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Workers’ Voice newspaper: June-July edition
Trump continues his assault on working and oppressed people: From the attack on voting rights to the environmental impact of the war on Iran to abortion rights to the struggles of immigrant meatpacking workers on the picket line, this edition is filled with insightful views on how working people are confronting the horrors of capitalism under the management of the Trump administration. Also in this issue read about migrant workers in Africa, the struggle against data centers, and the meaning of recent elections in Hungary.
The June-July 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
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Elections in Hungary: Does Magyar’s victory point to major policy changes?
By DANIEL ADAM
On May 9, the Hungarian parliament inaugurated Peter Magyar as premier, officially ending 16 years of rule by Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party. The election has implications well beyond Hungary as Orban has played a major role in right-wing politics globally. Not only has his nationalist offensive on democratic rights and institutions become a leading model for rightest projects, but it has helped to develop an international network of ethno-nationalist and far-right forces, including shared think tanks and media resources.
Project 2025, for instance, is not merely influenced by Orban’s work; his organizations helped craft it. In turn, J.D. Vance (and other MAGA figures) helped campaign for Orban—though in vain. On Election Day, Orban’s Fidesz party won a mere 38.6% of the vote to Tisza’s 53.2%
Making sense of Orban’s electoral defeat—what it means and how it happened—is important for all seeking to defeat rising reactionary movements around the globe. What enabled Orban to wage an offensive against democratic rights, immigrants the LGBTQI+ community, workers and other oppressed groups? What brought Orban down? What is replacing him? What does this mean for social movements in Hungary? What can we learn in the U.S. and elsewhere?
Orban’s dominance of the Hungarian political apparatus began in 2010, in the midst of a crisis of the neoliberal project brought on by the 2008/2009 financial crash. He directed outrage away from the capitalist class as such, and toward foreign elites, immigrants, progressive social values, the LGBTQI+ community, Muslims, Jews, and other scapegoats. He promised economic development for Hungary through greater independence from Western economic and political powers, national renewal and a rejection of progressive values and rights. He used a landslide victory to restructure much of Hungary’s political structure, including the constitution.
Orban developed relationships with powers outside the EU and NATO and made progress towards integrating Hungary into the supply chains of economic powers like Germany. Still, in a world-capitalist system wracked by competition, low profit rates, plague, war, and instability, these strategies could only go so far.
By 2026, Orban’s project had suffered through protracted crises. Facing sustained inflation and worsened prospects, workers had left the country in droves, depopulating Hungary by roughly half a million since 2011 (about 5% of the country!). Movements emerged to challenge Orban’s program, with mass protests in 2018 against the so-called “slave law” (which allows employers to mandate compulsory overtime, whose payment they can delay up to three years), mass protests and strikes by teachers in 2022, and unprecedented Pride marches in June of 2025.
Meanwhile, the corruption of Fidesz became more visible and onerous across classes, and estrangement from Western powers led the EU to block billions of euros in aid. For many, the regime’s rot was expressed vividly by child abuse in state institutions and the government moves to cover it up.
Peter Magyar, Hungary’s new premier, comes out of the higher ranks of Orban’s Fidesz party, starting in its youth organization and marrying (later divorcing) Judit Varga, the justice minister under Fidesz. Magyar left Fidesz and took over the previously obscure Tisza Party a mere two years ago.
Magyar has rhetorically distinguished himself from Fidesz primarily through promises to weed out corruption, restore democratic norms, and reconnect with Western powers in the EU and NATO. Second to these are promises to repair the health-care system and to renationalize and democratize higher education.
Magyar has committed to continue the same anti-immigrant policies promoted by Fidesz, even promising to go further than his former party by sending more troops to the Serbian border. On labor, Magyar (like Orban) refused to even meet with trade unions to hear their demands. He is quite close with heads of industry, several of whom have already been awarded government posts. Despite pledging to arrest the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to Hungary, upon winning the election, Magyar made sure that Netanyahu was the first foreign head of state he spoke to by phone.
Magyar stayed away from the massive Pride march of June 2025 and avoided speaking about LGBTQI+ rights (for or against) during his campaign. In his acceptance speech, he said that “everyone can live with, and love, whomever they want, as long as they do not violate the laws and do not harm others”—a Janus-faced statement if ever there was one.
More than just being vague, Magyar here provides the pretext to violate the rights he professes to defend in the very same statement. His own former party has passed laws which outlaw pride parades and distribution of materials depicting LGBTQ people or culture under the guise of preventing harm to children. In Hungary today, defending the right of everyone “to live with and love whomever they want” means violating the law.
As independent Budapest-based scholar Anita Zsurzsan puts it: “The Magyar government represents not a break with Orbanism, but its reformulation: a more disciplined, EU-compatible, technocratic version of the same nationalist, exclusionary order. The project has changed hands, not foundations.”
The import of Orban’s program for working people is not the narrowing of decision-makers and exploiters to a smaller clique, or the orientation towards one or another great power, but the use of racism, nationalism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia and other reactionary ideologies to redirect anger away from capital and to atomize and discipline the working class.
For those who wish to be more than observers, it is important to draw a tricky but critical distinction. Orban’s defeat in the election does represent a temporary set-back for authoritarianism, in that it was made necessary by the exhaustion of Fidesz’s program and the rise of mass movements to oppose it. But the support that Magyar received from this opposition creates a setback for these movements and the working class, as they have handed much political credibility to a party committed to continuing the same social program as Orban—despite whatever tactical retreats it might make.
Consider the extent of the opposition. The labor protests of 2018 drew 15,000 at their peak and raised the question of general strikes. The 2022 teachers’ strikes brought some 40,000 out for an indefinite strike and 50,000 for solidarity protests. The Pride march of 2025 put between 100,000 and 200,000 on the street—in defiance of a law against Pride marches that the government promised to enforce using facial recognition software. After the action, the government backed down and declined to prosecute marchers.
And so, by the time of Orban’s electoral defeat, his power to divide and intimidate had already been fatally undermined. And the Queer community had already won more rights in action than Magyar would ever promise them.
Meanwhile, in order to support Magyar, the Hungarian Socialist Party withdrew from elections altogether. And so, Magyar was handed the same authoritarian apparatus and the same two-thirds majority as Orban, but without any visible left opposition. The only other parties in parliament are to his right, and unlike Orban, much of the left has endorsed him!
The movements to defend the rights of working people will need to find their bearings once again. If they do not do so quickly, they might find their good names dragged down with Magyar’s as his program meets the realities of today’s capitalist decay. After all, it is the left’s association with the neoliberal offensive in Hungary and elsewhere that created the openings for figures like Orban and Trump in the first place.
This experience reveals the power of mass movements to upend the power of authoritarians even when their position appears secure. It also puts in bold the need for independent working-class political organization that can help such struggles to grow in power, rather than be driven into the arms of those who wish to make of them a meal.
Photo: New Hungarian premier Peter Magyar.
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Gutting of Voting Rights Act attempts to deny democracy to all working people
By CHRISTINE MARIE
Nearly 5000 protesters assembled in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday, May 16, as part of the emergency mobilization dubbed All Roads Lead to the South. The Montgomery rally followed the recreation of a segment of the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965, when 600 protesters were attacked by state troopers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge (named for a Confederate general who became a Ku Klux Klan leader). The event has come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Faith leaders, politicians, and activists joined figures like the “oldest living foot soldier” from that original crossing, 84-year-old Annie Mae Avery, and Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who was an eight-year-old participant and victim of the police assault.
