A number of parties and movements from North Africa and the Levant are calling for solidarity with the Democratic Way party in Morocco.

The Moroccan fraternal party Democratic Way has recently been subjected to repressive measures directed against its activities and members, including summoning the party’s General Secretary, Comrade Jamal Baraja, along with other activists, to appear before the National Police of order.

There is no doubt that this persecution stems from the party’s firm stance on the various issues affecting the Moroccan people and its tireless struggle against the oppressive and authoritarian Makhzen regime. It is also linked to the party’s firm opposition to normalizing relations with Israel, a policy that the regime pursues against the will and views of the Moroccan people, as the people unequivocally support the Palestinian cause.

Furthermore, this persecution is aimed at disrupting the efforts of the party’s activists as they prepare for their sixth national congress at the end of July. This, too, is consistent with the authorities’ ongoing practice of suppressing freedoms and undermining the right to independent organization.

The undersigned parties and organizations affirm their unconditional solidarity with the Democratic Way party, its youth organization, and the Moroccan people, and declare:

–We strongly condemn this targeted persecution as an ingrained practice of the Makhzen regime and consider it evidence of the regime’s confusion and fear in the face of growing anger and bitterness against policies of dependency, authoritarianism and corruption at all levels.

–We reaffirm our principled support for the revolutionary and progressive forces in Morocco in their struggle for freedom, dignity, democracy, and justice.

–We call on all forces for freedom and progress in the region and around the world to express their solidarity and organize all forms of support for the fraternal party Democratic Way of Morocco, in defense of its inalienable right to free and independent political activity.

17 May 2026

The Workers’ Party – Tunisia
The Mauritanian Workers’ Party
The Communist Party of Lebanon 

The Jordanian People’s Democratic Party (Hashd) 

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine 

Jordanian People’s Democratic Party 

United Democratic Patriotic Party – Tunisia 

Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara (CODESA) 

Communist Party of Sudan
Jordanian Communist Party
The Palestinian People’s Party 

Al-Qutb Party – Tunisia 

Socialist Party – Tunisia 

Bread and Freedom Party (in formation) – Egypt 

Socialist People’s Alliance Party – Egypt

River T. & the Women’s Commission of the American Party of Labor–

A Wyoming felony case could sentence Ríhanna Kelver, a transgender woman, to 15 years in prison for drawing a gun on a man who attacked her, in what was a clear, reasonable act of self defense. In the “justice” system of our patriarchal society, women are more frequently denied Stand Your Ground defenses than men, and are charged and sentenced as violent criminals when they have every justification to fear for – and defend – their lives.

Around 10 p.m. on Sep. 13, 2025, Kelver was verbally accosted by a group of men, one of whom physically assaulted her, outside her place of employment, an inclusive Laramie bar called the Crowbar & Grill. The attacker, initially reported as “S.D.” or “Durham,” shoved Kelver to the ground outside the bar after shouting slurs at her. Kelver then drew a legally-owned handgun and racked its slide, at which point the attacker backed off without Kelver ever firing her weapon. According to her, the safety was on and her finger was not on the trigger. Despite the fact she was not the instigator and did not fire her gun, it is now Kelver, not her attacker, who is being threatened with prison.

When speaking to the Red Phoenix, Kelver corroborated a report identifying the attacker as Scott Wayne Durham, a Patriot Front member from Aurora, CO. First unmasked as Patryck “Scott” Durham, he has posted fascist, white supremacist, and Patriot Front propaganda since high school, operating under the online handles “Kevin – CO,” “Fedposter,” “WallaceCarden,” and numerous others. Durham was barred from his high school graduation after being unmasked in 2022, and in 2023 left enrollment at the University of Colorado Boulder after a flyering campaign alerted students to his history. On June 10, 2025 he changed his name (p. 26) to Scott Wayne Durham and is now listed as an honor roll student at the University of Wyoming, located in Laramie.

Kelver’s case should be an open-and-shut self-defense case: she was outnumbered, physically assaulted, and her gun—a teal SCCY .380 subcompact pistol—is entirely legal in the state of Wyoming, a state that doesn’t require a permit to carry or purchase handguns. Kelver, born in Littleton, CO, has lived around guns her whole life, and even has marksman and sharpshooter qualifications from the National Rifle Association. She does not usually carry, and was only armed the day of the incident as a precaution after a stalking incident which led to a man being thrown out of the Crowbar. Not only did she not fire, she was the only one injured. Even if she had fired, self defense is protected in the state of Wyoming. Yet, she has not only been charged with aggravated assault, but also “possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent,” under the very law that should protect her. 

Though at this time there is no proof that Laramie Police or the prosecution are aware of Durham’s fascist affiliations, ignorance does not change the facts: During a period of extreme violence against trans women, a transgender Native American woman defended herself against bigoted aggression, and the state chose to prosecute her rather than the assailant.

The attack came in the middle of the media firestorm surrounding the Aug. 27 Annunciation Church shooting and the Sep. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, which reactionary media outlets leapt to blame on the transgender community. The framing of transgender people as a threat to public safety has fueled brigading of online queer spaces and multiple real-life attacks against transgender women. Days before Kirk’s death, the Department of Justice even floated the idea of banning transgender gun ownership entirely. This idea has resurfaced recently with the ATF threatening to require gun purchases to register with sex assigned at birth, forcing future transgender gun buyers to out themselves or face criminal penalties.

The original firestorm has long since died down, but transgender workers are under threat once again. Since the striking down of conversion therapy bans on Transgender Day of Visibility there have been thirteen reported murders of transgender people (primarily women) in the US, as well as a disappearance that still remains inconclusive. This is already more in two months than occurred in the preceding four, and it is likely an incomplete list. Even the extremely high-profile femicide of Juniper Blessing is still not being treated as a hate crime. In the midst of this climate, Ríhanna Kelver is charged with two felonies for fending off a fascist.

“Despite the high prevalence of female murder victimization in the United States, the U.S. lags behind other nations in defining and documenting gender-related female homicides,” according to the NIH, and homicide is the sixth-leading cause of death for Indigenous women under the age of 44. Taken in tandem with the aforementioned “post-Kirk” anti-trans firestorm, it’s no wonder Kelver felt that her life was in immediate danger. 

