reading for activists in the socialist and Palestine solidarity movements. It is an irreplaceable classic of Palestinian and anticolonial movement history. That being said, it leaves major questions unanswered, questions that Kanafani, martyred at the age of 36 by a Mossad assassin’s bullet, surely would have further developed had he lived longer. The aforementioned question of fascism is one. The term appears several times throughout the short book and the reader is meant to understand that Zionism, which reflects and organizes a society of total military mobilization, an economy of land theft, and the genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine, is either a phase of fascism or a form of it. However, which of these apply, and how it applies, is not clarified.

    A second question relates to Kanafani’s criticism of the Palestine Communist Party of the 1920s and 1930s for ignoring the colonial question and for normalizing Zionism. This is a prescient critique, to which he contrasts his own position, in which he attempts to harmonize Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism, and socialism.

    As Kanafani put it in a 1972 interview: Anti-imperialism gives the impetus to socialism if it does not stop fighting in the middle of the battle and if it does not come to an agreement with imperialism […] The Arab nationalists realized this fact in the late 1950s. They realized that they could not win the war against imperialism unless they relied on certain [social] classes: those classes who fight against imperialism not only for their dignity, but for their livelihood. And it was this [road] that would lead directly to socialism. [p. x].

    This position has parallels with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, specifically, that the struggles for democratic rights and economic reforms are not simply “stages” on the way to socialism, but rather, dialectically interrelated with the struggle for socialism. The struggle for socialism, in short, must put the question of working-class power on the table if it is not to fatally undermine itself. Reform and revolution, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, are not different paths to socialism—they are paths to different destinations. Kanafani seems very much in agreement.

    Yet while for Trotsky, as for Lenin and Luxemburg, it was the proletariat that must be the class leading the process of permanent revolution, for Kanafani, as for Mao and Ho Chi Minh, it is the armed peasantry that must exert hegemony in the revolution. Again, we are left to wonder, had he been able to live to see the profound changes undergone by the Arab region in the decades since his death—not least the proletarianization of the majority of the Arab working classes and their leadership role in some if not all the Arab revolts of the 2010s—whether and how Kanafani would have rethought his 1972 analysis.

    As we conclude this article, Israel is engaged in a deliberate starvation campaign against the people of Gaza and a seemingly unending wave of terror and pogroms in the West Bank. The Israelis have also murdered four more journalists in Gaza: Anas al-Sharif, Mohammad Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, and Mohammad Noufal. This brings the total since Oct. 7, 2023 to 270, making this genocidal campaign the deadliest for journalists in recorded history. Unfettered by a U.S. empire mired in a cycle of rapid, grotesque decline, the Israelis hurtle onward in this, one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. The U.S.-Zionist axis is not only annihilating Palestine, it is saying to the rest of the world’s working classes: “This is what happens to you if you get in our way.”

    More and more, we see the necessity today of Kanafani, a revolutionary socialist intellectual “who went to battle with his pen.”

    “Kanafani guides us to resist the isolation of the Palestinian cause as simply an issue for the Palestinians alone, or for the Arab states alone,” writes Layan Fuleihan in the introduction to “The Revolution of 1936-1939.” “When Zionism is understood as an imperialist project in its origin and its agenda, it becomes an enemy of all of humanity, and the Palestinian cause a banner for all of humanity” (p. xii). More and more of the world’s working masses, the only force that can stop this horror, are now seeing the truth that Kanafani shares in this book and in his life’s work.

    Top photo: Palestinians meet at Abou Ghosh, west of Jerusalem, during the 1936 general strike. (Library of Congress)

    , ,

  • No to Trump’s interventionist threats! U.S. troops out of Venezuela and Latin America!

    No to Trump’s interventionist threats! U.S. troops out of Venezuela and Latin America!

    By LEONARDO ARANTES

    Socialist Workers’ Unity (UST) — Venezuela

    On Sept. 2, President Trump announced that, on his orders, U.S. forces attacked and destroyed a small boat in international waters in the Caribbean. Without providing evidence, Trump alleged that the boat contained members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua transporting illegal drugs. He stated that 11 people were killed in the strike. The following article from Venezuelan socialists was written several days before the U.S. attack. — The Editors 

    In recent days, the U.S. government, led by far-right President Donald Trump, has made a series of announcements and taken actions aimed at launching a military operation in Latin American and Caribbean waters under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.

    U.S. imperialism is threatening and baring its teeth

    A couple of weeks ago, the United States began an unusual display of naval military power by deploying several warships and military personnel to the aforementioned area. According to international press reports, three warships, a nuclear submarine with missile and intelligence capabilities, P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and more than 4,000 Marines have been deployed so far.

    Additionally, three destroyers equipped with the Aegis air defense system, as well as submarines and aircraft, have been sent to the edge of Venezuelan territorial waters. These ships are armed with guided missiles, including Tomahawks, which can attack land targets and are the latest technology in the U.S. Navy.

    They perform naval combat and escort larger ships, such as aircraft carriers. They also perform land bombardment and air defense functions and can carry out intelligence and surveillance operations. They can also be used as a launch platform for selective military attacks.

    The deployment of such weapons to combat drug trafficking is disproportionate. Using weapons, military equipment, resources, and military power more characteristic of wars and/or military invasions makes it clear that this operation, supposedly to combat drug trafficking, constitutes a new threat against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean in general and Venezuela in particular under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking. Considering the recent political tensions and the fact that this operation is unfolding near Venezuela’s territorial waters, it is impossible not to consider the possibility that Venezuela is a potential military target.

    The political context in which the threat of intervention is developing

    It is relevant to describe and analyze the current political context of the operation and the threat of U.S. intervention.

    This military deployment follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s Aug. 8 order authorizing the use of armed forces to “fight foreign drug cartels” and defend the nation. Prior to this, on Aug. 7, 2025, the U.S. government doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro to $50 million. It is worth noting that Maduro was accused by the United States of drug trafficking and terrorism in 2020, during Trump’s first term. Specifically, the U.S. government claims that Maduro and high-ranking officials and military personnel in his government lead the “Cartel of the Suns,” an alleged criminal organization that the U.S. has declared a terrorist organization.

    Following these announcements, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that the U.S. government had “confiscated more than $700 million in assets from Maduro,” including “two luxury planes, several houses, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, and others in Florida; a horse farm; and millions of dollars in jewelry.” All of this was a result of his actions as “leader of the Cartel of the Suns.”

    In the weeks leading up to this announcement, the Trump administration had been engaged in negotiations with the Maduro government. These negotiations included the exchange of U.S. prisoners for Venezuelan migrants held by the Bukele government in El Salvador, the release of some political prisoners in Venezuela, and the granting of a new license authorizing Chevron to operate in Venezuela and extract and market Venezuelan oil.

    It is too early to say whether the U.S. government truly intends to intervene militarily in Venezuela or if it is merely increasing pressure on the Maduro government, as it has done before, to force it to negotiate unfavorable agreements and further surrender the country’s sovereignty, particularly its oil and mineral resources.

    The argument of “combating drug trafficking” is a cheap pretext that imperialism uses to increase its offensive to recolonize Latin America and the Caribbean. In this case, the target is particularly Venezuela.

    With the current military deployment, Trump and his government are seeking more than to combat, control, and defeat drug trafficking. Their real objective is to reinforce the protection of their economic, political, geopolitical, and military interests in a historically strategic region for U.S. imperialism.

