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 30, 2026
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is now entering its second month. And there’s no let-up. The Pentagon is seeking 200 billion dollars in extra funding for the war. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, it is sending 17,000 more troops onto Iran’s doorstep, augmenting the 50,000 U.S. troops already in countries surrounding Iran.
The U.S. military has already unleashed air strikes and bombing missions against 10,000 different targets across Iran. The Israeli military, the U.S. government’s attack dog in the Middle East, dropped more than 15,000 bombs across Iran. The U.S. superpower is attacking the Iranian regime as part of its campaign against regimes that were slightly independent, including Venezuela and Cuba, in the build-up to the next great global war everyone can see is coming.
It is the Iranian population that has paid the price for this U.S. war, with thousands of dead, tens of thousands of wounded and millions of refugees forced to flee their homes. The Iranian population is also a victim of its own rulers. While the Iranian regime built up its military in anticipation of the war, it didn’t bother to put in any air raid sirens or air raid shelters to provide a minimal protection for the population. It also continued its harsh repression, recently executing four young men for demonstrating against the regime.
The Lebanese population has also paid a huge price during the latest Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with casualties as horrific—or even worse—than what the Iranians are suffering.
The Israeli population is also being forced to pay for this war, and not just by the Iranian rockets and bombs that explode in their neighborhoods. The Israeli working population has also been brutalized and exhausted by its own government that has Israeli workers fighting on every front against the Palestinians and the Lebanese in wars without end, wars that have gone on for close to a century!
This war comes out of the very workings of capitalism. Under capitalism, the working class the world over has created and produced vast amounts of wealth that could feed everyone and do away with all poverty. But because everything is controlled by a tiny minority, the billionaires, the capitalist owners, for their own profit, all you get is more inequality, more wealth on the one hand and more poverty on the other.
At the same time, the U.S. superpower imposes its control over peoples and resources through war, bribery and destruction. The rulers of this country may justify the wars in the Middle East by claiming that they go back thousands of years. That is a lie. No, these wars come out of how the U.S. and, to a much lesser extent, the smaller imperial powers impose their domination over the Middle East, while sucking the resources out and super exploiting the working class and poor.
The war against Iran immediately spread throughout the Middle East. The enormous shipments of oil and gas that power the world came to a screeching halt. And that is not all. The enormous shipments of fertilizer for agriculture and vital chemicals for manufacturing, as well as big shipments of pharmaceuticals, also stopped.
This has already hit the poorest peoples in Asia and Africa the hardest, with huge food and fuel price increases and the beginnings of fuel and food shortages.
It has also begun to hit working people here in the U.S., as well as the richer countries of Europe and Asia. We are faced with new bouts of inflation, as price increases mount on top of price increases. And, as the war and economic disruptions continue, the possibility of new financial crashes and new recessions and depressions multiply, fueling new cataclysms and new wars.
The capitalist class has even been able to profit from the catastrophes that their wars create. Just look at how the big oil and chemical companies, as well as military contractors, are increasing their profits out of the misery caused by the war. Look at how the U.S. government suddenly can find a spare 200 billion dollars to fuel their barbaric war, but it doesn’t have a cent to pay federal workers, or to fund vital health, nutrition and education programs that working peoples’ tax money pays for.
The working population in this country has no interest in supporting or fighting these wars. But none of this is going to change through an election. Replacing the Republicans by the Democrats, or the Democrats by the Republicans is used by the capitalists to create enormous illusions that working people have a say, that if we don’t like things, we can vote to change them. But for how many decades have workers been doing the same thing over and over again? And look at the horrible results!
In order to change things, working people have to get at the root cause of the problem—the control over the world by the capitalist class for its own profit. The enemy for workers in this country is not the people of Iran or the Middle East. It is the capitalist class in this country.
Mar 30, 2026
An Air Canada plane crashed into a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport at 11:37 pm on March 22, killing the two pilots and injuring dozens.
At the time of the crash, one of the two controllers in the tower was also doing the duties of a third controller at the same time. That might be fine most nights, because there is little late night air traffic at LaGuardia. But that night there were lots of delayed flights, so they were landing one after another.
Even that might have worked out if there were no other problems, but problems do happen! A United Airlines flight had to abort two takeoff attempts because of an odor that was sickening crew members. The fire truck hit by the plane was responding to that emergency when it crossed the runway where the Air Canada plane was landing.
Even that might not have caused a crash if the fire truck had a transponder, allowing controllers to track its movements—but it didn’t.