She has not even been afforded the ability to raise funds for her legal defense. Kelver told the Red Phoenix that she’s been removed from crowdfunding platforms for “fundraising for violent crimes.” Queer people in general and transgender people in particular have been increasingly affected by destruction of financial lifelines. This puts an already vulnerable woman in an even more precarious position.

It might be easy from here to spin some grand conspiracy, but the fact is that there doesn’t need to be one. 

Capitalism requires continual reproduction of the workforce in order for the ruling class to sustain its parasitic relation to the exploited majority. Whether it’s for propagation of new workers or domestic labor to support existing ones, it is directly within the interests of the capitalist class to promote and propagate misogynistic rhetoric that maintains the subservience of women to the interests of capital. It is therefore an inevitability of the capitalist system to produce cultures of bigotry and hatred towards any movement or concept that threatens that relation, sowing discord among the working class and impeding the revolutionary liberation of all women.

With our reactionary ruling class embracing the turn to fascism, such violence against women serves their ends. So long as the workers are turned against each other, the capitalists don’t need to lift a finger. The brownshirts will handle it on their own.

As the American economy continues its disintegration, attacks against the working class will only continue to intensify, and those attacks are not only coming from Republicans. Democrats are abandoning transgender rights, with eight House Democrats voting with Republicans on a bill that would force teachers nationwide to out trans students. Violence against transgender people benefits them just as it benefits the Republicans. By allowing transphobic violence and rhetoric to go unchecked, they hope to turn workers against each other so that we cannot stand united against our exploiters.

The working masses of the United States are overwhelmingly in favor of trans rights, but passive support does not translate into concrete action. With the capitalist state and its media apparatus attacking the very right of transgender people to self defense, all working-class people must stand strong for our trans comrades. We must unmask fascists like Scott Durham and demand accountability for state actors who protect them. We must continue to put pressure on the courts to uphold Kelver’s innocence in standing her ground. We cannot let the state put her into even greater danger in a men’s prison where she will be vulnerable to sexual assault and other forms of violence by inmates and corrections officers alike. 

Class-conscious workers everywhere must be ready, willing, and able to intervene against fascist violence should the need arise. Through iron and undivided solidarity, we must resist oppression, for an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!

Justice for Ríhanna Kelver!

(Kelver has requested anyone wishing to donate find her here)

The machines of capital are reloading, and the necessity of street medic training is on the rise to protect the oppressed from the oppressors. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the armed wing of a deportation apparatus that serves profit, is set to spend $50 million on a grotesque arsenal of chemical grenades, CS (chlorobenzalmalononitrile) and OC (oleoresin capsicum) foggers, ferret rounds, and rubber-scatter projectiles. 123 distinct ways to maim; a quarter of a million canisters; 13,000 distraction devices that scream at 175 decibels, louder than a jet engine, hot enough to kill hearing tissue. 

“Less lethal” weaponry is state-managed injury, calibrated to break bodies without always stopping hearts, though, as we have seen from Portland to Los Angeles, sometimes it stops those, too. A jaw wired shut. An eye gone dark forever. A uterus cramping and bleeding from chemical exposure long after the protest ends. Such are the fruits of “less lethal” weapons.

This is not an aberration. It is the logical conclusion of a system that treats human beings, especially the unemployed, the homeless, the migrant, the protester, as disposable obstacles to capital accumulation. The police, in all its branded forms (CBP, ICE, DHS), is the enforcement arm of private property under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

“Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.”

V. I. Lenin, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky,” 1918.

When the rich feel the ground shake, when workers strike, when the oppressed refuse to vanish, the state does not negotiate. It fogs entire neighborhoods with tear gas. It buys ferret rounds designed to punch through walls, and through bodies, without a second thought.

This is where we come in as street medics, as volunteers with a stop the bleed kit, and as concerned community members ready to step up and fill in the gaps. 

Street medics have been trained to pack bullet wounds, cinch combat action tourniquets, and apply chest seals, not in a hospital or in a sterile classroom with mannequins and fluorescent lights, but in the heat of the moment where we are needed. We learned on our knees, hands buried in synthetic tissue, out of necessity. We learned to triage mass casualties by touch and instinct, who gets dragged to the transport van, and who cannot be saved.

We are there for the undocumented worker who cannot walk into an emergency room because the nurse will ask for ID and an ICE agent will be waiting at the discharge door. We are there for the unsheltered neighbor whose infected wound no doctor will examine because they assume addiction instead of agony. We are there for the protester shot in the face with a sponge round, like Kaden Rummler, who lost his left eye in Portland, who knows that if an ambulance arrives, he will be arrested before he is treated.

There have been street medics who camped for weeks at Standing Rock, treating tear-gas inhalation and rubber-buckle fractures under prairie stars. Medics who worked the southern border, not to patrol it, but to provide hydration and wound care to migrants abandoned in the desert by the very agency now buying twelve thousand ferret rounds. Medics who visit encampments every week, treating trench foot and abscesses and withdrawal, because the system’s answer to poverty is to criminalize it and make arrests for free prison labor.

Street medics do this without $50 million. We do it with donated gauze, expired saline, and our own exhausted, trembling hands. We do it because we have no trust in the institutions who claim to protect and serve: we only trust each other.

The proletariat will liberate itself. The state will not send help, only more rounds. The state will purchase 242,000 grenades and call them “specialty munitions” as if they are collectible coins instead of instruments of trauma.

They reload their arsenal. We restock our gauze. We build community networks. Until the gaps are closed. Until the arsenals are melted down. Until there are no more wounds to pack on a street corner because there are no more cops to fire the rounds.

“The capitalists will never voluntarily give up control of society and abdicate their system of exploiting the masses. Regardless of the devastating effects of their decaying capitalism; let there be famine, war, pestilence, terrorism, they will hang on to their wealth and power until it is snatched from their hands by the revolutionary proletariat.”

William Z. Foster, “Toward Soviet America,” 1932.

