the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 31, 2025
Trump and company are making big noise about the government deficit—Elon Musk has even promised to cut a trillion dollars a year from federal spending. This is their excuse to slash department after department, program after program, making it harder for retirees to get their Social Security, threatening Medicaid.
But while they are cutting everything else, they are planning to increase spending for the military, already over 900 billion dollars. They’re planning for a new F-47 fighter jet named after the 47th president, Trump himself, when the last fighter jet program, the F-35, cost about two trillion dollars.
And while they cut the small amounts the U.S. donated in food and health aid to other countries, they are not cutting the billions the U.S. gives to other countries’ militaries. On top of Israel and Ukraine, the U.S. props up the militaries of Egypt, Jordan, Colombia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Ethiopia….
Actions speak louder than words, and their actions show that their goal is not fundamentally financial. Of course, the wealthy would like another big tax break, military contractors like Boeing want more juicy contracts, and this money has to come from somewhere. But the increase in military spending and the money going to other countries’ militaries is preparation for war.
The U.S. capitalist class is determined to keep increasing the amount of wealth it wrings out of workers all around the world, even as the capitalist system falls deeper into crisis. To do that, they have shown they are willing to use the most extreme violence, up to and including war. That’s what all the military aid to other countries is about: lining them up as allies, and helping their militaries control their own populations.
The U.S. is already involved in wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemen. And bigger wars loom in the future. The sides are not yet clear, and alliances may be reshuffling as the U.S. changes its stance toward Europe and Russia. Those alliances may be reshuffled again before the U.S. pulls the world’s peoples into the next major war.
War is not fought only against people in other countries. It is also fought against the population of this country. We are already being pushed to live worse, and we can already see growing repression. Trump and his cronies have arrested people for demonstrating. They have attacked lawyers who stood up to them in the slightest way. They have deported people to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and released video after video of shackled immigrants. These are threats, aimed directly at the people who live in this country.
Trump is the president carrying out these attacks and preparations for war today, but he is not the cause of the crisis of capitalism, or of its drive toward war. Behind Trump, the whole capitalist system has long been pushing workers toward disaster—his policies accelerate our descent, but they don’t point us in a new direction.
But Trump is very useful for the capitalist class because he is a master at pitting one section of the working class against another.
Look at the propaganda against immigrants. Blaming workers from other countries for taking jobs distracts from the speedup and overtime that destroy jobs, and points blame away from the bosses. But also, immigrants with tattoos who don’t speak English are a useful target to get the population used to seeing people marched off in handcuffs to be shipped to a brutal prison.
Or, look at the attacks on transgender people. Politicians like Trump are normalizing the dehumanization of those who aren’t normal according to their standards.
Attacks that start off against immigrants and transgender people will not stop there. We can see this in the way they blame DEI programs for the lack of decent jobs for white men. This distracts from the reality that this system has destroyed the few good jobs that used to exist at all. It also reinforces the racist ideas that have long been central to American capitalism.
The working class is not prepared for what is coming at us. We are going to be pushed into blaming other workers. It’s been so long since workers united in any major way to defend themselves as a class that the traditions of class consciousness, of the idea that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” are almost lost.
But workers can begin to prepare today to stand up to these attacks.
We can prepare morally by refusing to blame other workers.
And we can prepare practically by bringing together those of us who see the need for the working class to organize to defend itself in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our schools.
Organized together, we can prepare to fight for a different future—not to be used as cannon fodder or chained to the oars on a sinking ship—but a future in which the wealth we have produced will be used to provide everyone with a better life.
Mar 31, 2025
Why hire when you can just grind your workers into the ground? Target, UPS, and plenty more love to slap “We’re Hiring” on the door. But if you need a job, don’t get your hopes up—they’re just kidding!
Instead of actually staffing up, they just pile more work onto fewer backs—all to stuff the bosses’ pockets. Sound familiar? Undertrained, overworked, and treated like machines, workers are the ones suffering. Enough is enough—it’s time to organize and make the bosses feel the pain for once.
Mar 31, 2025
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, resigned under pressure from his boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Marks was seen as a steady hand through the Covid epidemic, and even helped guide the development of Covid vaccines under Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” in 2020. But now he’s run afoul of RFK Jr’s anti-vax stance.
