For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

1 week ago

UAW 4811 and Region 6 Should Rescind Their Endorsement of Scott Wiener
Members Petition

Scott Wiener is not a labor candidate. He is not a progressive candidate. He is a politician whose career has been built on serving the interests of developers, policing student protest, and defending Zionist institutions.

As California students established Gaza solidarity encampments and demanded an end to U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine, Wiener emerged as one of the leading political figures pushing for repression. He championed SB 1287, legislation requiring universities to impose new restrictions on campus demonstrations and strengthen disciplinary mechanisms directed against protest activity.

Wiener has repeatedly aligned himself against Palestine solidarity organizing. He condemned efforts to establish academic boycotts of Israeli institutions, opposed divestment initiatives, and used his office to pressure universities and public institutions confronting growing demands to break ties with Israel. He is a self-described Zionist, and his political record reflects that commitment.

Wiener has played a similarly destructive role in battles over ethnic studies and public education. He has repeatedly aligned himself with efforts to police how Palestine, Zionism, and Israeli state violence are discussed in classrooms. Legislation such as AB 715 was promoted as a measure against antisemitism. In practice, educators, ethnic studies scholars, and civil liberties advocates warned that it was an attempt to stifle discussion of Palestine and place teachers under increased scrutiny for presenting Palestinian history and perspectives.

Nor is Wiener's economic record any better. He is the political architect of California's YIMBY movement, a project built on the premise that deregulating private development will somehow solve a housing crisis created by the market itself. His legislation has consistently advanced the interests of developers and weakened local democratic control. This is not a labor vision of housing. It is a developer vision of housing. The labor movement should not be endorsing politicians whose political base is organized around developers, venture capital, and real estate interests.

Supporters of the endorsement — which was announced without a vote or even a discussion in the membership — point to Wiener’s involvement in efforts to secure funding for scientific research and public higher education. For academic workers facing the consequences of federal cuts, that concern is real. But labor cannot build power by tying itself to politicians who offer limited concessions while remaining aligned with anti-labor forces.

The answer to funding cuts is not dependence on Scott Wiener. It is a stronger labor movement.

Academic workers are not the only workers under attack. Across the University of California, workers have faced layoffs, understaffing, contracting out, and austerity. AFSCME workers spent years fighting without a contract. The path forward is not endorsement politics. It is building durable solidarity across unions and developing the collective strength needed to force concessions from politicians of either party.

Working people need representatives drawn from the labor movement itself and accountable to workers rather than donors, developers, and political insiders. Every endorsement of a politician like Wiener teaches union members to place their faith in political patrons rather than their own collective power.

SEIU ultimately withdrew its endorsement of Wiener after his opposition to Proposition D, the “Overpaid CEO Tax.” UAW Region 6 and UAW 4811 should do the same. Members of UAW 4811 and Region 6 should email their local leaderships demanding that they rescind this endorsement.

The labor movement will build its power not through business unionism, not through alliances with the political establishment, but through its own organization, its own solidarity, and its own independent political voice. … See MoreSee Less

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

1 month ago

UFCLP May Day 2026 Statement
On May Day-Stop Fascist War Drive Abroad & Win The War At Home.
The Main Enemy Is At Home!

May Day is an historic day not only in the US, but around the world. Immigrant workers in 1886 were the leading force for the 8 hour work day, and that fight continues today. It is more important than ever that the working class reassert its historic militancy, show its opposition to Trump's threat to “bomb Iran back to the stone age” and stop his fascist attacks on working people here at home. This threat is not only an attack on Iran, but an attack on the international working class as well.

Trump’s bombing of the largest nuclear power plant in Iran could possibly lead to a dirty bomb nuclear explosion contaminating the entire Middle East and the rest of the world. Nuclear annihilation is a threat to all of humanity. Capitalism is on a downward trajectory and therefore can create nothing but competition and destruction. Trump has also attacked Venezuela to steal their oil, is strangling Cuba, is supporting the Israeli genocide and pogroms in the West Bank and is threatening wars throughout the world. He has also waged a reckless trade war, continuing sanctions on countries that oppose US imperialist demands. Cubans cannot even get their minimal needs met because of the embargo. The Cuban people are suffering at the hands of American imperialism. Israel, fully supported by the US, has threatened to turn Lebanon into Gaza and Trump has the same plans for Iran. The Democrats have helped fund these wars and the funding of the militarization of the border and police.