Nine seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller told the fire truck to stop, but the truck kept going. It’s not clear if the drivers of the truck heard the order—or if there was another equipment problem that prevented them from hearing it.
After the crash, one of the controllers said “I messed up.” Yes, but mostly, the whole system messed up!
For years, the FAA has had a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. They regularly put in overtime and work six-day weeks. As a result of staffing shortages, they are routinely tasked to do two jobs at once. Not a great idea for a job where everyone better be paying attention at all times or people can die!
And while the government can spring for giant projects that provide handsome profits to contractors, like the remaking of LaGuardia’s terminals a few years ago, it has been underfunding basic maintenance that pays for things like fire truck transponders and the upgrading of air traffic control systems for decades.
The population relies on many safety measures that can only be organized at the scale of the whole society, like air traffic control. But the capitalist class devours every dollar of the public money needed for these measures.
Mar 30, 2026
During recent interviews for a New York Times investigation, three women accused Cesar Chavez of sexually abusing them in the 1960s and 1970s. Chavez, a co-founder and leader of the UFW (United Farm Workers) from 1962 until his death in 1993, had been honored and held up as a saintly figure for decades.
One of the women is Dolores Huerta, another co-founder and revered leader of the UFW, who worked closely with Chavez for more than three decades. Huerta said that Chavez forced himself on her twice when she was in her 30s. She said the first time she felt pressured to have sex with Chavez. The second time, she said, it was outright rape. Both times she got pregnant and had two daughters, whom she arranged for other families to raise.
Huerta, who is 95, explained why she kept all this secret for 60 years. “I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work.… I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way,” Huerta wrote in a statement.
It obviously was a very difficult decision for her. At a time when it was practically unheard of for a woman to occupy such a high-level position in a union, business, or any other kind of organization, revealing the abuse would have very likely meant giving up her leadership position in the UFW.
The two other women, Debra Rojas and Ana Murguia, said that they were 12 and 13, respectively, when Chavez began to molest them—which makes Chavez’s alleged predatory behavior all the more odious. Rojas and Murgia, both daughters of UFW organizers, knew Chavez, and looked up to him, from a very early age.
Like Huerta, Murguia and Rojas also said that they kept silent because they did not want accusations against Chavez to hurt the farm workers movement. But Murguia also said that she probably would have been blamed for what Chavez did if she spoke out. That was how it worked back then, she said, when girls were abused by family members or people close to the family.
In that time period, such predatory behavior was much more tolerated by society than it is today, and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s were not immune to it either, even though women played a prominent role in those movements. So, some male participants of those movements also engaged in harassment and abuse of women, while they professed to be working for a more just and egalitarian society. Those men, including some in leadership roles, undermined, and thus betrayed, the very movements they were part of.
Today, half a century later, it is still common for men, who have authority over others, to use their position to try to force themselves on women. And such men often target working-class women who are under the pressure of keeping their job. Look, for example, at testimonies of women farm workers who, when working in the field, are under the constant threat of sexual assault by managers.
But this societal scourge does not affect working-class women only. The #MeToo movement, for example, showed how sexual harassment of women employees of all levels is an everyday reality of the American workplace, and the Epstein files are a daily reminder. It’s a reflection of human relations in capitalist society, where exploitation—of workers by capitalists, and women by men—is the very basis of the economy.
Mar 30, 2026
Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed four Army officers from a list of those slated to be promoted to one-star generals. Two of those removed were black men and two were women. Hegseth had previously pushed senior Army leaders to remove them from the list, but Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll repeatedly refused because he said the four had shown decades of exemplary service.
Hegseth blocked the promotion of the four despite the fact that non-white troops make up about 50% of soldiers in the lower ranks, but only 17 to 44% of those from one-star generals on up. While the disparity is less for women, more women have joined the Army in recent years.
Hegseth’s racist and sexist actions are part of an ongoing pattern, according to the New York Times, based on interviews it did with 11 current and former military and administration officials. Some of those officials pointed to a heated argument last summer between Secretary Driscoll and one of Hegseth’s underlings, Ricky Buria. Buria reportedly took Driscoll to task for selecting Major General Antoinette Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. That position would require her to appear next to Donald Trump in ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. According to those officials, Buria told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events!
Hegseth has gone on the attack against past leaders of the military for efforts to promote more minority and women candidates to higher ranks, calling them “whores to wokesters.” He fired dozens of top military officials, so that now 16 out of 17 of his top military officials are white men.
One of the people Hegseth chose to help him review the list of those chosen for promotion to one-star general was Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier general who once referred to President Obama as a “terrorist leader” and has a history of Islamophobic comments.