On his way out the door, though, he issued a scathing statement: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
What a perfect summary of what the Trump administration expects of all its employees: complete obedience. Science and public health be damned!
Mar 31, 2025
UnitedHealthcare’s founder and former CEO and chairman Richard Burke recently gave a rare interview. He claimed the company’s job is “to set what is fair and acceptable payment for certain medical services for the entire market.” He gushed, “I don’t think an employer or government company would intentionally make a decision for the patient that’s not in their best interest. I find it hard to see that happening.” To top off his mountain of whoppers, he went there! He added, “We approve the vast majority of claims we receive immediately, and the rest can be appealed.”
Mar 31, 2025
Trump has signed an executive order to abolish the unions and void the union contracts for workers at more than two dozen federal agencies. Trump’s order followed the same attack on the union for workers at Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
These government workers belong to the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 800,000 workers at government offices around the country. Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE hit squad have been cutting tens of thousands of jobs of these federal workers. Getting rid of their union is another attack on their rights and their standard of living.
This attack is not just targeted at federal workers. This is an attack aimed at all workers. Remember what happened in 1981 when the Reagan administration fired 12,000 air traffic controllers who belonged to the PATCO union. When there was no response from the working class to defend these PATCO workers, the government and the corporations felt they were free to go after other workers. The bosses began to take concessions from the working class and those concessions still continue today.
The leaders of the government workers union said they will fight Trump’s order through the courts. The leaders of other national unions are saying the same thing. But the courts have, over and over again, showed themselves to be on the side of the politicians, the corporations and the wealthy.
Workers don’t have to depend on the courts. Workers have the power in numbers to respond to these attacks in many and creative ways.
Mar 31, 2025
Public officials are preparing to dump millions of tons of toxic ash and rubble from the Eaton and Palisades fires into Southern California landfills that were not designed to handle high concentrations of toxic chemicals, according to a recent report from the Los Angeles Times.
An estimated 6,100 Altadena and 5,500 Pacific Palisades and Malibu homes were burned in the Los Angeles County area wildfires. The debris from such fires is known to contain heavy metals, lithium ion batteries, corrosive chemicals like pesticides, weed killers, ammunition, asbestos, and propane tanks. Heavy metals like lead cause brain damage. Lithium ion batteries used in electric cars, cell phones, and rechargeable batteries can explode and emit toxic substances.
Although such dangers are apparent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed this toxic debris by hand from the burned sites within a very short time of less than one month, haphazardly, under the federal government’s pushy orders. According to the EPA, such removal should have taken at least three months if done carefully and correctly. Because of this rush, the EPA could not remove this toxic debris from about one-third of burnt properties. So, the burned environment is currently left with a massive amount of toxic debris.
The federal government is now trucking this hand-picked hazardous waste to two locations, one in Pacific Palisades and the other in the San Gabriel Valley, 15 miles from the Altadena burn zone, for sorting and storage. After learning of the government’s disguised action, hundreds of San Gabriel Valley residents confronted officials during a heated community meeting, asking how a local recreation area had become a processing site for hazardous waste from the wildfire without community input.
One of the furious area residents, Jennifer Roman, said that she was worried that the waste was being trucked through more than a half-dozen cities to reach the site. She added, “I don’t know why we should trust them. Don’t they always lie?”
Confirming her evident distrust and concerns, the federal government agencies have shared little about where they plan to dispose of the estimated 4.5 million tons of charred debris.
Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom suspended solid waste disposal rules and permitted landfills used for municipal garbage to accept wildfire debris. One example is Sunshine Canyon, Los Angeles County’s largest active landfill, which is known for emitting excessive sulfur dioxide and dust into the communities below, and more than occasional explosive bursts and fire. Only last year, the company operating this landfill got hit with 60 violations for excessive air pollution and nuisance odor violations.
One disaster after another will lead to another catastrophe. The real culprit of these preventable disasters is the government and its officials. They are cutting money for real and solid solutions to such problems from the budget, for the sole purpose of providing tax cuts to the wealthy.
Mar 31, 2025
The Social Security program will celebrate its 90th birthday this August. To “celebrate” this event, Elon Musk and his DOGE deceivers have been lying non-stop that the Social Security Agency is overrun with fraud, waste and scammers.