    The Maduro government’s response is false anti-imperialism

    As expected, Maduro and his officials, including Diosdado Cabello (Minister of Internal Relations) and Delcy Rodríguez (Executive Vice President)—several of whom have been accused of various crimes—have denied accusations linking them to drug trafficking. They have also made bombastic statements such as “No empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela” (Nicolás Maduro, Aug. 19, 2025), and “We are also deployed in the Caribbean Sea, in our Venezuelan territorial waters, to defend our sovereignty” (Diosdado Cabello, Aug. 19, 2025).

    Similarly, they announced the mobilization of over 4 million reservists and the start of a recruitment and training process for these forces, in which they will likely coerce public administration workers into participating. Meanwhile, the Executive Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, called for “the unity of Latin American countries in the face of direct threats of military intervention by the U.S.” on AuG. 19, 2025.

    Maduro flaunts a false anti-imperialism while handing over our sovereignty, oil resources, hydrocarbons, and minerals to imperialist transnational companies such as Chevron, Barrick Gold, and Gold Reserve in the Orinoco Mining Arc (AMO). He exempts imperialist companies in the oil and food import business from paying income tax while imposing brutal austerity measures on Venezuelan workers. These workers earn a minimum monthly wage of less than $1, and their collective agreements are frozen. All of their labor, union, and social rights are violated.

    The bourgeois opposition celebrates the operation and the threats

    True to their bourgeois, ultra-right-wing character, as well as their role as lackeys of U.S. imperialism, María Corina Machado and her supporters celebrate the interventionist threats and imperialist military operation. They are fueling the population’s expectations for a military intervention against Maduro and Venezuela, even calling for its swift execution. They also declare that the United States would be “the best commercial, energy, and security ally in the region” if Machado were president.

    We warn Venezuelan workers and people not to trust a bourgeois leader who is a servile partner of the most rancid imperialist interests, nor the political sector she represents, nor U.S. imperialism, its government, or its armed forces.

    Let us reject the imperialist threats of intervention and show no support for Maduro and his government!

    From the Socialist Workers’ Unity (UST), we denounce this new threat of intervention and imperialist aggression, and we call for its repudiation. We categorically oppose the deployment of U.S. military forces near Venezuelan territorial waters and in the waters of Latin America and the Caribbean. We demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from these regions and urge the governments of the continent to condemn such military operations.

    Similarly, rejecting U.S. imperialism’s aggression and offensive against Venezuela does not mean supporting Maduro and his government politically. On the contrary, we denounce his policy of surrendering our sovereignty, natural energy, and mineral resources to U.S., Chinese, and Russian transnational corporations, among others.

    We oppose his policies of destroying wages, cutting income, curtailing labor and social rights, violating democratic freedoms, and repressing labor leaders, trade unionists, and political opponents of the government. We also oppose his attempts to eliminate trade unions through the so-called trade union constituent assembly. We call on workers to organize and mobilize in a unified manner to defeat the policy of surrendering the country’s sovereignty and the anti-worker, anti-popular austerity measures implemented by the government.

    We must expel Maduro from power. Only by overthrowing the Maduro government through the autonomous and independent mobilization of workers and popular sectors can consistent anti-imperialism develop. This will put an end to the surrender of the country and expel transnational corporations and joint ventures from the oil business and the Orinoco Mining Arc. It will also nationalize 100% of oil, banking, food production, telecommunications, and other strategic sectors. Additionally, it will stop payment of the foreign debt and repatriate capital flight.

    These are all anti-imperialist tasks that will not be carried out by the bourgeois, dictatorial Maduro government, nor by any other bourgeois government. Only a government of the workers and popular sectors of the country can undertake these tasks.

    • U.S. troops out of Latin America and the Caribbean!

    • Reject imperialist interference in Venezuela. We must reject the threats and aggressions of imperialism.

    • Do not trust the bourgeois opposition, U.S. imperialism, its government, or its armed forces.

    • Mobilize the workers and popular sectors to stop the surrender of the country’s sovereignty.

    • Defeat the anti-worker, anti-popular austerity measures of the Maduro government.

    • Restore wages, collective bargaining agreements, and labor, union, and social rights for workers. End repression!

    • Say no to the union constituent assembly and defend the unions!

    • Down with the Maduro government!

    • For a workers’ and popular government!

    , , ,

  • University of Pittsburgh SJP wins reinstatement

    University of Pittsburgh SJP wins reinstatement

    By CARLOS SAPIR

    On Thursday, Aug. 27, the ban against Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Pittsburgh was lifted by a federal judge, who ruled that their right to freedom of speech had been violated by the university. Reinstatement was won thanks to determined organizing by the students and faculty, who rallied university, labor, and community organizations to their public defense.

    This victory follows the February 2024 victory for a civil liberties defense campaign at Ohio State University, where the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists were briefly banned for organizing pro-Palestine events, winning reinstatement after a public pressure campaign. Despite the many draconian efforts by universities to limit or suppress speech on campus, these rights are still within our grasp, and provide a valuable platform to win a broader audience for solidarity with Palestine.

    What happened in Pittsburgh?

    Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Pittsburgh has been hounded by university administrators for all of its protest activities opposing the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In addition to hostile communications from the university, it has been harassed by Zionist groups, which publicly threatened it with violence during the 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (threats that Democratic Senator John Fetterman said he approved of).

    In December 2024, during finals week, SJP students organized a group study-in at Hillman Library on campus. For several consecutive days, students wearing keffiyehs held space in the ground floor of the library, while university administrators and police periodically threatened the students and demanded that they disperse on vague disciplinary grounds. The students, flanked by supporting faculty, insisted that the administrators specify the exact university policies that they were supposedly in violation of, and complied with demands to erase messaging on communal white boards. The students were referred to an opaque internal disciplinary process, while being continuously menaced about repercussions for further political activity.

    The students were not deterred. They published an open letter calling on the university to drop the charges against them, with the signed backing of 70 university and community organizations. The university responded by officially suspending SJP, accusing it of tampering with the disciplinary process for sending the open letter to the disciplinary review board.

    Student organizers brought the core questions of the moment to the student body as a whole, proposing three ballot measures in the March 2025 student government elections that directly related to their political fight:

    1. Should the Student Code of Conduct be amended to ensure that, at all Hearings, one or more students serve as additional Hearing Officers or as members of a Hearing Board?
    2. Should the University of Pittsburgh disclose the contents of its investment portfolio and undergo a yearly, public auditing process to ensure that University operations are transparent and accountable?
    3. Should the University of Pittsburgh divest all financial holdings, if any, from weapons manufacturers arming Israel?”

    All three measures passed with high turnout, alongside a fourth measure to phase out single-use plastics. Thousands of students voiced their support for divestment from Israel, for the financial transparency to allow such divestment to occur, and for greater student control over student disciplinary processes—a key, historical, and democratic demand of student movements around the world.

    The students and faculty also contacted legal support, with the ACLU agreeing to file suit pro bono in federal court. The faculty union, United Steel Workers Local 1088, organized a rally aligning with the April 17 national day of action for higher education, tying together the questions of federal attacks on university budgets, academic freedom, and diversity programs to the censorship of Palestine by the university. They also demanded answers from the university about its treatment of SJP in meetings about university policy in the wake of the federal government’s assault on university funding and political speech.

    Meanwhile, the internal disciplinary process meandered forward through additional hearings, with the university ultimately retracting its charges in relation to the December library study-in, but sustaining the suspension.

    In August, students went into the preliminary hearing surrounded by a crowd of supporters. After a few hours of deliberations in the federal courtroom, the judge published an injunction stating that the students’ rights to speech had been violated by the university, a government entity, that their suspension during the early-semester recruitment period constituted irreparable harm to them, and that reinstating SJP would benefit the public “by increasing the level of association and speech on campus.”