These mobilizations were a response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling on the case of Louisiana v. Callais, which granted Louisiana the right to gerrymander voting districts to make Black representation to Congress nearly impossible. Within days of the verdict, other white Southern state governors and legislators rushed to use the ruling to squash the electoral voice of the Black community. This includes efforts in Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
These moves signaled that Section 2, a 1982 amendment to the 1965 Voting Rights Act that strengthened the act by requiring that the courts need not prove “intentional discrimination,” but only “the presence of discriminatory effects,” was dead. With this act and the resulting rush of a number of the former states of the Confederacy to dismantle Black voting districts, the Court and the Republican Party is attempting to render void one the great conquests of the U.S. Civil Rights movement and put the political rights of all working people in greater danger than any time in the recent past.
In the course of this rush to dismantle democratic norms, the Speaker of the Alabama House, Nathaniel Ledbetter, expressed his hope—undoubtedly nurtured in far-right think tanks—that the Supreme Court would next “overturn the 14th Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. That is the one that includes birthright citizenship, but also says that no state should deny anyone in their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. In addition, it states that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The 14th amendment was ratified after the Civil War, and supporters of civil rights and Black self-determination have been trying to implement it ever since. The white supremacists given new momentum by the high court ruling are imagining being relieved of all restrictions to their attempt to turn back the clock and to gaining new legal support to limit political rights on a scale beyond what is afforded by diluting the Black vote.
In this dystopian, white supremacist scenario, the disenfranchisement of millions of Black, Chicano, and other oppressed populations will create the circumstances in which a growing pool of low-waged workers will have little capacity to make an electoral impact on government policy affecting wages, working conditions, and social support in the realm of education, health care, housing, and unionization.
Overturning the gains of the Civil Rights movement have been on the agenda of the U.S. far right since the day that the schools were first ordered desegregated. As Nancy McLean wrote in her 2017 “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a second Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1956, it immediately prompted right-wing intellectuals committed to the then current political economy of the South to set up an academic center at the University of Virginia under the leadership of the economist James Buchanan. These forces feared that future Supreme Court rulings might interfere with other state action said to be in violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, a scheme that they saw as replacing “state’s rights” with “individual rights,” and they specifically worried about the potential for changes to labor law and their ability to manipulate elections.
This moment, McLean argues, stands as one of the ideological beginnings for the current drive of the billionaire-backed far right to undo the level of democratic governance won by working people to date. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” while born directly from the global economic crises of the early 21st century, is also the intellectual product of nearly 70 years of planning to stop the increased democratization of the U.S. that began with the fight to desegregate the schools.
As Quinn Slobodian, author of “Hayek’s Bastards” (2025), puts it, right-wing economists believed that the Civil Rights movement begat the movements for feminism, affirmative action, and ecological consciousness, and these, in turn, resulted in millions demanding “redress of inequality” at the expense of profit. The ideological right saw these movements, which argued that inequality was systemic rather than genetic and legitimized demands for government social spending, as posing an existential threat to the efficient workings of capitalism.
The parts of the capitalist class rooted in white supremacist ideology have always seen the Black movement for equality as opening the door to unwanted advances by labor, women, and environmentalists as well. The current efforts to dilute the Black vote are part of their efforts to retool the U.S. economy in interests of their flailing profit system and against the interests of all working people. Thus, the whole movement against the Trump regime must put everything into the fight to push back that attack on Black voting rights. The fight of the Black community must become the fight of the whole movement.
Photo: Some 400 protesters cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Ala., on May 16. (Ralph Chapoco / Alabama Reflector)
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Workers need a program of action that is independent of the Democrats
By JOHN LESLIE
May Day Strong initiated a coalition of hundreds of trade unions and social justice groups to organize this year’s May 1 walk-outs and protests. The nationwide actions centered on antiwar, pro-democracy, pro-labor, and immigrant rights demands.
A couple of months earlier, May Day Strong, together with sympathetic legislators from the Democratic Party and other allies, issued a programmatic document, “The Real Affordability Agenda,” which tries to address the growing economic and social polarization between the rich and the working class.
For working-class people, the crisis of affordability has become more dire. Prices have been rising, rents are out of control, and many people work more than one job just to run in place. Many young workers are saddled with high debt from student loans. It’s not lost on them that the government, which is quick to bail out banks and corporations, has done nothing to help them.
The Affordability Agenda highlights the basic bread and butter questions that form the affordability crisis, calling for affordable housing, good well-paying jobs and an end to wage stagnation, affordable universal needs such as “child care with fair provider wages, free school meals and expanded food assistance alongside anti-gouging measures.” The Agenda also calls for free higher education, comprehensive health care for all, free public transit, and publicly controlled utilities.
While the planks in this program are both correct and supportable, there are limitations. If there is one lesson of the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, it is that no reform, no matter how hard won it might be, is permanent as long as capitalism continues to exist.
The growth of wealth inequality and the affordability crisis are the result of ruling-class attacks on working-class living standards. Capitalism delivers austerity for us and tax cuts for the ruling rich. U.S. workers, and workers around the world, have been subjected to more than 50 years of one-sided class war, with both capitalist parties complicit in these attacks. These attacks have accelerated during Trump’s second term.
The limits of reformism
The response of the Democratic Party establishment has been tentative and inadequate. Failing to come to grips with their 2024 defeat by Donald Trump, the Democrats have decided that they have to move rightward and deemphasize social issues that could be seen as “woke.”
While the base of the Democrats has increasingly rejected U.S. support for apartheid Israel, the party leadership has at best issued some mild criticisms of Israeli policy. Meanwhile, pro-Palestine progressives running in Democratic primaries have faced a massive funding onslaught by pro-Israel donors.
Formerly loyal Democratic constituencies—including many LGBTQ people, women, and Black people—should be prepared to be thrown under the bus if they haven’t been already. The Democratic Party’s social democratic wing has put forward alternatives similar to the Affordability Agenda, but these reforms will find little support inside a party that is fundamentally in service of capitalism.
Past gains made by African Americans, women, and LGBTQ people are under increasing attack. Key social safety net reforms like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security itself are in peril. Much of the pushback against these attacks has been expressed in opposition to Trump. While Trump is an odious figure, attacks on Trump fail to understand the systemic problem that underlies this ruling-class offensive. To be clear, Trump could not achieve his horrific goals without the support of at least a section of the capitalist class. It’s capitalism that’s the problem, not the politicians who serve our rulers.
Does this mean that socialists oppose reforms and merely want to “wait for the revolution” to achieve change? No, socialists understand that it is necessary to fight for gains for the oppressed and working class now. In fact, the fight for these reforms will radicalize many of the activists leading these fights. As revolutionaries, we want to work side by side with all steadfast fighters for economic and social justice while explaining that reforms alone won’t make fundamental change.
One essential ingredient of a strategy for fundamental change is the political independence of workers and the oppressed from ruling-class parties. Time and again, the Democrats have proven themselves to be a brake on social movements. The same is true of Democratic Party aligned NGOs, which serve to divert movements into the safe waters of electoralism and reform. Many movement leaders, from labor bureaucrats to the abortion rights movement and the Black freedom struggle, have subordinated themselves to the Democrats.