At the same time that Trump is unleashing destruction on these countries, he is telling the US working class that the government cannot pay for child care and other public services but has to focus on expanding the war machine with a 50% increase to $1.5 trillion. The US working class must step in and take the lead against these horrendous threats or more war is sure to break out.

This has even led to a split in the US military. Over 20 top officers who do not want this undeclared and Illegal war—which is in reality a suicide mission for US troops—have been removed or resigned. The American ruling class has no qualms about sacrificing the working class as cannon fodder in order to undermine its competitors. Right now, the American capitalists are in a life and death struggle with China and this is the primary reason that Iran is being sacrificed to the interests of US capitalism. Iran is an exporter of oil to China, China is a competitor of the US and therefore Iran must cease selling oil to China. This was also the reason for the US attack on Venezuela and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro. The imperialist wars of the last century resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions. Today, a conflagration of even greater dimensions is on the agenda.

The United Front Committee for a Labor Party calls on US troops to refuse to participate in imperialist wars, and not to obey the criminal orders of their commanders. There is precedent for this throughout history. We support a general strike on May Day 2026 and we will march together against imperialist wars abroad and against capitalists here at home.

The AFL-CIO—which is now taking $71 million from Trump and the Republicans through the NED’s “Solidarity Center”—continues to support the funding of the military budget and the US sending billions of dollars to Israel to continue the genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank.

The massive fascist attacks by ICE and other state forces against immigrants and workers are connected to the wars abroad. Project 2025 is carrying out the privatization and destruction of all public education, public services and healthcare. The attacks on Federal workers must be opposed by mass strikes, which the AFL-CIO refuses to support and organize.

The use of AI to marginalize and destroy the working class and its power is an existential question for the working class. The techno-fascists who run the US government are using AI for imperialist wars and for spying and attacking the working class and expanding the fascist state. Only working class control of AI can protect workers from the ongoing onslaught against our jobs and lives.

We support an independent democratic mass democratic workers party with a program for working people against the techno fascist billionaires running the US and the rest of the world.

On May 1 Join us at Harry Bridges Plaza, next to Ferry Building at 3:30 pm to oppose this insanity and threat to the people of Iran and the world, and to report on your struggles in your job and community.

In NYC, labor will be meeting at Washington Square Park at 4 pm. Only labor can stop fascism and war.

Stop Trump’s Fascist War on Iran, Lebanon & Palestinians
US Troops: Ignore Trump’s Illegal War Orders – The Main Enemy is at Home
Single Payer Now!
US Out of the Middle East & Close All 800 US Bases Around the World
STOP Union Busting, Privatization, Trade War & Shut Down the Fascist ICE with Mass Working Class Action
Build a Global Working Class United Front Against Imperialist War and Capitalist Austerity.
Stop the Attacks on the Working Class, Immigrants, Women, LBGTQ, Muslims & the Oppressed

United Front Committee For A Labor Party
ufclp.org … See MoreSee Less

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

1 month ago

Joint May Day Statement towards the internationalist conference of Athens
Let us unite in the global struggle to defeat Trump’s imperialist offensive
Let us bring down the governments that perpetuate poverty and war

The offensive of the U.S. and Israel against Iran has backfired. Cracks are multiplying in the camp of the invaders. No matter how much they try to cover it up, Trump has suffered a severe political setback. Netanyahu is attempting to advance territorial annexations on Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese soil, but his domestic and international position is increasingly being called into question. The quagmire facing US imperialism and the Zionist regime is practical proof that the U.S. and Israel are not an unbeatable machine. The setback they are suffering in the conflict with Iran is a source of encouragement for the exploited peoples confronting US imperialism across the globe.