    We can fight—and win

    Campuses are important fields of political activity: nowhere else in society are so many people actively forming and rebuilding their political understanding of the world. Students’ ties to their communities back home, as well as their position as new workers entering the workforce, make it possible for them to organize and influence political activity beyond the campus itself. And the universities are also often the largest employers in the cities where they exist, often deeply embedded in local health-care services. Maintaining a foothold on these campuses is important for social movements and socialist organizations, and also provides access to resources made available to student groups.

    The democratic rights that we have today, like freedom of speech, are the product of centuries of class struggle. Contrary to the ruling-class ideological perspective that these rights are protected by virtue of being enshrined in law, we know from experience that these rights must be continually fought for, demanded, and protected.

    Winning reinstatement for SJP at the University of Pittsburgh, much like it was for Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists at Ohio State University, meant months of political organizing and action, to push support for the case as widely as possible. In the process, these student groups were able to demonstrate the links between the oppression of Palestinian people by Israel and the repression of free speech at home, winning ever-broader layers of people to support Palestine and other liberation struggles. These fights do not distract from each other, but rather complement each other and allow for the movement as a whole to advance politically toward defeating the ruling-class agenda both in Palestine and North America.

    Photo: Police at the University of Pittsburgh attack pro-Palestinian student protesters near their encampment on June 3, 2024. (Quinn Glabicki / Public Source) 

    , ,

  • Israel prepares to expel Palestinians amid international condemnation

    Israel prepares to expel Palestinians amid international condemnation

    By FABIO BOSCO

    Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU), Brazil

    On March 1, 2025, according to Israel’s Channel 13, the government had decided to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza to force the Palestinian resistance to surrender. The State of Israel had decided to use starvation as a weapon of war on a large scale.

    On the 18th, shortly thereafter, Israel broke the ceasefire, invaded, and seized 75% of Gaza. They carried out indiscriminate bombings of schools, hospitals, and homes. Four hundred Palestinians died in the first few days alone.

    In April, Israel excluded United Nations (UN) agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from humanitarian aid distribution and hired GHF to distribute food in Gaza. GHF and the Israeli army turned the six distribution points into death traps.

    By August 17, Israel had killed 1,938 Palestinians and wounded another 14,420 in food line attacks. Additionally, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Zionist state has starved 258 Palestinians, including 110 children.

    They are preparing a brutal forced diaspora

    Simultaneously, Israel has contacted other countries to persuade them to accept Palestinians expelled from Gaza. In addition to negotiating with Sudan, South Sudan, and Somaliland, Israel is negotiating with Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah of western Libya. Dbeibah would accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in exchange for the release of $30 billion that has been blocked abroad since 2011.

    Israel is also negotiating with General Khalifa Haftar, who dominates eastern Libya, to accept Palestinians in exchange for a greater share of the country’s oil production.

    In the West Bank, Israel is preparing to annex the entire territory. It has armed 700,000 Israeli settlers to attack and expel Palestinians together with the army. Additionally, Israel has taken over the area known as “E1,” which divides the West Bank into north and south and separates it from Al-Quds/Jerusalem.

    According to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the goal is to bury the two-state solution—and the idea of a Palestinian state—once and for all.

    The dispute over control of the region

    Israel also seeks to establish itself as the sole regional power. It currently occupies Lebanese and Syrian territories, regularly attacks Yemen, and is preparing new attacks against Iran. Its plans are advancing in Lebanon, where the new president and prime ministe—allies of the United States and Saudi Arabia—were elected and are pressuring Hezbollah to surrender.

    In Syria, the Zionist plan to divide the country was facilitated by the Sweida massacre, in which interim government forces executed hundreds of Druze and pushed them to Israel’s side, fueling toxic divisions between religious communities—contrary to the goals of the revolution.

    In Yemen, the Houthis (Ansar Allah) are strengthening their control of commercial traffic in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, as well as their ability to paralyze Saudi Arabia’s oil production, as they did in 2019.

    In Iran, a new nuclear agreement is being negotiated with the United States. At the same time, however, the production of defensive weapons, particularly ballistic missiles that have successfully penetrated Israel’s air defenses, is resuming. Additionally, the reconstruction of its nuclear program is underway.

    U.S. support for ethnic cleansing

    None of these Israeli plans would be possible without U.S. support. The U.S. supplies 70% of the weapons used by Israel. The U.S. also provides political and diplomatic cover for the genocide in Gaza.

    For example, Trump imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, as well as on two judges and two prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This paralyzed the Tribunal and the International Court of Justice. He did all this to protect Zionist criminals.

    Trump’s policy directly benefits the U.S. arms and oil industries. Additionally, Trump has strengthened his relationship with Christian Zionists who support his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement.

    Neither European imperialism nor the BRICS are alternatives

    While U.S. imperialism openly supports genocide, European imperialism seeks another way to support Israel.

    In September, France and Saudi Arabia sponsored a UN conference to recognize a “Palestinian state.” However, this “Palestinian state” would be formed on the condition of the Palestinian Resistance’s surrender and would be demilitarized to guarantee Israel’s “security.”

    The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) participated in the conference and advocated for the disarmament of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

    In turn, British imperialism pledged to support this French policy if Israel did not mitigate the genocide in Gaza. Neither, however, spoke about what would really be necessary: a military embargo and the severing of trade and diplomatic relations with Israel.

    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a partial arms embargo but stopped short of taking further action. These misleading announcements seek to “distance” responsibility for the genocide and appease the massive wave of pro-Palestinian protests in Europe.

    Unfortunately, the situation is no different among the BRICS alliance, initially formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and now including several North African countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, as well as Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

    India is an unconditional ally of Israel. China is Israel’s primary export market. Russia is a historic ally of Israel and a supplier of oil to its war machine. Brazil and South Africa have protested the genocide but continue to export oil and coal to Israel, respectively.

    Hamas supports a ceasefire without surrender

    After 22 months of unequal struggle against the Zionist genocidal forces, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, led by Hamas, is weakened. Nevertheless, Hamas refuses to surrender or disarm, nor will they accept the Israeli occupation of Gaza.

    Conversely, Hamas supports the proposal for a 60-day ceasefire with a comprehensive prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

    Historical experience supports the Palestinians’ need for continued resistance. Disarmament has always led to the massacre of Palestinians, as in 1982 in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.

    An extraordinary wave of international solidarity

    The genocide in Gaza has been condemned by people around the world. Public opinion polls indicate the highest level of support for Palestinians ever recorded. This rejection of genocide is evident in various acts of solidarity, including marches that bring together thousands of people, as well as protests at universities, cultural events, and sporting events.

    Links between the struggles in Palestine and Ukraine have also begun to emerge. In Kyiv, left-wing activists demonstrated in support of Palestine in front of the Holodomor Memorial, which is dedicated to the millions of people who died of starvation in Ukraine in the 1930s due to Stalin’s policies.

    What has not yet happened on a large scale is the necessary unity among workers to stop the export of military equipment to Israel.

    Protests in Israel and their limitations

    Last week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested, demanding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews also protested compulsory military service for believers.

    These protests are important because they pressure Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to accept the ceasefire. However, it is important to understand their limitations. The vast majority of Israeli Jews support expelling Palestinians from Gaza and colonizing the West Bank.

    The prolonged genocide is impacting the already-in-recession economy and affecting the lives of Israelis who do not want to be killed in Gaza by the Palestinian resistance. Additionally, Israel’s international image has been severely damaged.

