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Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran is a major escalation in the Middle East that has dangerous implications for working people everywhere. The brutality of the imperialist assault internationally is paired with the attack on civil liberties by the Trump regime inside the U.S. This includes the continued operations of ICE and Border Patrol, the threats to the 2026 mid-term elections, environmental rollbacks that deeply impact the Black community, and unchecked police brutality.
Our editorial in this issue warns us: “There is a great danger of underestimating the determination of the U.S. corporate elite to drive through this effort. We cannot rely on court rulings or upcoming elections to save us. We must organize now, not only for mass demonstrations and community networks against ICE violence, but to find our way to building a new working-class party through which we can organize our political defense on every plane and on every day.”
In this issue we also have articles on the Epstein files and the ruling class, the San Francisco teachers’ strike, and a review of the new album by U2.
The March–April 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:
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Anti-Trump protesters pour into the streets on April 5
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
A massive outpouring into the streets of U.S. towns and cities on April 5 pointed the way toward building a vigorous mass-action resistance to the Trump administration’s reactionary policies. Estimates indicate that over three million people took part in the over 1600 protests throughout all 50 states—far surpassing the expectations of the organizers. Huge crowds of people joined the protests even in majority Republican-voting states and despite chilly weather and heavy rains in many parts of the South and the Northeast.
The number of participants nationally approached that of the giant Women’s March mobilization following Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017 and the George Floyd marches in 2020.*
The general slogan of “Hands Off!” reflected the growing resentment in this country over Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts to federal agencies and to health and social services. It also echoed the rage that many people feel over the Trump administration’s slashing of democratic rights and its apparent slide into outright authoritarianism. People held colorful hand-crafted signs demanding that the administration keep its “hands off” our democracy, schools, free speech, immigrants, scientific research, Social Security, libraries, veterans’ benefits, national Constitution, Black history, civil rights, trans kids, etc.
Many protesters were angry over the excessive tariffs that Trump had announced three days before the demonstrations—sparking the conditions for a worldwide trade war, a hefty spike in prices, and a major recession. Working people, many of whom are living paycheck to paycheck, see their future as a “perfect storm,” in which necessities become more unaffordable, their jobs become more precarious, their retirement savings are gutted, and the social safety net is eviscerated.
Some April 5 events stressed additional demands. For example, people at the rally in Denver outlined five main demands to a reporter from Colorado Public Radio: End the “illegal power grab by Trump, Musk and Congressional Republicans,” end the cuts in federal funding for programs like Medicaid and Social Security, protect public lands, and end the “attacks” against immigrants and people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Some protesters held effigies of Trump and Musk, with slogans such as “Stop the illegal billionaire power grab.” The Los Angeles march featured a giant Humpty Dumpty balloon with an orange Trump-style hairdo. And marchers at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which has been hardest hit by the DOGE-induced layoffs of some 40,000 federal workers, chanted, “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Musk and Trump have got to go!”
Unfortunately, the national Hands Off! call included the demand for “hands off NATO.” This was an attempt to keep the protests in accord with the interests of U.S. imperialism—a major flaw that poses the question of leadership in the movement quite sharply. As it turned out, a great many demonstrators brought signs into the streets with pro-Palestinian and anti-imperialist statements. Similarly, a large number of Palestinian flags, as well as Ukrainian ones, were displayed on April 5.
The larger cities saw tremendous crowds of protesters. Initial estimates indicated that as many as 100,000 marched in New York City and Washington, 30,000 in Chicago, over 25,000 in Philadelphia, and 20,000 in Boston and Atlanta. But hundreds of much smaller communities also had large turnouts, including Prescott, Ariz. (close to 2000 protesters), Anchorage, Alaska (1500), Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (1000), and Geneva, Ill., where several thousand people lined the streets. Solidarity marches also took place in London, Paris, and Berlin.
Washington, D.C., saw two big protests on April 5. In addition to the Hands Off! march, the Let Gaza Live! march called for solidarity with the Palestinian people and an embargo on U.S. arms to Israel. The latter gathering was organized by several Palestinian, Arab-American, and Muslim groups along with ANSWER and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The event also focused on the actions of the Trump administration in revoking some 1000 student visas (according to recent reports) and deporting non-citizens—such as Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Badar Khan Suri—whom the government labels as a “threat“ to U.S. foreign policy.
Reportedly, some major organizers of the Hands Off! event in Washington were reluctant to include in their march any call to halt U.S. support to Israeli genocide. Nevertheless, a number of protesters called attention to the issue with their signs and chants. Recent Gallup polls show that support for Israel has reached an all-time low in the U.S.
Moreover, it is clear to many that the current U.S. administration is even more favorable to the Zionist expansionist project than the Biden administration had been, and even more reluctant to call attention to Israeli war crimes. Trump praised Netanyahu during his White House visit as “a great leader,” and reiterated his proposal for the U.S. to “own” Gaza in order to redevelop the enclave into a posh Riviera-like resort once the Palestinians who live there are removed. However, he declined to lower the tariffs recently levied against Israel, saying, “We give Israel $4 billion a year. That’s a lot.”
Democratic Party-oriented organizations and coalitions—such as Indivisible, MoveOn, and 50501—generally took the lead in sponsoring the Hands Off! events, but close to 200 other organizations served as national “partners” and helped to build the protests in many areas.
April 5 provided signs that the labor unions—which until then, with few exceptions, had sat on their hands—might be beginning to get more active in organizing opposition to Trump’s anti-worker policies. One of the unions who endorsed the April 5 actions, the Communication Workers of America, wrote, “Our jobs and our freedom to bargain contracts are under attack. Billionaires are calling the shots in Washington, leading to mass layoffs, cuts to funding for cancer research, new hurdles for Social Security recipients, and the dismantling of the independent agencies that hold employers accountable when they violate our rights. … When our employers violate our collective bargaining agreements, when they refuse to bargain fair contracts, when they stand in the way of workers’ organizing to join our union, we use every tool we have to protect our rights.”
Democratic Party politicians spoke at many rallies—in some cities almost dominating the stage. But many demonstrators were frustrated with the Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to effectively counter the measures that Trump and his allies have put forward. One protester, a musician named Reece, told The Los Angeles Times (April 6), “I think we’ve looked to the Democrats, and we really can’t look to them to get anything done in regards to resistance, because in my view, they’re complicit with some of the things that are driving this present administration.”
The outpouring of protesters on April 5 was largely spontaneous and unorganized. Nevertheless, grassroots planning meetings and coalitions have formed in numerous cities and towns, providing the potential building blocks of a broad, diverse, and democratic protest movement nationwide. Ultimately, these coalitions must establish allies among the most oppressed communities as well as the labor movement while solidifying their demands to counter the Trump and MAGA agenda.
Following the tremendous success of the April 5 events, we should look forward to the rallies planned for April 19 around the country; 50501 states that they hope to engage some 11 million people in the events. In addition, a march oriented toward protecting the climate and defending immigrants will take place on April 19 in New York City. Further anti-Trump rallies are planned for the National Day of Action on May 1; some of the activities have trade-union backing. Workers’ Voice urges all of our readers to get involved in the coalitions that are being formed to organize these protests and to come out into the streets!
* Estimates state that between 3 million and 5 million people took part in the Women’s March of January 2017. The largest national political protest in U.S. history was probably the Moratorium Against the War in Vietnam, in October 1969; it was estimated that some 15 million people participated.
Photos: Top— April 5 marchers in Manhattan (Spencer Platt / Getty Images). Below — Washington, D.C. (Jose Luís Magana / AP).
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Türkiye: Ocalan dissolves the PKK
By ALEJANDRO ITURBE
In Türkiye, a great process of struggle against the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (RTE) has just begun [1]. A few weeks earlier, Abdullah Öcalan (“Apo”), founder and leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), announced that his party was definitively abandoning the armed struggle against the Turkish regime and was disbanding in order to join the DEM (People’s Equality and Democracy Party), a legal organization that participates in elections[2]. What is the meaning of Ocalan’s announcement in the Turkish context?