Fact: Social Security has very little fraud and waste. The percent of fraud and spending on administrative costs are both closer to zero percent than they are to one percent! In many ways, Social Security is a model safety net program. So why all the lies and slander about Social Security?
Social Security is the largest line item in the federal budget. It is a pot of gold—of workers’ money—that the billionaires and Wall Street sharks are hoping to get their hands on. It appears billionaires are mad because almost all of the Social Security budget goes to ordinary people and almost none to Wall Street. Boo-hoo!
According to Wired magazine, right now the largest group of Musk DOGE dodos are deployed at Social Security. Telling the lie that Social Security is full of waste and fraud is paving the way for Musk followers to “fix it.”
Here is one example of a new “fix” to prevent fraud. Starting March 31st, many will have to go “in person” to a Social Security office to apply for benefits that previously could have been initiated over the phone.
In reality, going to the office just gets the person an appointment to come back later.
Picture this. You are diagnosed with stage four cancer and are on oxygen. Previously, you could apply for Social Security disability from your hospital bed over the phone. Now, unless you have computer access you will have to haul your oxygen canister and your wheelchair into a Social Security office!
What is going on? The DOGE boys aim to create “bureaucratic burdens.” This is another name for government officials constructing hoops for people to jump through so people will give up before they get benefits. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
And what will be found at the Social Security office? Staffing levels are at their lowest point in 50 years! Offices are being closed so drive times are longer.
Workers are correct to be concerned and even scared, but use that alertness to coming danger in a positive way. Just because some billionaires have an idea to attack the whole population, does not mean that anyone should accept that this HAS to happen. Saying “Hell no!” is a good place to start.
The whole population is coming under attack. The whole population can find hundreds of ways to push back.
Mar 31, 2025
More than 100 times in the last 10 years, LAPD cops chasing suspects fired bullets into crowds, buildings and vehicles, killing at least three bystanders and wounding 18 others.
The real numbers are not known, since the LAPD does not report them, trying to sweep them under the rug instead. The numbers given above came from Los Angeles Times journalists, who examined 350 LAPD shooting incidents that occurred between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2024.
Sometimes the cops’ recklessness is so outrageous that LAPD brass can’t hide it. On July 21, 2018, for example, cops chasing a suspect fired into a crowded grocery store in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood. One of the bullets killed Mely Corado, a 27-year-old store worker, which made big headlines in the media.
Higher-ups still protected the murderous cops. L.A.’s police commission said the shooting was “within department policy”—just like it has done in half of the cases where LAPD cops shot bystanders. Finally, when Corado’s family threatened a lawsuit, city officials agreed to pay 9.5 million dollars to avoid a trial.
That money, like other LAPD payouts, came from the city budget. Last year, the City of L.A. paid a total of 30 million dollars for LAPD bystander shootings. Taking into account other deaths and injuries caused by cops, as well as harassment and discrimination cases within the LAPD, the total amount the city paid out for LAPD misconduct topped 100 million dollars in the 2024 fiscal year alone.
Workers not only pay for the cost of a large police force with cuts in jobs and essential services, but that police force is used to brutalize people in L.A.’s impoverished working-class neighborhoods.
Mar 31, 2025
This article is translated from the March 28 issue #2956 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
U.S., Russian, and Ukrainian officials claim that the negotiations in Saudi Arabia on a possible truce in Ukraine have made progress. Progress toward what end remains in doubt.
Indeed, even when staged in front of the world’s cameras, these talks are more diplomacy as usual. Governments make secret deals at the expense of the governed. For them to call it quick progress would be a joke, if tragic ruin wasn’t continuing. The belligerents had barely promised to stop hitting energy infrastructure on March 18 when Russian and Ukrainian drones and missiles rained down the same evening on each others’ refineries, fuel depots, and thermal power plants.
On March 25, what Moscow called 12 hours of “difficult but useful dialogue” allowed the White House to announce an agreement on the free movement of merchant ships in the Black Sea, which the Kremlin wanted. Kyiv declared it would implement Washington’s announcement but emphasized: “details remain to be resolved.” Among the “details” is the demand to lift Western sanctions targeting Russian grain and fertilizer exports. Trump says he is for it. Kyiv is against it.
