For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

1 week ago

Three Times Workers Resisted Fascism in Minnesota History

Historical examples of workers resisting the oligarchical forces of fascism and authoritarianism.

workdaymagazine.org/three-times-workers-resisted-fascism-in-minnesota-history/

BY AMIE STAGER | April 3, 2025

Workers and unions across the U.S. are raising the alarm about the Trump administration’s attempts to divide the working class.

“They want us to be distracted by attacking the working class on innumerable fronts, but we must stand united,” said University of Minnesota Twin Cities graduate worker Greyson Arnold at a recent rally organized by AFSCME 3800, which represents clerical workers, and GLU-UE Local 1105, which represents graduate workers.

The Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1 located in Staten Island, New York, released a statement on immigrant solidarity, saying they refuse to be divided: “By standing together across all lines of difference, we are building a movement stronger than their fear tactics, stronger than their threats. That unity will break their divide-and-conquer strategy and make real change possible. We call on workers, communities, and the labor movement to join us in defending immigrant rights as a core labor issue. A threat to one is a threat to all, and we will not stand by while our coworkers are targeted.”

Union leaders have pointed to the importance of building worker power in response to division attempts. “When they come after one group, they come for us all,” said Association of Flight Attendants International President Sara Nelson at a rally for Delta Air Lines workers in January. “Nothing on this Earth turns without us. If we understand our power in this moment and we organize together and have each other’s backs, we can take action. Strike action, organized action, moral action.”

In an interview with Bob Hennelly, Nelson said that after the elimination of collective bargaining rights for Transportation Security Administration workers by the Department of Homeland Security, workers have “very few options but to join together to organize a general strike.”

On March 27, President Trump signed an executive order to end collective bargaining for many federal employees, which Minnesota AFL-CIO president Bernie Burnham has called“unprecedented union busting.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO also released a statement on January 26 in support of immigrant workers. “Trump and his billionaire friends are counting on workers to turn on one another while they cut their own taxes, gut worker safety standards, roll back union rights, and more,” the statement reads. “Every worker should remember that an immigrant doesn’t stand between you and a better life – a billionaire does.”

Workers have a long and storied history of resisting attempts to pit them against each other. We found examples specific to Minnesota’s labor movement, which has a militant legacy that can be learned from today. Workers organized and mobilized to take defensive and offensive measures against various forces—hate groups, corporations, and corporate-backed elected officials—that sought to violently divide their communities and hoard resources.

Teamsters Local 574 Forms Union Defense Guard in 1938

In “It can’t happen here?” Joe Allen wrote about the Teamsters’ fight against the Silver Shirts in Minneapolis. The global economic crises of the 1920s and ‘30s empowered a rise in fascism. Hate groups formed in Europe and the United States, and Minneapolis was host to one of the largest chapters of the nationalist, fascist, and pro-Nazi Silver Shirts, AKA the Silver Legion of America. Sarah Atwood wrote about the organization for Minnesota History. Founded on January 30, 1933, as a paramilitary organization by journalist and Christian mystic William Dudley Pelley, the group also faced opposition in Minnesota, where the informal Anti-Defamation Council was organized to investigate antisemitism. In 1936, journalist Eric Sevareid began reporting on the Silver Shirts for the Minneapolis Journal, hoping to raise the alarm, although he felt his editors were framing the organization as unserious.

Workers in the 1934 Teamsters’ truckers’ strike defend the picket line against the private army of the Citizen’s Alliance. Image from the Minnesota Historical Society.

In Teamster Politics, union activist, communist organizer, and historian Farrell Dobbs wrote about the Union Defense Guard, which was a group of union members that mobilized to confront the Silver Shirts in 1938, four years after Teamsters Local 574 (also known as Local 544 in some sources) led the truckers’ strike that transformed Minneapolis into a union town. Dobbs was one of the initiators of the strike, which challenged the Citizen’s Alliance, an anti-union business oligarchy that was renamed to Associated Industries. When the Silver Shirts came to town, they threatened to raid the union’s headquarters and were using violent rhetoric against the re-election of Farmer-Labor governor Elmer Benson. Local 574 staff, Indigenous worker, and military veteran Ray Rainbolt was commander of the Union Defense Guard, a multi-union formation that set up combat defense training and an intelligence unit for hundreds of union members. When Silver Shirts leader Pelley came to Minneapolis to deliver a speech, his cab driver reported it to Rainbolt, who led the Union Defense Guard to where Pelley was scheduled to speak. The audience that had gathered left, and Pelley fled the city. The Union Defense Guard thwarted other Silver Shirt gatherings in Minneapolis, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Pelley disbanded the organization.

Immigrant Women-Led Resistance in the Iron Range Strike of 1916

On June 2, 1916, after receiving a smaller paycheck than expected, Joe Greeni walked off the job at St. James Mine near Aurora, Minn., spontaneously sparking what would become a violent and deadly strike against the largest corporation in the United States at the time, a U.S. Steel subsidiary called Oliver Mining Company. Many different ethnic groups of immigrants worked in the mines, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sponsored parades and dances to bring people together during the strike. Women, who were included as members of the union, regularly attended these events and played active roles in strike defense, refusing to be intimidated and sometimes going to jail for peaceful and violent resistance in support of the strike.

Members of the IWW on a Sunday picnic during the 1916 Iron Range strike. Image from the Walter P. Reuther Library.

On July 28, private armed deputies hired by the company tried to shut down a parade, and women defended the marchers by rushing to the front. On another occasion reported in August by the pro-labor Mesaba Ore, women physically resisted against mine guards denying them access to fresh water at mining camps, where the company sometimes cut off access to wells. In late July, mine worker Louis Stremola was arrested for interfering with the arrest of a woman, allowing her to escape custody. Although the miners lost the strike, workers and their families were militant in their resistance to the oppression of the companies that wielded control over their communities.

In an analysis on the strike for the Mining History Journal, historical researcher and writer Pamela R. Stek wrote that the media, controlled by companies, focused on the transgression of gender norms to question immigrants’ citizenship and roles as mothers in order to paint them as dangerous agitators: “Women strike activists faced public censure when anti-strike reporters and editors denounced female strike supporters as unfit mothers and suggested that an IWW victory would lead to the breakdown of family and society.”

The People’s Pilgrimage of 1937

According to MNopedia, the Workers Alliance, an organization that mobilized unemployed workers across the U.S., established a temporary branch in Minnesota called the People’s Lobby. On April 4, 1937, they gathered over a thousand people at the state capitol in support of governor Benson’s legislative package allocating $17 million in aid to the unemployed. What began as a demonstration turned into an overnight occupation after an activist used a knife to open the senate chamber door. Around 200 people peacefully occupied the chambers overnight, where they gave speeches, sang songs, and ate hot dogs. Benson addressed the demonstration, speaking against the senate and corporate interests that were opposing higher taxes for the wealthy. He vocalized his support for the protesters, who left in the morning at Benson’s request.

People’s Lobby members gather during their occupation of the Minnesota Capitol on April 4, 1937. Image from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Benson was used to raising the ire of Republicans; during his time as governor, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked many of Benson’s radical proposals. Following the sit-in, Republican senators accused Benson of encouraging intimidation. The protest made national news, but Benson’s package did not pass, and Minnesota’s economy experienced a recession later that year.

By Amie Stager|April 3, 2025

Amie Stager is the Associate Editor for Workday Magazine. … See MoreSee Less

Three Times Workers Resisted Fascism in Minnesota History

workdaymagazine.org

Historical examples of workers resisting the oligarchical forces of fascism and authoritarianism.

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

4 weeks ago

A militant Zionist group threatens activists online with a ‘deport list’
“It’s ironic that a Jewish organization is putting together lists.”

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/29/zionist-palestinians-deportations-x/

A century-old Zionist group has resurfaced in the U.S. with a list of pro-Palestinian activists it wants arrested.

March 29, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDTToday at 6:00 a.m. EDT

People protest Thursday near Columbia University against the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and graduate student. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
By Will Oremus
Almost six weeks before federal immigration officials detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a group called Betar US said on its X account that it had put the pro-Palestinian activist on “our deport list.”