    The majority of the Israeli Jewish population, including the working class, is not allied with the Palestinians. On the contrary, they benefit from the theft of Palestinian land and homes. Because of these material benefits, Israeli Jewish workers support the Zionist enterprise, which goes against the interests of Palestinians and workers around the world.

    Only demonstrations by Palestinians of 1948—Palestinians living in the territories captured in 1948 on which the State of Israel was formed—mainly in the city of Umm al-Fahm, demand an end to the genocide in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gaza.

    Unconditional support for the Palestinian resistance! Let us strengthen international solidarity!

    The PSTU unconditionally supports the Palestinian Resistance. While we do not have a programmatic agreement with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), we stand firm against Israeli genocide.

    We support the Palestinian Resistance’s decision not to surrender its weapons and to continue its actions against the Israeli army, however limited they may be.

    While the Palestinian resistance plays its role in the struggle, the working class and youth around the world must also play theirs.

    In Arab countries, a new “Arab Spring” is needed to overthrow collaborationist regimes. In other countries, we must mobilize to force governments to sever trade and diplomatic relations with Israel. We must involve the working class in direct action, such as boycotting the shipment of weapons and other goods to Israel.

    We will build the road to the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea, and to the end of the racist state of Israel in the heat of the struggle against genocide. This is the only solution for peace in the Middle East.

    , , ,

  • Trump escalates police state measures

    Trump escalates police state measures

    By JOHN LESLIE

    In the midst of the military occupation of Washington, D.C., Trump issued another Executive Order (EO) that further escalates the use of the military against domestic civilian populations. Particularly alarming is the creation of a “standing National Guard quick reaction force,” which could be deployed nationally at the order of the president. Since the deployment of National Guard troops to D.C., Trump has been threatening to send troops to Oakland, Baltimore, and Chicago, all cities with Black mayors, based on erroneous claims of a “crime emergency.”

    During the EO signing ceremony on Aug. 25, Trump told the press that “a lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’” He quickly followed this remark by assuring the reporters, “I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense.” However, at a cabinet meeting the next day, Trump again referred to the term “dictator” while denying that there might be any limitations on his “right” to send troops to Chicago: “Not that I don’t have … the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.’“

    All of this comes in the context of the massive expansion of ICE, Trump’s unaccountable political police, coupled with the construction of prison camps intended for the detention of immigrant workers. As we wrote previously, “Trump has taken the tools given to him by past administrations and directed them into a mass deportation regime using a myriad of federal agencies, including the FBI, ATF, and the Postal Inspection Service to augment ICE and Border Patrol efforts.”

    What is in the new EO?

    • Using the pretext of a so-called “crime emergency,” the EO creates a specialized D.C. National Guard Unit: “The Secretary of Defense shall, subject to the availability of appropriations and applicable law, immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard, subject to activation under Title 32 of the United States Code, that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.” This D.C. unit, along with state National Guard units nationwide, “will be trained to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances.”
    • Additionally, “the Secretary of Defense shall designate an appropriate number of each State’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes.  In addition, the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.
    • The EO also directs the National Park Service to increase the size of the DC Federal Park Police.
    • The EO includes a crackdown on DC public housing, directing the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to investigate violations and “include consideration of the provisions of such agreements that require housing providers to maintain safe, decent, and sanitary conditions or to restrict tenants who engage in criminal activity that threatens health, safety, and the right to peaceful enjoyment for other tenants, including engaging in drug distribution, violent criminal activity, and domestic violence.”
    • The EO also gives the Attorney General the right to review D.C. Metro Police General Orders and to request that the mayor make “updates and modifications to such orders as the Attorney General determines are necessary to address the crime emergency and ensure public order and safety.”

    Writer Hamilton Nolan explains, “This executive order is meant to create a standing military force that will go wherever Donald Trump tells them to go and do what he tells them to do. It is meant to smooth over any bureaucratic, legalistic, or technical objections to this sort of dictatorial use of force. It is meant to see to it that Donald Trump can point to any city and say ‘Send in the troops’ and have that happen, notwithstanding the opposition of any governors or mayors or disgruntled military officers or stray courts.”

    Fake crime claims

    Despite Trump’s claims, violent crime rates have declined since a spike during the COVID pandemic, with homicide rates down significantly—a 14.9% drop from 2023 to 2024. Homicides, aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, robberies, and motor vehicle thefts have all shown significant declines from their peaks at the tail-end of the pandemic.

    Trump’s verbal assault on Washington, D.C., calling the city dirty, crime-infested, and dangerous, is in line with conservative talking points that vilify urban areas. According to Trump, the situation in D.C. is “becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness, and we’re getting rid of the slums, too. … I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

    According to The Hill, “Violent crime was recorded at 926 per 100,000 in the nation’s capital, which is governed by Mayor Muriel Bowser (D). Officials said violent crime is down by 27 percent and at a 30-year low after reaching all-time highs during the pandemic.” In contrast, a “fact” sheet issued by the White House claims that “the local D.C. government has lost control of public safety in the city,” with a “violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”

    Here comes the police state

    Civil libertarians and community activists are rightly concerned about this unnecessary and dangerous use of the military in U.S. cities. Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner spoke out against this new development, saying, “The administration is trying to desensitize the American people to get used to American armed soldiers in combat vehicles patrolling the streets of America.”

    Trump’s use of the military for domestic policing violates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the use of the military for domestic policing. Since taking office, Trump has dramatically increased the size and scope of ICE. A previous Trump EO, Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement  to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens, further militarizes local and state police forces, providing more excess military equipment to police and shielding them from accountability. Trump’s desire to use the police and military against his perceived enemies poses a very real danger to oppressed nationalities, opponents of state repression, and the unions.

    Trump is creating the framework for an integrated, unaccountable, and loyal police and military force capable of waging a campaign of domestic counter-insurgency and repression on a national scale—a repression that would be unprecedented in the US. Writing in The New York Times, Ezra Klein wrote, “… that’s the other picture I see—the one that keeps coming into clear focus. Not Trump cleaning up crisis or disorder, but Trump creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him—that puts him in total control.”

    Klein continued, “ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have long been the most rogue, renegade and certainly pro-Trump police agencies in the federal government. So I think Trump sees those two as the most loyal to him. Also, obviously, the mass deportations are going to ensure that those two agencies remain relevant throughout his administration.” So, what is to stop Trump, or a successor, from using ICE and National Guard quick reaction forces, in conjunction with local police, against police brutality protesters, Palestine Solidarity activists, or against  labor strikes?

    Fighting back

    Building a fightback against Trump also raises the question of the Democratic Party. The Democratic establishment has been a weak and tepid “opposition” to Trump’s all-out assault on democracy, unions, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and women’s rights. One only has to watch the nauseating attacks on the unhoused and trans people by politicians like Gavin Newsom to know that the Democrats are just another set of enforcers for capitalism.

    Lawsuits and politicians won’t save us. The power is in our hands through working-class methods of struggle like strikes, mass action protests, boycotts, and independent political campaigns.

    Stopping Trump’s authoritarian ambitions will require a united fightback on multiple fronts. The democratic mass mobilization of all sectors of society—youth, oppressed nationalities, and the unions in particular—is an urgent task. This must be a combined struggle for democratic rights and due process, against legal ethnic cleansing under the guise of immigration control, for the abolition of ICE, and in defense of the working class. There must be a united and vocal rejection of authoritarianism.

    Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

    ,

  • Pennsylvania transit cuts: An attack on working people

    Pennsylvania transit cuts: An attack on working people

    By B. COOPER

    As of this writing, the Pennsylvania Senate has failed to pass a budget that would fund public transit, including SEPTA, a system that serves 800,000 people a day in the greater Philadelphia region. This funding was needed to get the faltering public transportation company out of a crippling $213 million deficit.

    Unfortunately, SEPTA (South East Pennsylvania Transit Authority) decided—in light of its long-standing fiscal “death spiral”—to dramatically reduce service and raise rates. The first round of cuts went into effect on Sunday Aug. 24. At least 50 bus lines will be cut entirely, and most rail lines will halve their services. Eventually, several major regional rail lines will be eliminated, while the others will stop running after 9 p.m. And basic fares are rising to $2.90 for a single ride.

    This is a major setback for the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of working people in Philadelphia and the greater region—including New Jersey and Delaware. Public transit cuts will also affect Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, and an Amtrak connection between New York City, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg. All of this means a severe increase of travel expenses for poor and middle-class people. It will also mean a massive increase in emissions of carbon and particulate matter due to the estimated daily addition of some 275,000 cars on the road (to say nothing of congestion).

    This is occurring in a time when the nation spends almost $1 trillion dollars on its military annually, $175 billion on terrorizing and imprisoning immigrants in concentration camps, and hundreds of millions more on so-called “AI data centers” that drink up and poison the water of nearby communities.

    SEPTA’s budget problem

    SEPTA officials have complained for years of their fiscal “death spiral,” which has steadily placed limits on services. Unfortunately, they put the blame for this on the consumer, i.e., the working-class rider, rather than the capitalist government.

    In 1961 the Southern Pennsylvania Transportation Compact ended the messy privatized system and combined several companies into a single network, which was reorganized as SEPTA in 1964. Several regional rail lines were cut in the process, but this was seen as a temporary measure pending electrification of the entire system. At the same time, plans were laid for a large expansion of the city’s subways, though most of the plans for expansion were never carried out.

    In general, the formation of the publicly owned system was a step forward in improving the quality of life for working people. But SEPTA was handicapped by inconsistent funding. There was never a secure guarantee of funds from the state or federal government, with the can being eternally kicked down the road by both Republicans and Democrats.

    Since SEPTA does not get regular, guaranteed financial support from the state or federal governments, a huge portion of its funding comes from fares. SEPTA—like all public transportation networks since the COVID-19 pandemic—has seen a drop in the number of people using its services, which creates a “spiral” in which the remaining customers need to pay more to keep the whole thing going.

    At the same time, SEPTA has been seeing greater numbers of people not paying—creating a point of contention between riders and bus drivers that has been an unnecessary source of conflict. In late 2024, the Transport Workers United Local 234 threatened to strike over pay and, critically, safety on the job.

    Today, SEPTA’s budget shortage cannot be fixed with fare hikes alone, and according to Pennsylvania state law (to rub salt into the wound), cannot be fixed by municipal taxation either. The average Pennsylvania family will pay 12% of its income in state and local taxes while the wealthiest only pay 6.2%.

    Why is there an attack on public transit?

    Reporting by outlets including the Philadelphia Inquirer, City-cast Philly, and Philly Voice have detailed information on many of the specifics of the budget wrangling between the two capitalist parties in the Pennsylvania Senate. People might think that there isn’t money available to consistently fund SEPTA (and other needed public services!). However, an examination of the budgeting decisions of the state and federal government reveal a different story, one of ideological motivation rather than economic realities.

    The Republicans, who have had the majority in the state Senate for over 30 years, mainly because of gerrymandering, have a brutal “free market” fundamentalism that scorns the public good. Across the country, their party has done everything possible to sabotage or stonewall progress in public services such as health care, schools, and housing. The Trump-influenced Republican Party is also trying to curry favor with rural and small-town white voters by saying that their tax dollars shouldn’t go to “crime ridden” Democratic-run cities.

    The Republican strategy of long-term destruction of public transit is on full display with their most recent budget proposal, in which $1 billion would be sapped from the Public Transportation Trust Fund, a fund that, according to SEPTA, is needed for maintenance and future capital improvements to the system at large.

    Both parties uphold capitalism and its for-profit exploitation of labor, as well as the U.S. imperialist mission abroad. But whereas the Democratic Party tends to put itself forward as representing the “rational” and “fair” policies of U.S. capitalism, the Republican Party, especially under Trump, has more openly embraced racist and exclusionary myths in order to justify merciless exploitation. Of course, cuts to social services, including public transit, do not benefit rural whites or small businesses at all, who will be harmed by the negative impact to the economy of many of Trump’s policies. Trumpism can only benefit the very wealthy.

    State and national budgets

    Of course, $213 million is not a lot of money when speaking of the budget. This is easy to see when we examine the so-called Big Beautiful Bill passed recently as the crown jewel of Trump’s policies. The bill includes among many other provisions a $145 billion increase in annual military spending, money that even the Pentagon admits it can’t keep track of. This brings the net annual waste on the military to almost $1 trillion.

    The so-called “beautiful” bill also increased ICE agent hiring by a whopping $8 billion, and allocates $45 billion for the building of new “detention centers.” This is alongside an obscene $50 billion allocation for border security and border wall construction. Even the money spent to build “shelters” for apprehended immigrant children, $3 billion, is 15 times the amount of money that would be needed to end SEPTA’s deficit.

    Looking at the Pennsylvania state budget doesn’t look much better. For example, Pennsylvania’s 2024-25 budget allocated $2.7 billion to “corrections,” i.e., the racist mass incarceration system, and another $1.3 billion to the state police. By comparison, a measly $234 million—or less than one-fifth of the police budget—was given to environmental protection.

    Whom does this budget serve? On a federal or state level, priority is clearly given to maintaining the oppressive organs of government over and above the actual needs of the working or middle classes, such as affordable housing, transportation, and clean air and water.

    Public transportation must be funded!

    When we compare the public transportation networks of the United States to other developed nations—even ones that are much poorer than the U.S.—we see abject failure. Public transit in nations such as Belgium, Austria, and Germany are much more robust, have much greater daily capacity, and are supported by consistent funding. Whatever other flaws these capitalist governments may have, public transit is supported as a basis for civil society.

    Public transportation should not be a cost hoisted onto working people. Public transportation should be seen as a necessity. Moreover, it must be dramatically expanded if we want civilization to survive climate change. Such an expansion would provide mass employment. Philadelphia, for example, was once a major manufacturing hub for the construction of train and subway cars, before the industry was eclipsed by the auto manufacturers who lobbied the government to expand asphalt roads for cars.

    Paying for the expanded system of mass transit could also be accomplished by raising taxes on the wealthiest and on corporations. Zohran Mamdani’s NYC primary campaign gained a lot of popularity among his working-class base by promising free buses funded partly by fining the slumlords and raising taxes on the wealthiest.

    The U.S. has more than ample resources to provide for the common good. But the current government loyally serves only a privileged minority.  The structure of government is designed to keep the capitalist owners of industry, high tech, and finance in control while marginalizing the bottom 90% of people and making their needs irrelevant to government policy.

    Working people need a political movement independent of the Democrats and Republicans, based on the unions and other working-class organizations. It must fight uncompromisingly at the ballot box, in the streets, and at workplaces to defeat this reactionary regime. Only a workers’ government led by working-class leaders, backed by a democratic mass movement and democratic trade unions, could create a budget that actually fulfills the needs of working people, protects the environment, and ends support for war and genocide.

    Fund mass transportation! Full mass transit within and between our towns and cities!

    For free buses and subways! Make the rich pay! Make corporations pay!