Though other Trump administration officials try to paper over suggestions of Trump and Hegseth’s racism and sexism, their behavior proves otherwise. As writer Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Mar 30, 2026
Because of another government shutdown, TSA workers were not getting paid, and many travelers were stuck in frustrating long lines at airports. All this misery and chaos was the result of politicians playing political games.
The Democrats saw that many people around the country were outraged by the goon squad tactics used by ICE, and they tried to claim that anger for themselves. The Democrats said they would refuse to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless reforms were made to how ICE operates.
But stopping DHS funding didn’t really affect ICE. Both ICE and TSA are part of DHS. But ICE was already funded way into the future with billions from Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, while TSA wasn’t.
So, while ICE agents continued to get paid and continued their domestic terrorism, the money for TSA workers’ paychecks stopped immediately.
For their part, Trump and the Republicans said that they were happy with what ICE was doing and they would not agree to the changes that the Democrats wanted. They shrugged off the shutdown and blamed the suffering of TSA workers and travelers on the Democrats.
After six weeks of this chaos, Trump finally signed an executive order to pay TSA workers. Which raises the question—if Trump had the authority to pay the TSA workers, why didn’t he just do that from Day One? Obviously, the suffering caused by this second government shutdown in the last 6 months was not of any concern to Trump and his fellow politicians.
Just as in the government shutdown last October, the TSA workers paid the biggest price, going weeks with no pay this time.
TSA workers were already very low-paid. The starting pay for TSA workers is as low as 15 dollars an hour. Most veteran workers are making less than 27 dollars an hour, meaning these supposedly essential workers are living paycheck to paycheck. So, when the government shutdown stopped their pay again, the TSA workers faced an immediate crisis.
Across the country, over 500 TSA workers quit their jobs to find another job. Several thousand other TSA workers called off work, either because they had to work another job to tide them over, or because they couldn’t afford to buy gas to get them to work.
With so many TSA agents not at work, it led to extremely long lines at some airports, getting through the security checkpoints. There were lines of four hours and more at airports in Atlanta, Houston, Baltimore and elsewhere. Many people even missed their flights because of the lines.
Of course, Trump and the other politicians had no such problems. They continued to get paid. And they didn’t have to worry about long airport lines because they were flying on their private jets or getting special treatment to get on their flights.
For the politicians of the two parties, workers not getting paid and misery for travelers is just another opportunity for political posturing.
Mar 30, 2026
On March 28, for the third time in less than a year, several million people across the country came out in what the organizers called “No Kings” protests in over 3,000 cities and towns.
The protesters were loud and had a lot of energy. The majority of signs that people carried, both homemade and printed, were denunciations of Trump, the wannabe king, who is trying to impose a more authoritarian regime. Some people brought signs protesting the war on Iran. There were also a lot of signs against Trump’s ICE goon squad—“ICE Out”. People had a lot of reasons to protest and it is important that so many people were ready to speak out.
One of the biggest protests was in Minneapolis-St. Paul where an estimated 100,000 people rallied. That’s not a surprise since people in Minneapolis had organized their own actions in a defiant response to the ICE invasion of their city. These determined protests in Minneapolis led to the Trump administration backing down, at least for the time being, and pulling most ICE agents out of the city.
The perspective given by the groups who organized the “No Kings” protests was limited to a protest against Trump. These groups are linked to the Democratic Party, whose only answer is to wait for the next election and vote against the Republicans.
The actions by the people in Minneapolis, by relying on their own activity, show a different way forward.
Mar 30, 2026
The following is taken from talks given at the Spark Dinner in Detroit on March 22. The first part of the talks discussed the U.S. war against Iran, which is covered in other articles in this paper (see pages 3, 9, 10). The part reprinted below connected that war to what is happening to the working class in the United States.
There’s a war taking place abroad, but there is also a war taking place right here in this country, a war against the working class. But the politicians call it an “Affordability Crisis,” which just gives them the opportunity to make all kinds of empty promises for ideas to fix the problems—when they are actually part of the problem!
The reality of the matter is one that we are all way too familiar with. Prices are on the rise for everything—housing, food, transportation, and healthcare. These are the very basics that people need to survive, but they are increasingly becoming out of reach for a large part of the working class.
Housing is one of the most important indicators of the problem. Over the past four decades, rent increases have drastically outpaced worker wages. Currently over 12 million households are spending half, if not more, of their income to pay for rent and utilities, leaving very little for any other costs such as food, let alone recreation. Millions of workers are living in their cars, shelters, or motels, along with their families. School districts across this country report close to 2 million children as homeless.
