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UPSURGE IN BOLIVIA: United Left Platform webinar on June 26
Upsurge in Bolivia: What It Means for the Fight Against MAGA and U.S. Imperialism
Jun 26, 2026 8:00 PM -
Workers’ Voice newspaper: June-July edition
Trump continues his assault on working and oppressed people: From the attack on voting rights to the environmental impact of the war on Iran to abortion rights to the struggles of immigrant meatpacking workers on the picket line, this edition is filled with insightful views on how working people are confronting the horrors of capitalism under the management of the Trump administration. Also in this issue read about migrant workers in Africa, the struggle against data centers, and the meaning of recent elections in Hungary.
The June-July 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:
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Scottsboro Boys: A lesson in defense campaigns
By BRIAN CRAWFORD
“No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals and retrials” as the case of the Scottsboro Boys,” wrote Douglas Linder in “Famous Trials.” Nine young Black men boarded a freight train in Chattanooga, Tenn., bound for Memphis. Accusations of rape would be the catalyst for a legal odyssey that lasted years. It also spawned a defense campaign organized by the International Labor Defense, the legal arm of the Communist Party.
In the 1930s, justice for African Americans in the southern United States did not exist. In cases involving Black defendants and white accusers, invariably the defendant was presumed guilty. The only question was whether the defendant would live to see the trial date. In this context, nine young African American men in Alabama faced certain death.
On March 25, 1931, about two dozen Black and white young men boarded a Southern Railway freight train. Freights served as transportation for the poor during the Depression years. Many went from town to town or across state lines looking for work. Also on this train were two young white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Butler, who had traveled from Huntsville, Ala., to Chattanooga Tennessee looking for work—unsuccessfully as it turned out. On March 25, they were returning home.
A fight broke out between the Blacks and whites. Most of the young white males were forced off the train by the Black men. They reported the incident at one of the stations, and the train was stopped at Paint Rock, Ala. A posse met the train and took the remaining Black passengers (some had deboarded along the way) into custody and then to Scottsboro, Ala.
Bates and Price also exited the train, and to avoid arrest themselves, they accused the young Black men of rape. (Bates would later recant and join the movement to free the Scottsboro Boys.) The accused were: Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Charles Weems, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, Andy Wright, and Roy Wright. Patterson would be convicted four times in five years.
On April 6, 1931, eight of the nine were convicted and sentenced to death. During the period of 1931 through 1937 there were six trials resulting in convictions. The case appeared before the Alabama Supreme Court on three different occasions; each time, the conviction and the death sentence were upheld. The case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court twice. It overturned both convictions. The first ruling was on the grounds that the defendants did not have adequate council, and in 1935, in Patterson v. State of Alabama and Norris v. State of Alabama, the Court overturned the convictions based on the exclusion of African Americans from the jury.
Mark Naison wrote in “Communists in Harlem” (p. 57) that the “Communist Party made the details of the Scottsboro case a part of the daily consciousness of the community until Scottsboro became synonymous with southern racism.” The International Labor Defense was created principally by James P. Cannon, then a member of the CP who later would lead the (Trotskyist) Socialist Workers’ Party. The ILD was established as a non-sectarian defense organization; it had previously represented the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and was also involved in anti-lynching campaigns. Once the ILD took the case, it became the center of the defense campaign. It placed the Scottsboro Boys on the front page of the party newspaper.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) initially refused to accept the case. They feared that a rape case in the South might tarnish its reputation. When the International Labor Defense took the case, the NAACP decided it couldn’t have these young Black men represented by Communists.
The conflict between the NAACP and the CP continued until the end of 1931. The CP attempted to secure support from leaders in Harlem, from ministers to organizations. Meanwhile, the NAACP thwarted its rivals by convincing some ministers to cancel scheduled meetings and journalists to repudiate their favorable opinion pieces. But the ILD by the middle of 1931 represented all nine of the Scottsboro defendants. By the January 1932 they gained control of the case. The ILD combined legal work with the defense campaign, in contrast with the NAACP, which relied on a legalistic approach.
Persuading the defendant’s parents to allow the organization to be their legal representatives was critical. It became a deciding factor in the ILD’s battle with the NAACP. The presence of family members on a national tour, speaking to large crowds across the country, made an impact.
The Amsterdam News appealed to the Black community to support “the defense through the Communist dominated National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners” (Naison, p. 71). Eventually, according to the publisher of the Amsterdam News, Harlem residents believed “that the Scottsboro fight is his fight, and that no sacrifice is too great to make in saving the lives of these defendants.” After Patterson’s second conviction, a Communist Party member stated: “I have never seen such anger and indignation before or since [. . .] Everywhere you went, you saw anger on people’s faces [. . .] If there were ever a revolutionary situation, I imagine that’s what it would look like” (Naison, p. 82).
Some protests in Harlem proceeded downtown. They brought many organizations together, including Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association and churches, the ACLU, and even the NAACP. A march on Washington of 3000 demanded to see President Roosevelt. The defense campaign would spread to cities across the country and around the world.
The ILD was also engaged in the case of Angelo Herndon, a Black Communist Party member. He was arrested and charged with insurrection, a remnant of the old Georgia slave codes. Herndon toured the country speaking about his case. He was convicted, but his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the insurrection statute was unconstitutional.
It must be noted that the Scottsboro campaign was carried out in a manner contrary to the practices of the Communist International at the time. The International, dominated by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, was sectarian and adverse to working with liberal organizations—often to the detriment of the tasks at hand. The ILD in this case managed to work with some independence, which mattered greatly. In 1935, the ILD, the NAACP, and other organizations joined together in a united Scottsboro Defense Committee.
Legal assistance was extremely important, but it was the Harlem organizing and extending the campaign nationally and internationally that made the difference. The nine young men spent years in prison but for only a fraction of the 75 or 99-year sentences frequently handed down by Alabama courts. Importantly, none were executed. All were eventually pardoned in 2013.