“It’s 10 p.m. and ICE is aware of his home address and whereabouts,” the group posted on Jan. 29 under a video of CNN interviewing Khalil at a campus protest, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We have provided all his information to multiple contacts.”
Khalil, a green-card holder married to a U.S. citizen, was detained on March 8. Three days later, Betar shared with The Washington Post a list of potential next targets it said it had recently flagged to Trump administration officials. At the top was Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student who was suspended twice last year for his role in pro-Palestinian protests there.
Now Taal, too, is fighting to stay in the country. Betar US, the newly revived and rapidly growing U.S. chapter of a century-old militant Zionist group, is claiming a share of the credit and moving on to the next names on its list.
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The Post couldn’t determine whether the group played a role in the Trump administration’s decision to target Khalil and Taal for deportation. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE “is not working with or received any tips through the ICE Tip Line from the group identified as Betar.”
But the Zionist group claims the government is listening, and so do attorneys for Khalil and Taal, whose student visa has been revoked: Both cited Betar in their respective lawsuits alleging that their clients are being targeted as part of an illegal crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech.
“We provided hundreds of names to the Trump administration of visa holders and naturalized Middle Easterners and foreigners,” said Daniel Levy, a spokesman for Betar. “These jihadis who oppose America and Israel have no place in our great country.”
Last fall, Betar was banned from Meta’s platforms after it made veiled death threats to pro-Palestinian lawmakers and college students. Now the group’s social media presence is unrestrained as it aligns itself with the Trump administration’s enforcement of executive orders calling for the expulsion of foreign nationals who engage in antisemitism or support terrorism.
Betar’s rising profile shows how Trump’s policies and rhetoric have emboldened a new crop of uncompromising Zionist groups that use social media to target individuals they view as antisemitic or sympathetic to Hamas — including some Jews.
In November, a stranger approached Taal in person at a protest in New York and handed him an electronic pager — a nod to Israel’s exploding-pager attack in September that killed or maimed scores of suspected Hezbollah members.
Handing pagers to pro-Palestinian activists, and calling on X for its supporters to do the same, has become Betar’s signature tactic. Its targets consider it a death threat; the group says it’s just an edgy joke.
On March 13, Betar published on X what it called a “deport alert” for Taal, noting his Cornell affiliation and visa status and quoting from his past X posts that the group said show his support for Hamas, which the United States has deemed a terrorist organization. The group quoted Taal as saying “glory to the resistance” after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people.
Responding to a question about whether he supported the group, Taal told The Post: “It is absurd to say that attending protests against the genocide makes someone a member of Hamas. I categorically reject this effort to conflate free speech with terrorism.”
Taal and two others filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York on March 15 asking a judge to block the Trump administration from enforcing its executive orders against Taal and others in similar situations. The suit attributed his “growing fear that he will be the target of an ICE removal operation” to “a pattern of escalating attention” from Betar and other Zionist groups “with the power to influence immigration enforcement decisions.”
The fear turned out to be well-founded. On March 19, officials from the Department of Homeland Security visited Taal’s residence in Ithaca, New York. Two days later, his attorneys received an email from Justice Department attorneys inviting Taal to surrender to ICE custody. A judge heard Taal’s request for an injunction and temporary restraining order Tuesday and could rule at any time.
Both Taal and Khalil had high-profile run-ins with authorities at their respective campuses before Betar began campaigning for their removal, and there’s no direct evidence that Betar influenced the government’s decision to pursue either of them. Nor is Betar the only pro-Israel actor claiming credit for helping the administration identify alleged Hamas sympathizers.
The day after Khalil was detained, a group called Shirion Collective posted a memorandum on X that it had sent to DHS on Jan. 27, laying out the “legal basis” for the Syrian-born Algerian’s “immediate detention and removal.” Shirion didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Another X account, called Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U, had posted about Khalil the day before his arrest, calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revoke his visa, not realizing that he was in the U.S. on a green card.
And after the government’s detention last week of Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University fellow from India, the conservative think tank Middle East Forum linked his arrest to a February article in which it reported on Suri’s ties to a Hamas official.
Following ICE’s request for Taal to turn himself in, Betar spokesman Levy told The Post that the group has “more and more reason to believe” that others on its list would soon be detained and deported as well.
“We want to say Shalom to many more Mahmouds and many more Momodous,” Levy said.
An Israeli flag flies in May near an encampment of protesters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology condemning Israel’s war effort in Gaza. (Steven Senne/AP)
‘Hand them a pager’
Betar was founded as a paramilitary Zionist youth movement in Latvia in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who believed a Jewish state in British-held Palestine could only be established by force. Among its alumni were conservative Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, and the group still boasts strong ties to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party.
Though Betar faded from political relevance once Israel was established, “the movement’s historical image is one of aggressive right-wing nationalist and militant activism,” said Guy Fiennes, a researcher at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
The revival of its U.S.-based chapter came only after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, said Ross Glick, who joined the resurgent group last year as its executive director, a role from which he stepped down in January.
Glick, an entrepreneur and marketing consultant in New York City, said he was “devastated” by the attack. When he saw pro-Palestinian demonstrators celebrating it on the streets of New York, “a switch flipped” and he became enraged. He began trying to document the demonstrators’ identities for potential investigation by law enforcement.
He linked up in 2024 with Ronn Torossian, a politically connectedpublic relations executive with a colorful past who shared Glick’s penchant for confronting activists. Torossian was working to resurrect Betar in the U.S. as a hard-line Zionist movement.
Before a visit to the University of Pittsburgh last fall, Glick announced on Instagram his plan to hand out pagers to members of the activist group Students for Justice in Palestine. That group reported Glick’s post to law enforcement as a bomb threat, and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, banned him and Betar from its platforms.
Undeterred, Betar refocused its social media efforts on X, which has generally dialed back content moderation while taking a more restrictive line against anti-Israeli slogans. There, on its verified account, it has challenged numerous pro-Palestinian activists, often exhorting its followers to “hand them a pager.”
In January, Betar posted on X that it aimed to raise $1,800 to hand a pager to a prominent Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani. The post linked to a GoFundMe page for the group, where it said it was a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
That irked Jenin Younes, a D.C.-based First Amendment lawyer whose father is Palestinian and who considers herself a supporter of the Palestinian cause, though not of Hamas. Younes is no advocate of online censorship: She represented some of the conservative plaintiffs in a 2023 Supreme Court case that accused the Biden administration of pressuring social media platforms to censor conservative speech that it deemed misinformation. But she drew the line at what she considered to be a threat on Kiswani’s life.
Younes responded to Kiswani’s post on X and said it was criminal conduct that neither X nor GoFundMe should allow. Betar quickly turned the tables, suggesting that its supporters give her a pager, too.
Younes said she reported the posts to X but received no response. Within hours, she said, she began receiving dozens of calls a day from an unknown number. On at least one occasion when she picked up, the caller began cursing and telling her to go back to her “Islamic s—hole.”
“I think when a group like this is making open death threats or threats of violence and nobody’s doing anything about it, that emboldens them,” Younes said.
X didn’t respond to a request for comment. GoFundMe said Betar’s efforts had been reviewed and found “in compliance with our terms of service.”
In February, Al Jazeera journalist Laila al-Arian posted what she said was a list of names of “Palestinian babies Israel killed before they reached their first birthday.” Betar responded, “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!” The post was removed, but Betar has since reposted screenshots of it.
Betar has also gone after Jewish people who criticize Israel, such as the liberal commentator and City University of New York journalism professor Peter Beinart. In February, Betar told its X followers that if they see Beinart on New York’s Upper West Side, they should give him a pager.
“Oppose my ideas all you want,” Beinart responded on X. “But when you urge people in my neighborhood to give me a pager — in the wake of Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon — that sounds like a death threat.”
In a phone interview, Beinart said: “It’s probably not coincidental that in a moment of enormous political thuggishness, in which Donald Trump sets the tone, there are a lot more people and groups that might be inclined to speak in that tone.”
In February, the Jewish civil rights group Anti-Defamation League added Betar to its glossary of extremism and hate, reporting that the group “openly embraces Islamophobia and harasses Muslims online and in person.” Betar is the only Jewish group on the list.
New York City police officers take people into custody near Columbia University in New York on April 30, 2024. (Craig Ruttle/AP)
Glick said he has met with both administration officials and lawmakers who welcome his input, including Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and James Lankford (Oklahoma) and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania). He has posted selfies and a video of himself interacting with Fetterman in a Capitol hallway in November, with Fetterman saying “I love it” when Glick described the “pager stunt.”
Neither Cruz nor Lankford returned requests for comment on their relationship with Betar. A spokesperson for Fetterman said the senator “strenuously denies any involvement whatsoever” and has never interacted with Glick or Betar beyond a single, incidental hallway run-in.
Glick stepped down as executive director of Betar in January after critics of the group resurfaced a scandal from his past, and Levy said Glick no longer speaks for Betar. Torossian declined to comment for this story.
Since the run-in with SJP in Pittsburgh, the tables have turned in Betar’s favor. Meta has reinstated Betar to its platforms, and earlier this month the University of Pittsburgh temporarily suspended SJP from its campus.
On Thursday, Betar posted on X a video of ICE officers arresting Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey. “She was on our list,” the group said, adding that it plans to send ICE a new list Monday of “approximately 1800 more jihadis.”
Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who is one of the attorneys representing Taal, said the degree to which Betar sets or merely aligns with the Trump administration’s agenda is immaterial.
“They’re still chilling speech, they’re still intimidating, they’re still creating a climate of fear,” he said, adding: “It’s ironic that a Jewish organization is putting together lists.” … See MoreSee Less

A militant Zionist group threatens activists online with a ‘deport list’

www.washingtonpost.com

As the Trump administration cracks down on antisemitism, Zionist group Betar has emerged as an ally, volunteering names of activists it wants detained next.