So I ask you, comrades, will we rise in opposition? Will we blockade, document, treat, and testify until their arsenal is answered by our collective refusal? Or will we let them fog the streets while we patch the wounds in silence, over and over, until we run out of gauze or hope?

They have chosen their weapons. What will we choose as ours? 

The past few years have seen a marked increase in transphobic balderdash bubbling up like a vomitous gruel from the reactionary political sphere, with right-wing media pundits, politicians, and the U.S. President himself spreading endless lies, vitriol, and accusations. This rhetoric ranges from claims that all trans people are “predators” who “prey on children,” to the stated ambition of the anti-trans movement as being “determined to use every level of government to drive transgender people out of public life.” Given this worrying situation, which has been partially addressed in prior articles on the topic, it is unfortunately unsurprising (though no less heartbreaking and outrageous) that since Apr. 1, there have been a total of 13 transgender people murdered in the United States. Bourgeois media has mostly neglected to cover this string of heinous crimes against some of the most vulnerable members of the population, and while many may rightfully decry these outlets’ silence, it is very much an expected part of the broader playbook the transphobic bourgeois establishment has deployed in recent years, one that has followed a very clear pattern of dehumanize, disenfranchise, destroy, and disregard.

At the front of the anti-trans playbook lies the often-employed tactic of dehumanization. This typically comes from right-wing pundits, politicians, political insiders, the U.S. President, and frankly, any online grifter without morals or any sense of self-respect looking to make a quick buck by exploiting the hot issue of today. 

We see this manifest in dehumanizing rhetoric, such as Congresswoman Nancy Mace repeatedly using transphobic slurs and derogatory language in reference to trans people; fascist political commentator Michael Knowles calling for the complete “eradication of transgenderism from public life entirely;” President Trump spreading the frequently-referenced false statistic that transgender women are “invading” women’s sports, causing widespread injuries and humiliation of their cis counterparts; and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson issuing a statement reserving the restrooms in the Capitol and House office buildings for “individuals of that biological sex.” 

One could go on endlessly citing examples of the bigoted, false notions the fascists have been spreading about trans people, but the fact of the matter is that this tactic’s core purpose is to set the rhetorical and moral foundation for the next item in their playbook: disenfranchisement. 

Standing firm upon their supposedly steady moral “high ground,” the anti-trans fascists deploy the next method in their toolkit, that of disenfranchisement, or disempowerment and marginalization. What few protections trans Americans had prior to the start of this recent full scale assault on their existence are slowly but surely being chipped away, revealing the beginnings of what, to the empathetic, progressive-minded individual, can only be seen as the head of Medusa, its writhing, serpentine coils poised to petrify the progression of civil rights for all oppressed people. 

This has primarily taken the form, in this decade at least, of anti-trans legislation being proposed en masse by various federal, state, and municipal legislatures across the country. While the majority of the bills proposed, which aim to restrict or fully eliminate the already limited civil rights trans people enjoy, do not proceed past the proposal stage, the sheer number of them being proposed (793 this year alone), act in a similar fashion to the pellets fired from a shotgun at long range, as in, while many do not impact their intended target, a number of them do, with 55 being signed into law in 2026. 

The content of these bills aims to make living a normal, happy life far more difficult, or even impossible, for trans people, such as Kansas Senate Bill 244, which de facto invalidated the driver’s licenses of all trans residents of the state with practically no advanced notice, Missouri House Bill 2009, banning the provision of lifesaving healthcare like hormone replacement therapy (which many trans people who have had certain gender-affirming surgeries need to physically stay alive) to incarcerated trans people, and the notorious Idaho H0752, which deems it a criminal offense for trans people to enter a restroom that is not aligned with their sex assigned at birth, with penalties ranging from one year in jail upon a second “offense,” to life imprisonment after a fourth.  

Emboldened by vicious dehumanizing rhetoric, and sweeping attempts to delegitimize trans existence on paper, useful stooges of the bourgeois order push the envelop into the final, tragic stages of this ongoing campaign of anti-trans genocide and erasure: destruction, or to put it more bluntly, murder, which then subsequently gives way to disregard, wherein, the bourgeois media acts as if it never even happened. 

Since Apr. 1, a total of thirteen trans and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S. have been deliberately targeted and murdered on account of their identities, with several others currently missing. To make matters worse, these murders have received practically no coverage from any of the mainstream, corporate-funded media outlets such as CNN, Fox, and HuffPost. This lack of coverage, far from being accidental, is part of the aforementioned aim of the reactionary transphobic movement to “eliminate [transgender people] from public life entirely.” In gathering sources for this story, there was extreme difficulty in acquiring the precise details of the victims’ lives, who they were, what their names and ages were, and the manner in which their lives were tragically and violently cut short. 

With the exception of Them, an LGBTQIA+-focused outlet owned by Condé Nast, the only coverage of these murders has been published almost exclusively in small, local newspapers in the localities where the killings took place, as well as by various independent journalists and online publications with a specific focus on investigating and reporting on queer issues. With the help of these sources, among others, the names and ages of the victims, along with the dates and locations of their recent targeted murders, are as follows:

• Davonta Curtis, age 31, Apr. 8, Chicago, IL
• Daniella Analee Escobedo, age 34, Apr. 12, Las Vegas, NV
• Danielle Spillman, age 74, Apr. 13, San Francisco, CA
• Aleanna Belcher, age 31, Apr. 17, Binghamton, NY
• Luca “RedBeard” Knapp, age 39, Apr. 18, Cibola County, NM
• Lanessa Rodriguez, age 35, Apr. 28, Fort Pierce, FL
• Hailey Singleton, age 29, May 5, Dunnellon, FL
• Juniper Blessing, age 19, May 10, Seattle, WA
• Eryka Caldwell, age 41, May 17, Brooklyn, NY
• Nathaniel Potts, age 16, May 20, Raleigh, IL
• Murry Faust, age 22, May 24, Wilder, KY
• Leia Trysiss Ali, age 35, May 24, Las Vegas, NV
• Persia Amarra Conway, age 33, May 25, Houston, TX

The unfortunate aspect of this tragic situation, of course in addition to the fact that any of these people were murdered in the first place, is that this list is most likely incomplete, as the vast majority of the murders of trans people, especially of Black trans women (the demographic most likely to be targeted and impacted by anti-trans violence and harassment), go entirely unreported. What’s more, day by day, week by week, year by year, as long as class society is allowed to continue, as long as the working class is subjected to the whims and wishes of the owning class, viewed as nothing more than replaceable cogs in the relentlessly churning, ever-decaying machine of capitalism, this will continue. 