A year and a half ago, in the middle of the fighting, Kyiv and Moscow already reached an agreement mutually beneficial to their grain exports. But it didn’t stop them from continuing to sink each others’ merchant ships. On March 24, just before discussing the deal with Trump’s envoys in Riyadh, the Kremlin flooded the Ukrainian skies with missiles that caused hundreds of injuries and dozens of deaths in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, and other areas. At the same time, Kyiv bombarded Russian-held Donbass.
The fighting is continuing and getting more intense now, even if a ceasefire might finally get reached on some future date. Fighting could intensify further, as long as the two general staffs have enough conscripts to send to the slaughterhouse. In order to liquidate the Kursk area that Ukraine occupied since last summer, Moscow drowned it with shells and attackers. Bloodbath on both sides. Kyiv had a piece of Russian territory to trade for the regions of Ukraine the Russian army occupied. Moscow wanted a “peace” agreement to endorse the annexation.
Russia is in a strong position on the battlefield. Its army is constantly gaining ground. Time is on Putin’s side. So he is in no rush to reach an agreement. But still, contrary to what European governments and media claim, Russia is far from holding all the cards. Moscow doesn’t dictate the game. The U.S.—on another continent altogether—has “naturally” imposed itself to lead the negotiations. The European Union has been excluded, even though the war is taking place on the E.U.’s doorstep.
The U.S. sets the agenda and instructs both sides. Washington even got both sides to consent to this, even when Trump publicly and brutally dictated his conditions to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Ditto for Putin, who had to accept without blinking that America would seize rare earth mineral deposits in Ukraine outside of Russian control.
None of this would make sense without remembering that a handful of imperialist powers dominate the world today. The American bourgeoisie is the one with the strongest economy by far, the most wealth, and the most powerful army. The U.S. is capable of imposing its policies almost everywhere, with 800 military bases around the world.
Certainly, some countries like China, Russia, and a few others have the means to not bow down unhesitatingly to the world’s leading power. But the fact remains that the overwhelming superiority of American imperialism allows Washington to be the one claiming to work for peace after pushing its pawns into the former USSR, thereby creating the conditions for the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Like mafia bosses laying down the law. But this bloodbath is on the scale of entire countries.
Mar 31, 2025
Since taking office, President Trump and his administration have put on a very visible campaign of deporting undocumented immigrants, often in dehumanizing ways.
In numerous cases, it deported immigrants to countries other than their country of origin. In early February, it used military planes to fly 178 Venezuelans to Guantánamo Bay. It later flew 300 people from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to Panama City and 200 others from Asia to Costa Rica.
On March 15, ICE flew 261 Venezuelan men to El Salvador. While those flights were still in the air, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., James Boesberg, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the transfers, yet the Trump administration completed the transfer anyway. Boesberg requested information on the deportations, but Trump invoked ‘state secrets privilege’ under the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify his refusal to provide the information.
The Trump administration claims about half the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador were members of a street gang working under the direction of Venezuelan President Maduro to commit crimes in the U.S. to destabilize the country. Intelligence analysts from the CIA and National Security Agency deny Trump’s claim.
More recently, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem filmed an ad and posted it to social media showing her in front of a prison cell in El Salvador showing the men with their heads shaved and being held in crowded conditions. In the ad, she issued the threat, “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you can face.”
Immigration officials are saying that as of April 11 everyone over the age of 14 living in the U.S. illegally must register with the federal government and provide fingerprints and their address, and parents of those under 14 must register them.
For the moment, another federal judge in Boston issued an order stopping the Trump administration from deporting anyone to a country where they are not a citizen without allowing them a “meaningful opportunity” to obtain humanitarian protection in the U.S. It remains to be seen what the final outcome will be.
In fact though, in terms of numbers of those deported, and numbers of deportation flights, Trump is actually doing less than President Biden carried out in the last couple of months of his term in office.
In the end, the politicians of both the Democratic and Republican parties have carried out similar policies preventing immigrants from having full rights in this country. But Trump and his administration are clearly now making their big show in order to scare undocumented immigrants into silence and to simply accept whatever conditions they might face in this country.
Mar 31, 2025
This article is translated from the March 28 issue #2956 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss the head of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, has sparked a major political crisis in Israel. His administration faces opposition from parts of the state apparatus. Thousands of people have protested across the country.