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

4 weeks ago

Campaign
Call to organize an International Forum against Political Persecution and Repression
socialistmiddleeast.com/call-to-organize-an-international-forum-against-political-persecution-and…

Socialist.jpegSocialist Mar 16, 2025 05:11159

Call to organize an International Forum against Political Persecution and Repression.jpeg
From one end of the planet to the other, the working masses are organizing the struggle in defense of their gains and their rights, against the barbaric consequences of the capitalist crisis that are being dumped on their backs. Uprisings, strikes, and mass mobilizations in recent years have confronted these attacks from capitalist governments, from mass strikes in Europe to rebellions in the Middle East and Latin America. From the mass street struggles in Argentina in 2017 and in the USA in 2020 to the struggle of the Palestinian resistance against imperialism and Zionism and the massive international solidarity movement created around it.

But also from one end of the planet to the other, these struggles and the organizations that the masses set up to wage them immediately become the object of the most ruthless persecution by capitalist governments that attack the right to strike, to organize and to protest and unleash the most implacable political persecution and McCarthyism.

With the deepening crisis of the capitalist social system as a whole – in particular since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of open war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine – a growing race to inter-imperialist war on a global scale has taken shape, which requires the intensification of repression also as a preventive measure. In the history of capitalism, the preparation of wars has always corresponded to the brutal restriction of democratic freedoms (where there were any), and this is happening now.

Organizations fighting against the genocide of the Palestinian people are persecuted and accused of being “anti-Semitic” by the accomplices of the criminal Netanyahu government, which include countless neo-nazi groups. To wage their war in the service of the Russian and NATO oligarch capitalists, Putin and Zelensky have practically eliminated any vestige of democratic law in Russia and Ukraine, starting with the right to strike. In Western countries, a systematic war of propaganda and ruthless repressive measures against emigrants and immigrants is underway, with the adoption of deportation plans against those who are presented as internal enemies.

All over the world, capitalist governments persecute the environmental protests of the people against capitalist plundering of our habitat and, to justify the unresolved persistence of the crisis, they scapegoat the “privileges” of minorities, promoting the attack on their rights and their organizations. Thus, they seek to criminalize movements for the defense of women's rights, black people, Latinos, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ people, to make them appear as responsible for the economic disaster and the growing impoverishment of the living conditions of each capitalist nation and to justify the growing fascist tendencies. Many of these governments (Milei, Trump, etc.) even toy with the formation of paramilitary groups to repress popular protests.

Democrats and pro-fascists, progressives and conservatives, “leftists” and far-rightists, all capitalist governments practice this persecutory and repressive policy. Under Starmer and the Labour Party in Britain, a campaign to deport immigrants has just been launched, aligning with the agenda of Trump's pro-fascist government. In Germany, the “democratic right” of the CDU has just subscribed to the immigration policy of the far-right AFD. In France, Macron has savagely repressed all strikes and protests by the labor movement against his plans to adjust and reform the pension system. The genocidal war of Zionism against the organizations of the Palestinian Resistance that are fighting to win the elementary right to national existence would not have been possible without the unconditional supply of bombs from the Democratic government of the progressives Biden and Blinken.

Bourgeois nationalist and pro-fascist governments are, of course, deeply repressive. In Meloni's Italy, the road to an ultra-repressive, police state took a decisive step forward with the approval of "security" law last October in one of the two chambers of Parliament. In Argentina, Milei has targeted the Polo Obrero and the piquetero movement that fights against the main consequence of the capitalist crisis, unemployment, and illegally putting its main leaders on trial. In Turkey, while hypocritically proclaiming his support for the Palestinian cause, the nationalist Erdogan represses and imprisons militants of the Kurdish liberation movement and socialists who oppose his anti-worker and national oppressive program. In China, the CCP regime rests on unlimited authoritarianism that ensures the stability of the conditions of super-exploitation endured by the world's most numerous working class. In Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela, repression of the worker’s struggles and left opposition is the norm and there are a growing number of political prisoners.

The repressive policies of capitalist governments, the tendency of bourgeois states to sweep away the most basic democratic rights and even to acquire increasingly authoritarian, police and fascist traits, can only deepen at the same rate as the crisis continues, as the super-exploitation of the working masses intensify, and with them the class struggle, and – mainly – to the extent that the race to rearmament and towards a new inter-imperialist war accelerates.

While resorting to institutional and formal channels of complaint and exposure is valid, the repressive offensives of capitalist governments will only be defeated by the mobilization of the masses, using the methods of struggle and organization that the working class has developed throughout its history.

For this reason, we, the undersigned organizations, consider it essential that political, social, and human rights organizations willing to speak out and actively mobilize against this global repressive offensive coordinate their actions so that the denunciation of the persecutions against organizations, their militants,and leaders is heard in all corners of the planet. As a step on this path, we are organizing an “International Forum Against Political Persecution and Repression”, to be held online on April 26th. We call on all organizations willing to take up this task jointly to participate in preparing this Forum and making it a success.

Our intention is to create an effective network to fight against the persecution of working-class organizations, in solidarity with Palestine, against militarism and militarization of all aspects of social life, the environmental catastrophe, and against any attack on political freedoms and living conditions. Therefore, we invite political, union, and human rights organizations interested in co-organizing the forum to participate in a virtual planning meeting on March 21, and all those who wish to participate to sign up and present a short summary of the cases of repression or political persecution they want to use the forum to denounce. We are convinced that the urgent need for working class solidarity against state repression needs building a united front across existing political differences that exist within our class to strike back together as one.

To contact: againstrepressionforum@gmail.com

Initial organizers:

Communist Liberation (Greece), MLPD Marxist Leninist Party (Germany), PO Workers Party (Argentina), SEP (Turkey), SWP Socialist Workers Party (Great Britain), TIR Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency (Italy). … See MoreSee Less

Call to organize an International Forum against Political Persecution and Repression

socialistmiddleeast.com

From one end of the planet to the other, the working masses are organizing the struggle in defense of their gains and their rights, against the barbaric consequences of the capitalist crisis that are …

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

2 months ago

URGENT CALL FOR A DEMOCRATICALLY CONTROLLED, MASS LABOR PARTY!
ufclp.org/appeals/
We are living through a time of crisis and societal collapse. Workers are left all alone to their destiny of facing with the pandemic and the economic collapse it has brought about with no protection. At the same time, the two bosses’ parties are once again racing to blame each other to cover up the shameful and devastating shortcomings of the capitalist system. The only candidate with an agenda of some level of protection for the workers, Bernie Sanders, has cancelled his campaign and openly offered his support to Biden – a perfect example of a bosses’ politician– right in the midst of this crisis. The bosses and politicians of both parties are conspiring to send the workers to death camp-turned workplaces, bailing out the giant corporations and thus making the working class pay for the crisis, and rubbing their hands together as they plot new ways of extracting resources out of the social wealth for their private means and give a beggar’s share of $1,200 to the workers. Meanwhile, the workers are abandoned without healthcare, hygiene measures, defense mechanisms, or political voice. With no one to represent them on any national platform, the working class needs its own political voice as much and urgently as it needs bread and healthcare to express grievances and push for change! This is quite literally a life-death matter for the working class today! Forward for workers’ own party!

Fellow workers! It takes having our own party to have bread and healthcare!

Fellow workers! Our toiling siblings across the country! Look and appreciate what we have been capable of in these times of chaos! The working class is on the move all across the country. From the Amazon workers in New York and GM workers in Detroit to the McDonald’s workers, longshore workers, and teaching assistants in California, workers of every state and type are organizing strikes, walkouts, and protests to protect themselves and their class from the double-headed monster of pandemic and economic collapse. In the shadow of the pandemic, we were able to organize a massive May Day action across the nation to shout out our demands and demonstrate our eagerness to resist!

While we the working class are heroically asserting our grievances on both fronts, the two parties are doing everything in their power to ignore or crush us. As nurses are struggling to save people’s lives, those in power are praising the thugs threatening the same nurses with their guns. As our family members show all symptoms of the deadly virus and we cannot afford taking them to hospital, both parties are rushing to bury the rightful demand for medicare for all. As we cry out for stopping all non-essential work with paid sick leave, our very rightful demand repeatedly falls on deaf ears in all states.

Fellow workers! It is high time for the working class to translate its spontaneous defense to its very own political platform. The time for begging for crumbles from the feast table of the bosses is way past. Both parties have demonstrated most overtly and brutally that they are on the side of the bosses. If we want to survive, we have to take matters into our own hands. So be it! With our spontaneous actions across the nation, we have demonstrated that we are capable of defending ourselves and our communities against all odds. But without our own mass political organization, we won’t be able to coordinate our struggle against the bosses organized in two parties.