This case illustrates that effective defense campaigns can often succeed against overwhelming odds. Working on multiple fronts, the International Labor Defense managed to prevent the executions by mobilizing a movement to bolster its legal efforts. In this moment, we can utilize this strategy to defend our movements. We must build forces capable of putting this into practice, now and in the future.
Photo: Bettman Archive / Getty Images
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Workers’ Voice Newspaper: July-August Edition
New name, same great paper! The crisis of the deepening authoritarianism of the Trump administration is focusing their attack on immigrants, Muslims, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Millions of working people and students are mobilizing in the streets to oppose raids, deportations, curtailing due process, and destroying our civil liberties. Read the socialist viewpoint in the current edition of Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.
The July-August 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.
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IWL: Down with U.S. and Zionist military aggression!
A call to the streets in defense of Iran and Palestine!
By INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT of the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS LEAGUE
The United States has directly attacked Iran, thus joining the Israeli offensive against that country. They used the most advanced aircraft in the world and the largest non-nuclear bombs known to attack a semi-colonial country. The argument used—“Iran cannot have nuclear weapons”—is the most cynical expression of imperialist arrogance. This is said by the imperialist country that possesses the most nuclear weapons, allied with another nuclear power, Israel: they demand exclusivity in their power of destruction.
This is a brutal imperialist military offensive that deserves denunciation from activists around the world. This is not just another war. It is the continuation and expansion of the Zionist genocide in Gaza. It is an attempt to impose military terror on the peoples of the world. Revolutionary socialists around the world have a duty to take the side of Iran in this war, because it is an attack by the most powerful imperialist country in the world against a semi-colonial country. The outcome of this war will influence the processes of class struggle around the world. If imperialism wins, it will legitimize its military intervention on a global scale. If it loses, the popular struggles against exploitation will be strengthened internationally.
The outcome continues to hang in the balance. It will not depend solely on imperialist military superiority. A new wave of mobilizations is beginning around the world that could be much greater than those that have existed until now, reflecting the enormous social and political polarization that this U.S. military intervention will generate.
This does not mean, on our part, any political support for the regime of the Iranian ayatollahs, a dictatorship at the service of the bourgeoisie, built around the state that emerged from the Iranian revolution of 1979 and which crushed that revolution. We maintain the most complete political independence from the Iranian regime. The United States and Israel have two clear military and political objectives: to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity and to overthrow the regime of the ayatollahs in order to impose a new government linked to the family of the former Shah Reza Pahlevi, who was deposed by the 1979 revolution.
Will they succeed in imposing these objectives? At this point, no one can predict the outcome of this conflict. So far, even with all its military superiority and the massacre of 60,000 Palestinians, Israel has not achieved its stated objectives in Gaza: the destruction of Hamas and the rescue of the hostages. The outcome of this conflict is not predetermined. Imperialism has already been defeated in the past in Vietnam, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it can be defeated again. Victory will depend on the continuity of the Palestinian and Iranian resistance and the magnitude of the mobilizations against imperialism throughout the world.
Chinese and Russian imperialism are limiting themselves to diplomatic statements against U.S. military intervention. Despite their alliances with the Iranian regime, they are not prepared to confront U.S. imperialism militarily. Putin cynically trades Iran for Ukraine, prioritizing his agreement with Trump on Ukraine over his alliance with Iran. The European imperialist governments came out in defense of the U.S. attack or limited themselves to defending a diplomatic solution. There is no such thing as “progressive” imperialism. We join the calls already echoing around the world for mobilizations in the coming days against the counterrevolutionary alliance of the U.S. with Israel against Iran.
We will see the response of the world’s masses to this brutal aggression. It is possible to defeat imperialism if mobilizations like those against the Vietnam War shake the U.S. It would require mass mobilizations to advance in the European imperialist countries, combined with direct actions and strikes wherever possible. It is essential to revive the Arab Spring to overthrow the Arab governments and regimes allied with the U.S. and Israel, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Only then can the enormous political support of the Arab masses for the Palestinian cause be transformed into effective military support for the struggle in Gaza. A new intifada must shake the Palestinian territories to join the struggle in Gaza.
For the defeat of U.S. and Israeli imperialism! For the victory of Iran and Palestine! Boycott and break all economic and political ties with Israel! No political confidence in the regime of the ayatollahs! For the destruction of the State of Israel! Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
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Los Angeles report: Community self-defense against ICE raids
By NATALIA T. and MAR RENO
LOS ANGELES—The Trump administration, beginning in January 2025, has marked a clear escalation in the repression of working-class people in the U.S. The abduction of political activists Mahmoud Khalil, Jeanette Vizguerra, and others, and the collaboration of multiple federal agencies to conduct ICE raids across the country in a brazen manner has sparked mass protests.
In an attempt to make good on his promise to surpass Obama as “Deporter in Chief,” Trump has ordered 3000 deportations per day, and taken the kid gloves off all federal agencies to get the job done. He chose Los Angeles as the first would-be victim of the monster. What Trump didn’t understand is that our city defends its own.
The military takeover of LA
On Friday, June 6, a sharp increase in ICE raids began in the LA metropolitan area, from areas as far north as Glendale to as far south as Paramount and Inglewood. By five days into the raids, 330 people had reportedly been arrested by ICE, and a similar number had been detained for protesting by the LAPD, the National Guard, Homeland Security, and even the FBI. From the get-go, thousands of people were in the streets to protest, mostly adults under 40 and high school age youth.
On the first night of an 8 p.m. curfew imposed by Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, 225 were arrested and charged with failing to disperse. On the second night of the 8 p.m. curfew, officers didn’t wait for the sun to set and began “kettling” protesters (entrapping them in an enclosure of police lines) and making arrests at 7:30.