It is a boost for the peoples of Latin America who have been suffering from the US escalation in the region. It is a boost for Cuba, which is under threat and facing a blockade that has escalated to levels of humanitarian disaster. It calls into question the Venezuelan government’s shameful collaboration with the U.S. invader and encourages the independent mobilization of its working class. It is a stimulus for the struggle being waged by U.S. workers and youth who are confronting Trump with growing mass participation and radicalization. The 8 million who mobilized on March 28 show the existence of a mass opposition existing to the war as the government has been publicly discussing the launch of a ground invasion, which would require a massive mobilization of the population as soldiers, and foreshadows an electoral defeat in the midterm elections scheduled for November of this year. It is a boost to the struggle against rearmament and austerity plans that workers are waging against capitalist governments of every stripe across the European continent, with their war budgets voted by the far right, conservatives, liberals, so-called leftists and social-democrats.

And, of course, it is a boost to the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle throughout the Middle East: in Palestine and Lebanon, and also in Iran. The Iranian people have not heeded Trump’s call to rise up in tandem with the bombings. We are well aware of the oppressive, reactionary, and repressive nature of the Iranian capitalist regime. But a progressive solution for Iran’s exploited and oppressed masses will not come from Zionism and US imperialism. The reckoning with the Tehran regime must come from the exploited people of Iran, who must be the architects of their own destiny, and we have the duty to support the socialist anti-capitalist forces struggling against the regime at the same time as against imperialist aggression.

We salute the anti-imperialist demonstrations in Iran defying the bombings, the mass demonstrations in the city of Gaza against the criminal and racist death penalty law targeting Palestinians, the resistance against the ground occupation in Lebanon, and the protests taking place across the globe against the ongoing aggression—including the new, massive Global Sumud Flotilla heading to challenge the genocidal blockade still imposed on the Palestinian people. We salute the struggles of the working class against reactionary reforms, from Greece to India, to Argentina, to Portugal. We salute the strikes for wages and living conditions, from the miners in South Africa, to the strikes for fuel prices in Bolivia and Ecuador. The imperialist drive for war promotes chauvinism and bourgeois nationalism everywhere, to which we oppose militant working-class internationalism. The revolutionary character of this internationalism is expressed by being at the forefront of the struggle against attacks of imperialism against oppressed nations.

The stance of China and Russia has been one of undisguised duplicity in the face of a new attack on a country with which they are declared partners in the BRICS project. They have even allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the attacks Iran launched against US bases in neighboring Arab countries in response to the extremely severe attacks it suffered. Previously, China and Russia endorsed Washington’s false, neo-colonialist peace plan for Gaza in that same forum. There is neither anti-imperialism nor a quest for improvement for the “Global South” here, but rather capitalist-imperialist depredation and a struggle for spheres of influence.

European governments are navigating their crisis with the US by attempting to improvise their own imperialist pole after decades of integration to it. Their clashes stem from deploying their military resources—which they are bolstering with rearmament budgets and preparing the ground for conscription—where they can advance their own interests and continue their plans for EU expansion into Eastern Europe, plans now called into question by the war in Ukraine having become completely bogged down after more than four years. They are not guided by “humanism,” but by the quest to satisfy their own imperialist appetites.

In Latin America, the struggle against Zionist and imperialist aggression is inextricably linked to the struggle against Trump’s agents and accomplices on the continent. We denounce the governments that act in concert with the Republican tycoon, such as Milei in Argentina. We denounce the governments that pose as progressives, such as Scheinbaum in Mexico or Lula in Brazil, who have adapted to U.S. pressure and participate in the blockade that Washington is stoking against Cuba, which aims to provoke an implosion on the island to facilitate a U.S. takeover of it. We demand that both governments reject this ultimatum and supply the oil and humanitarian aid that Cuba desperately needs.

The war, which is spreading, is an expression of the historical exhaustion and decay of the current capitalist social order. One of its manifestations, given its status as the world’s leading power, is the decline of the United States, which is one of the main engines fueling the trends toward a world war. The current ceasefire is violated permanently by the US and Israel. They have been forced to take a step back, but the US’s need to advance militarily against its enemies or confess its decline is very strong.

The crisis of overproduction and the fall in capitalist profit margins lie behind the drive toward war and the destabilization of the existing imperialist order. All capitalist governments, whether liberal or “progressive” or “socialist”, aim to reignite their rivalry on the basis of heightened levels of exploitation and austerity, while seeking to advance repression and social discipline that will allow them to deploy their workers as soldiers in the coming clashes. The war in Iran itself, far from solving the capitalist crisis, has aggravated it, with oil prices impacting living conditions all over the globe and increasing the prognosis of a profound economic depression.