The ruling class not only foments divisions among separate strata of the working masses in an attempt to divide and disorient any prospective proletarian movement, it requires a constant, steady supply of fresh blood, of new labor, to exploit, use up, and jettison into the industrial meat grinder once its productive capacities are at an end. Any deviation from the cis-heteronormative order which ensures this consistent stream of new workers – namely, gay and trans people – is seen as an affront to the bourgeoisie’s dominion, and must at once be identified, targeted, eliminated, and cast out from their proverbial “heavenly kingdom.” 

That is why the working-class movement, in its increasingly pertinent quest to shape itself into a more cohesive, independent, organized, and militant form, must under no circumstances give a single nanometer of headway to the bourgeoisie’s attempts to divide and disenfranchise any section of the working class, or to redirect legitimate social grievances or strain to anyone else but the real culprit for this crisis of capitalism: the capitalist. We must unreservedly stand shoulder to shoulder with our trans brothers, sisters, and siblings in the fight to end capitalist class rule once and for all. Our very future depends upon it.

On May 11, 2026, at around 6:00 pm in Mundelein, IL, a northern suburb of Chicago, a relative called the police and stated that Mary Alice Love, 37, was suicidal and had said she wanted police to kill her. Police arrived shortly thereafter and murdered Mary, stating that she had been wielding “two large knives” while on the patio (according to a statement by the “major crimes task force” of Lake County) and had “aggressively opened the screen door” before officers shot her four times inside the home. She was dead before they even got her in the ambulance, which had arrived with police, who noted a “full (cardiac) arrest” to the ambulance outside. 

The public response from local authorities has been predictable. The police and city government have stated that the incident was “a tragedy,” and have turned off comments on city and police department social media. Such is the fate of people killed by the police from the perspective of local governments. Their murder was a tragic “accident,” created by sad circumstances outside of our control as a society. The public response is also what you would expect: some anger, others defending the police, and the incessant, useless litany of “thoughts and prayers” for all involved.

I do know what it is like to talk to someone in crisis. I am a mental health crisis worker. I have sat next to people who were holding weapons. I have looked into the eyes of people in crisis who I was not completely sure would not harm me. Yet, in these countless situations, I have never hurt anyone or been hurt myself. I was never even armed with any kind of weapon or restraint. As a crisis worker, I was expected to use crisis deescalation, body language, and pragmatic problem solving to prevent the worst. 

What’s the difference? I have actual training for this work (that I care about and implement, unlike most cops) and do not see a person who is suicidal as a threat. A suicidal woman should never be shot four times and killed instantly by a group of armed men. A group of armed men, no less, called by a genuinely-concerned relative who wanted to help. Now, that relative must live with the fact that they called Mary’s killers.

As with so many other police killings, despair is a natural reaction. How many more must die before anything is done? But in this case, direct solutions are available. First and foremost, the police officers involved must be charged for their crimes, which should always be the first priority. We should avail ourselves of what little justice is available to us. Beyond this, on a country-wide level, armed police must stop responding to mental health crises. In many large cities and larger, better-funded states, there are already CIT (Crisis-Intervention Team) officers who are often unarmed and trained in crisis intervention. Mundelein has no such officers, and this is true of most suburban and rural towns. As with most things, there are two Americas, and where you live determines a great deal. 

Beyond this, we must continue our fight for community control of the police and universal healthcare. The police will never be accountable if they police themselves. They will always blame the vulnerable and those in mental health crisis. Being suicidal is not a crime, but the police will always use “mental illness” as their excuse for murder. Millions of Americans additionally cannot afford mental healthcare and millions more will lose access in 2027 due to cuts to Medicaid. From the local to the federal and to the world, all of our issues from the gas pump to the smoking gun of the unaccountable police are linked to the things the people of the world are forced to endure under this violent capitalist regime. As Malcolm X said, “we must stop it ourselves!”

Justice for Mary Alice Love! No free killer cops!
Cops out of mental healthcare!
Mental illness is not a crime!
Safe and non-judgmental healthcare for all!

The past few years have seen an unprecedented push by the United States federal government, backed by the broad authority of the far-right majority Supreme Court, to undo decades of progress in the field of women’s rights and bodily autonomy The latest development in this worrying trend, a recent lower-court ruling restricting access to the most commonly-used abortion drug, has been temporarily blocked from implementation by the Supreme Court. Progressive-minded people should not see this decision as a victory, however, but rather, a calculated, tactical retreat for the purpose of more effectively and comprehensively rallying the forces of reaction behind this fascistic assault on the fundamental human right to physical self-determination.

On May 1, a three-judge panel from a New Orleans-based federal appeals court issued a ruling determining that the most commonly-prescribed abortion drug, Mifepristone, can only be obtained in person, overruling longstanding federal regulations on the drug. Previously, medical professionals were allowed to prescribe and distribute the medication by mail, widely expanding its accessibility, particularly to those living in states with stricter abortion laws. Despite the fact that the FDA itself has, in the past, officially stated that Mifepristone is both safe and effective, a fact confirmed by the results of over 100 scientific studies, the agency, at the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has announced it will begin reassessing the safety and efficacy of the drug. This sudden change in attitude toward long-held official medical standards is indicative of the current regime’s clear pattern of unscientific, politically motivated decisions regarding the health and livelihood of the American people. If Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s history of misrepresenting scientific evidence about vaccines, autism, and Tylenol is any indication, this shift is unlikely to be grounded in sound medical judgment.

Just three days after the aforementioned lower court decision, the United States Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on the ruling, restoring remote access to Mifepristone for the time being while the court “considers the issue more fully.” While some who witnessed this new ruling exhaled understandable sighs of relief, it is important for all progressive-minded people and those directly affected by the issue to recognize that this is by no means a final victory, and we should refrain from celebrating prematurely. Far from being an unbiased actor standing above the reactionary political motivations of the current regime’s agenda, the Supreme Court has demonstrated its own concerning pattern of fascistic tendencies in its recent rulings, showcasing the problem’s deeper roots in the foundations of our society.