Emergency action program for the class struggle
The capitalist system is in a crisis that is environmental, political, and economic. Our ruling class wages wars overseas, has financed and supported a genocide in Palestine, and is waging war against working-class people here at home. Democratic rights are quickly eroding and the gains of the Civil Rights Movement are in danger of reversal.
The emergency we face, caused by the acceleration of the ruling-class offensive, must be combated with working-class methods of struggle and a program that goes beyond reforms and points towards revolutionary change. Workers and the oppressed have the social and economic power to bring the system to halt. During the resistance to ICE thugs in Minneapolis, the movement demonstrated this by organizing the Jan. 23 walkouts, combined with a mass action of tens of thousands marching in the streets.
While Jan. 23 was not a true general strike, it did illustrate the potential of such a strike and helped a layer of workers to visualize their potential social power.
A Workers’ Action Program to meet the current crisis must harness the power of workers, students, and the oppressed in a united fightback. Such a movement should be based on local, regional and national assemblies of trade unionists, community organizations, and organizations of the oppressed working to hammer out a program and course of action.
Protesters gather during the Workers Stand Up to Billionaires rally on May 01, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Lisa Lake / Getty Images for May Day Strong)
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Authoritarian turn at Ohio University: Repression, resistance, and the fight for campus democracy
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By DYLAN EDWARD and GUS DAVIS
On April 16, two student activists were arrested in Athens, Ohio, during a protest outside the Ohio University (OU) Board of Trustees’ April meeting. These arrests came at the culmination of a year of sustained organizing by a broad coalition of student, labor, and community organizations. They also raise urgent strategic questions about how to build and sustain the movement as the campus heads into summer break.
Four fronts of resistance at Ohio University
The April 16 protest was driven by multiple, converging demands and brought together a wide array of labor, left-wing, and progressive forces, including the United Academics of Ohio University, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Ohio Student Association, Black Panther Legacy, Amnesty International, Young Democratic Socialists of America, Publius, and others.
The protest centered on four primary demands:
• Calling for disclosure of and divestment from Israel bonds
• Amplifying the student-led “ICE Off Campus” campaign
• Defending the attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, departments, and spaces in the shadow of the “Advance Ohio Higher Education Act” (SB1)
•Resisting efforts to union-bust the faculty union, the United Academics of Ohio University (UAOU)
After Ohio Senate Bill 1 went into effect in June 2025—a state law aimed at undermining higher education workers and DEI initiatives—the university administration moved quickly to over-comply. In the past year alone, the administration under President Lori Stewart Gonzalez has taken sweeping action to shutter multiple centers and academic programs including the Pride Center, the Multicultural Center, Black Alumni Weekend, African American Studies, the Music Therapy program, among 32 other academic programs.
During this same time, after an overwhelming majority of nearly 800 full-time faculty voted to unionize with the AFT-AAUP, the administration initiated an aggressive union-busting campaign, including legal efforts aimed at undermining and potentially dissolving the union. These legal efforts are still ongoing, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees while the president and her senior leadership team award themselves disproportionate bonuses and faculty continue to go without raises.
While drastic measures have been taken to squash campus movements from below by Ohio’s ruling class, working-class and oppressed people in Southeast Ohio are not rolling over. There have been active steps to counteract and organize against these reactionary policies and university administration.
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions in Southeast Ohio
Earlier in the spring, Ohio University’s undergraduate student body overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling on the university to publicly disclose its financial holdings and divest from Israeli bonds. The measure emphasized transparency and accountability in the university’s investment practices. Its language was deliberately crafted to navigate Ohio Revised Code § 9.76, which prohibits public institutions from boycotting or divesting from Israel on political or moral grounds. Drawing on a prior effort that successfully pushed the Athens County Treasurer’s office to divest from Israel bonds, the referendum framed its case on economic grounds, arguing that such bonds are neither profitable nor financially sound investments.
In response to the student referendum, the university administration quickly issued a statement declaring it would “neither consider nor act upon any resolution or referendum that proposed illegal actions or exposed the university to civil liability.” Organizers rightly noted that the administration gave no indication it had even read the referendum, choosing instead to hide behind Ohio Revised Code § 9.76 as a convenient shield for its spineless inaction, rather than extending even a basic measure of respect to the student body.
Organizing against ICE in Southeast Ohio
Over the fall and winter, as ICE carried out “Operation Buckeye” and other violent raids across the country, a network of campus-based and community organizations began strategizing how to respond to the possibility of similar operations in Southeast Ohio. This effort culminated in the formation of the Athens Safety Network, a rapid-response formation of community organizers tasked with monitoring activity and mobilizing residents in the event of an ICE presence.
Shortly thereafter, the Ohio University chapter of the Ohio Student Association (OSA) launched its “ICE Off Campus” campaign in the spring, building on strategies that had seen modest success on neighboring campuses. OSA’s campaign was premised on six key demands:
• Inform the public of the policy of Ohio University towards ICE either through email or a website page.
• Publicly state ICE is not welcome on campus.
• Refuse all data sharing with ICE that is not legally mandated; protect private information of students and staff to the fullest extent of the law.
• Treat the presence of ICE on campus as a critical emergency, in which all students will receive an “OHIO Alert” emergency alert through the established system.
• Deny ICE entry to campus buildings.
• Refuse to sign the 287(g) agreement.
OSA’s campaign culminated in a March 31 public town hall featuring key administrators, including OU Police Chief Andrew Powers. Nearly 60 students, faculty, and community members turned out, only to watch university leadership once again throw up their hands, hide behind state laws they claimed had tied them in knots, and refuse to commit to a single student demand. At that point, the message was unmistakable: the administration would rather see international students, faculty, and immigrant workers across Southeast Ohio live under a cloud of fear than mount even the slightest resistance to the terror imposed on our communities by ICE.
Defending and expanding Black Power and other oppressed voices on campus
Parallel to the BDS and ICE-Off-Campus organizing that was underway, key organizations—including Black Panther Legacy, the Black Student Union, and others—continued resisting the rollbacks being implemented in the shadow of SB1. Arguably, this current wave of campus organizing began with a February 2025 demonstration against OU’s preemptive over-compliance with SB1, led by the Black Student Union alongside other campus organizations.
On Jan. 2, the Black Student Union released a letter calling out the administration’s inaction and over-compliance with the reactionary political program of Ohio’s state government. Then, on April 16, Black Panther Legacy, alongside several other progressive organizations, hosted an all-day sit-in and community-building event at the former Multicultural Center on campus. Much like the March 31 town hall with anti-ICE student activists, university officials responded by hosting a series of “listening sessions” with Black student organizations regarding their grievances. Ultimately, these sessions functioned as little more than superficial exercises meant to project accountability to the broader campus community while the administration continued to avoid acknowledging their own role in these attacks.
Sustaining the movement of organized labor on campus
Bookending all of these struggles has been a multi-year organizing drive by full-time faculty at OU. Following the pandemic-era mass layoff of nearly 280 faculty, administrators, and unionized staff in 2020, faculty sought to build collective power to protect the most vulnerable among their ranks and to fight for better learning conditions in programs that have endured decades of austerity under a revolving door of executive administrators.