Alongside an estimated 5 million people across the country, nearly 200,000 took to the streets for the “No Kings” day rally, where later in the afternoon police broke up a march of 2000 people in downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) by firing teargas and rubber bullets, charging civilians with horses, swinging batons, and leaving many with gruesome injuries (lost fingers, broken limbs, etc). Press and media workers haven’t been spared from the brutality, shown by a notorious incident where an Australian journalist, clearly marked and completely to the side of the protest, was shot in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet while broadcasting live.
Since then, community members and organized patrols have documented ICE wildly breaking into homes or cars to make arrests, storming into public markets and neighborhood festivals to grab individuals at random, and even engaging in several instances of hit-and-run traffic incidents. Geographically, nowhere is considered safe from the terror. ICE has targeted student graduations, factories, carwashes, churches, hospitals, Home Depot parking lots, and court hearings. Every act of terror has been facilitated by the full cooperation of the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs, illegal under the laws of a so-called “sanctuary city.”
The catastrophe comes at a time when the city is still in recovery from some of the most destructive wildfires in state history, which occurred in January 2025. Even though the Latino community, who make up more than 50% of the local population, uplifted the city and its residents by participating in mutual aid, cleanup, and reconstruction, this same community now finds itself under an even more brutal lockdown than in the COVID-19 pandemic. Neighborhoods that were once thriving with food, music, and community are ghost towns as people are afraid to leave their homes to work or get food. Several videos have gone viral of children taking on the jobs of their parents, who are in fear of being detained.
Unlike the ICE operations leading up to this period, which tended to target individuals in their homes, these raids are distinct in several ways. First, they are numerically greater, with dozens happening throughout the county every day. There are more agencies involved—not just the usual Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the FBI—but they are now being assisted by the Los Angeles Police Department, sheriffs, the California National Guard, and U.S. Marines. These agencies are intended to be visually present throughout LA communities and have targeted public spaces in largely Latino neighborhoods. At any hour of the day, platoons of a dozen or more police vehicles can be seen zooming down the road, sirens blaring, while helicopters fly nonstop.
LA working class defends itself
The military incursion has not been met with passivity. From the first day of the raids, Los Angeles has been in a state of rapid organization and community self-defense, in which mutual aid and solidarity are the norm. Signal threads, Instagram, and Twitch channels, and a number of other informal networks, are sources of information, coordination, and mutual aid for the tens of thousands of people ready to protest.
The downtown Federal Building, and all of the surrounding area, have been a primary location of protest. It serves as a processing center and a temporary holding area for people taken by ICE. The conditions of this facility are nothing short of heinous; people of all ages, from children to the elderly, are held in a basement parking lot, cuffed and chained, with no access to food, water, or attorneys. Reports state that police even brazenly gassed public elected officials with irritants as they tried to enter the premises. Families wait all day in a desperate attempt to see their loved ones. “He was only given a 20-second phone call. That’s how I know he was here,” said one woman whom we spoke with at a protest.
The character of the protests has been massive, sustained, and spread throughout the city, with a mixture of being spontaneous and organized. On graduation day, in response to ICE agents posting up outside of many LAUSD schools, high schoolers walked out of class by the hundreds and took to the streets to protest—in spite of the police blocking roads and stationing themselves in train station near downtown. On the other hand, organizations and coalitions, such as the broad-based 70-member Community Self Defense Coalition, are training volunteers to monitor and track ICE activity. When a raid is witnessed by the community, it’s called in to a hotline, and as soon as possible, volunteers are deployed to the area to document the action, inform victims of their rights (often by simply yelling through a megaphone), and through mass participation expel ICE from the community.
It’s difficult to estimate how many people have been in the streets at any given moment. The response to the ICE raids has been dispersed, with some demonstrations bringing out thousands and some a few hundred. The dispersed nature of the protests is likely due in part to LA’s vastness geographically (hampered further by the shutdown of Metro stations near downtown and police blockades of the DTLA neighborhoods), but it’s also a result of the intentional mobilization of community forces to places where ICE raids are happening in order to prevent them from arresting and disappearing people.
For example, on June 7, the working-class suburb of Paramount faced a major ICE raid at a meat-packing plant. Thousands of locals and extended community members turned out to the general area to protest, which resulted in the ICE forces eventually having to leave the area, while more than two dozen workers holed up in the break room were able to get into their cars and leave safely. In Compton, South Central, Pico Rivera, and the Northeast, similar defensive protests have unfolded. In the relatively-affluent and conservative suburbs of Pasadena and Glendale, cacerolazos (protests by banging pots) are held outside the hotels where federal agents sleep.
Republicans and Dems vs. the working class
What’s happening in the city is not just the Trump administration attempting to make good on its campaign promise of mass deportations; neither is it an attempt to push the limits of Trump’s own power against the “democratic” institutions of the state (the courts, public offices, etc). Mainstream media portrays a feud between the Democrats and Republicans over democracy, states rights, and more, but in practice, both parties work hand in glove together to exploit the working class and enforce the capitalist wage system. Weeks before the raids unfolded, California Governor Gavin Newsom championed a Supreme Court ruling that criminalizes houselessness, a tremendous social issue in a state with the third highest cost of living index in the country. In LA County, 75,000 people sleep on the streets every night.
LA’s Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, while rhetorically blaming the Trump administration for the chaos of the raids, publicly called on the community to come together to clean up the streets, essentially feeding the false narrative that largely peaceful protesters have caused destruction in DTLA. When asked why LAPD and LAC Sheriffs have broken local sanctuary policy by facilitating the ICE raids, Bass openly lied and claimed that the police were only involved in city business, such as managing traffic in affected areas. Seeking to crush the movement, after four days of protests, the mayor issued a curfew for downtown LA, and on the first night, 225 people were arrested before sundown. On subsequent nights, dozens were arrested before the curfew even went into effect.
Bass’s priority has never been to stop the attacks on the immigrant community or protect human dignity, let alone the economy and basic functioning of the city. In a time when many public officials have been publicly roughed up and arrested for questioning the thugs of ICE, Mayor Bass is well aware of the heinous acts happening on the streets she plays at shepherding.
Organize the working class!