In order to answer this question, we must first address the history of the Kurdish people, to whom we have dedicated numerous articles over the years[3]. In them, we analyzed that it is a nationality of almost 40 million people that has always been prevented from having its own nation-state (Kurdistan). On the contrary, since 1923, the Kurdish people and their historical territory (about 400,000 km2) have been divided into four countries (Türkiye, Iran, Iraq and Syria). In these countries, the Kurds have always been an oppressed minority. Therefore, they have been fighting against this discrimination and for their own unified state for more than a century.
The IWL’s position on the Kurdish people has always been to recognize and defend their right to separate their historical territories from the states into which they have been divided to form their own independent state as the only way to exercise their self-determination and reunification. Therefore, we fully support their struggle in this regard.
The Kurds in Türkiye
It is estimated that there are about 15 million Kurds in the country and they are the overwhelming majority in more than 25% of the Turkish territory, in the southeast of Türkiye (the Kurds call this region Northern Kurdistan).
This significant demographic and territorial weight has meant that since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, all regimes and governments have persecuted and repressed the Kurds and any attempt at independence or even regional autonomy. This was the case with the great revolts of Ararat and Dersim in the 1930s, which were bloodily suppressed by the secular regime of Kemal Atatürk with genocidal methods of ethnic cleansing similar to those used decades earlier by the Turkish Empire against the Armenian people (mass murder of women and children).
In the decades that followed, although there were no new massacres of this kind, the oppression and discrimination against the Kurds continued unabated (for many decades they were even forbidden to speak their language in public). In this context, a group of young Kurds led by Ocalan (b. 1949) founded the PKK in 1978.
The PKK and the armed struggle
The founding program of the PKK called on the Kurdish people to fight for national liberation and independence in all the territories into which it had been divided in order to build a “socialist, united and independent Kurdish state. To achieve this goal, the organization, with Maoist influences, proposed the development of a “protracted people’s war” and began to form its armed wing. The PKK recruited many young Kurds, especially from the poorest sectors.
In 1980, in the context of a political, economic and social crisis of the Kemalist regime, there was a military coup in Türkiye led by General Evren, who installed a repressive dictatorship that particularly targeted Kurdish organizations and leaders. The PKK was the only Kurdish party that was able to remain underground, and it continued to gain influence.
Evren’s dictatorship failed to resolve the crisis or stabilize the country. As it weakened visibly and tried to move forward with rigged and banned elections. In this context, in 1984, the PKK thought that the conditions were right to start the “people’s war” against the regime.
It managed to control some rural areas and set up its own administrations there. However, the harsh response of the Turkish army prevented its expansion and limited the area of confrontation. The conflict continued for several years and there were thousands of victims, especially Kurds.
Ocalan’s first turn
Ocalan was forced to leave Türkiye. He first went to Syria and then to several other countries. In 1999, he was arrested in Kenya by agents of the Turkish secret service and brought to Türkiye, where he was tried. He was initially sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, which he has since served in conditions of harsh isolation and at great risk to his health.
While in prison, although the PKK continued its armed struggle, Öcalan initiated an important political shift in the organization’s program. He abandoned the goal of a “socialist, united and independent Kurdish state,” which implied the separation of Kurdish territories from the countries into which they had been divided.
This proposal was replaced by what Öcalan called “democratic confederalism”. The struggle of the Kurds in each country should now be to achieve autonomous regions without separating from them. In these regions, “grassroots democracies” should be established with a “people’s economy” based on “solidarity” and with ecological care and women’s equality as central issues. These autonomous regions would then form “Coordinations”, hence the general name of this proposal.
The debate on this concept and its utopian character will not be addressed here, as it has already been done in other articles. Especially those that refer to the experience of Rojava (the Kurdish region of Syria)[4]. In a future article we will analyze the current situation of the Kurds in Syria.
What we want to point out in this article is that, in reality, this has already meant a big step backwards in terms of the PKK’s initial objectives and an adaptation to the national and international system of bourgeois states and its current configuration.
A new step backwards
In this context, Ocalan has been thinking for years about the idea that the PKK should finally give up the armed struggle and make an agreement with the Turkish regime in order to legalize itself and join the electoral system in force in Türkiye, as other Kurdish organizations in this country have done. In fact, there have been rumors on several occasions that emissaries of the Erdoğan regime have held secret meetings with him in prison to explore a possible agreement, but no progress has been made.
Now, after Ocalan’s announcement, the agreement is already being finalized and would mean a new and qualitative step backwards in the PKK’s proposals to the Kurdish people. It would be the final abandonment of the path of struggle for their self-determination and their own nation state. It would mean full integration into the Turkish regime to see if they can get “something in return”.
We want to make two points. The first is that we are aware that there are many situations in the course of a struggle that force one to retreat and accept a ceasefire or a truce with unfavorable conditions in order to try to regain strength. But this is not what Ocalan is doing now, because his proposal is, as we said, that the Kurdish people should finally give up the struggle for their historical demands.
The second is that we respect Ocalan for his long decades of struggle that made him the main leader of the Kurdish people in Türkiye and other countries. But if this step is taken, it would be a betrayal of the struggle and the demands of his people. An analogy could be drawn with the figure of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian people: after leading the struggle for decades and becoming its main figurehead, he betrayed it and gave it up in the Oslo Accords of 1993.
Modern Türkiye is a country of just under 800,000 km2 and 85 million inhabitants. Its current territory is what remains of the dismantled Turkish-Ottoman Empire, which was defeated in World War I. The vast majority of its territory is in the region known as Asia Minor, although a small western strip is in Europe. This strip includes part of Istanbul (the former Constantinople), which has historical ties to Europe. Because of its history, Türkiye has always been a kind of nexus between the European continent and the Muslim world.
The current Republic of Türkiye was born in 1923 after a section of the military, led by Kemal Atatürk, overthrew the imperial regime (the Sultanate). This military sector installed a sui generis bourgeois nationalist and Bonapartist regime (Kemalism) of a secular nature, which promoted a certain level of industrial, infrastructural and educational development. For several decades, the CHP (Republican People’s Party) was the central political support of this regime.
From the 1970s, changes in the global economic and political conditions made it increasingly difficult for these bourgeois nationalist experiences to survive, thus initiating a process of severe crises throughout the world, as was the case with Argentine Peronism.
The CHP split and gave rise to other parties that, together with the parties of Islamist character, formed a much more fragmented political system with different electoral and governmental coalitions.
The background was the general decline of the country, whose bourgeoisie was trapped between the aspirations to maintain some autonomy and a role as a regional power and the growing submission to U.S. imperialism and the European Union (which Türkiye has applied to join, without success so far). All these governments have implemented austerity and privatization plans.
This decline in Türkiye has cyclically manifested itself in socio-economic crises and also in a weakening of the national currency (Turkish Lira), which is undergoing a historical process of liquefaction of its value, with some very acute moments[5]. Another expression of this decline is the emigration of millions of Turkish families to Germany.
Erdoğan in power
It is in this context that the figure of Erdoğan begins to emerge and gain prestige, with a discourse that the Turkish crisis is due to the abandonment of the precepts of Islam, since the national constitution is based on secular principles. Therefore, the government had to apply them.
With this discourse and with the support of a radical Islamist party, he won the election for mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Four years later, after a violent public speech, the Constitutional Court dismissed him from office, sentenced him to 10 months in prison and banned him from holding public office. He was released four months later and allowed to run for office.
He began to moderate his discourse and founded his own party: the AKP (Justice and Development Party) with a much more liberal capitalist program. With the AKP, he began to run in national elections and received significant support in terms of votes. Based on these results, he was appointed Prime Minister in 2003 and elected President of the Republic in 2014. His rise to power was supported by the U.S. imperialism.
Erdoğan intensified the politics of privatization and the deals made with them and public spaces. In 2013, he faced a massive mobilization against his plan to destroy Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park to build a shopping mall. Despite harsh repression, the protests lasted a month. However, as we have seen, Erdoğan won the 2014 elections.
A regime change
From this triumph, Erdoğan tried to advance his project of changing the Turkish constitution towards a completely presidential and Bonapartist regime. To this end, he used the failed coup of July 2016, carried out by a small Islamist faction of the army that accused Erdoğan of being a “traitor,” to his advantage.
In response, Erdoğan called on the Turkish people to take to the streets to defend his government. Millions of people answered the call, in some cases confronting the rebellious military.