There will be those who claim that the focus should be on the burning, daily life-death struggles, and no energy should be wasted on such long-term proposals. Without a political platform of their own, the workers will be left to hopelessly pressure either party from the left. We have the most burning needs, and therefore must push for our very concrete demands with no concessions whatsoever to the bosses and their representatives. Organizing a political party capable of reckoning with them is as essential as the day-to-day struggles that we have proven ourselves capable of conducting. Otherwise, we will keep begging for crumbles that do not even exist anymore in this time of scarcity and collapse. Capital has two parties – forward for a mass Labor Party!
You want a “political revolution”? Begin with a workers’ party NOW!

Both parties have demonstrated in the most horrendous way that they are servants to the bosses by abandoning the workers to their deaths.

The Republican administration has been busy with passing legislations to bail out big businesses and the stock market speculators, pushing all workers to go back to work by the end of April, and tolerating – if not organizing – right-wing militias pushing for the opening-up of the economy. They have been using their monopoly over the distribution of medical supplies to bring their political opponents in line by restricting their delivery to certain Blue states – they effectively sacrificed the population living in those states for their own political greed! Always appealing to “American workers” in his shamelessly deceitful speeches, Trump himself nonetheless personally pushed for the so-called “stimulus package” that handed out public money drained out of workers and public sources to giant corporations. What did the workers get in return? A one-time check not enough even to pay the rent and a few pennies for their hospitals!

The Democrats are not very different. Their new poster-boy Cuomo had no problem in ruling out any medical or financial aid for the undocumented residents of New York – a significant portion of the workforce in the state. While threatening the Trump administration with leaving the Union for failing to handle the pandemic efficiently, Governor Newsom of California has deafened his ears to the grievances of McDonald’s employees demanding sick leave.

In both 2016 and 2020, Sanders ran on the Democratic slate, claiming to represent the working class. In both campaigns, he abandoned the class he was claiming he represented and ran to the arms of the most overtly neoliberal Democrats (Clinton and Biden), while his supporters told the workers and the Left to wait for another four years. Since 2016, both the Left and workers’ struggles have grown tremendously, proclaiming the dawn of a new era in the history of struggles for the fight for justice in this country. Yet, in the context of today’s societal collapse, calls already rising for a “democratic-socialist” candidate four years from today are ridiculous. The workers in the context of today’s breakdown cannot wait for four months, let alone four years.

This pattern should tell us that pressuring the Democrats from the Left is a hollow strategy. They have not, and will not, allow for any voice of the working class among their ranks, especially in this moment of crisis. Their current spokesman Biden has allegedly moved towards the Left, with some variations on the theme of “Medicare for all” (with a much more restricted range of application than Sanders’s), but let us not be fooled by this move. Both parties’ histories are full of generous promises to the toilers of this country to deceive them and then shameless breaking of their own words when they got what they wanted. It won’t be different with Biden. The Democrats are a dead end – forward for a clean, independent slate! Forward for workers’ candidates in the elections on a workers’ program!

Sanders has often called for a “political revolution”, but he always avoided breaking with the two-party system. The political status quo of this country, which has protected the oppressors for so long, cannot be broken by relying on either party of the bosses. Let us allow ourselves to see this with utmost clarity. Let’s begin our political revolution by organizing our own democratic, worker-controlled mass party!

No hollow phrases! Organize around our burning needs! Workers’ lives matter!

Establishing the workers’ own political party is inseparable from the day-to-day struggles they are facing, and the Democrats or any other bosses’ party will not move a finger for them. Yet, if we are to make a difference in our political impact as we burst on the scene, we should begin from our very concrete, very burning, very urgent needs. The members of our class are on the fight to satisfy such needs across the country and the world! We therefore propose the following list of immediate demands based on their struggles:

*Reinstate all unionists and workers fired by the bosses for fighting against the callous treatment of workers in the face of the lethal threat posed by the Coronavirus pandemic!
*No bailout for corporations and banks! Nationalize without compensation all entities in default of their debt under workers’ control and immediately redirect their resources to invest in industries that cater to the needs of the fight against the virus!

*Stop privatization of all public services and education! People over profit!

*Nationalize all corporations in industries that can produce medical equipment, all pharmaceutical companies, and all banks so that resources can be mobilized under state control for the fight against the pandemic!

* Nationalize all private hospitals and healthcare institutions under worker and community control in order to mobilize their entire capacity and their healthcare workers for the fight against the pandemic!

* Our fight is against our bosses and the virus, not with our fellow workers abroad. Chop from the top! Eliminate the military expenditures and channel those resources for human needs, especially for healthcare, housing and food security! Life over profits!

*End all militarily and politically motivated sanctions, in particular on medications, medical equipment and foodstuffs! Cuba is sending doctors across the world to fight off the virus, blocking that effort is criminal!

*Expropriate all wealth in tax havens to use the resources internationally, with priority for the poor countries severely shaken by the pandemic!

*Health safety measures in all industries that are essential (factories, agriculture, transportation, shipping, retail etc.), including safe transportation to and from work, shorter shifts, four-day week, pay raises, additional personnel, less crowded work layout, protective gear, bearable hours, etc.!

*No layoffs, no short working hours with pay reduction, workers need their wages to live, let the capitalists pay the price!

*Stop corporate propaganda attacks on the working class by putting journalists in charge of the media! Defend all freedom of press! Free Julian Assange and all journalists imprisoned and repressed by the bosses’ government! Establish workers’ own media and communication portals! Stop spying and censorship on communication technologies!

*Not alms but a living unemployment pay for all workers regardless of race, nationality, or immigration status!

* End all racist slurs against people with Asian background or ancestry!

* African Americans were being killed in masses by the system even before pandemic. Fight racism on all fronts! Black lives matter!

* Provide amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, and stop racist attacks on immigrants and Hispanic communities!

* Stop at once all sterilization experiments on peoples of color!

*Defend the rights of native peoples and their lands; stop the centuries-old genocide! Build hospitals and clinics on indigenous people’s land!

* Shut down all ICE detention centers that have turned into nests for Covid-19 to spread!

* Stop discrimination and terrorization of the LGBTQ communities!

* Cancel all student debt at once and unconditionally, stop the practice of bundling student debt with other loans!

*Cancel the foreign debt of poor countries, build an international fund for these countries to invest in healthcare, clean running water, adequate measures to fight against malnutrition;

*Dismantle the oppressive, colonial Fiscal Control Board over Puerto Rico, a major reason for the country’s inability to recover from recent disasters and, recognize the Puerto Rican people’s right of self-determination!

*Remove all privileges of pharmaceutical companies to make production of generic drugs a right for the poor countries!

*Provide free and properly sanitized shelters for all homeless with adequate physical distancing!

*Full unionization of the entire US working class and a mass jobs program paid for by a capital tax!

*No abuse of measures necessary to fight off Covid-19 to curtail any civil liberty!

*Most trade unions are currently structured as top-down, corporate organizations that accept the bosses’ rule and support US capitalism and imperialism. Fight the union bureaucracy! Democratic workers’ control over the unions that will put up true fights for workers’ rights! New, independent unions when necessary in the struggle for survival!

*General strike across the country!

No time for sectarianism! Forward for a workers’ united front!

Comrades! It is high time to unite for a mass labor party in the US! It is a political responsibility of all socialist or left organizations to unite for such a party. We can and shall have our disputes, discussions, and disagreements any time. The urgency of the moment demands that we work together to help forming the workers’ political party. In the course of our struggle we will reach clarification on many of these issues. As the virus is claiming lives and the bosses are plotting together to make things worse for the majority of the population, we cannot afford our internal – and serious – disputes get in the way of this vital effort. Forward for a mass, democratically controlled workers’ party!

Forward for the formation of “Committees for a Labor Party”!

Fellow workers! It is time for us to take matters into our own hands. Let’s fight together in coordination against the bosses’ literally murderous attempts! Let our united voice ring louder than both parties representing all bosses combined! Let’s start organizing for our own party entirely independent of those of bosses, and entirely under democratic workers’ control! We might have different experiences and points of view, which we shall discuss in our united struggles. However, the urgency of the moment requires us to unite around our class’s issues! The movement for a Labor Party as well is inseparable from our class demands!

The urgency of the moment is burning indeed – let that fuel our anger and enthusiasm! We need to start building our party now if we are to survive! So let us set up United Front Committees for a Labor Party wherever the moment finds us – in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our unions, in our communities!