Reliable transportation is another huge issue for the working class. Lack of affordable housing means that workers live further away from their jobs and schools. Car prices are growing so fast, and we live in a country where there is almost no public transportation. A new car on average costs over $50,000 and a used car about $25,000—and these figures don’t include added interest amounts or insurance.
Another indicator of the attack on the working class is the state of our healthcare system. Healthcare costs are growing at a rate of three times faster than wages. Currently there are approximately 16 million people ages 18–64 without any healthcare coverage. And for those who happen to have healthcare coverage, it doesn’t guarantee them actually getting medical care. There are over 100 million workers that have “inadequate” coverage. This is coverage that often carries high out-of-pocket costs or deductibles, causing many to delay the care they need.
Food prices have skyrocketed over the last five years, at rates that are much higher than inflation. There are almost 50 million people, including 15 million children, that the U.S. government considered “food insecure”, meaning they don’t have enough to eat on a regular basis.
The thing is, the money is there to provide adequate housing, healthcare, transportation and so much more, but it is being stolen by the capitalist class. The wealth of the richest one percent of the population in the U.S. has reached over 55 trillion dollars, which is more than the entire economies of the U.S. and China combined. Not to mention the hoards of money being used to build up the U.S military arsenal.
For the working class, financial cuts and deplorable conditions are only going to get worse as we move into a bigger war. This is the only way the capitalist class knows how to operate. Squeeze every last dime it can from those generating the wealth, us, and use it for what they want and not what we need. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, by the sixth day of the war, the cumulative cost of the war in Iran was 12.7 billion dollars. And this figure is going up by the minute. This is our money. This is tax-payer dollars. Money we pay into a system that should be taking care of our needs, not murdering innocent people or used as a tool for U.S capitalists. We could spend that money on anything other than killing and destroying generations of working-class people in other countries, while lining the pockets of the one percent.
This is not something we need to get down about, this should put fuel in your fire. Most recently we saw in Minneapolis, MN that people are mad as hell and are trying to do something about it.
Because of a determined mobilization by the population in Minneapolis, the Trump administration backed off and de-escalated the situation, at least for the time being.
Trump had sent 3,000 ICE agents into Minneapolis, supposedly to go after criminals who were not U.S. citizens. ICE was nothing but a bunch of masked gangsters, armed with assault rifles. They grabbed people off the street, out of their cars, workplaces, restaurants, schools and homes, citizens and non-citizens alike.
Trump claimed that ICE was arresting and deporting the “worst of the worst”. But when the folks in Minneapolis saw who ICE was arresting, they were not rapists, murderers and criminals, as Trump claimed. People in Minneapolis saw ICE taking away their neighbors and their co-workers; taking away workers from the restaurants and stores; taking away the parents of their children’s classmates. As one woman protester in Minneapolis said, “when you’re here, living it and seeing it, you know people who are being taken. They’re people; they live here; they pay taxes; they have families.” Most of the people taken by ICE were not U.S. citizens, but they were people who were trying to go through the legal process to become U.S. citizens.
People in Minneapolis could see that they had been lied to by Trump. A lot of people were outraged; they said something really wrong was going on here.
So, some people in Minneapolis started to do something about it by protesting against ICE. There have been protests against ICE in other cities, when ICE invaded people’s neighborhoods. But in Minneapolis, people across the whole city started to resist the ICE occupation. It spread fast. Perhaps the protests in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd had given people the experience on how to organize. Ordinary people organized through their community groups, block clubs, churches and schools, in union halls and in workplaces. Over 30,000 people trained to be ICE observers. They had watch groups, recording ICE on their phones, tailing ICE vehicles and warning people when ICE was around. People organized to bring food to immigrants who were afraid to leave their homes. There were marches and mass rallies.
Protesters confronted ICE in the streets. During two of these protests ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But despite these two murders, people were not intimidated, as ICE and the Trump administration thought they would be. When Renee Good was murdered, there was a protest by hundreds of people in zero-degree weather at 7:00 a.m. the next morning.
When people heard about the murder of Alex Pretti, within minutes, hundreds of people came into the streets to confront ICE. People who were unarmed were facing the armed-to-the-teeth ICE agents who had just killed two people in cold blood.