The coup attempt was ultimately defeated, and Erdoğan emerged greatly strengthened in his project. In 2017, he called for and won a constitutional referendum. In the same year, the parliament approved the reform. This marked a regressive change in the Turkish bourgeois political regime[6]. Erdoğan took advantage of this to advance a repressive policy against opposition politicians, journalism, workers’ and people’s struggles.
A great help for Erdoğan
Erdoğan often “navigated” through “troubled waters”, such as the aforementioned liquefaction of the Turkish lira in 2018. However, through various maneuvers and agreements with smaller parties, he always managed to move forward and remain at the center of Turkish politics. As a result, he was re-elected president in the 2023 elections.
In foreign policy, Erdoğan kept Türkiye in the “Western bloc”, a member of NATO and one of the main allies of U.S. imperialism in the region. At the same time, he combined this policy with “flirting” with Putin and the Iranian regime of the ayatollahs, with whom he met at the Tehran summit in July 2022[7].
In reality, Erdoğan’s main concern in foreign policy has been the issue of the Kurds, especially in Syria (a country bordering Türkiye), since the emergence of the autonomy of Rojava, supported by its own militias. Erdoğan feared that Rojava would be a base of support for the strengthening of the Kurdish struggle in Türkiye, led by the PKK; this concern led him to invade Syria and attack the Kurds there in 2016 and 2019 in order to create a “security cordon” separating Rojava from Turkish Kurdistan and isolating the Kurdish cantons of Syria from each other[8]. Since then, Türkiye has maintained a military presence in Syria, later disguised as the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose main activity before and after the fall of the al-Assad dictatorship was to attack the Kurdish militias.
The flip side of this policy of attacking the Kurds of Rojava is the excellent relations that Erdoğan has with the government of Basur (autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq bordering Türkiye) headed by Massoud Barzani. Barzani is a politician who heads the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party), which represents the Kurdish bourgeoisie in the region and has been in dispute with the PKK over the leadership of the Kurdish people.
In 2003, the KDP joined the coalition of forces led by U.S. imperialism that invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime. In return, the new Iraqi constitution of 2005 granted Basur the status of an “autonomous federal entity” with the right to elect its own government and parliament and to conduct its own foreign relations. In effect, it was almost a Kurdish state within Iraq. Since then, Basur has remained relatively stable politically and economically. It is important to note that this is an oil producing and exporting region. In this sense, it is the main supplier of oil to Türkiye [9]. This is one of the explanations for the excellent relations between the Erdoğan and Barzani governments.
Within Türkiye, Erdoğan has encouraged the Kurdish bourgeoisie to intervene in the electoral processes, which they do through the aforementioned DEM. In this way, the Kurds elect deputies and mayors and as a result, and they have some space to do business and act as an intermediary in the Basur oil trade. For this reason, this Kurdish bourgeoisie has in fact established a non-aggression pact with Erdoğan and has even supported parliamentary government coalitions.
As we have seen at the beginning of this article, Erdoğan is facing a mass rebellion against his government in Istanbul and other cities in the country. It is important for him to keep the “Kurdish front” quiet. In this context, Ocalan’s policy of dissolving the PKK into DEM instead of calling on the Kurds to actively participate in this struggle is a great help for Erdoğan. That is why he is very happy with it[10].
Sources:
[1] https://litci.org/es/turquia-entra-en-una-nueva era/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
[3] See especially https://litci.org/es/sobre-la-lucha-del-pueblo-kurdo/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser and http://litci.org/es/por-que-defendemos-el-derecho-de-los-kurdos-a-tener-su-propio-estado/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
[4] https://litci.org/es/rojava-kurdistan-sirio-un-estado-burgues-atipico-parte-1/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser and https://litci.org/es/rojava-kurdistan-sirio-un-balance-necesario/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
ylink&utm_medium=browser y https://litci.org/es/rojava-kurdistan-sirio-un-balance-necesario/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
[5] https://litci.org/es/turquia-inicio-del-efecto raki/?utm_source=copylink&utm_medium=browser
[6] https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-39616815
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Connecticut Workers’ Voice holds Solution is Socialism conference
By DAVE DANIELS
The room was packed in Hamden, Conn., on April 5 as activists gathered at “The Solution is Socialism 5” conference, hosted by the Connecticut branch of Workers’ Voice. Attendees came from all over the East Coast and as far away as California to hear a wide range of speakers on topics such as the U.S. and world political situation, immigration, gender oppression, the Syrian revolution, climate change, trade-union struggles, and the attack on civil liberties.
A banner behind the main stage that read “Oppose the New McCarthyism,” “Hands Off Immigrant Workers and Students,” and Defend Civil Liberties” set the tone of the conference in light of the increasing attacks on working people from the Trump administration.
The keynote speaker was Blanca Missé, a socialist activist, educator, and trade unionist. She put Trump’s attacks in the context of the deepening crisis of U.S. and world capitalism, the collapse of the U.S. as the world’s strongest imperialist power, and the ascendancy of China as a world power. Blanca described Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, for instance, as part of the struggle with China for world dominance, which raises the specter of all-out war between the two super-powers. She said that the way out of this crisis, ultimately, was to mobilize the power of the masses to overturn the capitalist system.
After Blanca spoke, the conference attendees divided into breakout rooms for more intense discussion. Some heard noted Marxist economist Michael Roberts speaking on an online connection, while others joined groups to discuss how to fight gender oppression and the climate crisis.
Following a lunch break, the conference heard a talk by the esteemed author, activist, and educator August Nimtz, author of “The Ballot or the Streets or Both” and “Lenin’s Electoral Strategy from 1907 to the October Revolution of 1917.” Professor Nimtz spoke on his latest book, “Marx and Engels and their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough.”
The conference then heard from Ramah Kudaimi, who spoke on the importance of the Syrian Revolution, which recently saw the overthrow the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Speaking of her background as a child of the Syrian diaspora, Kudaimi pointed out how important the overthrow of Assad was, and made a strong case against those who claim that Assad was somehow a force against U.S. imperialism.
In the final session, the conference heard from activists on the front lines of the struggle for the rights of immigrant workers and students and against deportations. All morning and afternoon, conference goers visited the book table and bought socialist literature, tee-shirts, and other items.
The conference ended with a call for the attendees to all become involved in, as August Nimtz aptly put it, the “laboratory of the class struggle.”
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What will AI mean for the working class?
By HERMAN MORRIS
Everywhere one looks in America, the message from corporations and even the government is clear. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming to change your life. Look at any screen and you will see how a new magical technology is going to change education, art, medicine, manufacturing, etc. It would be easier to list industries that AI isn’t being touted as a transformational tool. To back up these assertions, tech capital is making massive investments into AI infrastructure and commodities: $500 billion for stargate, a GPU datacenter for training AI models, hundreds of billions of dollars from Nvidia to develop more AI capable hardware, $65 billion for ai investments from meta. The investments into AI are so great that tech companies are investing into nuclear energy generation to meet the power demands of this new technology. Meanwhile, AI startups account for nearly half of all venture capital raised in 2024 according to Pitchbook. All this investment presents the question, what is society getting out of all of this? Is this going to transform the way everyone works? Is it just a bubble that is destined to fail?
What is AI?
It’s important to define what AI even is. While some form of Artificial Intelligence has been in use for decades now in the form of spell checkers, algorithmic content curation, and voice assistants, the current boom is largely around Generative AI models. In simple terms, these are computer programs that are fed large amounts of data (on the scale of the entire contents of hundreds of libraries), where they are instructed to identify and memorize the patterns found in that pool of data. After this “training” on data is completed, the models can then be prompted with queries in the form of photos, videos, or text and use its ability to recognize patterns from the prompts and data it was trained on to “generate” a response that appears wholly unique.
The importance of it being an appearance and not actually a truly original creation is key. While an ai agent can at times provide an uncanny ability to mimic human writing or image creation, it is doing nothing more than that, mimicking and pattern matching. This last detail is an inconvenient truth for the tech companies that are pushing these latest advancements in AI technology. Google has even gone as far as to fire scientists and suppress research at its company that demonstrate the limitations of Generative AI models.