Decisions the Supreme Court has made in the past few years clearly show its political direction. From overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, which had granted Americans the constitutional right to abortion, to its 2024 ruling that the U.S. President possesses immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office, to its siding just weeks ago with a faith-based pregnancy center that raised First Amendment concerns over whether it misled people to discourage abortions (it did), the Court has made its priorities clear. Much like the lower court that issued the original restriction on Mifepristone, the Supreme Court is not merely onboard with the current administration’s expanding attacks on the right to choose, it is leading the charge.

While the Supreme Court may have temporarily halted the ban on mail-order abortion drugs, it has by no means taken the side of science, truth, and bodily autonomy. Given its clear, recent pattern of reactionary, politically-motivated rulings which further restrict the freedom of women, transgender individuals, and all oppressed strata of the American population, all evidence points to this decision being a carefully-crafted retreat which aims to buy the court and the Trump regime the time it needs to consolidate its playbook of lies, and to more fully rally the forces of fascism behind a concerted effort towards the de jure elimination of the people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies.

This serves, in their view, to remind the working class that they, the bourgeoisie, own everything, not just the private property which they use to extract our labor power each day we punch into work, but our very flesh and blood, too. However, what is equally imperative for us to keep in mind is that their hubris will also be their downfall, and there is nothing they fear more than a united working class coming together across racial, gender, sexual, religious, and all other lines which serve as nothing more than barriers to our unity. We must recognize that while we cannot ever truly be free under the current capitalist mode of production, we do already possess the tools we need to ensure our collective liberation once and for all. We need only to use them.

After the horrific shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, it has become clear that, under the auspices of the Trump regime, fascist terrorists have felt emboldened to intensify their attacks against workers, LGBTQIA+ people, and people of oppressed races, ethnicities, and nationalities. One particularly noteworthy cell perpetrating right-wing terror is the Heartland Active Club (HAC), representing the states of Kansas and Missouri, and its leader Jacob Daniel Jones, who poses a severe and immediate danger to local communities.

Despite the rise in attacks, due to both the deliberate obscuring of violent crime data by the Department of Justice and a certain hesitancy on the part of media outlets to report on these subjects, it has never been easier for right-wing extremists to maintain their anonymity. The growth of so-called “Active Clubs,” an international network of decentralized white supremacist cells organized through social media, with ties to the militia movement and the fascist Patriot Front, largely organized through social media networks like Telegram. As of June 2025, there were 187 Active Club chapters operating in 27 countries. The relatively quick spread in popularity of these groups led Alexander Ritzmann, an advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, to remark: “I’ve never seen a network in right-wing extremism grow so fast. Usually, it takes years to build a transnational network.” 

On Jan. 21, 2026, Decoherence Media published an article identifying Jacob Daniel Jones, a 32 year-old man from Olathe, KS, as the leader of the HAC. Working under the Telegram username “Prairie ⴲ Nationalist ,” Jones has claimed to be a proponent of “National Socialist thought” for over a decade, and has said that after leaving the United States Marine Corps, he was briefly a member of the neo-Nazi Identity Evropa group. Jones has also made posts praising the white supremacist mass murderer Anders Brevik for fighting against “international communism.” Under Jones’ leadership, the HAC has engaged in actions ranging from sparring and martial arts training, to stencil painting Patriot Front insignias on buildings and engaging in pseudo-military exercises held at outdoor shooting ranges.

Jacob Jones’ tenure as head of the HAC has also coincided with increased collaboration with right-wing militia groups to deepen their network of nationalist cells. Through Telegram, the HAC has held regular communications with the Mid-Missouri Minutemen (MMN), active largely in the Ozarks region of Missouri. This is particularly troubling, as the MMN is among the larger militia groups in the country and has cultivated a particularly virulent white nationalist base, with members openly calling for genocidal race war within their Telegram chats. While the recruitment tactics of these groups are still woefully understudied, the Southern Poverty Law Center believes that the close connections between Active Clubs and both the militia movement and the Patriot Front has contributed to the rapid spread of these groups. While in-person events do take place, most of the development of these groups is taking place on-line and with members remaining more-or-less anonymous.

It is under the protection afforded by online messaging and communication networks that the HAC is actively preparing for violent action. While some Active Clubs in the U.S. have downplayed the role of military training in the movement, this is not the case with the HAC. At least four HAC members took part in a “run and gun” style shooting event held in Versailles, Missouri. Even more disturbing was the discovery of pictures showing Jacob Jones posing in military gear, holding a rifle while recreating the image of a recruitment poster used by Rhodesian Security Forces. The legacy and imagery of the white minority-led Republic of Rhodesia has long been used as a rallying point for fascist groups. This particularly holds true for HAC, as Jones has explicitly stated that he has developed the military standard operating procedures for the group using the training and policy of the Selous Scouts, a special forces unit of the Rhodesian military known for committing atrocities, including the use of biological weapons. When these details are coupled with Jones’ aforementioned celebration of Anders Brevik’s murders, the violent intentions of the HAC become clear.

Yet despite the obvious danger posed, the HAC and similar groups are receiving little notice. As of the time of writing, there has been no coverage of Jacob Jones outside of the aforementioned Decoherence article, and only a handful of stories from various outlets have addressed the HAC. While the emphasis these groups place on secrecy is partly to blame, it would be unwise to ignore the role of deliberate obfuscation. 

Last year, the Department of Justice quietly removed a study it had published finding that far-right extremists commit far more violence than other domestic terrorist groups. This policy was further developed with the 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy released by the Trump regime. This document made no references to right-wing terrorist groups but primarily concerned itself with leftists, “pro-transgender groups,” and Trump’s typical political targets. 

Shortly after the barbaric attack on the San Diego Islamic Center, the reactionary internet personality Laura Loomer spread lies about the victims and called for the center to be raided by ICE and the FBI. Perpetrators of fascist violence clearly can see that they have an ally in the White House.