Repression of the uprising in the streets has long been in effect, and with each passing day the movement transforms and renews itself. At the same time, the government is gathering information on individuals and groups through its mass surveillance apparatus. Republicans have sent letters of inquiry to several movement organizations that accuse them of paying protesters, a ludicrous accusation meant to remind us of the McCarthyite and civil rights era, when the state wantonly jailed and murdered movement leaders.
In order to fight back and defend our class, we have to out-organize the capitalist state and its repressive forces. The brutality of the police is meant to deter working-class people from participating; it’s meant to keep us home and afraid. The rich history of struggle against dictatorships in Chile and Brazil, and the Black liberation and Chicano struggles in the U.S., show us that organizations with experienced members have an important protective role to play in planning and leading mobilizations, providing aid of all kinds to those in the streets, and in the strategic direction of the movement.
Now is the time for revolutionaries, labor unions, and community organizations to come together in united-front coalitions with true democratic functioning. Our revolutionary organizations must also cultivate class consciousness through our own education, and sustain the morale of the movement through collective care and politicized social events. These important qualitative features are also needed to prevent infiltration, disruption, and destruction—such as the war waged on the Black Panther Party and other groups through the FBI’s COINTELPRO program in the 1960s and ’70s.
Through continuous organizing to broaden the movement, the development of political leadership in our organizations, collective care, and staying in the streets, Los Angeles will show working people what resistance to authoritarianism looks like.
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Chinese students have become a bargaining chip in U.S. & China trade war
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By LENA WANG
On May 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department would “work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or studying in critical fields.” This threat follows the Trump administration’s thwarted attempt to terminate several thousand international students’ statuses in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a measure taken with the aim of clamping down on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Rubio’s declaration reveals a blatant intention to continue conditioning the immigration status of U.S. international students based on their political views and nationalities. In particular, it marks a continuation of the U.S.’s recent hostility toward Chinese nationals in academia and its centuries of discrimination against Chinese immigrants.
In fact, the Chinese diaspora was the first to be targeted by federal restrictions on immigration to the U.S. through the Page Act of 1875. This was followed by the more comprehensive Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbade most Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. until its repeal with the 1943 Magnuson Act, which passed largely because China had become a U.S. ally during WWII. Amidst Cold War tensions in the 1950s, The U.S. once again limited Chinese and Asian immigration through the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which assigned quotas for most immigrants based on their national origin, while race-based quotas were allotted for Asians.
Today, as tensions rise between the U.S. and the PRC, the U.S. government is again targeting Chinese immigrants with racist, xenophobic measures. The 300,000 Chinese international students in the U.S., an essential sector of American higher education, have been a key area of contention for the U.S.-China rivalry since Trump’s first term.
In November 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice rolled out the China Initiative, a program that claimed to investigate and prosecute researchers at U.S. universities suspected of intellectual property theft on behalf of the CCP. According to the MIT Technology Review in 2021, the China Initiative failed on its own terms, with thousands of investigations leading to only 148 charges, less than a third of which led to a conviction. By launching unfounded accusations of espionage at academics purely based on their ethnicity, the China Initiative destroyed the lives and careers of many Chinese academics—causing over a hundred researchers to lose their jobs, and driving at least one scientist to suicide.
As of June 11, Trump has reneged on the threat against Chinese international students’ enrollment, announcing that they would be allowed to continue their studies if China would supply magnets and rare earth minerals to U.S. companies in return. Of course, this does not mean Chinese international students are safe; rather, they have become a major bargaining chip in the U.S.-China trade war. While inter-imperialist tensions escalate, the rights of Chinese students hang in the balance.
As the U.S. government launches a full assault on immigrant rights, it is imperative that we organize affected members of the Chinese diaspora while building a broad, diverse coalition in defense of all immigrants and foreign-born residents—connecting the struggles of the Chinese, Latino, and Palestinian communities and beyond. A successful counter to the escalating attacks on immigrants’ rights will require building solidarity across the working class, in our unions and neighborhoods, to fight xenophobic illusions, and to demand protections for Chinese internationals and all non-citizens.
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Trump and ICE wage terror on immigrants
By N. IRAZÚ
The immigrant movement is now at the center of struggle within the United States. It is the spearhead of Donald Trump’s racist and anti-worker policies. In his position as president—and toying with the idea of staying that way indefinitely—he decided to use the immigrant population of Los Angeles as a laboratory for his mass deportation campaign. FBI and ICE agents swept up thousands of immigrants from their workplaces, stores, churches, and schools.
Protesters in Los Angeles did not remain silent. They confronted ICE and its Gestapo tactics in the streets. The Trump administration, in mid-June, then used this resistance as a pretext to put Los Angeles under de facto military occupation, mobilizing the California National Guard and deploying the Marines against the people of LA.
The cruelty of the immigration raids in Los Angeles and elsewhere sparked huge protests throughout the country, and were a major theme of the massive No Kings marches on June 14. The response of the masses to this campaign of terror cannot be minimized; nor can the fact that it is a campaign of terror be denied.
The immigrant struggle in this country is nothing new; the weight of the immigrant proletariat in the class struggle in the U.S. has always been felt. It is a proletariat kept under a regime of exception, living between deportation and legality, super-exploited by the owners of industry and commerce in this country.
The Chicago martyrs, immigrants whose blood gave rise to May Day, staged the Haymarket Revolt, which occurred on May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square, Chicago. The Great Immigrant Strike of 2006, under the Republican administration of George W. Bush, where millions of immigrant workers and their allies refused to accept anti-immigrant measures, demonstrated the power of this section of the working class in our own time. They brought here the traditions of struggle from their native lands, reinforcing the living history of the American workers’ struggle.
While Trump seeks to subdue and terrorize the immigrant proletariat across the country—and at the same time that thousands of people are rising up in repudiation of this offensive—the Democratic Party offers nothing but nice words and legal maneuvers in the face of an openly illegal siege by the National Guard and Marines. To let oneself be carried away by the siren song of the Democrats would be to sign the death warrant of the struggle against this government; it would be to give up the only possibility of liberation—to stay in the streets.