Economic costs of AI development
It is also important to understand the cost of generating and operating these models. Historically, Large Language Models (a popular name for software that provides Generative AI functionality) such as ChatGPT or Gemini have extremely high upfront costs. GPT 4, for instance, costs over $100 million, and Gemini Ultra is estimated to have cost nearly $200 million. While information is hard to come by for operating costs, it’s known that OpenAI spent over 5.4 billion dollars a year and plans to increase its spending despite no path to profitability.
Despite spending the GDP of nation states to release and operate new models that, by these companies’ own admission, are giving diminishing returns, companies insist they are on a path to a higher level of AI technology that they call Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), so long as they keep getting more money. It helps them that AGI is such an ill-defined term, and that there is even disagreement amongst industry leaders on what it would do besides some vague sci-fi-esque intrigue on solving key world issues. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are choosing to instead define AGI as any AI system that can generate more than $100 billion in profit. This is ironically just as fanciful a definition, given that no system generated yet has demonstrated a capacity for returning any profit at all.
On the other hand, there have long been signs that at least replicating the quality that the leading models produce could be accomplished with fewer resources. These fears were confirmed with the release of DeepSeek R1, an AI tool providing similar capabilities to Chatgpt while being trained on a fraction of the cost at $5.6 million. While OpenAI has alleged that the company illegally used OpenAI’s chat bots to train their model (a rich claim given that the best models available on the internet are only possible through rampant IP theft), so far the consensus is that the best models today can in theory and practice be mostly reproduced at a cheaper cost.
This would indicate that tech companies whose valuations have jumped on the promise of big AI features are overvalued by the market, as everything they have put out so far could be replicated by a business with a fraction of their capital. In turn, this points to an economic bubble that when popped will lead to layoffs, loss of savings, and misery for workers who may not even realize they are exposed to the economic failures of this sector of the economy. However, it also indicates that the current offering of AI commodities could be released and iterated on with a smaller budget and integrate with the economy as a real organ of capitalist production, as opposed to pure speculation.
How is Generative AI meant to be used?
So how are corporations trying to integrate AI into the economy today? While specific iterations differ quite a bit, broadly Generative AI technology in the U.S. seems to get applied in three ways—consumer facing technology meant to automate creative work or computer interaction, technology marketed directly to capitalists or the state itself to help surveil and discipline workers and people writ large, and lastly, a convenient smoke screen to allow for greater bureaucratic crackdowns on workers and the larger population.
The first category is what most people are likely familiar with. These are tools such as chat bots, text summarizers/rewriters, and image generators. These AI offerings are mostly offered for free with the option to opt in for premium features at a price. It should be noted that many of these creative tools are being deployed in the workplace in order to either intensify and automate labor to extract more value out of less workers.
As for monitoring software, there are examples from Israel using all the data they collect from Palestinian surveillance and using it to train a ChatGPT like tool to speed up their ability to collect and process monitoring of Palestinians. Additionally, startup companies are now offering surveillance technology to monitor workers in the office and factory line for productivity, automating detection and disciplinary actions for workers who are not efficient enough or not active enough at their job role.
Lastly, there are cases in which AI is being “deployed” by companies or state actors in a way that its stated value is a fiction and its real value is to provide a smoke screen for the most unjustifiable cuts and attacks on people (examples include AI denials of coverage from UnitedHealthcare and Elon’s use of AI to determine whom to layoff from the federal government). Any trivial audit of AI used in this manner would undoubtedly reveal at best a highly unreliable accuracy rate, and more likely, outright fraud to cover up the most unscrupulous attacks on workers.
This last category also captures attempts to replace wide swaths of workers in the federal government with the use of AI to streamline government services and surveillance. The new head of Social Security wants to use AI to detect fraudulent payments, and OpenAI is now offering a version of ChatGPT for the federal government. When these new efforts are paired with the massive cuts to the federal workforce, these expansions of the use of AI present a double threat, where pushing workers out of government jobs and the way of replacing them result in a worse system for managing the duties of the federal workforce. Additionally, these uses of AI will not come close to fulfilling their stated purpose of acting as an ideology-free bureaucrat as they will make it much easier to falsely deny services and to monitor anyone who relies on government services in their day-to-day lives. Instead, these efforts should be seen as part and parcel of the Project 2025 agenda for turning the government into an explicit weapon of reaction against anything they desire. This time, they have the bonus of a new fancy technology that they can hide behind and use to justify their attacks.
While none of these technologies have yet demonstrated a profitable business model, they should be watched closely for how capitalists expect to use these emerging technologies to speed up, automate, and keep closer tabs on productive labor in the coming period, and the DeepSeek revelations indicate that it might be possible for some of these technologies to have a life beyond the immediate tech bubble.
For workers’ control of industry and research
The above details demonstrate the dual threat that emerging technologies of all types present to working people. On the one hand, the ruling class plans to use them to further the rate of exploitation and efficiency of the capitalist system. And while there is always talk about how the workers who get thrown out of their jobs today will end up in new productive jobs tomorrow, the experience of workers whose jobs have been successfully deskilled or automated demonstrate that there is really no guarantee that this will happen. On the other hand, economic bubbles, even ones that form around productive technologies, pose just as much of a threat as misallocating the funding of the economy toward creating a painful correction that also throws workers out of production.
Both these risks point towards the importance of workers’ control of industry and establishing the right for workers to determine how new technologies are deployed in the workplace. Democratic worker-controlled funding for research could ensure that only uses that have been debated and voted on get approved to be researched. This could prevent the mad market scrambles that flood investments into a sector in a highly inefficient manner, chasing the most exciting and flashiest product rather than investing in actually possible uses of the technology.
Additionally, workers could discuss and vote on whether to introduce new technologies like AI into their field of work. And if it is judged to be possible to fully or mostly automate a job using AI, they could even decide on the terms of a just transition. We can look at last year’s strike of SAG-AFTRA and WGA for winning AI use provisions in their contract that allow for writers and actors to fully dictate whether they want to use AI in their work, with no loss of their own intellectual rights in determining how it is used.
While workers everywhere should look at these wins for something to replicate in their own workplace, it is important to go beyond union struggles and for workers to have democratic structures for funding the research and development of these technologies in the first place. Environmental considerations related to heavy power consumption, the extraction of rare earths and minerals, the excessive use of water resources, and increased waste and pollution should definitely be taken into account. At the same time, there are undeniable uses of these new technologies, especially in the medical sector where promising research breakthroughs for cancer detection are occurring. It should be up to workers to determine how social wealth is spent to invest in these new research ventures, and not the increasingly few capitalists who get to decide alone where the funds should go.
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Postal workers take to the streets against privatization
By COCO SMYTH
A postal worker and member of the National Postal Mailhandlers Union comments on protests to keep USPS as a public service.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — On Thursday, March 20, postal workers took to the streets all across the country, heeding a call by the American Postal Workers Union for nationwide action. This call was heard in Columbus, where postal workers met outside the Statehouse, the site of the state government, to protest. Between this location and a second one outside a postal facility, nearly 50 workers and community supporters gathered to express their discontent.
Shouts of “U.S. mail not for sale!” echoed through the streets, punctuating political discussions between attendees. Why did workers brave the cold outside of their work hours to talk and demonstrate for the Postal Service?
This action was a preparatory move against the nefarious plans of the Donald Trump regime and Elon Musk, the self-appointed billionaire tyrant presiding over the despicable and ridiculous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, sigh). In his work destroying the few remnants of government for the people, he made a comment that riled up postal workers everywhere. Musk declared, “I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized. I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example. …. We should privatize everything we possibly can.”
USPS must be public
For postal workers, these are fighting words. The perpetual fear we all have is privatization. Through every crisis and transformation at USPS, postal workers have maintained their opposition to privatization.
For decades politicians, particularly Republicans, have pushed the idea of postal privatization. These politicians have criticized USPS as a monopoly, denounced it as an expensive money sink, and demanded it be more efficient. The central argument these critics make is that a privatized Postal Service would be far superior to the current public one. They hold on to the classic capitalist shibboleth that public institutions are expensive, inefficient, unaccountable, and backward. They believe in the mythology that private companies, since they must adhere to the dictates of the free hand of the market, make the most efficient, profitable, and rational decisions in order to maintain their own existence. Public institutions reverse all these virtues, they insist, since they stand outside the logic of the market.