    Dismantle the military industrial complex! Tear down the walls! Close the prisons and camps!

    End all support to Israel. Use the money instead to fund schools, trains, and health care!

    For a democratic and fighting labor movement! For workers’ control of industry, transport, and the banks!

    Photo: Jessica Griffin / The Philadelphia Inquirer

    ,

  • Free Kilmar Abrego Garcia!

    Free Kilmar Abrego Garcia!

    By ERWIN FREED and AVA FAHY

    Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a union sheet-metal worker, husband and father, and member of the immigrant advocacy group CASA—was finally released from a Tennessee jail on Friday, Aug. 22. Unfortunately, he was re-detained three days later, on the morning of Aug. 25, during an ICE “check-in.” A press conference organized by CASA brought hundreds of supporters to rally outside the ICE field office in Baltimore as he arrived for his “check-in” appointment.

    Abrego Garcia’s release from prison and his subsequent re-detention marks a crucial but unresolved point in the movement against the ongoing crack-down on immigrants and civil liberties. The movement to free Abrego Garcia has shown that all of the Trump administration’s lies and slanders against him are baseless. It should be obvious that there is no “legal” justification for his continued detention. However, the movement cannot let down its guard; it must mobilize support against a new maneuver by the administration, which has led to the re-detention of Abrego Garcia.

    As Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have pointed out, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security are working in “lockstep” to try to coerce him to plead guilty to bogus “human trafficking charges” in exchange for deportation to a “safe” country, where he would be given asylum. The federal government gave Abrego Garcia an ultimatum: If he did not plead guilty on Aug. 25 and accept deportation to Costa Rica, the government threatened to deport him to Uganda—a country where he does not speak the language and where he would be more vulnerable to human rights abuses.

    It is obvious that the government was attempting to coerce Abrego Garcia into relinquishing his civil rights to due process in immigration proceedings. Abrego-Garcia bravely declined the terms of the ultimatum and peacefully accepted his re-detention, which was expected, at his ICE “check-in.” He was sent to a detention center in Virginia. A federal judge in Maryland has temporarily blocked Abrego Garcia’s deportation until at least after his evidentiary hearing takes place on Aug. 27.

    Immigration policy analysts like Aaron Reichlin-Melnick speculate that if the U.S. government were to send him to Uganda, that country would then deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he would face threats of violence, and where it would technically be illegal for the United States to send him directly. Of course, the U.S. government already did just that when they sent Abrego Garcia, along with over 280 other detainees, to the CECOT torture center in El Salvador in mid-March.

    Often left out of news reports on this situation is the fact that rapprochement between the United States and Nayib Bukele’s regime in El Salvador began during the Biden administration. In 2023, senior Biden officials began laundering Salvadoran President Bukele’s image and “courting” the hyper-corrupt, hyper-carceral regime. An article in The Dial reported that in September 2023, Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, “[Alejandro] Mayorkas … applauded [El Salvador’s] state-of-exception arrests—whose victims are people like Juan Saúl Castillo Alberto, an employee of the Salvadoran public works agency who was arbitrarily detained and starved in prison. He died at age 32.” When Bukele accepted re-election the next summer, Mayorkas led a high-level diplomatic delegation to the country.

    The kidnapping and the “case” against Kilmar

    Quotations without attribution refer to this court filing: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.1.0.pdf 

    ICE and the entire federal government held Abrego Garcia behind bars since March 12. On that day, after working a full shift as an apprentice sheet metal worker, ICE HSI agents pulled over his car. Abrego Garcia had just picked up his son from his grandmother’s house, and the pair were on their way home. ICE agents told him only that his “status was changed,” while arresting him and threatening to send his son to Child Protective Services if his wife did not show up to the scene fast enough.

    Born in the capital city, San Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia fled the country at age 16 after years of being targeted by the Mara 18. The gang extorted his mother’s pupusa stand and threatened to kill Kilmar and his brothers if they didn’t join Mara 18. A U.S. immigration judge found Abrego Garcia’s story credible enough to grant him “withholding of removal” status, legally preventing the government from deporting him to El Salvador under the terms of the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture. Such relief is only granted to individuals who face a “clear probability of future persecution.”.

    During his first evening in ICE detention, Abrego-Garcia spoke with his wife. He told her that he had been questioned about gang affiliations, repeatedly stated he had none, and “that he had been told that he would go before an immigration judge and then be released.” After his initial detention, Abrego-Garcia was moved to “various detention facilities around the country.” Along the way, he urgently told his wife that “El Salvador was asking for him.” As she desperately attempted to explain that “he had won protection from being removed to El Salvador” to ICE officials and agents, no one responded.

    In a call at around 11 a.m. on March 15, Abrego Garcia “relayed that he was told that he was being deported to El Salvador. With a sense of urgency, he asked his wife to contact his mother so their family could get him from ‘CECOT,’ as that is where he was told they were sending him.” CECOT is a 40,000-bed concentration camp where physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of detainees are all institutionally supported.

    Unfortunately, Abrego Garcia had been told the truth. At least 280 people, including him, were sent to CECOT as part of a psychological warfare operation meant to instill fear in immigrant communities.

    Abrego Garcia, along with the rest of the people sent to CECOT, was horribly beaten and subjected to torture. Most of the people sent to CECOT, estimated at around 250, were Venezuelan men. While the Trump administration claimed they were members of the Venezuelan gang, ”Tren de Aragua,” even those charges were made up. Tren de Aragua barely exists in the United States, and the administration has not presented any evidence showing that any of the people deported to CECOT were gang members.

    Instead, the deportation flights were riddled with alleged “administrative errors.” They included at least seven women, who were mistakenly sent to CECOT (an all-men’s prison) and, by the government’s own admission of error, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. In 2019, an immigration judge ordered a stay of removal for Abrego Garcia, specifically barring the government from deporting him to El Salvador.

    Ever since news of the CECOT deportations, solidarity with the deportees and disgust with the Trump administration’s crimes has largely congealed into the demand “Free Kilmar Abrego Garcia and all CECOT detainees.” All over the country, pictures of Abrego Garcia have flooded mass demonstrations against the anti-immigrant crackdown and general repression unleashed by the government. Everything the Feds do to try to justify targeting Abrego Garcia further exposes the arbitrary unlawfulness of not only immigration enforcement, but capitalist policing generally.

    Kilmar Abrego Garcia had three main points of contact with law enforcement, all of which ended with him being allowed to remain in his community, and none of which resulted in his being charged with any crime.

    The first was in 2019. At that time, Kilmar was detained along with other day laborers waiting for work. They were detained by a corrupt cop, Ivan Mendez, who weeks later would plead guilty to being a “John” and providing information to “commercial sex workers.” The “evidence” that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang was based on the words of a still unnamed “criminal informant” in a “gang field survey” sheet filled out by Mendez. The “gang field survey” was so broad as to be meaningless, and was outlawed by the state of Maryland shortly after Abrego Garcia’s initial detention. Similarly, the informant claimed that Abrego Garcia was part of an MS-13 “clique” located in New York, a state the government has never shown him to have had any connection with. During this period, from March 8 to Oct. 10, 2019, Abrego-Garcia was held in ICE detention. He had been immediately handed off to ICE by local police following his detention, although during his final hearing in this episode, he was neither convicted nor charged with any crimes.

    The second contact with law enforcement were two reported domestic disputes, one in 2019 and one in 2020, when Abrego Garcia’s wife called the police during arguments. No charges were filed, and the couple appears to have had success with the help of a counselor. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Kilmar’s wife, has directly blamed Abrego Garcia’s uncharacteristically aggressive behavior during this period on the trauma of having been placed in ICE detention.