After nearly four years of deep, sustained faculty-to-faculty organizing, the United Academics of Ohio University (UAOU-AAUP/AFT) went public with a supermajority of union authorization cards and demanded voluntary recognition from Gonzalez’s administration. The administration summarily rejected neutrality and launched a multi-month effort that successfully excluded more than 200 faculty from the proposed bargaining unit. Nevertheless, UAOU went on to win a landslide victory in its union election with more than 80% turnout. Despite this decisive mandate, the administration has continued attempting to overturn the election through a series of lawsuits while delaying and obstructing contract negotiations for nearly a year.
By the spring of 2026, it had become increasingly clear that these were not separate fights unfolding in parallel, but interconnected fronts within a broader struggle over the future of public higher education and democratic life itself. The same administration that was arresting students, attacking DEI programs, refusing demands around ICE, repressing Palestine solidarity, and union-busting faculty was responding to a deeper political crisis far beyond Southeast Ohio. What has unfolded at Ohio University over the past year is therefore both intensely local and unmistakably global.
Repression on campus in an age of imperial decline
What is unfolding at Ohio University in Southeast Ohio cannot be understood in isolation from a broader political context. It would be an error to understand the failures of Gonzalez’s administration solely as the result of a handful of reactionary university officials. Although one may certainly argue that this is part of the problem, it would be a disservice to our movement if our power analysis began and ended there.
The political developments that have taken place at OU over the past year reflect broader transformations underway within the U.S. neoliberal order as it continues through an increasingly crisis-ridden and decadent historical phase. As global economic crises deepen, U.S. hegemony and legitimacy weakens, requiring more severe interventions abroad while simultaneously tightening their grip on popular dissent at home. Within this broader political landscape, governing institutions are increasingly being repurposed into mechanisms of control, surveillance, and repression.
To put it another way, the process of U.S. imperial decadence has both international and domestic dimensions. Internationally, this has meant escalating imperial intervention and unconditional support for genocidal wars like the one in Gaza. Domestically, this has looked like an expansion of policing powers and other repressive arms of the state through anti-immigrant terror, the criminalization of dissent, and attacks on labor, reproductive, and LGBTQIA+ rights. Public institutions that are ostensibly meant to serve the general public have been systematically repurposed into instruments of repression, control, and the management of social instability on behalf of ruling elites.
Public higher education has become one of the most salient battlegrounds in this broader transformation. Across the country, universities have become some of the primary agents of repressing popular protest, unraveling academic freedom, dismantling DEI programs, and union-busting organized labor on campus. In Ohio, Senate Bill 1 represented one of the sharpest expressions of this overarching authoritarian turn. It advanced the ruling class’s playbook for restructuring public higher education to discipline both students and faculty, further undermining any semblance of shared governance while subordinating education to austerity and corporate interests.
Of course, at Ohio University, these changes did not happen overnight, nor was SB1 the sole originator of them either. At the same time, the past year has demonstrated that resistance to this political moment is possible. Students, workers, and community members across Southeast Ohio have repeatedly refused political demoralization and passivity. The convergence of labor organizing, Palestine solidarity work, anti-ICE organizing, and struggles against racist repression on campus points toward the early formation of something larger than a series of disconnected issue campaigns. The central question now is whether these struggles can develop into a more organized, strategic, and durable movement capable not only of mobilizing resistance, but of building lasting power.
What this moment requires of our movement
The April 16 arrests of the two campus activists should be understood as a political test for the broader campus and regional movement. Whether OU’s administration, the police, and the state are successful in isolating these activists is dependent largely on whether our movements are capable of transforming moments of repression into opportunities for broader political organization and united-front action.
For these reasons, launching a serious public defense campaign for the two activists must become an immediate priority. Such a campaign can serve not merely as a vehicle for fundraising for their legal fund and political solidarity, but more importantly as an organizing tool capable of unifying student groups, faculty, workers, and broader regional forces around shared democratic demands. Public defense campaigns historically become most effective when they move beyond symbolic outrage and instead function as vehicles for mass participation, political education, coalition-building, and sustained pressure campaigns.
At the same time, the movement must honestly assess its own weaknesses and organizational limitations. Much of the current organizing terrain remains heavily centered on mobilizing without sufficient attention to deep, long-term organizing campaigns. Actions are frequently reactive, disconnected from broader strategic campaigns, and often carried out by relatively small layers of highly committed activists rather than rooted in broad and democratically organized constituencies. While disruptive protest tactics can play an important role under certain conditions, they cannot substitute for the slow and difficult work of developing durable organizations with deep roots among ordinary students and workers.
This weakness is particularly visible in the gap between widespread dissatisfaction on campus and the relatively narrow social composition of many activist spaces. There is deep frustration among students regarding affordability, declining educational quality, political repression, economic insecurity, and the broader direction of society. There has also been a noticeable shift in public opinion around issues such as Israel’s assault on Gaza and the expansion of ICE operations. Yet much of this energy remains untapped and politically unorganized.
Bridging that gap requires prioritizing open and democratic organizing structures capable of bringing new people into struggle rather than concentrating decision-making among a relatively small layer of experienced activists. Too often, organizing infrastructure revolves around informal leadership circles with limited mechanisms for leadership development, political clarity, or mass participation. If movements are to grow beyond episodic mobilizations, they must create structures that systematically develop new organizers, deepen political education, and integrate broader layers of students and workers into active participation.
This also requires a far deeper unification between the student movement and organized labor on campus. The faculty unionization drive demonstrated that large numbers of campus workers are prepared to struggle collectively against austerity and administrative overreach. Students and workers are confronting different expressions of the same political project: the transformation of higher education into a more authoritarian, corporate, and unequal institution. A stronger alignment between labor and student organizing would significantly expand the social power and durability of resistance on campus.
Ultimately, the strategic task ahead is not simply to mobilize against each new outrage as it emerges. It is to develop democratic, militant, and deeply rooted organizations capable of contesting institutional power over the long term. The political conditions that produced the events of the past year are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The question is whether movements on campuses like Ohio University can evolve accordingly.
Photo: “End the Silence” protesters rally against Ohio Senate Bill 1 outside Peden Stadium in Athens, Ohio, Feb. 27, 2025. (Emma Reed / The Post)
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Amid genocide and ethnic cleansing, Palestinians vote in local elections
By FABIO BOSCO
On April 25, local elections were held in the West Bank and in one municipality in Gaza: Deir al-Balah. A total of 6917 Palestinians ran as candidates on electoral lists in 381 electoral districts (villages or municipalities).
Voting took place in half of the electoral districts, where more than one list of candidates was presented. Turnout was 56% of the one million Palestinians eligible to vote. In Deir al-Balah, turnout was 22.7% (16,000 out of 70,000 voters). In the other half of the localities, no voting took place, as was the case in major cities such as Ramallah and Nablus. In East Jerusalem (Al-Quds ash-Sharqiya in Arabic), voting was prevented by the State of Israel.
The elections were called by the Palestinian National Authority with the aim of regaining some legitimacy, as its policy of collaboration with the Israeli occupation is highly unpopular, having proven contrary to the interests of the majority of Palestinians. The sole beneficiary of this collaboration is the Palestinian bourgeoisie linked to the occupation’s businesses.
To prevent its unpopularity from being reflected in the elections, the PNA imposed a rule requiring candidates to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, as well as to recognize the State of Israel and the cooperation agreements.