These politicians purposefully elide the most central distinction between a public and private institution. The former is responsible to the people while the latter is responsible to shareholders. But this gets to the crux of the real motivations of the opponents of USPS. The key proponents of privatization seek to cannibalize USPS for their own benefit.
Though many average people are fooled by the free-market demagoguery of capitalist politicians, the most vociferous advocates of privatization believe they stand to gain personally from a private USPS. They see USPS as a lost money-making opportunity since it isn’t operated with profit as its master. Private competitors of USPS in package delivery such as Amazon, UPS, and FedEd believe they have much to gain by making inroads into the areas USPS currently serves. The broader logistics industry, a large and integral part of U.S. capitalism, also has vested interests in profit-seeking at the expense of USPS.
The rich seek to sacrifice everything at the altar of capital. But their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the vast majority who benefit from USPS as a public service. Since USPS is public, profit-making isn’t its sole priority. It makes unprofitable decisions and takes on expensive responsibilities that would never be accepted by capitalist shareholders. Prices for letter, flat, and package delivery remain well below the market rate established throughout the rest of the logistics system. Since the mail is an essential part of everyday life for every individual in this country, affordability is vital to USPS’s mission. Without the safeguard of accountability to the people, millions would be priced out of the essential services USPS offers.
Postal workers picket in Youngstown, Ohio. (Fox 28 News) Another core aspect of USPS is its servicing of the entire populace. Since mail is so central to the economy and everyday life of the people, it is vital that everyone be able to receive mail. The delivery system of the USPS is the only one that can reach every person, from rural Alaska to urban Atlanta. There is a reason that the private delivery competitors of USPS rely to an extraordinary extent on the postal system—it is in principle unprofitable. Delivery to large swathes of the country is costly—too costly to make it worth it in the private market. Without the assurance of delivery guaranteed by a public institution designed for the whole people, millions may not be able to receive essential deliveries. A price could be put on universal service, but it shouldn’t be! This service is a democratic right that is priceless, and should continue to be.
If anything, the core problems of USPS all arise from the way it is limited as a public institution. It is not directly funded by the federal government and is subjected to market logic despite not operating on that principle. The Postal Master General and the top-level management of USPS act and conceive of themselves as a private corporation. They also preside over the workers with the same logic, subjecting them to ridiculous and usually counter-productive attempts to ensure “productivity.”
We can solve most of the current problems facing USPS, but only if we take the exactly opposite approach to that advocated by the privatizers. The USPS should be made entirely public; it should be directly funded by the government and subjected to greater democratic control by the populace and the workers. And it ought to offer even more essential services, not less!
The sabotage of the Postal Service
The proclamations by Musk are just the latest in the long-running attempts to erode the Postal Service in order to make privatization appear like the only option. There have been many odious attempts to undermine the Postal Service. One of the most inane cases was the “Postal Fairness Act,” which mandated that the USPS pre-fund retirement for its employees 75 years in advance. The federal government required USPS to set aside the money for employees’ retirement a whole lifetime ahead of time! It was not only absurd in concept, but absolutely unique in any institution. Thanks to that mandate, the “debts” of USPS ballooned for years. Thankfully that policy was finally retired in 2022, but it is just one element of the wider assault on USPS.
The Post Master General appointed during Trump’s first presidency, Louis DeJoy, has presided over the degradation of USPS. He announced an “ambitious” 10-year plan that he called “Delivering for America.” This plan was purported to “modernize” the postal system to bring it in line with the norms and forms of organization of the logistics networks of the private sector, implement wider automation, and centralize mail processing and distribution around massive mega-facilities.
Over his reign, DeJoy slowly but surely began to implement this 10-year plan. It has been a disaster. The consolidated facilities have been notoriously inefficient and dysfunctional. Customers have suffered increasing problems with receiving their mail in a timely manner or at all. Part of the series of reforms in fact downgraded the speed of mail delivery across the board. Many attempts at automation, including robot drivers, were an expensive failure as well.
It would be easy to think that this was just another ignorant plan by delusional top-level management in a large institution that failed despite its drafters’ intentions. Many postal workers believe otherwise. We have seen this catastrophic 10-year plan as a purposeful attempt to wreck the Postal Service in order to pave the way for privatization. If the institution is terminally dysfunctional, then radical change would be justified. “Delivering for America” continued through the Biden presidency, since he never attempted to displace the Trump appointee.
To everyone’s surprise, however, Louis DeJoy exited his position shortly after the beginning of Trump’s second term. Celebrations by postal workers were quite brief, however, as happiness was quickly replaced by foreboding. Speculation has run rampant about what his resignation meant. Many believe that he’s stepped aside so the Trump administration can move more aggressively than even DeJoy’s 10-year plan stipulated. This, paired with Trump’s stated aims to dissolve the Postal Board of Governors, the highest bureaucratic body of USPS, has precipitated the fears that have led postal workers to move into action.
A first step toward bigger struggles
This call by the APWU, heeded by thousands of postal workers, is an important step toward building the movement we need to defend the rights of postal workers and secure USPS as a public service. Due to the ban on strikes by postal workers, there have been huge barriers to postal workers’ fights for their rights, better contracts, and a socially just Postal Service. Lacking that basic weapon for workers’ struggle, until the right to strike is secured, other means of defense are absolutely necessary.
It’s essential that the rank and file get active in their union branches to discuss tactics and strategy and begin to build the type of workers’ organization capable of beating the despicable plans the rich have for USPS. If we want to beat back the attacks on USPS, our unions will have to transform themselves from bodies for the filing of grievances into organs of struggle and worker initiative.
We also desperately need to achieve unity across the various postal unions. USPS is organized in a craft-union system comprised of the National association of Letter Carriers (NALC), the National Postal Mailhandlers Union (NPMHU), the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU.) This set-up has unfortunately allowed postal management to counterpose the interests of each union against each other to ensure that all postal workers get worse contracts. Tactics of divide-and-rule are a central tool that capitalists use to break workers’ struggles, and the independent lives of the postal unions lay the groundwork for campaigns of division. Our union leaderships must seek unity in the face of these attacks! It’s our responsibility as workers to build up our connections across crafts and unions to join in our collective defense. With the collective power of over 500,000 workers, and with the support of the people, we have the power we need to secure a just, democratic, and public Postal Service.
The majority of attendees at the Columbus rally were APWU members. Letter carriers and mail handlers were notably absent. In fact, I believe I was the only mail handler in attendance. I hope to see future nationwide demonstrations and actions like this one gain the full support of every postal union. Postal workers united and with the support of the community have the power to defeat any of the machinations of the rich.
The fight will undoubtedly be long and arduous, but postal workers and the people can and must come together to ensure that the United States Postal Service maintains itself as the cherished public service it is. Postal workers will stand up not only for our own interests, but for the interests of the people as a whole against any attacks by the rich and the powerful!
Top photo: Postal workers in Columbus, Ohio, March 20. (Coco Smyth / Workers’ Voice)
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No to the Trump-Putin agreement to dismantle and loot Ukraine!
No to the rearmament of the EU! Full support to the Ukrainian Resistance!
By the EUROPEAN SECRETARIAT of the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS LEAGUE – FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
Donald Trump’s abrupt turn in foreign policy has been exemplified by his stance toward Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, where he has closed ranks with Putin to force the capitulation of the Ukrainian government through the vilest blackmail. The aim is to force Ukraine to seal a colonial agreement in which Putin keeps Crimea and the Donbass, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as he has had written in the Russian Constitution, and divide up the country’s wealth.
In addition to the plundering of Ukraine, Trump’s actions are part of his strategy to try to distance Russia from China and to weaken the European Union (EU) — the bloc of European imperialisms — by subjugating and humiliating it, promoting the far right within it, and pitting member countries against each other. At the same time, he is trying to legitimize its own aspirations for the annexation of the Panama canal, Canada, and Greenland.
Trump’s blackmail is also part of his plans to concentrate his forces against China in the Indo-Pacific. His policy in Ukraine is linked to demands on European NATO countries to substantially increase their military spending so that the U.S. can gradually withdraw its direct military presence in Europe over time.