Netanyahu justified his move by claiming the Shin Bet chief committed a “professional breach of trust.” Specifically, he criticizes Bar for launching an investigation of members of Netanyahu’s entourage. They stand accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for working to improve the image of Qatar, at the same time that Israel had authorized Qatar to finance Hamas, which ruled Gaza. Qatargate, as the Israeli media call it, adds to the cases of fraud, corruption, and breach of trust for which Netanyahu is currently on trial. He also was just implicated in a recent Shin Bet investigative report on the October 7 massacre, which highlighted the government’s failings.
Netanyahu also faces opposition from the judicial system. The Supreme Court suspended Ronen Bar’s ouster until April 8 while it considers appeals filed by the opposition and an NGO. Israel’s attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara is supposed to ensure that government actions are legal. She supports the Supreme Court. But Netanyahu’s cabinet voted no-confidence in her on March 23, paving the way to remove her from office.
To save his political career and avoid ending up in prison, Netanyahu needs the support of the far right more than ever. He wants to entice Jewish supremacist Itamar Ben Gvir to become national security minister again, after leaving the government because of the January ceasefire agreement with Hamas. To woo Ben Gvir, Netanyahu relaunched the war in Gaza. The Israeli army began a new ground offensive and is carrying out disastrous bombings that have killed nearly 800 people in just a few days. Residents of Gaza’s border areas have been forced to evacuate, paving the way for further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu is seeking to create right-wing national unity behind him. He is pulling out all the stops on all fronts, encouraging and supporting settlement activity in the West Bank and launching military operations in Lebanon and Syria. He feels even more empowered to do all this because he knows he can count on the support of Trump, who declared his full approval of the resumption of the war in Gaza.
A portion of the Israeli population has expressed its rejection of this headlong rush into war. Opposition politicians, families of hostages, and even several former hostages—worried about the breakdown of negotiations—called for protests, which drew tens of thousands of people. This is similar to the mobilizations against the judicial reform initiated by Netanyahu before October 7. At the protests, many people expressed their fear of having an increasingly authoritarian regime. In Tel Aviv on March 22, a large mounted screen read “Stop the mania for dictatorship.” Center-right politician and Netanyahu opponent Yair Lapid declared “the entire country should stop” if the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet goes forward. The leader of Israel’s main trade union confederation Histadrut echoed, “I have no intention of standing by while the state of Israel is dismantled.”
These criticisms come from leaders who supported most of Netanyahu’s warlike policies. Now these criticisms are causing a political crisis. What will happen? Keeping Bar at the head of the Shin Bet as the protestors demand will not end the war in which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are plunged, along with everyone else in the Middle East. It’s not enough to just denounce Netanyahu, denounce the growing and threatening influence of the extreme right, and denounce the resulting rise of authoritarianism. These are the logical consequences of policies that Israeli governments have pursued since 1948, denying the national rights of Palestinians.
Many Israelis are rightly concerned that the Israeli state looks less and less like the “island of democracy” it once claimed to be. But that phrase always covered up the oppression suffered by Palestinians. The Israeli population is increasingly falling victim to the oppression that the Israeli state has always visited on the Palestinians.
Mar 31, 2025
The press and various politicians are concerned about the lack of security in using the Signal app to discuss specific plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen. Others are concerned about its disrespect for U.S. European allies.
But few are discussing the total disregard for human life! The Secretary of Defense, the Vice President and others cheered on the destruction of a civilian apartment building in the attack.
On March 15, Waltz (national security advisor) texted, “The first target—Their top missile guy—we had a positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Vance (vice president) replied, “Excellent.” And Ratcliffe (director of the CIA) replied, “A good start.”
At least 15 people were killed, including five children. Many were innocent civilians.
This attack was just another in a long-running war—by the U.S. and its proxies—against the Houthis. For years, the U.S. has backed a murderous air campaign led by Saudi Arabia against the Yemeni population under the pretext of fighting the Houthis.
Over the last century, the U.S. military has shown utter disregard for civilian lives, repeatedly casting ordinary people as enemies. But this is always the case in wars. It is the population that suffers, it is the population that is traumatized, their lives and their livelihoods upended or destroyed.
All this concern for the security of military secrets, none for the security and safety of ordinary people trying to live their lives. Military business as usual, completely ignored by the media.