Forward for a workers’ party and workers’ government! … See MoreSee Less

Appeals | United Front Committee for a Labor Party

ufclp.org

Appeals APPEALS UFCLP Appeals for the issues and demands below 9 Urgent Call for a Democratically Controlled, Mass Labor Party Let’s begin our political revolution by organizing our own democratic, …

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

2 months ago

UFCLP Open Letter To The World Socialist Web Site
ufclp.org/ufclp-open-letter-to-the-world-socialist-web-site-2-12-24/
2/12/24
| Feb 12, 2025
UFCLP Open Letter to the World Socialist Web Site –
A UNITED FRONT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAM, NOR SHOULD IT BE COUNTERPOSED TO ONE, AS THE SEP DOES. AT THE SAME TIME THAT WE FIGHT FOR THE GREATEST POSSIBLE UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS, WE MUST ALSO DEVELOP OUR OWN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION AND FIGHT FOR ITS PROGRAM. AT STAKE IS NOT JUST A TACTIC, BUT THE NEED TO FIGHT FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY BY ENGAGING IN THE STRUGGLES OF THE WHOLE CLASS.
UFCLP Open Letter to the World Socialist Web Site – 2/12/24

In its first weeks in office, the Trump regime has moved rapidly to begin mass deportations, assert the unfettered power of the executive, install loyalists throughout the federal bureaucracy, shut down public services, and dismantle labor rights. The working class has already begun to respond, with significant protests in cities across the country. However, the trade unions, under the leadership of the labor bureaucracies, which are tied to the Democratic Party, are doing little to nothing to oppose the grave danger to union members, immigrant and non-immigrant alike. Federal employee unions have attempted to use lawsuits to block the attacks on federal workers led by Elon Musk, but have made no attempt to mobilize their members. Even as Trump works to shut down the NLRB and OSHA and is preparing further attacks on labor rights (Project 2025 calls on Congress to consider whether public sector unions should be outlawed altogether), the union bureaucrats have avoided even beginning a discussion on the clear and present danger to the labor movement, much less taken action.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has sycophantically sought to curry favor with Trump, while social democratic UAW President Shawn Fain, Trump’s erstwhile most vocal opponent in the labor bureaucracy, says he’s “ready to work with Trump” on trade. The labor bureaucracy, as usual, is no opponent of social chauvinism and trade war. For the labor bureaucrats, organizing mass meetings to discuss Project 2025, beginning a campaign of political education, preparing for strike action—in short, the steps needed to begin building a united front against deportations and attacks on labor—is out of the question. Instead, they prefer to keep their heads down, appeal to the Democrats and the courts for support and keep their own memberships on the back burner.

Trump has also shut down the AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center,” which operates in 62 countries with a budget of over $35 million, funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Since its formation, the AFL-CIO leadership has collaborated with US imperialist interventions throughout the world in dozens of countries, including Chile, Ukraine, Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. It also supports and collaborates with the Zionist trade union Histadrut, which supports the genocide of the Palestinians. This still remains a secret to US workers. The US trade union bureaucracy, after spending decades supporting privatization and helping to prop up company unions around the world, now finds itself the target of a similar attack on public sector workers and unions. The AFL-CIO leadership has so-far remained totally silent about the closure of the Solidarity Center.

As for the various self-described “socialist” groups and sects in the US, most have made little attempt to analyze the class character and historical nature of Trumpism, much less to organize a mass working class opposition. The DSA and PSL have opportunistically embedded themselves into the lower layers of the union bureaucracy; these groups have no interest in forming rank and file organizations in the unions as independent centers of working class power. Tailing the bureaucracy, they refuse to take any steps toward mobilizing union members and building a united front. Moreover, they do not even pretend to provide a Marxist analysis of Trump. They assume that Trump is no more than another right-wing politician and that bourgeois democracy is basically stable. By operating as though nothing has fundamentally changed, they disarm workers in the face of Trump’s drive toward dictatorship.

Among the few groups that has taken the danger seriously—at least in their public statements—is the Socialist Equality Party, which publishes the World Socialist Website (WSWS). They have extensively documented the rise not only of Trumpism but of the far-right globally and have analyzed how it has arisen from the crisis of world capitalism. They repeatedly warned of the danger of a coup attempt months before the January 6 Insurrection, and continue to provide coverage of the ongoing process of constitutional breakdown. However, as we will see, their political methods are completely incapable of confronting the danger.

The WSWS Correctly Warns of the Danger of Dictatorship

The WSWS Editorial Board outlined its view of the world situation in a January 3rd statement, “Socialism against oligarchy, fascism and war.” We agree with this statement on a number of points:

The character of the new [US] government marks a violent realignment of the state to correspond with the nature of capitalist society itself. The world’s richest individuals and corporations control resources on an unfathomable scale… Globally, the top 1 percent now possesses more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.
The concentration of wealth and power in a few hands has reached proportions unprecedented since the Gilded Age of the last century. According to the Financial Post, the so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla) comprise about one third of the S&P 500 index, and have driven over half of its gains over the last two years, despite falling profit margins. Tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Larry Ellison, who are at the center of this speculative binge, have openly embraced the far-right and are spearheading the attacks on democratic rights. Amid global economic stagnation and declining profit rates, the capitalists are driven to attack the social gains of the working class, and devour each other. All public services must be dismantled and privatized, trade unions destroyed, and workers’ wages reduced to poverty levels. This is the aim of Musk’s wrecking operation in the federal government.

The hegemonic position of the US in world politics—alongside the world economic order it established after the Second World War—is unraveling. Finance capital, concentrated in the Western countries, and especially the US, depends upon the extraction of surplus value from the working classes of the Third World. The giant transnational corporations, which are concentrated in the US and its allies, use their monopoly position and control of advanced technologies to extract a surplus from wage labor lower on the value chain. Through its control of the imperialist financial institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, and the US dollar’s status as the international reserve currency, the US is able to finance deficit spending—including massive military expenditures—by shifting debts onto the global economy, while underdeveloped countries in the Third World are crushed under mountains of debt.

Every part of this machinery is falling apart. The Global South is rising up against the transnational corporations and the dollar’s position as world reserve currency is being undermined. At the same time, economic growth in the First World has stagnated, leading to wild financial speculation.

The WSWS rightly notes:

Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of speculative financial instruments like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, whose overall market value now stands at $3.26 trillion. A recent report in the Financial Times revealed that US credit card defaults have surged to their highest levels since 2010. Defaults on leveraged loans have also reached their highest rate in four years, signaling the growth of financial instability. Meanwhile, the national debt of the United States exceeds $36 trillion… Official unemployment rose to 7.1 million in November 2024, with another 4.5 million underemployed and 5.5 million having left the workforce.
A massive financial bubble has formed, including massive speculation in artificial intelligence, which the capitalists look to as a panacea that will help them raise productivity by cutting millions of jobs. But to the degree that the capitalists are successful in automating a significant portion of the economy, the consequence will only be to drive down the rate of profit further. As Norbert Wiener, the “father of cybernetics,” wrote in 1954:

Let us remember that the automatic machine… is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke.
AI, far from saving capitalism, can only destabilize it further. The stage has been set for a global financial panic and economic collapse greater than that of 2008, or even 1929, and the collapse of the US dollar as reserve currency.

The US, with its hollowed out industrial base, is unable to compete with China, and this has come to a head in the last decade, as China has moved up the value chain into strategic technologies such as advanced energy, robotics, electric vehicles, AI, etc. The US ruling class has no choice but to respond with trade war and attacks on its own working class as a geopolitical imperative. Imperialism has entered a deep crisis. Under these conditions, sections of the US bourgeoise, including key billionaires at the top of the tech monopolies, have swung behind Trump.

As the WSWS editorial warns:

The incoming administration is planning, from “day one,” to implement a massive assault on democratic rights, focused initially on immigrants and refugees… The targeting of immigrant workers is the spearhead for a broader attack on the democratic and social rights of the entire working class, as the government prepares to enact further tax cuts for the rich and a coordinated assault on every social program won by workers through bitter struggle.
At the same time, the world is confronting an eruption of militarism, first in Ukraine, where the US (assisted by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center) backed a coup in 2014 and provoked a proxy war in order to break up Russia, one of its main geopolitical rivals. The genocide in Gaza, the murderous attacks on Lebanon, the victory of US and Israeli proxies in Syria, the settler pogrom attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, etc. are a prelude to a war against Iran, as the US and Israel attempt to “redraw the map” of the Middle East. Above all, the US is preparing for direct military confrontation with its main rival, China. The US has ringed China with alliances and military bases in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. Its annual military budget has reached around $1 trillion, which includes a massive nuclear modernization program. Trump’s trade war measures and attempts at reindustrialization must be understood as preparation for global war.