Trump-Putin colonial agreement exposes a large part of the European left
This agreement clearly demonstrates the fallacies of the post-Stalinist left, such as the Spanish Izquierda Unida, Rete dei comunisti (RdC) in Italy, or the PRCF in France, which supported the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s dictatorial and bloodthirsty regime, reproducing its vile argument that Russia was seeking to denazify Ukraine and that it was an “anti-imperialist” movement against the USA and NATO. In doing so, they whitewashed Putin, friend and protector of the far right, and aligned themselves with Russian regional imperialism and its oligarchs, who are continuing the annexationism of tsarism and Stalin. They have also denied Ukraine its legitimate right to defend itself against imperialist aggression.
Their “theory of camps,” introduced by Stalin, according to which one had to be in one’s camp, which was always the “progressive” one (disregarding conflicting class interests), has been continued by the (post) Stalinists for many decades. They have relied on this theory again, arguing that Putin’s camp was the “anti-imperialist” and “progressive” camp. Now, with their announced support for the Trump-Putin plan, they have sided with U.S. imperialism and have been left without the “anti-imperialist” argument, exposing their moral and political poverty.
This agreement also exposes forces of the neo-reformist left, such as Podemos, Rifondazione Comunista (Italy) or FI (France) who, in the name of an empty pacifism, eliminated the heroic Ukrainian national liberation struggle from the scene. They turned the war into a mere conflict between powers, filling their mouths with abstract declarations of peace and cooperation between peoples and opposing the delivery of arms to Ukraine, thus favoring Putin. Now they buy into Trump’s cynical and disgusting discourse, which aims to make him appear as the great peacemaker. Once again, they have betrayed Ukraine’s right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In this hidden support for Putin we must also mention part of the so-called far left. Lutte Ouvrière sees Ukraine as the armed wing of the EU and has gone so far as to write that it would have been better if Putin had taken Kyiv at the beginning so that the war would have cost fewer lives. The current of Alan Woods (ex-IMT, now RCI) characterizes the war as imperialist and defends Russia’s aggression as a lesser evil. While the Trotskyist Fraction erases the Ukrainian people, denying their right to defend themselves, and while it does not defend Putin’s invasion, it considers it a proxy conflict with NATO.
In contrast to the campism and all of Putin’s avowed and unavowed friends, our support and solidarity with Ukraine in the context of this war of national liberation against the Russian invasion and plundering has always been carried out by denouncing the self-serving cynicism of the U.S. and Europe and without placing the slightest trust in Zelensky. Our internationalist solidarity with Ukraine is based on principled opposition to all imperialist blocs and on active support for national liberation struggles. And in that context we seek to build an independent working-class camp that fights for a revolutionary socialist program.
The EU’s rearmament plan
The EU, after Trump has scorned and humiliated it, is now justifying its greatest rearmament in decades, in the name of “defending Europe against Russia,” “becoming independent from the U.S.” and continuing “support for Ukraine.” They also talk about “defending freedom and peace.” All of these are lies, as we will try demonstrate below. Furthermore, this plan reflects an attempt to reposition the European imperialist bloc, which has been marginalized by the dispute between the U.S. and China.
The 27, under the impetus of Germany and France, have unanimously endorsed (not without internal discrepancies) Von der Leyen’s proposal to invest 800 billion euros in defense over the next four years, with the idea of increasing annual military spending to 3% or 3.5% of GDP. The majority (around 650 billion euros) would come from the national budgets of the Member States. To this end, they will activate an “escape clause” that will allow Member States to exclude military spending from the deficit limits allowed by the EU (3% of GDP). This means that, while the deficit must be complied with for education, health or employment, this will not be the case for armaments. Of particular note is Germany, whose parliament has approved a reform of the Constitution to enable it to carry out a massive increase in public debt that will allow it to make investments to reinforce its military forces.
Von der Leyen has also proposed a fund of 150 billion euros in loans to member states to “boost the European military industry.” Some countries, such as Spain, also want direct subsidies and talk of “expanding the concept of defense.”
Their “defense of Europe against Putin” and “independence from the U.S.” is false
Bourgeois propaganda hides the fact that the EU is not some oppressed entity that needs defending, but an imperialist bloc. After the war of aggression against Ukraine, fear of Russia is deeply felt in places like the Baltic States and also in Poland. Georgia and Moldova are directly in Putin’s sights. But neither the EU nor the U.S. have expressed their readiness to defend them from a Russian annexationist attack.
Nor can the Baltic States expect effective help from NATO if Trump agrees with Putin. The same goes for Greenland, which is currently part of the Kingdom of Denmark, if Trump takes it over militarily. NATO Secretary General Rutte has not said a word about it, despite the fact that Denmark belongs to the alliance.
Likewise, the supposed search for military independence from the U.S. mainly serves to justify the rearmament of European imperialism. And while it is true that Germany and France have a real desire to strengthen their military industry (against which we have to take an active stand), the main beneficiary of European rearmament is going to be the U.S. arms industry.
Currently there is a great deal of military fragmentation among the different European states, with no unity of command or prospect of any “European army,” since each imperialism has its own geopolitical interests and a differentiated relationship with U.S. imperialism.
In the words of the head of the ECB, the rearmament plan could give an economic boost to a stagnant Europe, a kind of military Keynesianism, a military version of the Draghi plan. The rearmament is attracting investors and several aerospace and defense companies saw their shares soar. But it is more than doubtful that the EU would openly challenge the U.S. and its American military industry and question its dominance in the international arms market.
A miserable and self-interested EU support of Ukraine
The EU and its member states claim to have supported Ukraine “more than anyone else.” But a study by the Kyiv Institute for World Economy, marking three years since the invasion, shows that Germany, the UK, and the U.S. have mobilized less than 0.2 percent of their GDP to support Ukraine, while other countries such as France, Italy and Spain only allocated around 0.1 percent. Germany’s tax subsidies for diesel alone cost three times more than all of Germany’s military aid. The EU paid 21.9 billion euros for Russian fossil fuel imports in the third year of the invasion, considerably more than the 18.7 billion euros in financial aid sent to Ukraine in 2024.
The EU, like the U.S., has been delaying, haggling, and denying key military support to Ukraine during these three years of war, without providing the requested offensive weapons that could neutralize the Russian offensive. Its military aid was always delivered in dribs and drabs, with the purpose aiding Ukraine just enough to weaken Putin so that he could not win. The aim was not to defeat Putin, but to be able to reach an armistice (no doubt with Russian annexations) that would allow them to enter the reconstruction business in good conditions.
Now they have infamously applauded Zelensky’s ceasefire proposal, which is a direct result of U.S. blackmail, to which they too submit. And they are offering to place troops on the ground to “guarantee” the Trump-Putin agreement, in the hopes of coming to an agreement with Trump to share Ukraine’s wealth and to resume the purchases of Russian gas at previous levels. The AfD has even called for the reconstruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines.
Since the beginning of the large-scale aggression, Ukraine’s accumulated debts to the U.S., the EU, the ECB, the IMF and the World Bank have more than tripled to almost 90% of its GDP. The IMF and the World Bank continue to demand that the Ukrainian government pay its debt and carry out neoliberal reforms such as market deregulation, cuts in social spending, privatization of the transport and energy industries, etc. These are measures that Zelensky’s lackey government and the oligarchs they serve are applying by attacking the living conditions of the working class and the poor.
The EU has plundered Ukraine during this time through its financial institutions, including multinational companies such as Bayer and joint ventures with Ukrainian oligarchs. NATO and the EU only want to secure their imperialist interests by participating in the exploitation of Ukraine.
Those who have been and continue to be at the forefront of the struggle over the last three years are the working class, who have been drafted en masse into the army after the Russian invasion. It is not the aid received from the EU but the heroism of the Ukrainian working class that has managed to stop Putin at the cost of immense sacrifices. As long as the Ukrainian people do not give up, our task is to continue to support even more strongly the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people with its workers at the forefront!
A rearmament that is part of a reactionary package and makes clear the EU’s true colors
In an exercise of repugnant cynicism, they have also justified rearmament in the name of the defense of freedom and peace, at the same time as the EU and its governments have expressly supported the barbarity of the Palestinian genocide by Israel, which they arm and give political backing to, while harshly repressing mobilizations of solidarity with Palestine and branding them as anti-Semitic. Despite crocodile tears and lamentations, such as those of the Spanish government, they have all continued to allow the sale of arms to Israel and have refused to break diplomatic and economic relations with the Zionist state.