The struggle against the threat and advance of fascist and far-right formations will not come from the formation of “Popular Fronts” of class conciliation, but from the independent organization and mobilization of the working and exploited masses, from a united front of action against imperialist war. This independent struggle is joined inextricably with the task of throwing the trade-union bureaucracy out of the labor movement and recovering unions as tools of the class struggle. The truce of the AFL-CIO with Trump, during acts of mass struggle where thousands discuss the need of a general strike, is an example of the global tendency of integration of these bureaucracies into the state and betraying the interests of their class. Their has been an upsurge in working class actions against the war machine, blocking production and distribution of weapons and opposing the functioning of US and NATO bases. We demand the shutdown of the 800 military bases the US operates in 80 countries for its imperialist war machine!

It is urgent to build a proletarian international and internationalist front against all capitalist states and all capitalist blocks. While forces claiming to be of the left vote for their bourgeoisies’ military budgets, we internationalists have the obligation to raise a class banner, to fight for our living conditions, and to confront the spreading imperialist offensives and steadily oppose rearmament and capitalist wars.

We propose holding a new internationalist conference against imperialist war in July in Athens, to raise a banner of working-class defiance against militarist barbarism and exploitation. For an international workers’ front to rise up against imperialist war. Let us promote the formation of workers’ parties and a revolutionary international.

Hands off Iran!

Israel and the Zionists out of the Middle East!

For the defeat of the U.S.-Israeli genocidal coalition!

Stop the bombing of Lebanon immediately! Israeli troops out of Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank!

End the criminal blockade of Cuba and Gaza!

For the revolutionary unity of the peoples of the Middle East, free from capitalist and imperialist domination!

For an international and internationalist class front against capitalist governments and the wars of capital!

Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

Endorsed By PO, KA, SEP, TIR, SWP, UFCLP, CWP-H and GAR … See MoreSee Less

For A Mass Labor Party In The USA

2 months ago

Channel Island CSU CFA Professor Acquitted of All Charges After ICE Frame-up
by Michael Powelson
Wed, Apr 15, 2026
By Michael Powelson
Mpowelson3 [at] gmail.com

On April 9, 2026, CSU-Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello was acquitted of both felony and misdemeanor assault charges brought by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice. Dr. Caravello was charged with assaulting two Border Patrol agents with a deadly weapon—in fact a tear gas canister. While the government claimed that video footage showed Dr. Caravello throwing a tear gas cannister at Border Patrol Agents, the videos in fact showed Dr. Caravello throwing the cannister originally thrown by Border Patrol Agents—against department protocol—as far away as possible so that it would not harm either protesters or federal agents.

On July 10, 2025, Border Patrol Agents descended on Glass House Farms outside of Camarillo, CA, to arrest farm workers suspected of being in the country without proper papers. As news of the raid spread throughout the area, Dr. Caravello was one of hundreds of citizens that went to Glass House Farms to protest the raid and to protect the farmworkers. Border Patrol Agents placed yellow tape across Laguna Road near the Glass House Farm and ordered protesters to remain east of that tape. The protesters complied as ordered by the agents, and moved out of the way to allow two unmarked police vehicles to drive east on Laguna Road where the agents had instructed the protesters to stay. A single protester was slow to move and so was knocked to the ground with extreme force by a Border Patrol Agent, who also released a tear gas cannister, which was a violation of the Department of Homeland Security’s own protocol. Dr. Caravello first attempted to kick the cannister out of harm’s way, but having failed he picked up the cannister and threw it as far as possible. The cannister landed far from any protesters or federal agents, as recorded by the body cam of a federal agent. While Caravello was clearly trying to protect both protesters and federal agents from chemical exposure, he was nonetheless charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon against federal agents.

While there was ample video evidence in the courtroom of criminal actions shown over the three days of the trial, they were all committed by Border Patrol Agents, who will once again go unpunished. As Dr. Caravello noted during the rally to celebrate his acquittal, there was no justice in this ruling, because Dr. Caravello had done nothing to warrant these charges in the first place. Yet, once again, federal agents are allowed to act with disregard for the law and yet avoid all punishment.