Once again, WSWS argues correctly:

This global eruption of militarism is inseparable from the deepening crisis of American capitalism. Trump’s emphasis on “dollar dominance” underscores the extent to which military aggression will be wielded to sustain the global supremacy of US finance capital. Tariffs, trade wars and threats against both rivals and allies—exemplified by Trump’s provocative remarks about annexing Canada as “the 51st state”—reveal the desperation of American imperialism to maintain its hegemony in the face of long-term economic decline.
They go on to quote from Foreign Affairs, which:

…recently described the new era of “total war,” in which “combatants draw on vast resources, mobilize their societies, prioritize warfare over all other state activities, attack a broad variety of targets, and reshape their economies and those of other countries.”

That is, all of society is to be subordinated to war.
These conditions are spurring significant resentment among American workers, who have increasingly gone on strike as the only solution to their declining living conditions. This has included workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Boeing, and the Writers’ Guild who, in some cases, have actually won victories of various sizes. Strikes have not been limited to the US, but have taken place across the world, including in Argentina, where workers have organized against the fascistic Milei government:

Across Asia, significant strikes erupted in key industries, including transit workers and Samsung employees in South Korea, and railway workers in Sri Lanka. Strikes by copper miners in Chile and port workers in Brazil highlighted the determination of workers in Latin America to resist the commodification of their labor for global capital. In Mexico, workers in steel and auto fought back against low pay and conditions imposed by transnational corporations.
The world’s working class is no longer quiescent in the face of the attacks by both their capitalists and the demands of the IMF and World Bank. Namibian miners, with the loss of their jobs due to Chinese capitalists, have organized against the attacks, although that struggle has not yet been successful. In the US, the mass deportation efforts and other attacks on immigrants, and the coming attacks on organized labor, public services and education, and Social Security and Medicare, will bring on mass struggles and radicalize masses of people.

The worldwide lurch to the right is due, in part, to the capitalists’ fear of the working class, which will inevitably object to the murderous conditions at home. The capitalist class is preparing preemptively for massive police repression and the suppression of the already-weakened labor movement. Countries around the world, from Sri Lanka, to Argentina, to Britain and Germany are spearheading attacks on people who protest against the genocide in Gaza, and on workers who are fighting against austerity. In the US, the Democrats have laid the basis for far greater repression under Trump, who promises to deport and jail political activists, who he calls “the enemy within” and “communist scum.” Trump and his billionaire backers will also begin to more openly support fascist bands, which will be used to attack unions, immigrants, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and Muslim workers and drive xenophobia to new levels.

The Trump regime is closely following the Project 2025 plan to consolidate power, including with a flurry of executive orders and an effort to expand the powers of the executive and diminish those of Congress. Trump is installing loyalists throughout the government, including in the military intelligence apparatus, and legal confrontations are being deliberately provoked in order to use the reactionary Supreme Court to expand the power of the presidency further.

The time is rapidly approaching when this systematic effort to undermine the institutions of bourgeois democracy from within will spill over into an open conflict with the existing bourgeois democratic order. Trump’s agenda of social counterrevolution requires nothing less. As soon as he confronts mass opposition, he will seize on the crisis to declare martial law. It also cannot be ruled out that he will not wait for a crisis, but will create one of his own (i.e. a Reichstag Fire incident).

The SEP’s Rejection of United Front Methods

While the SEP argues that, “The only viable response to the crisis confronting mankind is the revolutionary mobilization of the working class,” in reality, they maintain an almost entirely online existence aimed at pulling workers into their own organization. The WSWS is not mobilizing workers in their workplaces, whether union or non-union, and hence is incapable of mounting an effective opposition to the mounting danger. Their idea that authority and credibility in the working class comes from proclamations in their paper rather than actually leading and winning class battles is total idealism.

The fight in the trade unions is key. The union bureaucracies are bound to the Democratic Party and unwilling to take basic steps to mobilize their members, but the pressure from the rank and file for action will mount with the scale of Trump’s attacks. The labor bureaucrats are sellouts, but the unions have real power in every major industry and, if mobilized, could shut the economy down and knock the fascists back on their heels.

Rather than taking on this fight, the SEP continues to denounce the unions as “anti-working class” organizations and counterposes them to its own aspirational “rank-and-file committees,” which it says must be built entirely independently of the unions. They justify this position by arguing that labor unions have degenerated so completely that they serve only to subordinate the working class to the capitalist state. The globalization of capitalist production has undermined the national basis on which the trade unions formerly waged their struggles, and enormously weakened their ability to force concessions from finance capital. The SEP concludes that only new, revolutionary committees (essentially Soviets) can break the working class from the domination of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

But then the question must be asked: how can the masses of unorganized workers and those in the reformist trade unions be brought over to the Soviets? Historically, this has always occurred in stages, through a process of “successive approximations,” as the working class was radicalized by events and learned the need for a revolutionary program. Secondly, how can the working class defend itself now, while the rank and file committees command no influence? Millions of workers are in unions, which are, at present, the only organized defense against the capitalists. In the face of the immense danger posed by the far-right, the SEP advises the workers to throw down the weapon they already have in their hands and go looking for another one.

New democratic class-struggle unions may also become organized alongside the present trade unions if these pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist unions fail to defend their members, but that does not mean we should abandon the struggle in the existing unions, including in the AFL-CIO unions. The greatest upsurge in the history of the labor movement in the United States, that of the CIO, began as a rebellion within the AFL. The Trotskyists in the UAW and the Teamsters in the 1930s and 40s fought the AFL bureaucracy within the existing labor movement, particularly and most successfully in the Teamsters Union, building militant caucuses and locals, and winning leadership of thousands of workers through their determined efforts to win the great union struggles of that period.

We need to organize toward a general strike against Trump’s attacks on democratic rights. General strikes are an historic tool of the working class in defending itself against repression and the crimes of capitalism and imperialism. A mass general strike against the threat of a mass deportation by the Trump regime would be a powerful tool in confronting not just the brutal attacks on immigrants but Trump’s whole fascistic agenda. WSWS does not even mention a general strike in its call to action. It has abandoned this tactic because it has abandoned the fight in the unions. It completely ignores the lessons of the three great strikes of 1934: the Minneapolis general strike led by the Teamsters, the San Francisco general strike, and the Toledo Auto-Lite strike. These successful mass strikes showed that workers can organize and fight back successfully against the bureaucrats and the capitalists. As Art Preis writes, these strikes taught the workers that:

…the struggle of one group of workers is the battle of all workers, in which all labor must cooperate if victory is to be assured.
The WSWS has announced a so-called “International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees” (IWA-RFC), a grand name for a Potemkin alliance. According to the WSWS, “Central to the work of the ICFI and its sections in 2025 is the building of the IWA-RFC as the coordinating nerve center for global opposition to the dictates of the capitalist oligarchy.” And what are the politics of this central nerve center? Has this organization ever held a public meeting, actions, or rally of workers anywhere in the United States since its formation? A nerve center will never grow if it cannot have any organized actions.

Cells of militant rank-and-file workers must be built inside the unions and developed into powerful centers of organizing that can oppose the labor bureaucracies. The SEP refuses to participate in building rank and file cells and caucuses that are not subordinated to itself. They demand that workers accept their program and their political authority, all or nothing, as a prerequisite for participating in their rank-and-file committees. To insist on setting up pure revolutionary committees of this type, sectioned off from the existing mass working class organizations, is to renounce the fight against the trade union bureaucracy.

The WSWS says it defends the legacy of Trotsky, but Trotsky left little doubt what he would have thought of a group like the “IWA-RFC”:

Sectarian attempts to build or preserve small “revolutionary” unions, as a second edition of the party, signify in actuality the renouncing of the struggle for leadership of the working class. It is necessary to establish this firm rule: self-isolation of the capitulationist variety from mass trade unions, which is tantamount to a betrayal of the revolution, is incompatible with membership in the Fourth International.
The SEP’s politics are hopelessly contradictory. On the one hand, the SEP labels the unions “anti-working class” organizations and claims that “the trade unions cannot be reformed.” They tell workers to abandon the unions, even calling for workers to vote “no” in unionization campaigns. Yet on the other hand, they utilized a UAW presidential election to spread revolutionary slogans and recruit to their group. They pitched this campaign as an opposition to the bureaucratic apparatus, but if they were consistent, their campaign slogan would have read: “Elect our presidential candidate in order to… dissolve the union!” If the SEP had bothered to build up rank and file cells and caucuses, there could have been a solid basis for their campaign, but instead it was run as a one-off that was not taken seriously by most of the rank and file. Recently, without acknowledging a change in their position, they have subtly shifted their language: “Only to the extent that power is wrested from the hands of the bureaucracy and transferred to workers on the shop floor can the unions be revived as instruments of the class struggle.” So which is it? Can the unions be revived as instruments of class struggle or can’t they?