The European rearmament plan is not to guarantee peace but to prepare for future war and to intervene in conflicts outside the EU, wherever the interests of European multinationals are threatened. And, as it progresses, it will be accompanied by a reduction in social spending and an increase in taxes on the working class and the petty bourgeoisie, no matter how much some, like the cynical Sánchez, say, with deceptive formulas, that rearmament will not be to the detriment of social spending.
At the same time, they are stepping up xenophobic and racist measures against immigrants with expulsions, thousands drowned at sea, and the establishment—following the Meloni model, which has been applauded by Von der Leyen—of deportation camps outside the EU’s borders, while at the same time they plunder the semi-colonial countries. Rearmament also goes hand in hand with a sharp decline in the already very lukewarm existing environmental measures.
There will be no freedom, peace, or prosperity in Europe with the EU. The alternative to this Europe at the service of capitalist oligopolies, which is unsupportive, antisocial and anti-ecological, is to fight for a Europe of the working class and the people, which can only emerge from the ashes of the current EU. We need a socialist federation where the strategic sectors of the economy are socialized, subject to workers’ and popular control, and at the service of a democratic planning of the economy to meet social needs and respond to the ongoing environmental crisis.
We must fight for a Europe in solidarity with the semi-colonial countries it has plundered for more than a century. What is at stake is not only the future of Ukraine, but that of all the peoples of Europe and their freedom.
No to the EU rearmament plan!
No to increased military spending!
Dissolution of NATO!
No to the professional army and its caste of officers! We cannot leave our defense and security in the hands of the EU and NATO. We need an army based on universal military training, sustained by the democratic principle of the armed people and controlled by them.
No to the Trump-Putin agreement to dismember and plunder Ukraine!
Trump, Putin and the EU: Hands off Ukraine!
Cancellation of the Ukrainian debt and transfer to Ukraine of the 200 billion Russian assets frozen in the EU!
All our support for trade unionism and social movements within Ukraine in their struggle against the Trump-Putin agreement and against Zelensky’s anti-worker and neoliberal measures!
Ukraine has every right to request and accept all the material and military aid from whatever source necessary to fight against the Russian occupation!
Against the Europe of the capitalists! Let’s fight to unite the struggles of workers and young people on the continent! For a socialist federation of Europe!
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Mahmoud Khalil’s Open Letter
Introduction: On March 8, Palestinian solidarity activist Mahmoud Khalil, who had recently graduated from Columbia University, was arrested by ICE agents for his alleged political views and activity. Despite the fact that he is a legal U.S. resident and is married to an American citizen, he is threatened with deportation. At a hearing on March 28, a Louisiana judge declined to release Khalil on bail.
Another judge ruled earlier that Khalil’s case must be heard in New Jersey, but the Justice Department is seeking to have it moved to Louisiana, where he is being held and where the more conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals holds jurisdiction. Protests calling for Khalil’s release have taken place around the country.
Khalil is one of several foreign-born academics who have been detained as part of the growing wave of political repression pursued by the Trump administration. Trump has pledged to deport students who participate in what he falsely labels as “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said recently that the Trump administration has revoked the visas of at least 300 people.
The victims include Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student, who on March 25 was snatched by masked police officers as she left her home and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. Her only known activism was co-signing an opinion article in the campus newspaper that asked the university administration to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney specialist from Lebanon who was about to begin work as an assistant professor at Brown University, was deported earlier this month on charges that she supported a Hezbollah leader. And Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student from Iran studying engineering at the University of Alabama, has been detained by ICE on still unexplained charges.
The “Open Letter” below was published in The Jacobin:
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I woke to cold mornings and spent long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the twenty-one-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents who refused to provide a warrant and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety [Noor Abdalla is Khalil’s wife]. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza [in New York City], I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s cease-fire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family that has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past sixteen months as the United States has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least twenty-two Columbia students — some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the front lines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my firstborn child.
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End the death penalty!
By AVA FAHEY
On Tuesday, March 18, the state of Louisiana killed Jessie Hoffmann Jr. by forcing him to inhale nitrogen gas. Despite the state’s repeated lies that nitrogen hypoxia causes a painless death, witnesses to Hoffmann’s execution reported that he showed clear signs of fear and distress in the 19 minutes it took for him to die. Hoffmann objected to the method of execution on religious grounds, with his lawyers unsuccessfully arguing that forced oxygen deprivation would interfere with the meditative breathing he wanted to practice at the moment of his death.
Hoffmann is the fifth person in the world to be executed by nitrogen gas, following the state of Alabama’s four nitrogen gas executions in the past year. Like Hoffmann, Demetrius Frazier, Carey Grayson, Kenny Smith, and Allan Miller all apparently suffered in their final moments, remaining visibly conscious for several minutes and violently thrashing on the gurney. Louisiana Corrections Secretary Gary Wescott said that the state chose nitrogen gas as Hoffmann’s method of execution because state officials had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs following a 2012 lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s lethal injection protocols, and because drug companies objected to their products’ usage in capital punishment. In order to keep killing death row inmates, in 2024, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a bill approving nitrogen gas and the electric chair as lawful methods of execution. Hoffmann was the first person executed by Louisiana in 15 years.
Hoffmann’s execution is one in a line of executions that make up a worrying trend of executions by methods other than lethal injection, after a series of gruesome botched executions by lethal injection brought public pressure on pharmaceutical companies to cease providing the drugs to correctional facilities. As mentioned earlier, Alabama began carrying out nitrogen gas executions in 2024 despite calls from the United Nations to cease the inhumane practice. South Carolina responded to the lethal injection supply issues by requiring death row inmates to “choose” their own method of execution, offering the options of lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad. It should go without saying that there is no instant or painless way to kill a person, and executions by firing squad cause excruciating pain in a person’s final moments. Nevertheless, South Carolina executed Brad Sigmon by firing squad earlier this month.
During Biden’s term, the Democratic Party saw a serious backslide on its death penalty policy. Despite holding death penalty abolition as a campaign promise in 2020, in 2024, for the first time in over a decade, the Democratic platform did not oppose capital punishment. “We need to fund the police, not defund the police,” it reads. Notably, the state of Missouri killed Marcellus Williams last September despite clear and convincing evidence of his innocence. Kamala Harris was silent on Williams’ killing, despite her former opposition to capital punishment as the San Francisco district attorney.
Under the new Trump regime, people in the U.S. should expect capital punishment to increase drastically. One of Trump’s first-day executive orders, entitled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” clearly lays out his administration’s intentions. The EO condemns the Biden administration’s stay of federal executions and commutation of 37 federal death row prisoners and promises to resume federal executions expeditiously. It promises to ensure that the 37 former death row inmates “are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose”—a clear violation of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment—and promises to investigate whether any of them could be resentenced to death row at the state level. It also promises to ensure that every state has a sufficient supply of lethal injection drugs.
Most worryingly, the executive order calls on the U.S. attorney general to seek the death penalty when the defendant is an immigrant in the United States without legal status, “regardless of other factors.” With vague language, the executive order leaves open the possibility that undocumented people could receive the death penalty for crimes other than murder. By targeting undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are Latino and/or Black, this executive order “says the quiet part out loud” about capital punishment. It has always been used disproportionately against Black and Latino people. Despite making up only 31% of the U.S. population collectively, Black and Latino people make up a majority, 53%, of death-row inmates. Homicides with white victims are overwhelmingly more likely to result in a death penalty conviction than homicides with Black victims or Latino victims.
There is a long history of the racial disparities in death row in the United States, and there are numerous studies concluding that contemporary executions occur more often in the same places where enslavement and racial terror lynchings were prevalent. Before the Civil War, it was a rare sight to see a white person executed in a slaveholding state. In Virginia, for example, there were 60 capital crimes for enslaved Black people, but only one for white people. After the Civil War, extra-judicial executions of Black people swelled as white mobs launched a campaign of terror against Black communities across the country, lynching thousands of Black people. Capital execution is a direct descendant of anti-Black racial terror lynching, and racial terror lynchings decreased only when capital punishment started to rise. While Black people made up only 22% of the South by 1950, they made up 75% of death row.