While Dr. Caravello was the named defendant in this case, the two Border Patrol Agents were really the ones on trial. While the prosecution tried their best to present the agents as simply enforcing the law, Trump’s Department of Justice lawyers could not disguise the fact that the two agents involved in the events that day were horrible individuals who repeatedly conveyed that as law enforcement agents they could not violate the law. The two agents, one white, one Latino, were foul mouthed, violent, and contemptuous of any and all demonstrators. Video footage showed both agents assaulting protesters for no reason, laughing about their violent actions, and declaring during one respite that “I don’t fucking care,” and “we’ll gas them like we did before.”

Both agents lied under oath, with one defending the use of tear gas by claiming that a government car was surrounded by protesters, when in fact video footage showed that the agent deployed tear gas with no protesters surrounding government automobiles. Another agent lied in claiming that he hurled a tear gas cannister in compliance with department protocol while video footage showed that same agent hurling a tear gas cannister overhead like a baseball pitcher directly into a group of protesters—a direct violation of DHS protocol. Government lawyers were also caught lying by misrepresenting to the jury an audio recording of a police agent’s interrogation of Dr. Caravello. Between the video footage, the lies by Border Patrol Agents and the lies of the government lawyers, it was difficult for those in the courtroom to remain silent and keep from outright laughter at the obvious lies of the prosecuting lawyers and witnesses.

Although the Border Patrol Agents enjoyed the tremendous power and support of the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security, government lawyers and witnesses could not fool the jurors, who took only two hours to arrive at a verdict of not guilty of both felony and misdemeanor charges against Dr. Caravello. In fact, in case after case across the nation, federal charges against protesters have been overwhelmingly dismissed. While Trump, his Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security may feel that any protest constitutes a crime, juries throughout the nation disagree. Dr. Caravello’s acquittal was an affirmation that protesting government actions are not a crime.

Dr. Caravello’s union, the California Faculty Association, was prominent throughout the trial and helped fund Caravello’s defense team, including the fees for the defense’s excellent lawyer, Knut Johnson. Since Dr. Caravello’s acquittal, however, the CFA has been silent about the need to prosecute the Border Patrol Agents who committed any number of crimes captured on video. In addition, the CFA has been silent on efforts to build a genuine labor party to counter the Republican/Democrat monopoly the top one percent enjoys over the entire political system. US elites exert a monopoly over the two parties and control all the instruments of power, including the media, the courts, the military, the police, manufacturing and finance. The working class deserves its own party that will advocate for its own interests. In California an independent labor party should be the first order of business for the CFA and the entire AFL-CIO network of unions.

Too often lost in these Border Patrol raids is the fact that the government is waging war on working people, in this case migrant farmworkers. In targeting the most vulnerable of the working class—both documented and un-documented migrant workers—the Trump administration employs a tactic practiced by fascists throughout the world. When Hitler took power in 1933, for example, the German government first targeted migrant workers from Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. In the years before the 1939 invasion of Poland, the German Nazi government targeted immigrants, Romani, communists, socialists, gays and labor leaders in order to weaken and harass the German working class. Hitler was in power for five years before he instituted Kristallnacht, in which Germany’s Jewish population was attacked and forced to live in “ghettos” until they were transported to their death in camps throughout Europe. The actions of the Department of Homeland Security and Trump’s Border Patrol Agents are reprehensible on their own, but Trump’s actions point to a broader war on the US working class. Since Trump took office in January, 2025, over 40 people have died in Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) custody, and over 6,000 children have been detained. Many are from Latin America and Asia, but Russians, Germans, and even US citizens have also been swallowed up in ICE raids. To counter this, the working class cannot rely on liberals or Democrats to protect them. Only the working class has the means and the ability to protect the working class.

Despite Dr. Caravello’s acquittal, it must not be forgotten that a worker died as a result of the DHS raid in Ventura county that day. Jamie Garcia, a farmworker at Glass House Mills was one of hundreds terrorized by Border Patrol Agents and died fleeing the raid. Garcia has extended family in Ventura County and his wife and daughter live in Mexico. Before Garcia started working at Glass House Mills he was a flower seller for a decade in the Camarillo area. Mr. Garcia’s legacy must not be forgotten.

Michael Powelson
Mpowelson3 [at] gmail.com … See MoreSee Less