We have to organize ourselves independently of the parties of the rich. Organizing our neighborhoods, our universities, and our workplaces will be crucial to building a collective response, defending ourselves, and resistance. No other force will stop this offensive.
The struggle has already established links with the trade unions, partly in response to repression by the government itself, which continues to lash out at the organized proletariat. Union leaders such as David Huerta of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) have been arrested. Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a member of SMART (International Association of Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers), was deported to a concentration camp for immigrants in El Salvador. Student-workers such as Mahmoud Khalil (Columbia University) and Rümeysa Öztürk (Tufts Univerisity), affiliated with the UAW (United Auto Workers), have been persecuted for their public support for the cause of Palestinian freedom, a people subjected to occupation and genocide by Israel, with the backing of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.
We must call on the unions to denounce these attacks and to stand up in unceasing struggle against the government’s terror campaign. Activists should help raise awareness among the unions’ rank-and-file membership about the need for solidarity in this struggle and about the power that workers have. As the attacks we are experiencing continue to increase, only the working class can respond to them decisively.
We have to raise the need for working-class action (picket lines, strikes, slowdowns, etc.)`to counter these policies, as well as organizing workers’ self-defense to protect the whole of our class, both citizen and immigrant. That’s because, as we well know in the workers’ movement, “A blow against one is a blow against all.”
Concretely, we need to build a united front of struggle, organizing the broadest sections of the population who are outraged with this government, uniting trade unions, organizations fighting for the most diverse causes, and independent activists in a great movement capable of defeating this government that threatens the civil liberties of the entire working class.
Freedom of movement is a basic human right. Immigration restrictions do not help workers and they do not keep us safe. They make workers’ lives more precarious and devalue human life on a fundamental level, making it harder to speak out and organize against injustice on the job and more generally. Rather than ceding ground to the far right as they make immigrants their scapegoat for capitalism’s problems, we need to stand our ground and fight for papers for all.
Even so, the only way to ensure that the attacks on immigrants and all working people come to an end is for the working class as a whole to take political command, creating a truly democratic and internationalist workers’ state that seeks to dismantle the brutal capitalist system and all its barbarities. This will require a socialist revolution.
Stop the deportations! ICE out of our communities! Let’s stay in the streets! Papers for everyone! The struggle of immigrants is the struggle of the working class!
Photo: Los Angeles Times
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An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
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By CHRISTINE MARIE
On No Kings Day, more than five million people took to the streets to reject the drive toward authoritarianism and its figurehead, Donald Trump. The June 14 actions came on the heels of similarly powerful displays in April and May.
Yet, despite these growing mobilizations, our plate is still overflowing with unresolved defense cases in which Palestinian and other international students, as well as immigrant workers and their labor organizers, remain imprisoned or in waiting for trials with onerous sentences. Trans youth and disabled people still wake daily to fears of loss of medical support and, of necessity, take up a thousand individual struggles to protect their rights in schools, health care, sports, and housing. Professors, teachers, and health and social service workers must be poised each day to protect students, patients, and the underserved from being swept up by ICE or deprived of services.
Recently, the far-right head of the U.S. Senate Committee on Crime and Terrorism, Josh Hawley, began a dramatic and public McCarthyite investigation into political organizations and immigrant services providers in Los Angeles, accusing them of “funding violence.” These organizations include Union del Barrio, CHIRLA, and the Party of Liberation and Socialism. Federal hearings by his committee could lead to serious charges that could be used to threaten all protest organizers. Similarly, the maintenance of felony charges against California SEIU President David Huerta was meant to put fear in the hearts of union leaders who want to defend their members.
We must be attentive to this list of victims of political persecution and understand that winning each individual case is a key component of a successful national resistance strategy. If these cases are subordinated to any of the many other political and economic fights we are undertaking, it will be at the peril of the working-class movement.
Utilizing our most powerful tools to decisively win these touchstone cases is a critical task and one that should be embraced by every organizing pole—especially by the unions. In Connecticut, labor activists recently demonstrated just how possible it is to advance this perspective inside key unions. On June 8, the CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee (https://www.ctcivillibertiesdefense.org) held a demonstration endorsed by the Connecticut Education Association, the Hartford and New Haven Federations of Teachers, the CT Congress of Community Colleges SEIU 1973, several AAUP chapters, Unite-Here Local 217, GEU UA Local 6950, Unidad Latina en Accíon, Hartford Deportation Defense, and other working-class organizations. Each of these endorsing organizations embraced a list of demands that included “Free Mahmoud Khalil, Drop All Charges against Rumeysa Ozturk, Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia and all CECOT Prisoners, Stop Deportations, Stop Attacks on Queer & Trans People,” along with slogans advocating protecting and funding our schools, universities, health care and social services.
The endorsements were built on debate inside these unions, including one at the state convention of the CEA that affirmed union solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil. Speakers from the CEA and other education unions on the platform on June 8 made it clear that they believed that the unions must take the lead, not only in the economic battles, but in the defense of our rights to protest and in defense of immigrant and other oppressed community members. This development is in line with the launch of Labor for Democracy, a formation that includes at least 14 national unions aligning themselves with these critical defense cases. The CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee is planning to deepen their defense of these victims with a state educational and organizing conference in September. This local experience and model must be enriched by the work of labor militants the country wide. An Injury to One is An Injury to All!
Top photo: No Kings rally in Hartford, Conn., on June 14. (Mark Mirko / Conn. Public) Below: June 9 rally in Los Angeles calling for the release of SEIU leader David Huerta. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)
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Millions protest Trump’s repression in nationwide ‘No Kings’ actions
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
June 14 was a day of contrasts. Under gray skies in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump celebrated his birthday with a sparsely attended military parade. In the meantime, in cities and towns nationwide, millions of people took to the streets around the slogan of “No Kings!” The outpouring of protesters—led by a coalition of democracy activists, labor organizations, and civil rights groups—was of historic proportion. It was a magnificent display of courage, resistance, and determination.