This determination by the protesters in Minneapolis had an impact on people around the country. There were growing protests against ICE in big cities and small towns. The angry reaction from the population pushed the media to criticize the Trump administration and expose the lies the administration had told about the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Facing these growing protests, Trump and his advisers took a step back. Trump pulled Greg Bovino, his top ICE gangster, out of Minneapolis and moved the majority of the ICE agents out of the city. The Trump administration tried to save face by claiming that ICE was leaving because they had achieved what they wanted. They may not admit it, but it looked like the Trump administration was looking for a way to cool the situation down, for now anyway.
The fact that Trump backed off in Minneapolis doesn’t mean the threats from ICE are over. ICE still has agents all over the country, arresting and detaining ordinary working people. Trump is still moving ahead with plans to build more detention jails around the country. ICE is still a repressive military force with more money than the military budgets of all but 15 countries in the world.
The protesters in Minneapolis have not eliminated ICE. But the protesters won something because they did something that can be very important in the future.
A movement like this can mean that people have learned what they can do when they decide to do something. When people have seen what they are capable of, it can open the door for a bigger movement. It can open the door for a movement, not just against ICE, but a movement against all the problems that the population is facing. It has happened before that a small movement like Minneapolis has sparked the flame for a big movement and has ignited a social explosion.
There are a lot of things we can learn from the recent activities in Minneapolis. The one thing that stands out is that people in Minneapolis organized themselves to make a real difference. They figured out what was needed and did it. They found ways to feed people and keep them safe while being actively hunted by ICE. They showed they were willing to fight back.
We thought the same thing after George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests under the BLM banner spread across the nation and even the world, but that didn’t stop police brutality, just like the protests and fights didn’t stop the inhumane practices of ICE. The recent protests against ICE in Minneapolis were not organized by workers, but still showed us something bigger is possible. If the working class organizes as a class, that is where our real power comes from.
The working class continues to be pushed back because we have not yet organized ourselves as a class to fight. The capitalist class has organized themselves as on a class basis. They stand shoulder to shoulder to ensure that their profits continue to roll in, regardless of who is hurt or killed, regardless of race or sex. We, as the working class, must do the same—organize as a class. We need a political party that is built by the working class, for the working class.
The working class is not organized for the fight that is necessary right now, but we have been in the past, and we will have the opportunity again. But next time, we must not stop short of our ultimate goal—a working-class revolution. We must stop accepting empty promises and partial victories, given to us by the ruling class. Stop accepting promises from both the Democrats and the Republicans that they are going to make changes to make our lives better. We must stop letting the same capitalist ruling class continue to run the society. Workers can’t let some politicians or union leaders lay out a few crumbs that were won, tell us that’s enough, and then continue on in the same society that caused all the problems in the first place.
The working class is not moving today. But the working class sits in the middle of the whole productive economy. The working class makes everything run, and the working class can make everything stop. Like the song Solidarity Forever says, “Without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel would turn.” The working class is the only force that has the power to bring down this whole capitalist system and make everything run in a new society. A revolution led by the working class is the only way for all of us, for humanity, to have a better future.
So, it is important for all of us who understand this to talk this and say this all the time, to everyone we know. We have to prepare for when the next movement starts. We need more people who agree that the working class can’t stop short next time. We need more people who agree that next time we can’t stop until we get rid of this system and build a new one.
In order for that to happen, we need to build a revolutionary party in the working class. That is what we are trying to do.
Mar 30, 2026
This article is translated from the March 27 issue, #3008 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
A March 20 publication by United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, denounced the Israeli government’s “systematic torture of Palestinians.”
Titled “Torture and Genocide,” the report “examines Israel’s systematic use of torture against Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory” since October 7, 2023. Albanese was then accused of anti-Semitism and of having “an obsessive and hateful agenda aimed at delegitimizing the State of Israel”—like all who dare to condemn the murderous policies of the Israeli government. Albanese was careful to specify that she “unequivocally condemns torture and other forms of ill-treatment committed by all actors, including Palestinian armed groups,” but that her report “focuses on the conduct of Israel.”
The facts are overwhelming. Albanese is banned from entering Israel and the occupied territories, but relied on 300 testimonies from various organizations. She details the “mass arrests, by force, of elderly people, disabled people, pregnant women, children, everywhere, in Israel as well as throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.”