The SEP also ignores the advice Trotsky gave during the rise of fascism in Germany, where he called for a united front between the social democrats and the communists. He did not instruct the German proletariat to summon Soviets out of mid-air as the solution to the fascist danger, but insisted that communists must fight for the unity of the working class. The SEP rejects united front tactics across the board as an attempt to subordinate the working class to the labor bureaucracy and capitalist parties. But the united front was aimed precisely at tearing the masses of workers in the social democratic parties and reformist trade unions away from these organizations. This is only possible by demonstrating a resolutely revolutionary program in practice. The working class organizations must be mobilized through the pressure of the rank and file. To the extent that the labor bureaucracy refuses to mobilize, or betrays the struggle, the revolutionary forces point to their treachery, and win over the masses of workers step by step.

The united front does not entail subordination to the labor bureaucracy or capitalist parties, or that revolutionaries give up their program or right to criticism. The “Theses On The United Front,” adopted by the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922, state this very clearly:

Whilst supporting the slogan of maximum unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the capitalist front, communists cannot in any circumstances refrain from putting forward their views, which are the only consistent expression of the interests of the working class as a whole.
A united front can and must bring workers together to fight for specific class demands. Militants in the trade unions need to call for joint meetings of unions and community organizations across the country, and unite working class organizations against attacks on labor and immigrants. This can win a wide audience, especially in the numerous unions that have large immigrant memberships. The idea that one organization, whether it is IWA-RFC or any other exclusive group, can confront this existential crisis for the working class and humanity has nothing to do with the reality of the situation and the tasks ahead. A mass working class united front will show people that we can successfully organize, and will raise the political consciousness of millions of workers.

In 1938, Trotsky called for building a labor party in the US to fight against the politics of both bourgeois parties and so that workers could make a clear statement against the lies of the capitalist politicians. He recognized that the emerging struggles of the CIO would take on an increasingly political form, and that the working class needed a political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. At a conference of ten UAW locals in 1939, Trotskyists in the UAW called for a labor party. While they did not give up their own organization or revolutionary program, they attempted to appeal to the wider membership to build a political party that would speak for the workers.

Now, more than ever, as masses of workers have come to despise the Democratic Party, we have an opportunity to fight for an independent party of the workers. The SEP declares “We are that party!” and imply that a labor party would only bind the workers to the capitalists. In other words, there is no possibility for a struggle in the labor unions or a labor party, because the outcome (reformism) is a foregone conclusion. Compare this to Trotsky’s approach:

…the unification of the unions on a political plan is a progressive step. There is a danger that it will fall into the the hands of our enemies. I therefore propose two measures: 1) That we have only workers and farmers as our representatives; that we do not depend on so-called parliamentary friends; 2) That our representatives follow out our program…

I will not say that the labor party is a revolutionary party, but that we will do everything to make it possible. At every meeting I will say: I am a representative of the SWP. I consider it the only revolutionary party. But I am not a sectarian. You are trying now to create a big workers’ party. I will help you but I propose that you consider a program for this party. I make such and such propositions. I begin with this. Under these conditions it would be a big step forward…
Revolutionaries in the trade unions today should make similar demands: break all ties with the false “friends of the workers” in the Democratic Party; only workers should represent us. Rank and file cells and caucuses should say publicly that the unions should come together into a united coalition, call mass meetings, and organize a common plan of action to defend immigrants and unions. People do not need to agree on an entire program in order to call for the defense of immigrants and confront the all-out assault on workers, which are class issues and the basis of a united front in action. The labor bureaucrats will, of course, continue to stall, avoid calling mass meetings, and rely on the courts and the Democratic Party, but as their members press for more action, they will have no choice but to try to get out in front of the mass movement. If they call protest actions, or agree to enter into a coalition with other unions, we should support these steps, but argue that such a coalition be based on mass meetings open to the membership, not backroom dealing. These developments could be used to fight for a complete break from the Democrats, open meetings, mobilizing the members and creating defense committees, preparing for strike action, and a program of concrete transitional demands.

The SEP cries that any critique of its politics on the basis of the lessons of the historical communist movement is “ripping history out of context.” Thus, to the SEP, the trade unions are outmoded as an arena of the class struggle; the united front is not relevant, because there are no mass social democratic or communist parties; the labor party is an anachronism and all workers must enter the revolutionary party directly; and the mass strike can be discussed later, since what is needed now is recruitment to the SEP. It is one thing to revise our methods and program to suit the changing world situation, but to throw away all the lessons and methods of historical communism is to abandon Marxism.

A united front is not a substitute for a revolutionary program, nor should it be counterposed to one, as the SEP does. At the same time that we fight for the greatest possible unity of the working class, we must also develop our own revolutionary organization and fight for its program. At stake is not just a tactic, but the need to fight for the leadership of the revolutionary party by engaging in the struggles of the whole class.

The working class is woefully unorganized and unprepared for the capitalist-fascist offensive. The present disorganization of the working class does not decrease the relevance of the united front but rather increases it, as a life and death question for the labor movement. Without a mass labor party, large numbers of workers could easily be diverted behind racist and reactionary scapegoating. The treacherous bureaucrats that stand at the head of the trade unions must be swept away and replaced with a revolutionary leadership ready to fight for our class. Great struggles lay ahead, and with them, the chance to rebuild mass working class organizations guided by a revolutionary program and methods that will lead the masses to victory.

United Front Committee for a Labor Party.org

The United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) seeks to unite workers, unions and working class organizations in building united fronts against fascism, mass deportations and other class issues. We also support a united front to break the unions from the Democrats and build a mass democratic working class party. We previously challenged David North and the Socialist Equality Party to defend their abstentionist political practice and abandonment of the Transitional Program, and North stated that he was willing to do so. We again invite them to publicly debate this question.

FOR UNITED FRONTS AGAINST DEPORTATIONS & FASCISM, FOR A GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST MARTIAL LAW AND FOR A MASS DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY: WORKERS HAVE THE POWER LETS TAKE IT
UNITED FRONT COMMITTEE FOR A LABOR PARTY – UFCLP.ORG, INFO@UFCLP.ORG … See MoreSee Less

UFCLP Open Letter to the World Socialist Web Site – 2/12/24 | United Front Committee for a Labor Party

ufclp.org

UFCLP Open Letter to the World Socialist Web Site – 2/12/24 Posted by MBayram_y2k@Yahoo.com | Feb 12, 2025 | Trade Unions, UFCLP Statements, United States | 0 | A united front is not a substitute fo…

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

2 months ago

Gran acto frente a Cancillería contra las políticas antimigratorias de Trump y Milei

prensaobrera.com/internacionales/gran-acto-frente-a-cancilleria-contra-las-politicas-anti-migrato…

JORNADA INTERNACIONAL
Gran acto frente a Cancillería contra las políticas antimigratorias de Trump y Milei
Hablaron referentes del PO y de la comunidad paraguaya, peruana y boliviana

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Foto: Juan Diez
Como parte de una jornada internacional contra la persecución a los migrantes, el Partido Obrero realizó este viernes 7 una concentración frente a la Cancillería argentina en Buenos Aires. Se sumaron el Polo Obrero y compañerxs de la comunidad paraguaya, boliviana, peruana y de la Campaña Migrar No es Delito. Estuvieron presentes también el legislador porteño Gabriel Solano (PO-Frente de Izquierda), el diputado nacional electo por la provincia de Buenos Aires, Néstor Pitrola (PO-Frente de Izquierda), Guillermo Kane (diputado provincial MC del PO-Frente de Izquierda) y el dirigente nacional del Polo Obrero, Eduardo Belliboni.

La campaña de deportaciones masivas en Estados Unidos, lanzada por Donald Trump desde su reasunción como presidente, es la expresión más descarnada de una política de alcances internacionales, como lo muestra la persecución sistemática en el continente europeo y en nuestro propio país, donde el gobierno de Javier Milei aspira a modificar la Ley de Migraciones para endurecer las condiciones de acceso a la ciudadanía, además de arancelar el acceso a la salud y la educación para los extranjeros.

La voz de los migrantes

El acto frente a Cancillería pudo reflejar este cuadro de ataques con la presencia de sus propios protagonistas, con tramos en guaraní y quechua. La primera compañera en hacer uso de la palabra, Lilian Rojas, de la comunidad paraguaya y miembro de la Mesa Nacional del Polo Obrero, hizo una vibrante intervención en guaraní y en español en que contó que lleva más de 50 años en Argentina (emigró en 1969, a los 6 años de edad) y señaló que “ningún paraguayo debe permitir que agredan a los migrantes”. Planteó recorrer los barrios para explicar que Milei se tiene que ir, y denunció que el mandatario (que en su discurso en el foro de Davos reprodujo el discurso antimigrantes del presidente yanqui) es un títere de Trump.

Por su parte, Ana Arguedas, compañera de la comunidad peruana y organizadora de la Villa 1-11-14, se refirió a la dificultad que enfrentan los migrantes para conseguir trabajo. Y denunció, además, el desabastecimiento de los comedores populares por parte del gobierno, a los que apenas envía polenta, mientras Milei y sus funcionarios se pasean por el mundo.