We, the working and oppressed peoples of America, find ourselves in critical times. As the contradictions intrinsic to capitalism intensify, we can only expect the onslaught of fascist violence to likewise intensify. While the portion of the ruling class represented by Trump will actively court fascists and white supremacists as its political base, the portion of the bourgeoisie represented by the Democratic Party is more interested in blaming leftists for its failures than in combating reactionary violence. We must accept that no help is coming from the political establishment, and we know this from the history of the communist and labor movements.

In the first half of the 20th Century, the struggle against fascism was fought by the militant international working class under the courageous leadership of the Soviet Union. In this hour of historical upheaval, it is the workers that must lead the charge in exposing and fighting the members of the fascist networks that have developed in America and abroad. This will require courage, vigilance and above all, dedication to the struggles of all oppressed peoples. But if history has taught us anything, it is that when the workers of the world are united and guided by the principles of scientific socialism, no fascist horde is powerful enough to oppose them!

As the cost of living for the average working-class American continues to rise, residents in Oregon are being hit particularly hard, while our elected representatives sell us out to line the pockets of a billionaire. The state is currently facing a nearly $200 million budget shortfall, which has led to elected officials there having to make “tough choices” regarding which public services must face funding reductions. However, many have raised serious doubts about the necessity of such cuts, considering the fact that state and city governments have made the decision to give handouts to wealthy out-of-state investors. It is up to the working masses of Oregon to organize together and reverse this deal to restore our essential services.

According to the 2026 Cost of Living Report, around 73% of Oregon residents have been forced to reduce personal expenses in order to afford necessities, with the cost of housing and utilities accounting for a 33% increase from just seven years ago. 

In the Portland metropolitan area, where nearly 60% of the state’s residents live, the situation has become even more bleak. TriMet, the city’s publicly-owned transit company, has noted that its cost of upkeep increased 59% between 2019 and 2025, forcing it to reduce or eliminate service on more than 10% of its bus lines. The Portland Public School District announced it would be forced to close one in seven public elementary and middle schools. Multnomah County’s homeless services budget was also recently slashed by $87 million, over a quarter of its total, which will substantially harm the people who depend upon subsidized housing or access to shelter beds, domestic violence shelters, and cooling shelters in the upcoming summer heat.

Meanwhile, the city and state are spending $350 million in public funds to renovate the billionaire-owned NBA team’s stadium, the Moda Center, which was purchased by the city of Portland in 2024 for $7 million. This funding allocation comes from SB 1501, a bill backed by Gov. Tina Kotek and passed by an overwhelming 43-13 majority in the Oregon state legislature. 

The Portland Trailblazers were previously owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, and upon his death were bought by Texan billionaire and Trump supporter Tom Dundon. Dundon is infamous for earning his wealth through predatory subprime loans, preying on the most vulnerable for maximal profits. His business model was considered so rapacious that the state of Oregon had previously sued his company, Santander Consumer, stating that it was “predatory and harmful and will not be tolerated in Oregon.”

Yet the state wasted little time in reversing course and welcoming Dundon with open arms. During the negotiation phase for this stadium deal, Oregon had no independent negotiator working on the behalf of the city and its people. The deal was simply outlined by Dundon’s representatives and then accepted by the legislature without any attempt at negotiation. This is extremely unusual, and has no doubt led to the worst stadium deal in the United States.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, and all but one of the twelve members of Portland City Council – including three of the four DSA members – released an official statement applauding SB 1501’s advancement, citing the creation of “urgently needed, good-paying construction jobs” (ignore all the potholes and lack of schools, health clinics, and affordable housing though!), and referencing the potential positive impact the renovations may have on the economy.

In reality, “nearly all empirical studies find little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economic activity, and the level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits.” Any genuine study of evidence immediately invalidates the false claims coming from Portland public officials that these donations of public funds to an out-of-state private investor will supposedly serve to benefit the people living here.

It is clear that the so-called “progressive” politicians running our city and state are more interested in providing handouts to the people who need it the least even while the masses are struggling, our neighborhoods are collapsing, and necessary public services are being shuttered. Even “progressive” representatives have given nothing but more austerity while providing billions in subsidies to the predators who accumulate their ever-increasing wealth on the backs of our labor and our suffering.

Our elected officials, regardless of their party affiliations, offer us nothing but a false choice, with little daylight between their policies in any practical sense. All of them stand for the continued accumulation of capital and power by a tiny minority of moneyed interests who produce nothing but pain for the working masses and catastrophe for the planet.

Rather than spinning our wheels in the same mud of incremental reform, without end, without galvanizing working people, we must make demands to alleviate our stress and strain for the decisive class battles to come. 

We call on grassroots organizations, labor unions, and working-class parties and organizations to work together to put pressure on the mayor and City Council to reverse this stadium deal and restore our public services.

Stop the City of Portland from allocating any public funds to the Moda project. Make private money pay for the renovation. No handouts to billionaires!

Reallocate slashed funds to public services they were taken from. No cuts to TriMet, housing, schools, or any services that help working Portlanders!

To organize in coalition with our Portland organizers, reach out to us on Instagram: @apl.pdx

Hunger strikes have erupted across three of ICE’s concentration camps operated by the private prison corporation the GEO Group, a publicly traded corporation – two at neighboring facilities in Adelanto, California, and a third at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. As detainees refuse food to protest abusive conditions and indefinite confinement, the coordinated actions expose the growing resistance inside America’s sprawling immigration detention system.

Adelanto, the small rural town where these hunger strikes are taking place, is in a desert in rural California, about a two-hour drive from Los Angeles. It has three buildings for holding ICE victims. Adelanto ICE Processing Center was a state prison for two decades, before GEO Group bought it in 2010 and converted it to an ICE facility in 2011. They built its larger West Wing in 2012, to support Barack Obama’s massive surge of anti-immigrant violence. Desert View Annex, to the east, is a de-facto expansion opened in late 2020. “Adelanto” is commonly used to refer to all three as one concentration camp.