    The third was a brief traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Dec. 1, 2022. According to the government’s own account, Abrego Garcia was allegedly pulled over for “speeding” and not “maintaining” lanes. In the vehicle were “eight other individuals” whom Abrego Garcia told police he was bringing from Texas to Maryland “to perform construction work.” Abrego Garcia was let go with a warning, and no incident report was filed. However, the details of the traffic stop somehow ended up in the files of the “Combined Intelligence Unit” (CIU) of the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations bureau.

    From a quick review of documents, it is not clear what the CIU is. In any case, that unit’s report, combined with the word of a federal informant, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, appear to be the basis of the White House’s insistence that Abrego Garcia is a “suspected human trafficker.” In actual fact, the informant in this case had previously been convicted of human trafficking and was the owner of the van Abrego Garcia was driving. Now, the Justice Department and DHS appear to be leveraging Reyes’ extensive criminal record to coerce him into painting Abrego Garcia as some sort of “human smuggling” kingpin.

    It is apparent that none of these interactions with police give credence to any of the White House’s claims. There is no evidence that he is a member of MS-13, there is no evidence that he is a serial “wife beater,” and there is no evidence that he participated in “human trafficking,” as any reasonable person would understand it. On the last point, whatever status the people in his car might have had on Dec. 1, 2022, the federal government is now going out of its way to drop similar charges against Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, as well as charges for randomly shooting guns and other crimes, in order to receive testimony backing up their narrative demonizing Abrego Garcia.

    Migrants are not political pawns! End ICE and CECOT terror! Hands off Kilmar Abrego-Garcia!

    While tens of thousands of Salvadoran men languish in CECOT and other torture camps, almost 300 deportees sent from the United States were ultimately traded in order to release 10 “political” prisoners from Venezuelan jails. That list inexplicably includes Dahud Hanid Ortiz, who was convicted in Venezuela for a triple homicide carried out in Spain.

    The CECOT negotiations are emblematic of the U.S. ruling class’s apparent emerging strategy towards brute force “negotiations” and the use of working people and media spectacle to orchestrate “foreign policy.” Trump’s second term has already become defined by making big pronouncements, followed by small “victories” claimed by the attention hungry press core. Along the way, the administration is willing to destroy countless peoples’ lives through arbitrary behavior meant to put targeted communities in a state of “shock and awe” and creating the general fear that speaking out will leave one behind bars.

    Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s months-long ICE odyssey spans probably a half dozen states, multiple countries, and even multiple detention centers within El Salvador. He has been villainized and publicly slandered at every opportunity by the highest “authorities” in the United States. Attempts to deport him also show the weakness of the MAGA movement’s attempts to carry out “mass deportations” and to win popular support for their plans. Instead, “Hands off Abrego Garcia!” became a rallying point and unifying call for millions of people, who poured out in the streets to stand against the Trump administration.

    Particularly now, as Abrego Garcia is once again incarcerated for the “crime” of moving across borders, the fight to defend him and end this petulant witch-hunt deserves support from all who care about democratic rights and understand that every successful step made in empowering and expanding the detention-deportation machine is also a successful rollback of everyone’s civil liberties.

    There is no time to waste! “Keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home” must be the message on every shop floor, in every community space, and at every mobilization for working people and civil liberties.

    Photo: Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks to supporters outside his ICE “check-in” on Aug. 25. (Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters)

    ,

  • Free Catalina ‘Xóchitl’ Santiago!

    Free Catalina ‘Xóchitl’ Santiago!

    By JOHN LESLIE

    Immigrant Justice activists and their allies are demanding the release of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a respected community organizer and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient. Xóchitl was seized by Border Patrol agents at the El Paso airport on Sunday, Aug. 3, while she was traveling for work. Agents disregarded her legal status under DACA and placed her in detention. DACA recipients are supposed to be both authorized to work and protected from deportation.

    Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago

    The government has falsely claimed that Xóchitl was picked up because of criminal charges from 2020. Her attorney, Norma Islas, has issued a statement refuting this allegation, which points out: “Despite repeated false claims by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the public, media, and members of Congress about pending criminal charges, none exist.”

    DHS and the FBI are constantly making up and framing Black and Brown people for crimes. The Trump administration continues to peddle the lie that Kilmar Abrego-Garcia is an “MS-13 member,” despite no evidence other than a meaningless “gang checklist” and the word of a crooked cop’s informant. Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and others faced ICE arrest purely because they advocated for Palestine. In virtually every press release with immigration arrest statistics, ICE purposefully hides and obfuscates criminal charges. The most up-to-date statistics show that the vast majority of immigrants picked up by the Feds since Trump took office have been accused of no crimes, other than “breaking” immigration laws.

    Xóchitl was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. as the child of farmworkers. As an adult, she has dedicated herself to winning equal rights and dignity for immigrant workers and their families, organizing in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Most recently, Catalina has been working in El Paso, helping women in the community through La Mujer Obrera. At a vigil organized by supporters in Philadelphia, a friend and fellow organizer, Evan Feldberg-Bannatyne, talked about their work fighting for the right of immigrant workers to obtain drivers licenses. Supporters in Philadelphia, Chicago, and El Paso held vigils demanding Santiago’s release, with more planned in other cities.

    At the Philadelphia vigil, a friend, Frangi Pozo, read a message from Xóchitl: “Today marks one week of not being able to see the sunset every evening, of not being able to feel the warmth of the land, of not being able to sprout seeds or hear the elders and children laugh. It has been a week full of histories of strife rooted in forced immigration and to come face-to-face with the criminalization of the immigrant. Getting to see the guts of the for-profit prison system that scrutinizes every move we make, that locks us far away from our loved ones. Where the lights are on day and night. Where every evening dinner is a frozen ham and cheese sandwich, crackers, and orange juice.” Catalina goes on to describe medical neglect of pregnant women, racist and homophobic behavior of guards, and inhuman living conditions.

    The National Network for the Rights of Immigrants and Refugees (NNIRR) stated:

    “This is not an isolated incident. Catalina is part of a worrying and growing trend in which immigrants with legal residence are detained without cause, which constitutes a violation of their rights and a direct threat to community leadership.

    “Catalina is a pillar of her community: a talented narrator, a passionate advocate and a tireless advocate for women, the elderly and children. Educates young people about plant medicine and environmental management, grows community gardens and sows knowledge, hope and resilience wherever she goes. Their detention is not only unfair, but a flagrant abuse of power against those who seek and build justice in their communities.”

    What you can do:

    It’s clear that Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago has been targeted as a challenge to DACA and as a threat to immigrant rights organizers from the racist Trump regime. The entire Immigrant Justice movement must stand up with one voice and say Free Xóchitl! Free all detainees immediately! Stop the racist ICE raids! Abolish ICE, Trump’s political police.

    Photo: Protest in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 6. (Jeff Abbott / El Paso Times)

    ,

  • Hospitals shut the door on trans youth

    Hospitals shut the door on trans youth

    BY ROSA AURELIA

    On Thursday, July 24, Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Health announced that they would be ending their surgical (and medication based) gender-affirming health care for patients under the age of 19. This decision came immediately after Connecticut Children’s Medical said it would do the same. These developments have grave implications for trans people and their allies in the state of Connecticut. As clinics close their doors, the clients of the ones that remain will experience longer and longer wait lists, and this fact will inevitably lead to the (preventable) death of the state’s most marginalized youth.