The president, who has only half-jokingly styled himself a “king,” had obviously hoped that he could produce a spectacle that would rival those of other authoritarian and self-aggrandizing “Great Leaders” in history. As it turned out, however, the bleachers along the parade route were largely empty. The president and guests sat stoically behind bulletproof glass and visibly struggled to stay awake as endless columns of tanks and trucks rolled by. The liveliest portion of the $45 million extravaganza was when a couple of robot dogs pranced before the reviewing stand.
Of course, Trump’s paean to the military was closely tied to his declaration of war on immigrants—signaled by the administration’s call-up of National Guard and Marine units against protesters in Los Angeles the week before. And it coincided with Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, which has been aided by the U.S. military. U.S. Navy ships have been rushed to the Persian Gulf while Trump is weighing whether to become more directly involved in the war against Iran. Such a move would threaten to spark a much wider war in the Middle East.
Trump proclaimed that acts of dissent would not be allowed in Washington, D.C., on June 14, and that protests of his military parade would be met by “very heavy force.” He motivated his threats by describing protesters as “people who hate our country.” Similarly, when asked by the press about the protests of immigration raids in Los Angeles, he exclaimed, “These are paid insurrectionists!” But rather than frightening most people, Trump’s attempts at intimidation seemed to have persuaded many more to join the protests.
“President Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday,” the No Kings protest movement stated on its website. “But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else. No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance.”
People responded to the call to action; they came into the streets like never before. Colorful signs and chants soundly rejected Trump’s increasingly authoritarian policies. The protesters singled out the brutal deportation raids against immigrants, raising demands such as “National Guard out of L.A.!” Other demands addressed impending cuts to Medicaid and other social programs, attacks on DEI and trans people, gutting of measures against climate change and for environmental protection, and much more.
Anu Joshi, national campaign director for immigration at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the leading organizers of the rallies, said that people appeared shaken by the “cruelty” they have witnessed from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. “We’re just seeing the incredible abuse of power that this administration is exercising, and people just can’t sit on the sidelines anymore,” she told the press. “I think when you see children being zip tied by agents wearing face masks and ripped away from their parents because they are going to their court date, people are moved by that and they don’t want to live in a country where that is the law of the land.”
The largest protest mobilization in history?
Major sponsors of the national mobilization—including Indivisible, ACLU, 50501, Move On!, etc.—agreed that over 5 million people participated in No Kings events in at least 2100 towns and cities around the country. It was possibly the largest nationwide single-day political demonstration in U.S. history, even exceeding the over 4 million who demonstrated nationwide in the Women’s March that took place soon after Trump first came to power in 2017.
The numbers of demonstrators in single locations were also extraordinary. The largest action was in Boston, where the No Kings event coincided with the previously planned annual LGBTQ Pride parade. Indivisible and 50501 partnered with Boston Pride for the People as the chief sponsors of the combined event. About 1 million people reportedly filled Boston Common and lined the streets. Banners read: “Resist with Pride” and “No Kings but Yaaas Queen!”
About 200,000 came out for the No Kings march in Los Angeles—the epicenter of Trump’s anti-immigrant roundups during the last couple of weeks. The crowd included a great many people of Mexican or Central American heritage. As they marched, they passed National Guard troops or Marines who were stationed outside government buildings. Unfortunately, toward the end of the event, police with horses and armored cars attacked a number of protesters. They used rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and tear gas against the marchers—injuring several people.
In a statement to FOX News, Hunter Dunn, national spokesperson for 50501, said: “Today, over 200,000 people gathered peacefully in downtown Los Angeles to protest the egregious overreach of this administration. While the official No Kings event concluded earlier in the day, many remained in the streets to continue their nonviolent dissent. The escalation came from law enforcement, not protesters—who responded with tear gas and violent crowd suppression. One organizer was shot directly with a rubber bullet, while passing out supplies. We unequivocally condemn this unnecessary and aggressive use of force, and we stand with every person who chose peace in the face of provocation.”
Philadelphia, which had been denoted as the “flagship city” for No Kings protests, saw 100,000 people march up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway despite a continuous light rain and predictions of a heavier downpour (the police gave a figure of 80,000 marchers). The huge and densely packed crowd shouted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” They seemed younger and more diverse than at many of the earlier anti-Trump marches, with a broader array of issues and demands reflected on their signs. A lively Palestine solidarity contingent also took part in the march with banners and flags.
Many teachers marched in Philadelphia behind a wide American Federation of Teachers banner—just as a large number of teachers did in other cities—and AFT President Randi Weingarten addressed the rally. For the most part, however, the unions failed to organize their members to participate in the action as organized contingents. Likewise, nationally, the labor movement—which is key to organizing a powerful fightback against government cutbacks and repression—has generally been slow in getting involved in protests.
Organizers reported that about 100,000 marched in New York City, braving a steady light rain and rows of intimidating cops in riot gear. Close to 100,000 marched in San Francisco, organizers say 70,000 in Chicago, at least 70,000 in Seattle, and 60,000 in San Diego. Other cities also saw tens of thousands respond to the call for protests on June 14. According to the media, Dallas had a protest of about 11,000 people despite Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for National Guard troops to counter statewide protests.
Unfortunately, Trump’s attempts to create an atmosphere of chaos and fear did stir a handful of far-right people to try to disrupt some protest events with violence. A person drove his SUV into protesters in Riverside, Calif., causing injuries, while a similar incident took place in Virginia; a fatal shooting took place in Utah; and fascist Proud Boys made an appearance at a demonstration in Georgia. In the meantime, some 10,000 people demonstrated in Minnesota, despite Gov. Tim Walz’s request to cancel all protests following the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband by a right-wing vigilante on the morning of June 14.
Where do we go from here?