En la misma línea que Ana, otra compañera de la comunidad peruana, María Luz Peña Vallejo, de la Villa 31, denunció la discriminación y maltrato que padecen cotidianamente los migrantes. Además, nos brindó un impactante testimonio de primera mano, explicando el caso de un allegado suyo que vive en los Estados Unidos y pasa buena parte de sus días escondido para evitar las redadas de la policía migratoria, en las que se detiene a mansalva a los extranjeros para su deportación en vuelos militares.

También tomó la palabra Eulogia, de la comunidad boliviana y miembro de La Garganta Poderosa, quien explicó que se encuentra en Argentina desde los tiempos de la última dictadura militar (1976-1983). Cuestionó el desabastecimiento de los comedores populares por parte del gobierno nacional, defendió el derecho a la educación, salud y vivienda digna, pisoteados por el Poder Ejecutivo, y advirtió que “los grandes capitalistas se están llevando todos los recursos naturales de Argentina”.

Doris Quispe, abogada e integrante del colectivo Migrar No es Delito, señaló que el gobierno de Milei intenta avanzar en la reforma de la ley migratoria porque se encuentra envalentonado ante el triunfo electoral de Trump en Estados Unidos, y llamó a enfrentar a ambos gobiernos.

Abajo el racismo y el fascismo

Como cierre de la jornada, el legislador porteño y dirigente del Partido Obrero-Frente de Izquierda, Gabriel Solano, indicó que la deportación masiva de migrantes a otros países, e incluso a la base de Guantánamo (en territorio usurpado a Cuba), y el hecho de que los migrantes deban vivir clandestinamente para evitar las redadas, son señales de una descomposición de la democracia estadounidense.

Al mismo tiempo, explicó que el discurso de Trump, que compara las migraciones con la delincuencia y las responsabiliza por la crisis de los Estados Unidos, es “un discurso clásico de los fachos”, que intentan dividir y aplastar a la clase trabajadora.

Llamó a enfrentar a todos estos gobiernos con la unión de trabajadores nativos y migrantes, y denunció la actitud de los gobiernos “nacionales y populares” latinoamericanos, que capitulan o pactan con Trump (Colombia aceptó los vuelos con deportados, mientras que México derivó miles de militares a la frontera), en función de las presiones de la clase capitalista.

En el caso de Argentina, tomó como ejemplo de las políticas antimigratorias y represivas el alambrado que el gobierno de Milei-Bullrich promueve en Aguas Blancas, Salta, en la frontera con Bolivia, que se haría con el apoyo del gobierno provincial de Gustavo Sáenz, próximo al excandidato presidencial de Unión por la Patria, Sergio Massa.

En este escenario, reivindicó el planteo de la unidad socialista de América Latina, que solo podrá ser llevada a cabo por la clase trabajadora.

Las acciones en otros países

La jornada internacional en apoyo a los migrantes fue aprobada en una reunión virtual con representantes de 18 países, que discutió también cuestiones como la guerra imperialista y el ataque a las libertades democráticas. Antes de la acción en Buenos Aires, compañeros del NAR de Grecia participaron de una acción en Pireo convocada por sobrevivientes y familiares de un naufragio en que murieron alrededor de 600 migrantes.

Para el sábado 8, estaban pautadas concentraciones frente a las sedes de la policía migratoria (ICE) norteamericana en Los Angeles, San Francisco y Nueva York, impulsadas por el Comité de Frente Unico por un Partido Laborista (UFCLP) de Estados Unidos. En México, el Grupo de Acción Revolucionaria (GAR) realizó un evento virtual con las consignas “¡Abajo el TMEC!” [tratado de libre comercio de América del Norte] y “unidad de la clase trabajadora internacional”.

INTERNATIONAL DAY

Major event in front of the Foreign Ministry against the anti-immigration policies of Trump and Milei

Representatives of the PO and the Paraguayan, Peruvian and Bolivian community spoke

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Photo: Juan Diez

As part of an international day against the persecution of migrants, the Workers' Party held a rally in front of the Argentine Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires on Friday 7. The Polo Obrero and comrades from the Paraguayan, Bolivian, Peruvian community and the Campaign Migrating is not a Crime joined in. Also present were the Buenos Aires legislator Gabriel Solano (PO-Frente de Izquierda), the national deputy elected for the province of Buenos Aires, Néstor Pitrola (PO-Frente de Izquierda), Guillermo Kane (provincial deputy MC of the PO-Frente de Izquierda) and the national leader of the Polo Obrero, Eduardo Belliboni. The mass deportation campaign in the United States, launched by Donald Trump since his re-assumption as president, is the most blatant expression of a policy of international scope, as shown by the systematic persecution on the European continent and in our own country, where the government of Javier Milei aspires to modify the Migration Law to toughen the conditions of access to citizenship, in addition to charging fees for access to health and education for foreigners.

The voice of migrants

The event in front of the Foreign Ministry was able to reflect this picture of attacks with the presence of its own protagonists, with sections in Guaraní and Quechua. The first comrade to speak, Lilian Rojas, from the Paraguayan community and member of the National Roundtable of the Polo Obrero, made a vibrant intervention in Guaraní and Spanish in which she said that she has been in Argentina for more than 50 years (she emigrated in 1969, at the age of 6) and pointed out that “no Paraguayan should allow migrants to be attacked.” She planned to tour the neighborhoods to explain that Milei has to leave, and denounced that the president (who in his speech at the Davos forum reproduced the anti-immigrant speech of the Yankee president) is a puppet of Trump.

For her part, Ana Arguedas, a member of the Peruvian community and organizer of Villa 1-11-14, referred to the difficulty that migrants face in finding work. And she also denounced the shortage of supplies in the soup kitchens by the government, to which it barely sends polenta, while Milei and her officials travel around the world.

Along the same lines as Ana, another member of the Peruvian community, María Luz Peña Vallejo, from Villa 31, denounced the discrimination and mistreatment that migrants suffer daily. In addition, he gave us a shocking first-hand testimony, explaining the case of a close friend of his who lives in the United States and spends much of his time hiding to avoid immigration police raids, in which foreigners are detained indiscriminately for deportation on military flights.

Eulogia, from the Bolivian community and member of La Garganta Poderosa, also spoke. She explained that she has been in Argentina since the time of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). She questioned the shortage of supplies in soup kitchens by the national government, defended the right to education, health and decent housing, trampled by the Executive Branch, and warned that “the big capitalists are taking all of Argentina’s natural resources.”

Doris Quispe, a lawyer and member of the Migrar No es Delito group, said that Milei's government is trying to move forward with immigration law reform because it is emboldened by Trump's electoral victory in the United States, and called for both governments to confront each other.

Down with racism and fascism

To close the day, the Buenos Aires legislator and leader of the Partido Obrero-Frente de Izquierda (Workers' Party-Left Front), Gabriel Solano, indicated that the mass deportation of migrants to other countries, and even to the Guantanamo base (in territory usurped from Cuba), and the fact that migrants must live clandestinely to avoid raids, are signs of a decomposition of American democracy.

At the same time, he explained that Trump's speech, which compares migration with crime and blames it for the crisis in the United States, is "a classic speech of the fascists," who try to divide and crush the working class. He called for confronting all these governments with the union of native and migrant workers, and denounced the attitude of the “national and popular” Latin American governments, which capitulate or make pacts with Trump (Colombia accepted the flights with deportees, while Mexico sent thousands of soldiers to the border), based on the pressures of the capitalist class.

In the case of Argentina, he took as an example of anti-immigrant and repressive policies the fencing that the Milei-Bullrich government is promoting in Aguas Blancas, Salta, on the border with Bolivia, which would be done with the support of the provincial government of Gustavo Sáenz, close to the former presidential candidate of Unión por la Patria, Sergio Massa.

In this scenario, he claimed the proposal for the socialist unity of Latin America, which can only be carried out by the working class.

Actions in other countries

The international day in support of migrants was approved in a virtual meeting with representatives of 18 countries, which also discussed issues such as imperialist war and the attack on democratic freedoms. Before the action in Buenos Aires, comrades from the NAR of Greece participated in an action in Piraeus called by survivors and relatives of a shipwreck in which around 600 migrants died.

For Saturday 8, demonstrations were scheduled in front of the headquarters of the US immigration police (ICE) in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, promoted by the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) of the United States. In Mexico, the Revolutionary Action Group (GAR) held a virtual event with the slogans “Down with the USMCA!” [North American Free Trade Agreement] and “unity of the international working class.” … See MoreSee Less

Gran acto frente a Cancillería contra las políticas antimigratorias de Trump y Milei

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Hablaron referentes del PO y de la comunidad paraguaya, peruana y boliviana –