    This calculated move on behalf of the liberal establishment, however, does represent an opportunity for us to assess the strategies that the ruling class is employing in their continued gutting of essential social and medical services—which impacts all working-class Americans. Furthermore, these attacks give the class an opportunity to identify its antagonists, and to fight back against them with the power of a mass movement to protect trans youth that unites with medical workers struggling against neoliberal austerity measures.

    In order to understand these attacks and how to fight back, we must look to the national and international context in which Connecticut hospitals have caved to anti-trans right-wing pressures, then speculate as to the possible responses of the trans liberation movement, as well as plan how revolutionists should meet this incredibly determinant moment in this arena of the class struggle.

    The motives and strategies of the anti-trans reaction

    From Brazil to Britain and from Hungary to China, we’re seeing the agents of capital adhere to anti-trans sentiment because it aids in their goals of dividing the working class along gender lines and because it diverts responses to crises of capitalism onto the already marginalized Queer community.

    Strategically, the ruling class can repurpose sentiments of discontent toward the liberal education and health care systems to scapegoat trans people for the failures incurred by decades of neo-liberal policies. This strategy is especially effective on people who know intimately the state of the gutted social services, but who see no class independent alternatives in their elections.

    The right’s playbook is rather easy to grasp. In the U.S. we have seen Attorney General Pam Bondi announce that she will be going after these industries for “defrauding” the American people. This framing allows the administration to appear as if it is fighting against the interests of the “elite.”

    The Justice Department has also sent subpoenas to about 20 medical providers demanding that they turn over to the government sensitive records about their young transgender patients—including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses—as well as billing documents, communications with drug manufacturers, etc., going back to January 2020. Bondi said last month that the Justice Department is attempting to hold accountable for their actions “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.”

    In addition, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health & Human Services sent a letter in April to state Medicaid directors, urging them to “strictly limit” their services for gender-affirming care. Three days later, the department issued a form for whistleblowers to report to the government their “complaints” against providers of such services as long as they have a “good-faith belief” that the medical practitioners “violate professional or clinical standards.” In describing these standards, the document references Trump’s anti-trans Executive Order 14187, titled, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

    Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the big bourgeoisie in their governmental guise, is going after “gender ideology” by attacking the rights of clinics and doctors, as well as by holding what amounts to an anti-trans rally (Baum, 2025). What we are witnessing is a paradigm shift in corporate oversight of medical practices, and it shows how the right aims to prosecute their offensive against trans people. There is no doubt that the same strategies employed now against trans people will be used to enforce abortion bans in the future.

    Though this strategy plays into the working class’s distrust of the health insurance industry and the medical industrial complex, it cannot actually solve the problem that workers are saddled with enormous medical debt, paying an arm and a leg for insurance, and unable to access the services they need.

    Indeed, the right’s characterizations of trans health care prey upon very real and valid distrust of the establishment’s failing health-care system. However, these narratives effectively conceal the fact that Queer people are far more likely than their cis-hetero counterparts, to experience the marginalization that leads to difficulties in accessing health care. And further, these challenges are exponentially intensified for those already facing poverty, racism, ableism, and sexism.

    There is a crisis in the U.S. health-care system, and the resulting lack of health care is disproportionately felt by the most oppressed. Yet the right wing claims that it is the “transgender industrial complex,” and not their $880 million in cuts to Medicare, that further debilitate our health-care system. These right-wing narratives are codified by the FTC, the office of the AG, and especially by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Skrmetti to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care. And now we see that through these actions they are successfully pressuring supposedly “blue state” liberals in the upper echelons of the medical industry to make the very destructive decision to abandon trans youth entirely.

    Nationally, we are only going to see this crisis for trans people worsen as surveillance of health-care providers increases, and as the FBI goes after providers who stand up to these pressures. Though they may start with providers and clinicians, this will no doubt expand to trans people themselves; as we saw earlier this year, they have already removed the language barring the FBI from surveilling people purely based on their gender identity.

    This form of domestic spying is merely the first step along a path toward the expansion of the medical surveillance apparatus. This surveillance will allow the ruling class to police all bodies, and especially those of pregnant people by monitoring things like their health app data and period tracking apps.

    Our strategy for the fightback

    Obviously, such grave circumstances can be very scary, and demoralizing, for the trans community. Trans people might be tempted to respond to the increased surveillance and unavailability of gender-affirming care by moving into underground networks. But these strategies, especially if they manifest in underground Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) distribution networks, will have an enormous potential to be infiltrated by police or the FBI. In that way, they could kettle trans people and put them in a position to be further repressed.

    To defend ourselves, we need public solidarity that prevents the government from isolating and attacking us as criminalized individuals. Out of these decisive moments, workers and oppressed people could build a broad and strong mass movement that can defend trans lives by taking up the struggle to advance the rights of women, Queer people and the particularly vulnerable trans community.

    Building robust and effective defense campaigns can be aided when the trans community participates in other movement spaces, such as within the immigrant rights movement, the climate movement, the Palestinian solidarity movement—and in the unions. Campaigns organized by unionized workers might eventually be able to put credible strike action on the table, which could shift the balance of power in our fight.

    Additionally, we advise allies of the trans liberation movement against actions that aim to “raise awareness” of our plight through escalatory, performative, and adventurist confrontations with police and the National Guard. These actions risk alienating the movement from its potential allies. Those who put forward such plans lack a complete understanding of the only force that has the potential to make meaningful advances toward liberation, that is the force of the united working class.

    The mass action of the working class is enormously powerful. For example, it was only when Black Lives Matter protesters started raising the slogan “Black Trans Lives Matter” that we saw the conservatively led Supreme Court issue an opinion that protected LGBTQ workers from being fired based on their sexual or gender orientation. In 2020 the ruling class felt threatened by workers uniting to defend Black trans bodies, so they conceded Bostock v. Clayton County. But today they feel less of an immediate threat—so we get Skrmetti. The difference between the Court that made that ruling and the one we see today is the strength of our solidarity.

    To build such solidarity we must follow the example set by protesters outside of NYU Langone Health in New York and in Michigan earlier this year, where trans activists united with hospital workers to oppose concessions on trans health care that had been made by liberal health-care industry executives. When these forces united, we saw that they won their respective battles, effectively setting back the right-wing anti-trans movement. And when California’s Kaiser Permanente said it would stop providing surgical care to treat gender dysphoria in people under 19, the largest nurses’ union in the nation stood up to condemn those actions. These examples of solidarity need to be repeated at every hospital and clinic across the country. We know such solidarity is possible because as trans people we don’t just want to fight for trans health care; we want to fight for all health care, and the rights of all health-care workers.

    It is necessary for all social activists to help build a mass movement of workers and the oppressed that could bring together health-care workers’ unions and their allies within the trans community. When such a movement takes to the streets with slogans as strong as “Black Trans Lives Matter,” we will be able to go beyond defending the most basic gender-affirming health-care for minors and fight for full liberation.

    Sources

    Baum, S. (July 10, 2025). “Trump’s FTC lays the groundwork to charge GAC providers with ‘fraud.’” https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trumps-ftc-lays-the-groundwork-to

    Maroney, E. (2025a). “The Anti-Trans Witch Hunt.” Spectre, (11). The Anti-trans Witch Hunt  Spectre: A Marxist Journal. https://spectrejournal.com › the-anti-trans-witch-hunt

    Maroney, E. (2025b, Jan. 30). “Trump, the right, and the broader anti-trans reaction.” Tempest. https://tempestmag.org/2025/01/trump-the-right-and-the-broader-anti-trans-reaction/

    Photo: Emma Williams / Austin Monthly

    ,