In all, the No Kings actions, coming just five months into Trump’s administration, were an excellent launching pad for building a sustained movement of resistance. The mobilization on June 14 gained strength not only through the coalition of big organizations that sponsored the major events but also through the heavy footwork by grassroots activists—often members of local chapters of Indivisible, 50501, and other groups. Now, what will it take to move decisively forward?
“No Kings!” was fine as a general defensive slogan to unite people against the rise of authoritarianism. But rather than merely protesting for the restoration of things that the Trump administration has removed or is threatening to abolish, we should go on to demand far-reaching measures that can achieve true economic and social justice for all people. To do this, we must present clear and concrete demands to the government—the entire government, not just Trump and not just the Republicans.
These essential demands, and the strategy and tactics to achieve them, can best be decided and put into action by means of mass democratic assemblies and unified coalitions, centered on expressing the deep needs and concerns of working people and oppressed communities. These coalitions should function with democratically elected leaderships who are representative of and accountable to the participants.
What kinds of demands should be raised? They might address, for example, questions of the federal budget. They could point out that money that is now to be appropriated for the imperialist war machine (at least $895 billion), building a wall on the Mexican border ($50 billion), beefing up the dragnet against immigrants (an estimated $34 billion to $160 billion), direct subsidies for oil drilling (current estimates range from $14 billion to $52 billion a year), and lavish perks for the super-wealthy could be redirected to items that people really need—such as quality affordable housing, free health care for all, and strict protections against environmental pollution.
It is essential that the labor unions get fully involved; in fact, they should take the lead in organizing workers and their allies in a concerted struggle against both the government and the bosses to gain the economic and social benefits that working people need.
In recent months, the AFL-CIO and some unions like the AFT and government workers in the SEIU, AFGE, UFCW, etc. have co-sponsored anti-Trump rallies here and there. There are indications that union participation might now be increasing. According to Carl Rosen, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a new formation called Labor for Democracy helped to bring together 15 national unions and hundreds of locals and regional bodies to back the No Kings Day protests. He said that they recognize that “the labor movement has a special role to play in defending democracy in our country.” (The website https://laborfordemocracy.org/ is due to be launched soon.)
Ultimately, the “heavy hitters” that organize workers in industry, transportation, and the docks need to make their presence felt in the movement. Such workers have unmatched power to fight for change; their tactics extend beyond street demonstrations to actions at the workplace—pickets, slowdowns, strikes, and factory sit-down occupations—that can have a jolting economic impact.
Organized labor’s concerns go beyond the shop floor; they also include the political sphere. If Trump decides to bomb Iran, for instance, the conflagration would affect working people in this country and all over the world. At the very least, oil and gas prices would rise in this country and domestic repression would be heightened, while the lives of U.S. workers in the armed forces would be threatened. How could the antiwar movement respond? Let’s suppose that port workers, warehouse workers, and railroad workers mount an antiwar protest by sitting down on the job so that nothing moves! That would really send an effective “message” to the war makers!
Unfortunately, political strikes and sit-ins are unlikely to take place in the near future. The unions have been hobbled because of their bureaucratized leaderships’ almost universal support of the Democratic Party—while a few have recently strayed to the Republican Party. Unless this collaboration with one of the bosses’ parties is broken, we can foresee that most labor leaders will concentrate their efforts—and the funds derived from the dues of union members—on supporting major-party candidates in the 2026 Congressional elections. Next to those electoral campaigns, the necessary struggles of working people will take second place.
In 2017, we saw in the aftermath of the massive Women’s March, which was led primarily by organizations tied to the Democratic Party, that the movement suddenly collapsed into a campaign to elect politicians to office. That must not happen again.
But supporting Democratic or other big-party politicians presents more dangers than merely being a distraction at election time. Such support also establishes limits on how far a struggle can go with its demands and strategies. The Democratic Party, which like the Republicans mainly depends on capitalist donors for its support, is interested primarily in maintaining the status quo. It is not going to allow trade-union leaders, or protest movement leaders—or anybody else it believes it can successfully co-opt—to fight for and achieve demands that upset the regular workings of U.S capitalism; unless, of course, it is forced to make concessions.
As it is, as long as the Democratic Party establishment feels that it has the unions, the NGOs, and other social organizations in its pocket, the politicians will continue to induce working people to accept crumbs so that they don’t take the whole pie.
Moreover, failing to take up working-class battles in order to better align with Democrats further pushes workers away from union politics and toward the far right. That some union leaders, like Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters, have used that trend as a justification to pivot to supporting Republicans is even more shortsighted given that the government’s policies actively undermine the ability of unions to organize and grow. It’s like filling your gas tank with sugar water because the meter is reading low; the meter may now read full but you’ve ruined the engine. The engine of strong union politics can only be fueled by a committed, unapologetic defense of working people’s needs.
For these reasons alone, a successful working-class movement for radical change must be fully independent of the Democratic Party. Ultimately, the labor movement and its allies need to establish their own party, which can consistently and militantly organize the fight for the needs of working people and the oppressed.
Photo: No Kings marchers fill Market St. in San Francisco on June 14. (Jason Winshell / SF Public Press)
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Hands off Iran!
By CARLOS SAPIR
UPDATE: Soon after Israel began its military attack on Iran in mid-June, it was joined by the U.S., which conducted direct airstrikes against alleged nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran on June 21. An older article follows below. Please look for our commentary on these developments in future articles.
Since June 13, Israel has been carrying out a brazen military offensive, striking both civilian and military targets across Iran. In the face of this aggression by a state with the full military backing of the imperialist U.S., Iran has both the right and obligation to fight back. In doing so, it opens a new front in the war against the Zionist occupation and genocide being carried out against Palestinians.