The report states that more than 18,500 Palestinians have been arrested, including at least 1,500 children. In February, 9,245 were still being held in various locations. This included 1,330 with convictions, 3,308 in pretrial detention, and 3,358 in arbitrary detention without trial. Thousands more have disappeared, been abducted, or were executed. All forms of violence are “permitted,” including torture, beatings, deprivation of food, hygiene, and medical care, as well as humiliation and sexual violence. In late February a kind of public viewing was organized for far-right settlers at Nitzan prison in Israel’s Central District, where detainees were displayed in degrading positions, lying on the floor and handcuffed, despite objections by media outlets.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, attacks by far-right settlers intensified on March 21 and 22, following the death of a young settler struck by a car. Hundreds of armed annexation militants carried out parallel attacks in several villages near Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem—ambushes, arson, and the destruction of homes and orchards. An army spokesperson who participated in these attacks called them simply “unrest.”
But, despite the support shown by a majority of Israelis for Netanyahu’s escalating war, the release of the report and the systematic abuses committed by settlers and the army are clearly raising questions in public opinion. Some voices were raised. A former minister and former generals published an open letter on March 16th denouncing the anti-Palestinian “pogroms” and this “Jewish terrorism.” This reminds older generations of the violence perpetrated by Jewish terrorist organizations in the late 1940s before and during the creation of the state of Israel—terrorism aimed at driving out the Palestinian population and silencing opponents.
This is the policy Netanyahu’s government supports. So does his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is in charge of settlements. Smotrich openly says he aims not only for the “collapse” of the Palestinian Authority, but the outright annexation of the West Bank.
Mar 30, 2026
This article is translated from the March 27 issue, #3008 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed on March 17 that negotiations were underway with the U.S. But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the economic reforms offered by the Cuban government were “not dramatic enough.”
He added, “Cuba has an economy that doesn’t work and a political and governmental system that can’t fix it. So they have to change dramatically.” The day before, Trump said he might “have the honor of taking Cuba. They’re a very weakened nation right now,” with which he could do as he pleased. Cuba has faced American imperialism for 64 years. But this time, the U.S. seems determined to put an end to this regime which is just a stone’s throw from its shores but beyond its control.
The situation in Cuba has been deteriorating for several years. Since 2019 and the previous U.S. sanctions, the number of tourists has dwindled. Foreign currency has become increasingly scarce. Power outages are becoming more frequent. The few remaining foodstuffs rot in hot refrigerators. Deprived of ventilation and air conditioning, Cubans struggle to sleep.
In five years, Cuba has reportedly lost a fifth of its population, mainly its youngest citizens. Almost nine in 10 of the island’s inhabitants now live below the poverty line. Seven out of 10 Cubans skip a meal a day due to lack of money or access to food.
Seventy percent of essential medicines are unavailable. In five years, infant mortality has almost tripled. The international press reports that dengue and chikungunya epidemics in December 2025 were direct results of the stopping of garbage collection because the island had no gas for municipal trucks.
The situation worsened after the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela in January. American warships prevent any delivery of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. The U.S. threatens sanctions against any country such as Mexico which tries to sell oil to Cuba. The blockade is total.
This throws the island into genuine humanitarian catastrophe. With increasingly frequent power outages and gasoline shortages paralyzing the island, prices are skyrocketing. A bag of sugar imported from Brazil and a package of flour together cost more than 1,200 Cuban pesos—nearly two weeks’ retirement income, or almost a week’s salary for a civil servant.
By depriving the Cuban population of all necessities, the U.S. hopes to incite protests against the government. This might not succeed. Since 1959 and the overthrow of reviled dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had turned Cuba into a “brothel” for the U.S., the Cuban people have found many ways to resist the pressure of imperialism. This is why Cuba, despite the increasingly corrupt and police-state nature of its regime, continues to resist pressure from the U.S., and remains a thorn in their side. This is what provokes such animosity in Trump and other American leaders.
None of this stops Trump from already positioning himself as the victor over Cuba. On March 9, he said that taking control of Cuba could be a “friendly takeover” or an “unfriendly takeover.” He is prepared to do anything, including making Cuba a new scene of military operations.
Mar 30, 2026
This article is translated from the March 27 issue, #3008 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
The working class in most countries around the Persian Gulf is mainly composed of immigrant workers. When the war began, they were trapped without resources in unexpectedly dangerous places.
In the six Gulf monarchies of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, more than half of the 60 million inhabitants are foreign workers. In Qatar, they make up nearly 90% of the population. Around 25 million workers are from Asia, especially India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Several hundred thousand are from Africa.
Oil and gas workers, construction workers, hotel employees, domestic workers, and drivers, they are indispensable in all essential sectors. They are subjected to brutal exploitation. Several Gulf countries practice the “kafala” system which requires workers to have a sponsor such as their employer who controls their right to keep a job, change jobs, or leave the country. Sponsors often confiscate their passports, which puts them in a position of almost total dependence.