Mar 31, 2025
Since Trump took over the White House, he has been ranting and raving about the U.S. government taking over Greenland. Since many people in Greenland have made it clear that they don’t want to be taken over by the U.S., Trump sent J.D. Vance to Greenland to make a veiled threat.
The Trump administration had first planned to send Vance’s wife to Greenland on a public relations tour, but they couldn’t find any people in Greenland who were willing to welcome her. So, Trump sent Vance himself. But Vance did not go anywhere near where any people of Greenland lived because they were planning protests against his visit. He instead went to a very remote U.S. military base in Greenland.
Why does the Trump administration want Greenland? Trump has talked about putting more military bases there because of its location and that certainly may be part of what he wants.
But the U.S. capitalists that Trump represents also see Greenland as a place to make more profits. Greenland has a wealth of metals like cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium, zirconium and other rare earth minerals that are used in the production of batteries, cellphones and electric vehicles. As global warming melts the glaciers and ice that covers most of Greenland, these minerals will become more profitable to extract.
The melting of Artic Sea ice also opens up of the possibility of shipping lanes north of the North American continent through what has been called the Northwest Passage. Shorter shipping lanes to and from Asia again means more profits for U.S. capitalists.
This is not the first time that the U.S. government has tried to take over Greenland. During World War II, the U.S. government put a military base in Greenland, forcibly ejecting the native people who lived there. The U.S. government has attempted several times to buy Greenland from Denmark, which for years held Greenland as a colony. But Denmark always refused.
Greenland later became a territory of Denmark. But the people of Greenland have expressed that they want to be independent. In a recent poll, 80% of the people of Greenland said they want to be independent of Denmark. And 85% of the people said they don’t want to be under the thumb of Trump and the U.S. government, either.
Mar 31, 2025
The following article is translated from La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice), the newspaper of the Haitian group OTR (Organization of Revolutionary Workers), issue 325, March 28, 2025.
On Wednesday, March 27, an angry demonstration against gangs shook the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, which had been transformed into an open-air cemetery and a field of ruins. After Solino and Léogâne, it is the turn of the residents of Canapé-Vert, Débrosse, Christ-Roi and other neighboring neighborhoods to express their frustration. It is indeed through popular mobilization, autonomous, coordinated, rooted in the neighborhoods, that we will be able to break the backbone of the gangs, their sponsors and accomplices at the top of the state.
Thousands of residents, mostly young people, took to the streets, revolted by the daily barbarity of the gangs. Starting from the Débrosse district, the procession took several roads in the city, including Canapé-Vert and Bourdon, briefly paralyzing traffic. On the way, the demonstrators were joined by residents of several other working-class neighborhoods, but also by displaced people from makeshift camps. Like a river that swells as many rivers flow into it, the mobilization has grown at every crossroads, every alley, reinforcing the collective anger.
Placards in hand, slogans shouted at the top of their lungs, most of them carrying machetes, the street trembled under popular anger. The demonstrators strongly denounced the terror imposed by the armed gangs and directly accused the Temporary Presidential Council, the Prime Minister, and the Chief of Police as working in collusion with the gangs instead of seeking to dismantle them.
But faithful to its role as protector of the established order, the Haitian National Police chose, once again, repression by launching tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, triggering panic, jostling and one person killed.
This mobilization does not come out of nowhere. Residents of Solino, chased from their homes, have already organized two demonstrations with the blocking of the main arteries leading to Pétion-Ville, demonstrating their determination to return to their neighborhood. In Léogâne, residents stood up as one to counter an offensive by the bandits of Viv Ansanm to take control of the city. Several dozen of these bandits are said to be put out of harm’s way.
The inhabitants of Canapé-Vert, the origin of Bwa Kale, have been mobilized for more than a year to prevent reprisals from the gangs. From district to district, anger grows. These mobilizations, although little publicized, reveal a possible turning point: a collective awakening which, if it becomes widespread, could well lead to a takedown, a popular uprising to put out of action the criminal federation of Viv Ansanm gangs and their sponsors in power and in the private sector.
But for this to happen, a qualitative leap is necessary. It is not enough to protest one day and return to indifference the next. This mobilization must go further than the Bwa Kale, not only in intensity but also in duration. The existing vigilance brigades in several working-class neighborhoods must redouble their efforts to raise awareness among local residents, to organize the displaced people living in the unsanitary camps. These women, these children, these families abandoned by the state form a silent army. All they lack is morale and awareness of their own strength. It is this consciousness that must be awakened, and this force that must be set in motion!