Hamas and the PFLP announced they would not participate in the elections. The DFLP criticized the move but participated on some independent slates. For its part, the People’s Party (PPP, formerly the Communist Party) participated while attempting to distance itself from the Palestinian Authority government of which it is a part.
About 88% of the candidates ran as independents for electoral reasons, although many were members of Palestinian parties, primarily Fatah.
In Deir al-Balah, in Gaza, four lists ran. All were announced as independent, but in reality the “Rise of Deir al-Balah” list, close to Fatah, won six of the 15 council seats, and “Deir al-Balah Unites Us,” closer to Hamas, won two seats. Of the independent lists, “Future of Deir al-Balah” won five seats and “Peace and Reconstruction” won three.
A development celebrated by women’s rights activists was the election of 21.4% female council members, exceeding the 20% quota required by law. Among them were three female mayors.
Despite the turnout, Palestinians’ expectations regarding the councils and the PNA are low. On the one hand, the violence of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank precludes any sense of normalcy. On the other hand, the experience with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, whose president was elected in 2005 and the legislature in 2006, is very negative. Most Palestinians voted for practical reasons, since these councils are responsible for basic services such as garbage collection and water supply. But everyone knows that these elections are not part of a national liberation project.
Any national liberation project must be based on the unity of the entire Palestinian people, currently divided by the Israeli occupation; approximately half live within occupied Palestine (the West Bank, Gaza, Al-Quds, and Palestine of 1948) and the other half in the diaspora or as refugees.
The elections could be a powerful tool for revitalizing the Palestinian national movement and for debating and deciding the course of the struggle for national liberation. The PLO would have all the means to organize such elections, registering all Palestinian families, organizing free debates, and holding virtual elections worldwide.
The point is that the current leadership would be swept away and the unpopular project of cooperation with the Israeli occupation would be buried. Hence the lack of interest among PLO leaders in holding them. The Zionists, too, have no interest in facing a renewed Palestinian national movement with new strategies of struggle.
The policy of normalization with the State of Israel, embodied in the 1993 Oslo Accords, has proven to be a failure for the Palestinians, who are experiencing an expansion of colonization combined with the genocidal violence of the Israeli army and Zionist settlers.
On the other hand, the politics of resistance have resulted in the loss of legitimacy of the State of Israel in the eyes of peoples around the world, particularly in the Western imperialist countries that are its main supporters. This delegitimization of Zionism benefits the Palestinian resistance, as well as the weakening of Israel following the military aggression against Iran.
The strengthening of the Palestinian resistance, armed or otherwise, together with the working class and youth of Arab countries and around the world, is the path to achieving a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
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Who is Zé Maria?
Longtime Brazilian industrial union leader and political activist faces a two-year prison sentence for speech in defense of Palestinian liberation
By PSTU – Brazil
The trajectory of José Maria de Almeida, Zé Maria, is intertwined with the recent history of the Brazilian workers’ movement. Starting as a metalworker, he began his political activism during the military dictatorship. He participated in some of the main mobilizations that marked the pro-democracy movement, the process of trade union reorganization, and the political disputes of recent decades.
Born in 1957 in the interior of São Paulo, Zé Maria entered political activism as an industrial metalworker, already linked to the Trotskyist current Socialist Convergence, which opposed the military regime (1964–1985).
Repression was a constant reality. In 1977, he was arrested while distributing materials calling for May Day mobilizations and remained detained for about 30 days. The episode generated repercussions and mobilized student and pro-democratic sectors.
In 1980, during the historic ABC region metalworkers’ strike, he was again arrested, along with then-union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – now President Lula – and other leaders. The arrests occurred under the National Security Law and embodied the regime’s repression of strikes that brought together hundreds of thousands of workers.
Workers’ reorganization and Diretas Já
The late 1970s and 1980s were marked by an intense process of reorganization of the Brazilian workers’ movement after years of repression during the dictatorship. Large-scale strikes, massive assemblies, and new forms of collective organization challenged the state-controlled union model.
Inserted in this context, Zé Maria actively participated in mobilizations that combined economic demands (such as wage adjustments and better working conditions) with a growing political dimension of confronting the regime.
The ABC region strikes in the late 1970s and early 1980s paved the way for a new stage of organization for the country’s working class. This process expanded to other regions and categories, contributing to the formation of a new generation of union leaders.
In this scenario, Zé Maria was also present in the Diretas Já (Rights Now!) campaign, one of the largest popular mobilizations in Brazilian history. Millions of people took to the streets demanding the right to direct presidential elections, pressuring the military regime and accelerating the democracy movement.
Together with Socialist Convergence, Zé Maria advocated for connecting the struggle for democratic freedoms with the demands of the working class. For these sectors, political democratization needed to go hand in hand with the expansion of social rights and the strengthening of workers’ independent organizations.
The Lins Congress and the building of the PT and CUT
In the early 1980s, the advancement of workers’ struggles brought to the fore the need for the working class’s own political representation. Zé Maria directly participated in this debate, present at meetings and in articulations aimed at shaping this project.
Among these spaces, the so-called Lins Congress, held in Lins, stood out, bringing together union leaders, activists, and left-wing currents around the country’s political and union reorganization. The meeting was part of a broader process that questioned structures inherited from the dictatorship and advocated for workers’ political independence.
In this context, Zé Maria played an active role in defending the creation of a workers’ party that would directly express the interests of the working class and not be subordinated to bourgeois projects. He presented and defended the proposal to create a workers’ party. Once the proposal was approved, articulations began for the founding of the Workers’ Party (PT) in 1980, a milestone in the political reorganization of the Brazilian left.
In parallel, the construction process of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT – Unified Workers’ Center) developed, having been founded in 1983. Zé Maria was also involved in this initiative, which sought to reorganize the union movement on an independent basis. The CUT emerged as an alternative to the state-bound unionism inherited from the authoritarian period, proposing a new form of organization based on autonomy, internal democracy, and direct worker mobilization. Zé Maria’s participation in these processes evidences his involvement in two of the main institutional milestones of the contemporary Brazilian workers’ movement.
Role in the CUT and union leadership
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Zé Maria served on the national board of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores, participating in one of the most intense periods of organization and consolidation of post-dictatorship Brazilian unionism. The CUT quickly became the country’s main union federation, bringing together strategic economic categories and playing a decisive role in struggles for labor rights, wage restoration, and expansion of social guarantees in a context marked by high inflation and economic instability.
As a part of this process, Zé Maria engaged in central debates about the center’s direction, including strategies to confront federal government economic policies and forms of strike organization, and advocated for grassroots organizing and workers’ democracy. His work was linked to sectors that defended combative, independent unionism, with an emphasis on working-class autonomy from the state, governments, and business interests. This position placed him within the internal disputes that marked the CUT throughout its history, especially at moments of political inflection for the central. During this period, he participated in national mobilizations, wage campaigns, and inter-union negotiations, contributing to the consolidation of an organizational model that sought to break with the corporatist unionism inherited from the dictatorship.
Zé Maria’s presence on the CUT’s national board for several years evidences his relevance within the Brazilian union movement, especially among sectors that defended a more combative and autonomous approach.
The Mannesmann strike
In the late 1980s, amid a period of severe economic instability, high inflation, and intensifying labor conflicts in the country, one of the most striking episodes in Zé Maria’s trajectory occurred: the strike by Mannesmann workers in Contagem, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte.