The war drastically worsened this situation. Tourism collapsed. A number of energy and petrochemical sites have been damaged by bombs. Others were closed in fear of bombs. Affluent Western families and foreign executives fled in haste, sometimes abandoning their employees. Domestic workers, chauffeurs, and guards found themselves without pay or housing in the blink of an eye.
All this causes drastic consequences in their countries of origin. In India’s southern state of Kerala, remittances sent by workers in the Middle East make up a fifth of local incomes. Workers from Bangladesh alone sent more than 23 billion dollars home last year. These transfers support entire families, who are now bearing the brunt of the war’s consequences.
The governments of their countries of origin have little to offer. The government of the Philippines says it is willing to bring back the 2.4 million Filipino workers in the Middle East if the situation worsens. But leaders did not say how they would do this. A video filmed in Bahrain showing Filipino workers being roughly turned away by an embassy staffer has caused outrage. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi bizarrely boasts of having called several leaders of Persian Gulf countries to thank them for taking care of Indians there.
During peacetime, the Persian Gulf monarchies’ skyscrapers and energy and tourism industries relied on the exploitation of these tens of millions of workers. In wartime, these same workers and their families thousands of miles away suffer immediate consequences.
Mar 30, 2026
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of March 22, 2026.
When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, they kicked in the door opening onto World War III.
Of course, Trump had excuses for starting the war against Iran. Warmongers always do.
He reproached Iran’s regime for killing its own people, imprisoning thousands of them.
Both true, but if this reasoning were followed, the U.S. should have been attacking Israel, given the slaughter that Israel carried out in Gaza. Other countries should have been attacking the U.S., given the numbers the U.S. imprisons.
No. The U.S./Israeli bombardment of Iran was an unprovoked war. The U.S. hadn’t been invaded. Iran posed no real threat. It had no missiles that could hit the U.S., no nuclear weapons in hand, unlike the U.S., which is the only country ever to have used such a weapon.
To launch the war against Iran was a choice, a conscious choice, a deliberate choice.
That’s only a way to say that this war is a product of U.S. policy, not just Trump’s policy, but the policy of the U.S. capitalist class. If the rulers of this capitalist society were opposed to Trump’s war, he would have been sliding out of the White House on his rear, his golden baubles with him.
Today, the whole world is being battered by a long-term financial crisis. The economy of this country is not immune.
The major part of the American capitalist class is doing well, individual capitalists make money speculating on AI ventures, crypto and real estate. Corporations are paying out more money to stockholders than they make in profit—and they are putting their companies in hock to do it. But the productive economy is running only tepidly. Debts are piling up: corporate debt, government debt. And the population is choking on debt.
The economies of the U.S. and China are closely tied to each other, dependent on each other. And yet, China and the U.S. are in an increasingly poisonous competition with each other.
Economists wonder how long this contradictory situation can go on. In other words, when will it break out in war?
Such a war may still be off in the future. But U.S. capitalism, with Trump acting for it, is clearing up some loose ends today. It is trying to impose discipline on countries which diverged even a bit from where U.S. capitalism is heading.
Iran is one of those countries, as was Venezuela, as is Cuba, as is Russia, not to mention much of the Middle East, which sits at the hub of world trade. Its oil and natural gas is not only needed for transport, but is key for the production of fertilizer and of helium for semiconductors.
And what about Greenland and Canada? Are Trump’s threats to them just Trump being Trump? Another Art of the Deal? Maybe. But Trump being Trump is the front man U.S. capitalism needed on its road to World War III.
Trump has spent the last year trying to discipline the U.S. population, preparing us to accept wars people don’t want. Opponents are tied up in lawsuits and criminal cases, which eventually are thrown out of court—but not until the people attacked have wasted a lot of time and money. Opponents of the wars or of Trump’s other policies are accused—unofficially—of treason. But laws from World War I targeting “sedition” are being dusted off to use again—officially.
The attack on immigrants is key to the disciplining of the whole population. Today, one part of the working class is cut out, isolated from the rest of our class. ICE, a military force, is thrown into the cities; concentration camps are set up in warehouses and tents; legal rights are denied.
Capitalism is showing its hand. A world at war will mean a devastating war at home.
We should not let ourselves be taken by surprise.
Mar 30, 2026
455,000 women left the workforce between January and August of 2025. Forty-two percent of them were forced out because of caregiving responsibilities and the rising costs of childcare and eldercare.