The millions of displaced people in the West and the Artibonite, the unemployed workers, the young people without a future, the women alone to feed their families.... All of them together form a potential steamroller and the largest network of intelligence because they have eyes and ears everywhere. All that is needed is coordination, a clear watchword: no respite as long as the gangs occupy our neighborhoods and our homes. The vermin will only fall if the population decides to sweep them away.
Mar 31, 2025
Painter, sculptor, and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) was a leading figure in the American Black Arts movement as well as a lifelong communist and educator. A major exhibit of more than 150 of her artworks is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. until July 5 and will reopen at the Art Institute of Chicago from August 30, 2025 to January 4, 2026.
Won to communist ideas by the time she studied art at Howard University, Catlett helped workers organize in each of the many cities where she taught and made art. In Harlem she gave dressmaking classes involving plenty of political discussions with her working-class students.
Catlett loved to portray black women at work and in other everyday situations, and always with dignity. Her distinctive style was influenced by African art and by the Mexican muralists, like Diego Rivera, with whom she worked for many years.
Find a way to get to D.C. or Chicago to see her stirring artworks.
Mar 31, 2025
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of March 24, 2025.
The Senate just passed another 11th-hour funding measure. Every Republican, except one, voted for it. But, despite Democratic Party opposition, Democrats provided the 10 votes needed to push it through. The vote, so they said, was necessary to “keep government running.”
Let’s be clear. That means, “keep it running in the interests of the capitalist class.”
They were funneling money into the military, whose 750 bases provide the force that imposes exploitation on labor all over the world.
They lavished money on the banking system, which today is tangled up in the webs spun by speculators in search of another billion dollars.
They kept contracts going, which provided profit for some of the biggest global companies, companies like Space X, Boeing, and Blue Origin.
They kept money running into subsidies for other massive corporations, feeding their profits, companies like Tesla, Ford and GM.
They funded research done by universities that provide the discoveries that pharmaceutical companies get the patents on and profit from.
And by the way, this 11th-hour measure also gave the capitalists a special gift. It authorized the massive 4.5-trillion-dollar tax break that Trump has promised to his fellow billionaires.
The American capitalist class, which in reality is a multinational class, is the wealthiest the world has ever seen. But it can’t make its own system run without help from the government. That’s the bare truth. And it’s why both parties work together to fund the government. They are protecting the capitalists from the destruction their own system causes.
In reality, what the Republicans and a few Democrats did was to renew the budgets pushed through during the Biden administration. Then, the Democrats were the ones then to push funding; the Republicans provided the extra votes needed.
They are two different parties, each trying to get ahead at the other’s expense, but at the end of the day, they share the same obligation, to protect capitalism from itself.
This year, it’s true, there are some obvious differences from what we’ve seen in the past. Trump and his good buddy Elon Musk have been creating chaos in Washington.
Trump issues orders getting rid of thousands of government workers, even whole departments. The people who might have investigated a business that scams people—they’re gone. The people who work disbursing money to school systems short of money—they’re gone. The people who look into man-made disasters like the Flint water crisis—they’re gone. The people who bring aid when natural disaster hits—they’ve gone, too.
Not so long ago, Trump pledged not to cut Social Security. But by cutting the people working at Social Security, closing down its offices and shutting down its phone lines, he has put up barriers that will keep many people from getting it.
Musk sent his raiders to copy individual information for the whole population. They pirated the funding programs that allow Social Security to pay people. What do they intend to do? What do scammers usually do with pirated information?
Madness, right? But there’s a method to this madness. Not only are they looking for money today to keep government going in capitalism’s interest, they are preparing for a future, when the system could end up in a complete lock-down. They want the possibility to rule extra-legally.
There is no protection against that from within the system itself. The two parties may argue, but neither will protect us from the other. The courts may issue rulings, but they don’t prevent Trump from attacking protestors. Congress just jumps in behind whoever is stronger. The whole system is rotten.
True protection for working people can come only from other workers. Maybe we can’t yet get rid of the system today—although that has to be our aim—but we can struggle to keep unity among ourselves. That will prepare us for throwing out the whole system tomorrow.