For Latinos, there is a similar link between lynchings and capital punishment. In Texas, over 5000 Mexican-Americans are estimated to have been lynched by civilian whites, local law enforcement, and Texas Rangers between 1910 and 1920, a period now referred to as La Matanza (“The Massacre”) and La Hora de Sangre (“Hour of Blood”). Today, Texas, which carries more than a third of all executions in the U.S., has killed a shocking 84% of all Latino prisoners executed in the last 40 years. If nothing happens to intervene, it is likely that this number will rise as judges and juries in Texas and elsewhere feel emboldened by Trump’s support to hand down more and more death sentences.
One can look to Trump’s previous presidential term for a harbinger of what might be to come. Trump executed more prisoners than the last 10 presidents combined. Before 2020, the federal government had not executed a prisoner since 2003. But in the last year of his presidency, Trump’s attorney general handed down 13 executions, with the final one—of Dustin Higgs, a Black man—taking place only five days before Biden took office. Billie Allen, a federal death-row inmate, said that he and his fellow death-row prisoners did not realize that they might be killed until prison guards began practicing execution protocols. “Many of us knew Trump was going to keep killing … until he ran out of time,” said Allen. One man, Daniel Lee, was executed while he had a pending appeal. At least one of the executions was botched.
It is an established fact that the death penalty does not deter crime. A so-called “justice” system with a history as racist and violent as the United States could never carry out a humane execution. For one out of every eight executions, one death row prisoner has been posthumously officially exonerated. Black and Latino death row prisoners are particularly vulnerable to wrongful convictions.
There is only one way to stop this trend of brutal executions is to get rid of the death penalty completely by abolishing the current prison system. Under a just system, non-violent offenders would be diverted into alternatives like rehabilitation, education, and treatment. Capitalism is the primary cause of crime, and as the working class, we should take to the streets to demand the end of a criminal justice system that brutally murders Black, Latino, and/or poor people instead of punishing the bosses, landlords, and corrupt politicians who are responsible for far more social murder.
Photo: Jessie Hoffman Jr., put to death on March 18, 2025.
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Comrade Américo, presente!
It is with great sadness that we are reporting the passing of our colleague, comrade, and member of the IWL leadership, Américo Astuto. He suffered a heart attack at the São Paulo bus station on March 19, where he was catching a bus to Campinas. He was rescued by an emergency team, resuscitated and taken to the Clínicas hospital. But he suffered another heart attack and died. The wake and funeral were held on March 21.
Américo was 64 years old. He was a cadre who had been entirely dedicated to the revolutionary struggle for socialism from a very young age. As a leader of the Brazilian PSTU and the International Workers League for decades, Américo fought tirelessly for socialism. He was a member of the party in Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, as well as in several other parties. In general, his focus was on daily work with the proletariat.
Although he suffered from severe hypertension and had already suffered a heart attack, he continued to fight with all his might.
He was one of those indispensable people, in the words of Brecht.
Comrade Américo, until socialism, always!
— International Secretariat of the International Workers’ League
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How we beat wannabe dictators: Two lessons from 2024
By CARLOS SAPIR
Reading the capitalist press today, it’s easy to get the impression that the Trump-Musk government is unstoppable. Raining down a torrent of policies, attacks, and provocations against oppressed communities and government infrastructure alike, the current government acts with a blatant disregard for the existing written laws of the U.S., and gives self-contradictory half-excuses when its actions are challenged by judges or the press. It is true that the largely symbolic norms supposedly balancing the powers of the liberal state are currently dead letters.
So what can keep the government in check? Two recent examples from last year chart a path forward.
One-day strikes stopped the chainsaw in Argentina
Elon Musk, who has never heard an idea he didn’t want to steal, got his phallic chainsaw circus act from Javier Milei, Argentina’s own slash-and-burn tyrant. While the government learns theatrics from Argentina, Argentina’s labor movement has demonstrated concretely that the government can’t push through policy against the massed forces of organized workers. When the Milei government tried to advance its reactionary cuts to social spending, the unions called one-day general strikes that sent those policies back to the drawing board. The rubber stamps of Argentina’s legislature in favor of the policy didn’t matter: Argentina’s workers demonstrated that they are vehemently opposed to these changes and that they would not accept them, so the government was forced to retreat.
They have done this repeatedly, in January, May, and October 2024, and they’re preparing to do it again against austerity measures in April 2025. Notably, when the largest union, the CGT, neglected to muster its forces in July of 2024, an amended version of the cuts was passed. It is not enough for workers to be organized, we need to be mobilized every time that we are under attack. While the Argentine labor movement can’t yet claim total victory over the Milei government, the battles they have won are an example of the power that unions can wield against tyrannical governments. Whereas in the U.S. we are seeing new attacks landing day after day, it took months for Milei to implement even a fraction of his program.
South Korea stops martial law overnight
Beyond the fights against austerity policies, 2024 also saw an even more astounding mobilization of popular forces against capitalist military dictatorship. At 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 3, President Yoon Suk Yeol abruptly declared the imposition of martial law, accusing the opposition DPK party of engaging in “anti-state activities” and working with “North Korean communists.” He moved to ban all political activity, end freedom of the press, and outlaw strikes, ordering striking medical workers to return to work. South Korean civil society and trade unions erupted in response. While police and military forces were carrying out orders to lock down state institutions, mass protests erupted in the darkness of midnight. The Korean Central Federation of Trade Unions (KCFTU) called for a general strike. Within a stunning six short hours, the martial law order was reversed and President Yoon was indicted.
The political crisis created by the attempt to impose martial law has yet to be resolved. Yoon Suk Yeol resisted arrest, and continues to defend his actions while facing charges. Although Yoon and his collaborators in principle face a possibility of the death penalty for treason in the current proceedings, the bourgeois courts that control this ongoing process have a motive to let Yoon and others off lightly, out of ruling-class solidarity. We should not trust that they will reach a just verdict. But, despite this and other daily injustices of capitalism in South Korea, the victory won against the attempt to reimpose martial law was a crucial demonstration of the power of working-class mobilization.
This is not the final battle
Even when we lack the forces to decisively end capitalism once and for all, masses of workers are a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Trump, perhaps even more so than his overseas counterparts, enjoys only the begrudging, half-hearted approval of significant layers of the bourgeoisie. They are willing to give him a chance to enact his vision, in part because his policies give them more legal grounds to repress their own workers, but also because rocking the boat is usually bad for capitalist profits. If workers up the ante, and make it clear that we are going to put up a fight, layers of the capitalist class will also get cold feet about supporting Trump. But make no mistake: it is only the independent mobilization of working-class forces that can provide the leadership for this change by demonstrating its direct power to mobilize and bring life-as-usual to a standstill.
The immediate militancy of unions in Argentina and Korea in the face of threats to their basic rights is in part due to the recent memory of struggles to defeat entrenched military dictatorships in both countries during the 1970s-80s. In contrast, the U.S. labor movement has languished under decades of business-unionism strategies that tried to play nice with the bosses instead of confronting them head on. No major trade union in the U.S. is currently prepared to call a credible general strike. But that doesn’t mean that mass politics are indefinitely postponed until we reach a desired level of union concentration and militancy.
We can build mass mobilizations today by winning the support of union locals and regionals to throw their weight behind the grassroots civil liberties, education funding, Queer rights, Palestine solidarity and anti-war protests that are already sprouting all around the country and publicizing them widely to invite the public to join in. In doing so, we will be drawing more and more previously politically inactive people into these movements, making them a force to be reckoned with that can stop government plans in their tracks (and building union membership and militancy in the process). It will also create the conditions for articulating and achieving political demands that go beyond simply stopping the latest new attack that the capitalists have concocted. This is how we tip the scales of class struggle to our favor.
Winning new demands will require even greater levels of organization. It will require a political party to organize and coordinate militant rank-and-file trade unionists and community organizers who want to fight for a better future, and not just a better-negotiated present, in order to push the labor movement and broader working class to consistently and aggressively take up the fight against oppression and for greater democratic rights, for workers’ economic and political control over their living conditions. This is the party that we are hoping to build today, striding forward to both build the best defense of the rights we are still allotted and prepare the fight for their further expansion, while ultimately organizing the struggle for the working class to take full political power.