Mannesmann, one of the country’s main metallurgical industries at the time, concentrated a large contingent of workers and played a strategic role in industrial production. The work environment was marked by demands related to wages, working conditions, and labor rights during a period when the economic crisis directly affected the working class. The strike, which began in 1988, quickly gained political and labor-movement-wide dimensions. Zé Maria was the movement’s main leader, acting in organizing assemblies, articulating among workers, and defining mobilization strategies. Unlike traditional work stoppages, the movement at Mannesmann took a radical turn. At a certain point, workers occupied the factory and exercised direct control over production, maintaining activities under workers’ management for several days.
The occupation represented a qualitative leap in the form of struggle, breaking with the usual limits of strikes and bringing the debate over workers’ control of production to the forefront. This type of action carried strong symbolic and political weight, directly questioning employer authority within the productive space.
The episode occurred in a national context of hardening labor disputes. In the same period, other mobilizations faced repression, such as the strike at the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN, National Metal Company) in Volta Redonda, also in 1988, which ended with military intervention and the deaths of workers.
Taking place in Contagem, the Mannesmann strike stood out not only for its radicality but also for the level of worker organization. Massive assemblies with broad participation guided the movement’s direction, while grassroots commissions and internal structures ensured that the actions could proceed smoothly.
The experience had national repercussions and became a reference point for sectors of the union movement that advocated more combative strategies. At the same time, it intensified internal debate within the workers’ movement about the limits and possibilities of the forms of struggle adopted.
For Zé Maria, participation in this process consolidated his prominence as a combative union leader associated with sectors that defended greater confrontation with employers and political independence for the working class. The Mannesmann strike remains an emblematic episode of workers’ struggles during the democratic transition period, expressing both the mobilizing potential of the working class and the tensions that marked union reorganization in Brazil.
Rupture with the PT and founding of the PSTU
In the 1990s, political disputes within the PT intensified, reflecting different conceptions about political strategy, alliances, and institutional participation.
The Socialist Convergence current, of which Zé Maria was a member, took a critical stance toward changes in the party’s orientation, especially regarding participation in governments, alliances with bourgeois sectors, and adaptation to the rules of the institutional political system.
One of the points of greatest tension occurred during the political crisis that led to the impeachment of then-President Fernando Collor de Mello. At that time, the slogan “Out with Collor” gained strength on the streets, driven by student, union, and grassroots mobilizations.
Zé Maria, together with Socialist Convergence, was at the forefront of defending the ouster of the government, publicly adopting the slogan “Out with Collor” and actively participating in organizing street protests. Within the PT, however, there were disagreements about the form and pace of this mobilization. Sectors of the party leadership prioritized the institutional path and the progress of formal investigations in the National Congress.
The internal conflicts intensified, highlighting strategic differences regarding the relationship between mass mobilization and institutional action. These divergences, along with other political clashes, culminated in 1992 in the expulsion of Zé Maria and all Socialist Convergence militants from the PT, a process marked by intense internal disputes and repercussions throughout the Brazilian left.
Following this rupture, Zé Maria and all militants of the current began building a new political organization, which resulted in the founding of the PSTU in 1994. Zé Maria played a prominent role in this process, participating in the political and organizational articulation that gave rise to the new party. Since then, he has become one of its main national leaders.
The PSTU was constituted as a Trotskyist party, focusing its work on organizing the working class, intervening in social movements, and criticizing policies adopted by various governments. The founding of the PSTU marked the continuation of a political tradition that sought to maintain class independence as the central axis of action, in contrast to paths taken by other institutional left forces in the period.
Rupture with the CUT and construction of CSP-ConlutasIn the early 2000s, the Brazilian political landscape underwent significant changes as Lula and the PT came to power. The election of a leader from the union movement posed new questions about the role of workers’ organizations in relation to the federal government.
In this context, sectors of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) began adopting a more government-aligned posture, prompting internal criticism. Zé Maria, as a member of the central’s national executive, stood out in defending the central’s political independence from the Executive branch.Divergences deepened especially during the debate over pension reform proposed at the beginning of Lula’s first term. For those opposing the reform, the reform represented an attack on historic workers’ rights. This process led to the rupture with the CUT and the construction of a new union and grassroots movement formation: Conlutas (National Coordination of Struggles). The initiative sought to bring together unions, social movements, youth organizations, and land land rights’ movements around a proposal for independent action.
Over the years, Conlutas consolidated and gave rise to CSP-Conlutas, which began operating as a union and grassroots central with a presence in different regions of the country. CSP-Conlutas seeks to strengthen union struggles with ties to broader social movements, taking up questions related to land, housing, youth, and struggles against oppression.
In 2026, the central held its 6th Congress in São Paulo, bringing together about 1,500 participants, including delegates and observers, to discuss the national situation, union organization, and mobilization strategies, also marking two decades in its journey. Zé Maria’s participation in this process reaffirms his role in key moments of reorganization of the Brazilian union movement, both in building and in breaking away from and creating new structures.
Candidacies and the campaign against FTAA
Zé Maria was a candidate for President of the Republic in four elections — 1998, 2002, 2010, and 2014, representing the PSTU each time. His candidacies occurred in a context of strong political polarization and consolidation of major parties in the Brazilian electoral scenario.
Even with a small structure and limited airtime, the PSTU’s campaigns fulfilled the role of presenting a socialist program and giving visibility to the workers’ movement’s priorities, using the electoral process as a space for political intervention. The slogan ‘Against the bourgeoisie, vote 16’ is well known and associated with the party to this day.
Among the central themes of these campaigns were criticism of economic policies adopted by different governments, the defense of labor rights, denunciation of social inequalities, and opposition to measures considered harmful to the working class.
One of the most prominent moments of this period was the party’s role in the campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in the early 2000s. The project, driven by the United States, envisioned creating a free trade zone covering the entire American continent.
The PSTU actively participated in mobilizations against the FTAA, organizing campaigns, debates, and actions together with unions, social movements, and youth sectors. For the party, the agreement would represent a deepening of Latin America’s economic dependence on central powers.
The rejection of the FTAA, which ultimately was not implemented, resulted from a combination of political factors and resistance from different social sectors on the continent, a context in which the PSTU’s work was situated.
Zé Maria’s candidacies helped inject issues related to the world of labor and socialism into the public debate and consolidate his presence as the party’s political spokesperson at the national level.
Political amnesty
The arrests and persecutions suffered by Zé Maria during the military dictatorship were later recognized in the political amnesty process in Brazil, as part of reparations measures. Like him, several militants linked to the former Socialist Convergence also had their status as political persecutees recognized by the Brazilian state, due to the harms they suffered for their role participating in workers’ and democratic struggles.
This process gained public visibility, especially with the so-called Amnesty Caravans, which brought trials and public hearings to various regions of the country, transforming institutional recognition into moments of historical recovery and affirmation of the memory of resistance to the dictatorship.
Parallel to this official process, militants and organizations linked to the political tradition of Socialist Convergence, whose tradition is today continued by the PSTU, also advanced their own initiatives for memory, denunciation, and appreciation of the histories of struggle against the military regime.
Amnesty is not just a legal act of individual reparation, but part of a permanent political struggle. Preserving the memory of the persecutions, arrests, and resistance is fundamental to understanding Brazil’s recent history and strengthening the political consciousness of new generations.