Mar 31, 2025
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson narrowly won approval from his City Council to issue a new municipal bond—a loan of 830 million dollars for which his administration expects Chicagoans to pay two billion dollars in interest.
The administration presents the loan as uncontroversial and necessary to pay for routine maintenance of the city’s streets, equipment and other infrastructure. Yet editorials in both of the city’s major newspapers, the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, argued against the expensive plan.
The City Council nearly didn’t supply the votes. Opposition to the plan counted among it conservative alderpersons at odds with the liberal mayor. And the president of the Fraternal Order of Police threatened to fight the reelection of any alderperson who voted for it.
Mayor Johnson was himself a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, and then an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. He was elected as part of a broad, multi-million-dollar push by the union to elect its endorsed candidates in the 2023 elections. He was also only the third black man or woman to be elected mayor of Chicago.
In support of the mayor, an alderman likened the council’s opposition to that of the 1980s’ “Council Wars,” in which a bloc of mostly white alderpersons obstructed the term of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington.
And, in their defense, Mayor Johnson’s office pointed out that there’s nothing unusual about their plan—for decades, every one of the city’s mayors has taken out the same loans, with the same repayment plans, and without this level of opposition.
That’s because—whatever they have to say and whatever they might have to fight about—today’s left and right really have only one solution for our cities’ problems: to make the working class pay.
Mar 31, 2025
Tesla, the manufacturer of electric vehicles owned by Elon Musk, grew to its present size and standing thanks to tens of millions of dollars in government handouts—and helped make Musk the world’s richest man in the process.
Tesla only started turning a profit thanks to credits given by twelve states to companies that build electric vehicles—to the tune of 6.5 billion dollars from 2019 to 2024.
If electric vehicles are the wave of the future, you might expect that Tesla, the biggest EV manufacturer in the U.S., would be investing in building more vehicles. Not so. In the last five years, Tesla has only put 25% of its free cash into capital investment—that is, plants for building cars. From 2009 to 2015, the company put 50% of its free cash into plants—those were the years when the company was establishing itself, in large part thanks to half a billion dollars from the Obama administration.
But now, financial speculation is in the driver’s seat. Fifty percent of Tesla’s free cash is going into the markets—including a 1.5 billion dollar investment into cryptocurrency, just in 2021. So … Tesla takes money from the government, only to put it straight into the financial casino.
That says it all—“the company of the future” is harvesting taxpayers’ tax dollars to fatten Musk and other investors on speculation. They know this capitalist system has no future—and they place their bets accordingly.
Mar 31, 2025
Wild birds are in big trouble across the United States, according to a recent report. One third of U.S. bird species are in high or moderate risk of disappearing. This comes five years after a study reported that almost three billion birds or 29% had disappeared in 50 years. Over 100 species have lost more than half their populations. For example, many sparrows, warblers, finches, swallows, hummingbirds, and even ducks are in crisis.
“We have a full-on emergency across all habitats,” a National Audubon Society officer warns. Much of the emergency comes directly from capitalist pressure on land. Expansion of commercial logging and commercial farming threatens grasslands, wetlands, and forests. The Great Plains are losing grassland at one to two million acres per year. But drought also threatens birds, and drought happens more often because of climate change caused by industrial air pollution.
Mar 31, 2025
The award-winning documentary focuses on an organized fight in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. It houses men in solitary confinement who are accused of “gang activity”, with no oversight, no way to appeal. The only way they could get out was to agree to snitch on gang activity. Some were held in solitary for decades. (The United Nations says solitary confinement for more than 15 days is torture.)
In 2011, they decided to go on a hunger strike to fight against this practice. They signed a “no hostilities” pact between the different nationalities, neighborhoods, and races. After two weeks of the hunger strike, the prison administration appeared to cave, but nothing came of it.
Two years later, they came together to try with a hunger strike again. This time nearly 29,000 prisoners across 33 prisons and 4 out-of-state prisons went on a hunger strike, all on the same day. The strike lasted for nearly two months, and at the end there were still 100 refusing food. This time, they could not be ignored. As a result, the Pelican Bay Prison was shut down, and the prisoners were transferred. The solidarity won though their efforts was the real victory, and lays the ground for the next fight.