Just after Covid, women had made a come-back into the workforce, with the ability to work from home and more flexible work schedules. But recently with the pressure to return to the office and less flexible work schedules, women are torn between caregiving responsibilities and work.
This trend shows that the role of women in this society hasn’t changed much. Women are still expected to take care of the children and the aging parents. And they are forced out of a way to earn money.
Childcare and eldercare are huge socially necessary jobs, but they are also unpaid jobs. Looks like the oppression of women in the United States is alive and well.
Mar 30, 2026
The world is in a state of climate emergency, according to Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations (UN), speaking on Sunday, March 22, following the release of the latest “State of the Global Climate” report from the World Meteorological Organization. The report reflects the best available global science with contributions from scientists and institutions across 190 countries. The report shows Earth’s climate is out of balance, meaning our planet is trapping heat faster than it can shed.
For clarification purposes, climate is different from the weather. Weather is what is happening right now. Climate is the average of these weather patterns over a long period of time—typically 30 years or more. For example, a desert climate or a tropical climate. An analogy might be, weather is to climate as mood is to personality.
This year’s report includes a new way to measure climate change—the rate at which energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet. That is energy coming in and energy going out.
The significance of record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases, heat-trapping gases, in the atmosphere, and their effects are visible everywhere. For example, an 11-year series of hottest-ever years; and the way heat is accumulating deep in the oceans.
In a stable climate, incoming energy and outgoing energy are about the same. But activities such as burning fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal), growing food and making steel, cement and plastic have upset that balance by pushing levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to the highest level in at least 800,000 years. That’s trapping more of the sun’s energy in the Earth’s climate system than ever previously recorded.
The new metric shows a more complete picture of how the climate system is responding to human emissions, integrating all the heat accumulating in the oceans and atmosphere, on land and melting ice, explained oceanographer Karina von Schuckmann, a senior science advisor with Mercator Ocean International. Earth’s energy imbalance also helps show how different parts of the climate system are connected and identifies the central role of the oceans in absorbing most of the trapped heat. It gives a more accurate picture of climate change and how it works than just showing temperature change relative to 1850. Greenhouse gases change how much energy escapes and how the system responds. This is what drives climate change.
The air temperature people experience, for example, is only about one to two percent of all the energy trapped in the Earth’s systems by greenhouse gases. Whereas about 90% heats the oceans, about five percent melts ice and heats land.
The U.N. Secretary General added that the consequences of our heating planet “are written into the daily lives of families struggling as droughts and storms drive up food prices, in workers pushed to the brink by extreme heat, in farmers watching crops wither, and in communities and homes swept away by floods.”
Capitalism has led humanity down a path that is destroying the environment that living organisms require to survive, and it has no solutions. Only an organized working class can take charge and solve this crisis.
Mar 30, 2026
On March 16, 3,800 meat packers, members of UFCW Local 7, struck the Swift Beef Company’s processing plant in Greeley, Colorado. It’s the first major strike in the meatpacking industry since 1985, when workers struck for a full year against Hormel in Minnesota.
The plant is owned by JBS, headquartered in Brazil. JBS is the world’s largest meatpacking corporation, with a market value around 17 billion dollars.
The company is sitting pretty right now. Tyson, its competitor, closed a Nebraska plant, taking supply off the market. Consumers have to pay around six dollars a pound for hamburger; double that for whoever can afford steak.
JBS profits in 2025 were around 2 billion dollars, a 14% increase over 2024. The company paid dividends of one dollar per share. The Batista brothers’ group of Brazil holds 536 million of those shares. The Brazil Development Bank holds 200 million shares. BlackRock holds 28 million shares. The workers aren’t paid enough to live on, but shareholders take hundreds of millions!
Workers have to eat too. The Greeley strikers have to cope with a high Colorado cost of living. Add on the company’s healthcare co-pay demands, plus brutal working conditions, plus charging workers for necessary safety equipment like cut-proof gloves. All this pushed the workers into action.
When JBS refused to bargain as required by law, the union called an unfair labor practice strike. Workers approved the strike by 98%, even while ICE vans circled the meeting!
Roughly 90% of the 3,800 union workers are immigrants. The night shift is largely Haitian.
Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, said: “There’s 50 languages spoken at this plant. And where JBS thinks that they can hire a vulnerable workforce, they do that by design, hoping that workers can’t talk to each other about wages and benefits or working conditions. They’re hoping that we have a division in the plant. But they underestimated their workers. The workers are smart. They’re strong. They’re hard workers. And they deserve dignity, and they deserve respect.”
On March 27, the strike entered its third week.