Human rights groups have mentioned Adelanto in numerous lawsuits since GEO started running the facility. ICE has been known for denying due process to their victims, while the facility is known for beatings, overcrowding, denial of visitation, spread of disease, medical neglect, and abuse of prisoner labor. 

Donald Trump is openly friendly with GEO Group’s largest investors. The company’s stock jumped 42% the day after his re-election. Since Trump’s second term began, five people have died in Adelanto or shortly after being released from the facility. 

A reporter from Southern California New Group says that over 40 people began hunger striking in the West Wing on May 15. They are demanding faster medical care, more and better-quality food, and mold remediation. Unfortunately, as of the time of writing, information is limited. Several families have made the long drive to Adelanto, to only then be denied visits because their loved one was part of the strike or living in the same dorm as a striker.

A separate hunger strike, plus economic boycott, began in Desert View Annex on May 19. Defend Migrants Alliance hosted a press conference on May 20, to expose the conditions in Adelanto, share the strikers’ demands, and ask for immediate support from the community. This strike includes at least twenty people, with possibly dozens more.

Eva, the wife of one of the organizers, went into detail about the horrors that led to the strike. Her husband, Luis, has been in Adelanto facilities since September. Luis has an exposed nerve on his hand from a work accident. Being kidnapped by ICE has cut his treatment short. He was assigned a top bunk, while the bottom bunk was empty, even though climbing up was sending a shocking pain through his hand. When he asked for the bottom bunk, the guards mocked him. They told him to “get a doctor’s note,” then directed him to a fake grievance process instead of getting him medical attention. He hasn’t been able to get anything to cover the nerve, so now he’s experiencing “shocks” and complications through his whole arm. He has also tried to report coughing and chest pains, but has only been given tylenol, mints, and salt packets “to gargle with.”

Communication with prisoners is limited. Phone calls are monitored, while prisoners face retaliation for reporting bad conditions or offering information to outside organizers. In-person visits can be denied for any or no reason. Families and organizers have learned to bring many outfits to visits, as anything can be deemed “too baggy,” “too revealing,” “offensive,” or “a gang color.” The facility denies visitation for emergency “power outage” closures, which organizers claim happen more in weeks that the facility is covering up a death, strike, or other incident.

ICE prisoners are often forced to pay for over-the-counter medication, while being denied medical attention. Adelanto has a $1 per day work program, which is the subject of a lawsuit for wage theft, unjust enrichment, and forced labor. While squeezing prisoners for as much commissary money as possible, using them for unpaid or barely-paid labor, and denying them decent food or medical care, GEO Group is charging the government an average of $165 per detainee, per day. The typical bond is around $80,000, so most people are trapped while they wait for their court hearings. The Desert View Annex economic boycott involves refusing to pay for phone calls or buying anything else from the commissary.

Caleb Soto, a lawyer with National Day Laborer Organizing Network, spoke at the press conference to confirm how bad the conditions are and to share the exact demands of the Desert View Annex hunger strikers. He said that his clients have noticeably aged in just months at Adelanto, from the food and medical care being inadequate and the constant stress from the conditions of terror.

Desert View Annex Hunger Strikers’ Seven Core Demands:

1. Bond Reform: Fair, transparent, and legally-justified bond determinations
2. Improved Conditions: Immediate remediation of mold, water infrastructure repairs, and clean, functioning facilities
3. Adequate Medical Care: Meaningful medical appointments and appropriate treatment for chronic conditions
4. Nutritious Food: A diet that sustains basic physical health
5. Accountability for Deaths: Answers regarding detainee deaths in care
6. Right to Organize: Freedom to meet collectively and communicate without retaliation
7. Shut Down Adelanto and Desert View: Complete closure of the facilities

Bertie Hernandez spoke as a survivor of Adelanto; now an  advocate and activist with California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance. Hernandez and CIYJA  talked about how the conditions were already horrible during Trump’s first term and have only become worse because of overcrowding. One of their priorities was to highlight how hunger striking is a last resort. Hunger strikers can be thrown in solitary confinement or even transferred out-of-state, away from their families and lawyers, to a facility with forced feeding. The press conference organizers  also pointed out that lawsuits had reduced Adelanto’s prisoner population to just six people in 2020, providing organizers and activists tangible proof  that it is possible to shut the facility down.

The hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall started on May 22, 2026 and includes about 300 prisoners. They are striking for vulnerable detainees to be released, for the governor to investigate the facility and meet with them, and for their conditions to be improved. Delaney Hall is in urban Newark, New Jersey and has been supported by large protests outside its walls. ICE has been assaulting protesters, including U.S. Senator Andy Kim, with chemical weapons. U.S. Congressman Rob Menendez claims that he tried to do an unannounced oversight visit, but was illegally denied entry. New Jersey’s Governor showed up on Monday morning and was criticized for the state’s slow response.

All three strikes are believed to be still ongoing. Anonymous observers reported ambulances leaving the Adelanto complex on May 23, 24, and 27.

The American Party of Labor remains committed to the fight against ICE, the prison industry, and fascism. Working people deserve freedom and comfort, no matter their race, nationality, or physical ability. Migrant workers are not the cause of capitalism’s failures. We recognize the courage of the strikers and strongly encourage everyone to mobilize to support them. An organized, militant working class cannot be abused!

Teamsters’ General President Sean O’Brien and North America’s Building Trades Unions’ President Sean McGarvey recently attended an infrastructure summit hosted by multinational investment company BlackRock. The summit’s guiding theme was “Building America’s Future Together: The Infrastructure Opportunity.” For two unions, with over 4.4 million members combined, it is unconscionable that their Presidents would observe, let alone participate in, any event hosted by a company of Blackrock’s ilk. BlackRock is actively privatizing homes that were once relatively affordable while workers struggle to afford housing. The company secured uncontested contracts for failing banks during the 2008 housing collapse and crushed the workforce with layoffs and uncertainty.

BlackRock is not just your run of the mill corporation; in a world of capitalist tyranny and monopolistic dominion, BlackRock is second to none. They are the world’s largest asset manager with approximately $12.5 trillion in managed capital. Along with Vanguard and State Street, these “big three” companies are holding around half of the total market capitalization of the S&P 500 (the 500 largest companies on the stock market, representing 80% of the total US stock market value), and they are the largest shareholders in 88% of those same corporations.