Therefore, the defense of memory, truth, and justice appears as a central element in Zé Maria’s militant work, which is part of a collective experience of militancy that spans the authoritarian period and projects into present political struggles.
Internationalist activism
Zé Maria also carries out internationalist work as part of the International Workers’ League – Fourth International (IWL-FI). This organization comprises socialist movements around the world and participates in political debates and organizing work alongside social and union movements on an international scale. Throughout his career, he has taken positions on different conflicts and political processes in the world, defending, in line with the PSTU, support for struggles he considers linked to the resistance of workers and oppressed peoples.
In this field, notable positions include support for popular mobilizations in Latin America, such as social struggle processes in Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela; backing for workers’ movements and strikes throughout the world; and solidarity with popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, especially during the cycle of mobilizations known as the Arab Spring. Also included in this context is opposition to wars and military interventions by major powers, with criticism of actions by the United States and NATO in different regions.
Among these positions, his work in defense of the Palestinian cause stands out. Zé Maria is for the creation of a free, secular, and democratic Palestine as a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. In public statements, he has sided with the resistance of the Palestinian people and defended the dissolution of the State of Israel, a position aligned with the political line of the PSTU and IWL-FI.
It is precisely because of these positions that Zé Maria has been the target of political persecution, recently sentenced to 2 years’ confinement for statements made in defense of the Palestinian cause, on charges of antisemitism.
This accusation is unfounded and distorts his political positions. His work is based on anti-Zionism, understood as criticism of Zionism and the policies of the State of Israel, especially regarding the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories.
The case has already had an international impact. Organizations, militants, and left-wing entities have been promoting an international campaign for support and solidarity with Zé Maria, denouncing the conviction and defending the right to express political positions in international debate freely.
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Philadelphia garage collapse highlights dangers for construction workers
By JOHN LESLIE
On April 8, a parking garage under construction in Philadelphia’s Gray’s Ferry neighborhood collapsed, killing three members of Ironworkers’ Local 401—Stepan Shevchuk, Matthew Kane, and Mark Scott Jr. and injuring at least two. The garage was intended to serve employees of the nearby Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
According to news accounts, the collapse was the result of the failure of a precast concrete roof panel, causing the floors below to fail on impact. Following the disaster, the building was deemed too unstable for recovery efforts and demolished.
It is still unclear what caused this accident. Precast concrete can pose increased safety risks during installation, including uncontrolled collapse, crane accidents due to failed connections, or crushing injuries due to high weight. Neighborhood residents have expressed concern about whether they would be compensated for possible damage to their homes and about the temporary closure of the neighborhood grocery store because of its proximity to the job site.
CHOP’s decision to build the parking garage in a predominantly Black working-class neighborhood had been met with fierce opposition from community members who were concerned about traffic from hundreds of cars on a daily basis and the structure’s proximity to a children’s playground. Both CHOP and the city administration ignored the concerns of neighborhood residents.
Dangers
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “There were 5,070 fatal work injuries recorded in the United States in 2024. … The fatal work injury rate was 3.3 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers.” In 2023, structural steel and ironworkers had a fatal injury rate of 19.8 per 100,000—second only to roofers (57.5 per 100,000). Fatality rates in construction are disproportionately higher in the nonunion sector. A 2023 New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) report showed that “OSHA’s 39 construction fatality investigations in 2021 … found that in New York State, 82% of workers who died on private worksites were non-union. In the 15 OSHA-investigated sites in New York City, 80% of the construction workers who died were non-union.”
The report continues, “Latinx workers make up a disproportionately high percentage of worker fatalities in New York. An estimated 10% of New York State’s workers are Latinx, but in 2021, 25.5% of worker fatalities were of Latinx workers—a 42% percent increase from 18% in 2020.” Housing construction, which is predominantly nonunion, has a much higher rate than commercial and industrial construction which has a higher union density.
Trump’s Cuts to OSHA and NIOSH
President Trump, a failed casino owner, game-show host, and fake champion of working people, has implemented drastic cuts to an already anemic Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). These cuts devalue the lives of every worker.
A letter released by Senator Elizabeth Warren in February 2026 points out that Trump has “eliminated the authority of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA)—which protects coal miners from hazards like black lung disease—to require mine operates to ensure proper ventilation and prevent roof collapses in mines. Announced plans to eliminate requirements for adequate lighting on construction sites—even though about one of every twenty construction worker deaths are caused by visibility issues, including poor lighting. Construction is the leading sector for worker fatalities. Announced plans to limit OSHA’s ability to hold employers accountable for unsafe working conditions in inherently unsafe professions. And loosened respirator requirements for workers exposed to carcinogens, lead, asbestos, and formaldehyde.”
Under Trump, the Department of Labor has revised guidelines for workplace safety and will carry out nearly 10,000 fewer workplace hazard inspections. The administration plan includes an 8% overall OSHA budget cut reducing OSHA’s funding from $632.3 million in FY 2025 to $582.4 million in FY 2026. OSHA will spend $23.7 million less on enforcement than the previous year reduce OSHA’s workforce from 1810 to 1587 employees. Among the guideline changes is the extension of time allotted to remediate workplace hazards “by redefining “immediately,” which used to mean during the inspection or on the day that it occurred, but now can take up to 15 days.” In 2025, OSHA “performed 20% fewer inspections during a six-month period compared to the same period in 2024. Additionally, the data shows 42% fewer fines issued for severe workplace violations.”
NIOSH, which is not an enforcement agency, plays a key role in developing workplace safety programs and educational materials. According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, “The loss of at least 90 percent of NIOSH’s workforce will affect the development and flow of research information and the creation of up-to-date methodologies that keep people safe, essentially making an increase in injury and illness within the workforce inevitable.”
Fight for unions and safety
Trump’s cuts to workplace safety are an attack on all workers for the benefit of the capitalist class. The fight for more robust workplace protections is necessarily a task of the unions, which have the ability to codify safety protections in union contracts. This includes necessary language to address climate-driven heat waves, which can adversely affect workers’ health and well-being. Shop stewards should have the right to shut down operations in any workplace to address safety concerns.
For the building trades, it is imperative to organize all workers who engage in construction work regardless of sector or national origin. This means breaking down the craft union parochialism of the unions. With union density in the U.S. construction industry down to a record low of roughly 11.1% in 2025, organizing the unorganized is essential to the very survival of the unions. There were 916,000 union members in 2024 in the building trades, down from 39.5% density 50 years ago. A more combative class-struggle unionism would benefit all workers, not just the trades.
Part of an organizing drive in construction would harness the energy of the immigrant workforce, who are the backbone of much of the construction industry. Front and center in this fight would be the struggle for workplace safety. Every worker deserves to go home at night uninjured. Their kids deserve to grow up with a parent. The bosses and their mouthpiece, Donald Trump, have shown in practice how little they value our lives. It’s time to fight back!
The best memorial to our fallen brothers Stepan Shevchuk, Matthew Kane, and Mark Scott Jr. is to build a world where our lives and work are valued. An injury to one is an injury to all.
The writer is a union carpenter
Photo: Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer
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Farewell comrade Jan Talpe! Long live socialism!
By INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’LEAGUE – FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
We inform all members and supporters of our organization of the passing of Comrade Jan Talpe, a member of the Belgian LCT and the International Moral Commission. His passing is a profoundly painful loss. This is not because it was unexpected or surprising. On the contrary, it is painful because it was a conscious decision, and we had to endure an agonizing wait. For many years, we held this exceptional human being and comrade in high regard, enjoying his boundless generosity, his ability and clarity of thought, his fraternal humor, and his humility.