Thus far, Iran and Israel have traded multiple aerial strikes daily, with Israel flying U.S. F-35s over Iranian airspace as Iran strikes back with barrages of missiles breaking through Israel’s air defenses and inflicting casualties as well. The exact extent of damage in Israel is unclear at the moment, due to the military censorship obstructing reporting and the lack of sustained Iranian aerial presence over Israel that could identify and confirm strikes. Nevertheless, the partial reporting obtained through social media suggests that this is the most damaging bombardment that the Zionist state has ever experienced, an occurrence that many Israelis likely thought was impossible thanks to Israeli propaganda regarding their air-defense systems.
It remains to be seen whether the Israeli military will be able to use this assault to consolidate its position, or whether the pressure of Iranian missile strikes will crack the Israeli population’s willingness to support their government’s endless, futile wars. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that Israel’s brazen actions are carried out with the full complicity of the U.S. government, underscoring the urgent need to break U.S. support for Israel once and for all.
NATO’s nuclear hegemony
In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s first volleys against Iran, Israel’s aggression was met with diplomatic statements from countries such as France that defended Israel’s actions, even committing to dedicating their military to defending Israel’s home front in the case of a wider Iranian counter attack. On June 16, the Group of Seven imperialist nations, meeting in Canada, issued a statement expressing full support for Israel in the conflict while labeling Iran as “the principal” source of instability and terror in the Middle East. This was despite the fact that the same countries had a week earlier been threatening Israel with sanctions for its genocide in Gaza, a crime against humanity that Israel continues to commit unabated. How is this possible?
The international reactions to Israel’s surprise attack and the Iranian response largely follow their positions regarding the protection of NATO states’ nuclear hegemony. Countries favorable to the continued imperialist dominance of NATO states’ nuclear arsenals support Israel, while countries opposed to this hegemony recognize Israel’s aggression as a threat. France itself is a key benefactor of this status quo, controlling the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and thus it supports the Israeli military offensive, as it protects its own imperialist edge. This is a higher priority for the imperialists than the genocide in Gaza.
While French president Macron’s overnight transformation from an Israel critic to a pledged defender of Israeli territory is illustrative of how Israel has counterintuitively used further aggression to win a diplomatic reprieve, it is of course the U.S. that is the imperialist state most directly complicit in these attacks. In addition to the ongoing military and logistical support that the U.S. provides to Israel, without which Israel would not have an operational air force, the U.S. has used its diplomatic clout to maneuver Iran into exposing its military assets as part of supposed nuclear disarmament negotiations.
While hypocritically warning Iran that any attacks on U.S. assets will be met with fierce retaliation, Trump rushed to take credit for Israel’s attack, saying “we knew everything.” After making a quick exit from the G-7 meeting, Trump took an even harder tone, stating that he was no longer “much in the mood to negotiate” with Iran. In posts to social media on June 17, Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran and said that the United States knows where Iran’s supreme leader is but won’t kill him, “at least not for now.”
Iran’s contradictory role
While Israeli aggression has forced Iran to fight back against the forces of imperialism, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a principled ally of political liberation in general, nor even of Palestine in particular. While Iran’s religious leaders have consistently offered rhetorical support for Palestinian liberation, they propped up the Assad regime in Syria—which brutally repressed Palestinians in exile, quietly tolerated Zionist occupation of the Golan, and collaborated with U.S. imperialism in its “War on Terror,” facilitating “extraordinary rendition” (prolonged detention and torture) in its territory. In Iraq, they have directly coordinated and collaborated with the U.S. to bomb the country into submission and reinforce sectarian division. In Ukraine they have abetted Russian imperialism, providing firepower for the Russian arsenal. And domestically they have butchered leftists and fiercely repressed women and ethnic minorities.
Nevertheless, despite all of these historical crimes, it is all of Iran that is under attack by imperialism, and the Islamic Republic is correctly taking up the fight to defend itself and its people. A regime change under the aegis of Israeli bombardment and imperialist pressure can only result in the further subordination of the people of Iran, and must be opposed. The original dream of the 1979 revolution—a socialist, democratic, liberated Iran—can only be brought about by the self-activity of the Iranian masses, not by an imperialist bombing campaign aimed at crippling the country’s military capacity. For Iran and for the region as a whole, it is the defeat and dissolution of the constant military threat that is Israel, and the retreat of imperialism from the region, that will open the road to liberation.
Now more than ever: End U.S. aid to Israel!
Ending U.S. aid to Israel was already a vital demand in the context of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide that it is committing. With Israel now spreading war elsewhere, and leaning even more heavily on U.S. logistical and diplomatic support to do so, this demand has only become more urgent. With the possibility of the U.S. military stepping in directly, it is vital for socialists, antiwar activists, and all other supporters of Palestinian liberation to mobilize demonstrations denouncing the ongoing U.S. support for Israeli war.
Such mobilizations will begin to put pressure on the U.S. government to reconsider its posture, but even more importantly, they will help educate the broader public of working people about the nature of both the Israeli attacks and their backing from U.S. imperialism, and organize the public into a force that can act for itself to stop war production bound for Israel, irrespective of imperialist politicians’ opinions. This is not a struggle limited to the U.S., but rather an international one, with activists everywhere able to build public pressure against Israel’s warmongering, isolating the Israeli apartheid state and building a conscious global movement against it.
Massive mobilizations have already been organized, with over 100,000 people rallying at The Hague in the Netherlands over the weekend. These build on other efforts to draw attention to the crimes Israel is committing in Gaza and the West Bank. In order to free Palestine, the Israeli war machine must be stopped.
Hands off Iran! Hands off Palestine! End U.S. aid to Israel now!
Photo: A firefighter works in a residential building in Tehran destroyed by Israeli bombing on June 13. (Morteza Nikoubazi / NurPhoto / Reuters)
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Global March to Gaza Video Diaries
{:en}PSTU-Brazil member Fabio Bosco is on the ground with the Global March to Gaza, bringing updates and drawing attention to the ongoing genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians.
1. Introduction
2. Activists stopped by Egyptian police at a checkpoint
3. Activists’ passports confiscated
4. Latest updates as Israel attacks Iran
5. Next steps and repression