Without a doubt, our most senior militant has left us. Even at 92 years old, he remained active, dedicated, and disciplined until his final hours. He never sought to be a leader. Throughout his long and intense life and militant career, however, he trained and built revolutionary cadres in several countries and made important theoretical contributions that were published by our international organization.
His ideological, political, and geographical journey is striking. Born in 1933 in Belgium amid the rise of Nazism, he was raised in a Catholic family and was taught the value of “charity.” In his early youth, he decided to devote his life to the priesthood. During his education, he earned a degree in theology and a doctorate in physics.
While serving as a missionary in Brazil during the Castelo Branco dictatorship, he witnessed the hardships endured by the exploited and oppressed masses. It was there that he first encountered Marxism. He became radicalized and decisively engaged in the struggle of the oppressed. In keeping with his convictions, he moved to a working-class neighborhood. The exploiters’ state persecuted and imprisoned him for six months. A strong campaign in Belgium and internationally secured his release, after which he was deported.
He did not capitulate or break. He broke with the Church and began a new search. During his travels, he returned to Latin America and visited Chile after meeting Loly in France. She would become the love of his life and the mother of his children. She was participating in activities against the Pinochet dictatorship. He settled in Argentina. In the suburbs of Buenos Aires, against the backdrop of the Falklands War, he became involved with the IWL and helped found the MAS in Argentina.
A decade later, the uprisings in Eastern Europe and the USSR against capitalist restoration presented an opportunity and challenge for the IWL. Jan and Loly were on the front lines, along with their two children, and they settled in East Germany. There, they worked tirelessly with the “Eastern Team,” which united the region from Belgium and Germany to Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. Jan and Loly’s fluency in several languages was essential for translating numerous texts and interpreting at events throughout Europe and other countries.
Our beloved comrade Loly passed away in 2014, and we will always remember her as an icon of the IWL. We could go on at length about Jan’s exemplary and inspiring journey up to the present day. As recently as January 2026, the Brazilian government granted Jan amnesty. However, our greatest tribute to Jan is to share his farewell message:
Dear comrades in struggle,
My health is deteriorating day by day to the point where staying alive is becoming increasingly difficult. I have decided to leave. I bid you farewell with a smile.
A smile for having been able to live. To live as one of the 300 million mammals endowed with cognitive capacity on a planet where our species is threatened with extinction, just as the dinosaurs disappeared tens of millions of years ago, unless we reverse the calamity of concentrating the comfort of consumer goods in the hands of a tiny minority that disposes of the means to produce them as it pleases instead of fostering the development of these goods for all of humanity. I smile at having been able to participate in the fight to confront that calamity.
From my mother, I learned to do good for others without understanding who does evil. I also learned not to understand why there are “good” people and “bad” people depending on where they were born or the parents they happened to have. The “bad” ones stole jobs from the “good” ones.
In those nine decades—or at least from the age when those around me said, “He can dress himself now,” until they began to say, “He can still dress himself”—I learned that the “bad” people were bad because they mistreated the “good” ones and that there was a struggle between good and evil. I learned to choose a side in that struggle. I joined the “good guys” to confront the “bad guys.” In those struggles, I met people who could explain what that “mistreatment” entailed.
I learned that “class struggle” is not a bad term. I learned that there are bourgeois and proletarians. I learned that there is a struggle between them.
I have chosen a side. I have studied what that entails based on what Karl, Friedrich, Vladimir Ilyich, and Lev Davidovich explained and did by actively participating in the struggle. Today, on the eve of bringing this life of struggle to an end, I am proud to have behaved for decades in a manner consistent with that while remaining aware of my weaknesses.
I smile because for half a century, Loli, the mother of my children, has been by my side, selflessly and steadfastly struggling alongside the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
Comrades in struggle, today, April 20, 2026, I let go of your hands with a smile.
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Check out Forja Socialista no. 16, Mexican workers’ newspaper
Check out the April-May 2026 edition of Forja Socialista, the newspaper of Corriente Socialista de los Trabajadores, sympathizing section of the IWL-FI in Mexico. Click through the link for articles on the World Cup, the so-called “Second Phase of the Fourth Transformation” rolled out by the government, crises for PEMEX workers, struggles by teachers and fabric workers, government repression, and more! All contents in Spanish.
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California to share immigrants’ DMV records with Feds
By HERMAN MORRIS
This article is based on a speech that the author delivered at a rally May 1 in Mountain View, California.
The demonization and attack on immigrants remains a bipartisan project. Case in point, this past week the governor’s office of California announced that it will be turning over the driver’s license data of all 1 million undocumented immigrant drivers in the state to a federal database where their names, information, and addresses can be looked up.
In response to pressure from the Department of Homeland Security, California is to provide DMV records to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, who will enter it into SPEXS, a national database used to search for duplicate licenses that could be used to deny Real ID’s. Because these records are open to state employees and contractors, there is no way to ensure it will not be used by DHS to find and deport workers without papers. Information on the database revealing that a person does not have a Social Security number could signal to DHS authorities that they are subject to deportation.
While implementation may be dependent on the legislature voting funds for the process, this decision has not yet been legally challenged and as of yet there have been no rallies opposing it.
This is coming from the Democratic Party—the party that says it stands with immigrants! If they are willing to do this today, what will they do next? Send a list of minorities in the state to the federal government? Create a national database of those who have abortions or seek gender affirming care? The Democratic Party does this because it is ultimately responsible to the same big business owners and donors that the Republicans are. The only way out for us is to recall the legacies and victories of May Days past, build a movement in the streets and in the workplaces, make demands on the government, and stand up collectively for our rights.
Once again, the question of international solidarity rears its head. Who is and who is not a citizen is something that the U.S. government has defined and redefined for as long as it has been around—at various moments expanding it dramatically when it needed more workers, and restricting it at times of political crisis. We are currently in a moment of restriction, when undocumented workers are reviled by both big parties in the U.S., who have each taken a hand in building the border wall between the United States and Mexico and expanding the strength of ICE and developing it into the secret police that it is today.
ICE is now an unchained attack dog that targets undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, and even full U.S. citizens—as we saw most dramatically in Minneapolis with the shootings of Renée Nichole Good and Alex Pretti. This presents working people with a challenge: Are workers from other countries who come here looking for a decent wage and the freedom to live their lives as they see fit able to become U.S. citizens? We must say YES! And this can only be achieved through the dismantling of ICE and other forms of immigration enforcement and the extension of a quick and painless process of attaining U.S. citizenship for all.
Without these two demands guaranteed, the question of who will have the rights of a U.S. citizen will always be played with by the ruling elites who run this country. The issue will continue to be used to divide working people, whom they try to trick into thinking that the worker from another nation is not their friend and ally.
The Democratic Party’s betrayal of immigrants in California is a devastating attack on our communities. Defending ourselves from the government’s unmitigated attacks and surveillance requires us to go further than just electing Democrats, who sell us down the river the moment that it becomes politically expedient. Unions and community organizations in California must come together and discuss what must be done to protect our communities from government attacks, and nationally to coordinate our efforts and move beyond the corrupt wreckage of the Democratic Party.
Photo: Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times