But BlackRock doesn’t stop at managing assets, they are also actively privatizing hospitals and utility suppliers. The United States is already dealing with an unprecedented wealth gap (the top 1% own half of the stock market, while the bottom 50% of the population owns 1%) and it’s due, in large part, to companies like BlackRock. This follows the logic of capital accumulation as Vladimir Lenin explained in Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism: 

“Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized.” 

And later, 

“Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.”

The idea that two major labor union leaders would attend an infrastructure summit hosted by BlackRock is a betrayal to the workers they represent. Unions exist because the workforce and corporations have diametrically opposing views on production, compensation, and what is best for the workforce in general. A union should look at this summit with the understanding that this work can not be done without us, the laboring masses.

These are the same companies and capitalist opportunists who have moved American manufacturing overseas amidst rapacious automation, ignored infrastructure for decades, and still continue to pillage the countries subjected to imperialism. Instead of participating in this façade, union leaders must continue to recruit more members until organized workers’ power has been accumulated to such a level that industry-wide strikes can be successfully coordinated. They must lead the struggle for organizing society to the tune of workers’ interests, not the interests of private profit. To join in the discussion at this summit is akin to holding out your soup bowl and hoping the ladler is feeling kind. These presidents need to foment the change in American labor, not ride the coattails of the bourgeoisie.  

The unions show their subservience to the people they are supposed to be fighting by their participation in a program to “maintain the country’s leadership in AI deployment.” These unions need to understand that AI will not only make millions of jobs obsolete, but the remaining jobs will be negatively affected when unemployment numbers skyrocket and companies take advantage of the swelling desperation in labor. 

If not for the class antagonisms of capitalism, artificial intelligence would be a useful development for reducing workload and working hours for laborers to improve standards of living for everyone. But AI, as it is currently constituted under capitalism, instead leads to growing economic inequality, media manipulation, mental atrophy, nonconsensual imagery, stricter surveillance, and irreversible environmental issues. Competition between employers is a race to the bottom in terms of workplace conditions and workers’ quality of life.

We already see today that the data centers used for AI are raising residential utility prices as the costs to maintain them are subsidized by our tax dollars. These data centers also need immense amounts of water to cool the equipment, causing water scarcity and even droughts in more water-scarce locations. They are not being built in affluent, well-off neighborhoods, they are being built in working-class towns and cities, affecting already skyrocketing energy bills, and in some cases contributing to noise pollution with their constant, dissonant humming.

Of course, technology should be used to make the human experience a more enjoyable one. AI could have very large benefits to working people but under capitalism, every technological development is used to further oppress working people. 

As with all capitalist companies, BlackRock is the ultimate contrarian. They claim to use investment principles that emphasize environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. Meanwhile BlackRock is the world’s largest investor in coal, they invest in industrial development and intimidation on indigenous land, and they profiteer from wars all around the globe.

For any member of either of these two unions, with such corporate stooges leading the way, every justification exists to hold their union’s leadership in the utmost contempt.

Sean O’Brien and Sean McGarvey are frauds of the highest order. They have sit-down meals with Senators paid by union dues, they play rounds of golf with the dregs of capitalist society, and they collaborate with Donald Trump, a fascist war criminal and sexual predator. They have no interest in organizing the masses, no interest in building class consciousness, and are everything that’s wrong with the current leadership of American unions.

Statement by the Revolutionary Government | May 20,2026—

The Revolutionary Government condemns in the strongest terms the despicable accusation by the United States Department of Justice announced on May 20 and proclaimed for several weeks against Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution.

The United States government lacks the legitimacy and jurisdiction to carry out this action. It is a despicable and infamous act of political provocation, based on the dishonest manipulation of the incident that led to the downing, in February 1996, of two aircraft operated by the Miami-based terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue over Cuban airspace, which repeated violations of Cuban airspace for hostile purposes were of common knowledge.

Furthermore, the U.S. government distorts other historical truths about the event it uses as a pretext. It omits, among other details, the numerous formal complaints filed by Cuba during that period with the State Department, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regarding more than 25 serious and deliberate violations of Cuban airspace committed by the cited organization between 1994 and 1996, in blatant transgression of international law and U.S. legislation itself.

It also ignores public and official warnings issued by Cuban authorities about the inadmissibility of such violations of its airspace and alert messages conveyed directly to the President of the United States about the seriousness and possible consequences of such transgressions.

Cuba’s response to the violation of its airspace constituted an act of legitimate self-defense, protected by the Charter of the United Nations, the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, and the principles of air sovereignty and proportionality.

The United States, which has been a victim of the use of civil aviation for terrorist purposes, does not and would not permit the hostile and provocative violation of foreign aircraft over its territory and would act, as it has demonstrated, with the use of force.

The inaction of the US government in the face of the warnings issued by Cuba at the time, revealed its complicity in the planning and execution from its territory of violent, illegal and terrorist actions against the Cuban government and people, a recurring and systematic practice since the triumph of the Revolution to present day.

It is highly cynical that this accusation is made by the same government that has murdered nearly 200 people and destroyed 57 vessels in international waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific, far from the territory of the United States, with the disproportionate use of military force, for alleged links to drug trafficking operations that were never proven, which qualify as extrajudicial executions, in accordance with International Law, and murders, according to US laws themselves.

This spurious accusation against the Leader of the Cuban Revolution adds to the desperate attempts by anti-Cuban elements to construct a fraudulent narrative in an effort to justify the collective and ruthless punishment against the noble Cuban people, through the strengthening of unilateral coercive measures, including the unjust and genocidal energy blockade and threats of armed aggression.

Cuba reaffirms its commitment to peace and its firm determination to exercise the inalienable right to self-defense, recognized by the Charter of the United Nations.

The Cuban people reaffirm their unwavering decision to defend the Homeland and its Socialist Revolution and, with the greatest strength and firmness, their unrestricted and unchanging support for Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, Leader of the Cuban Revolution.

Homeland or Death, We Will Prevail.

Havana, May 20, 2026.
“Year of the Centenary of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.”

Maude C. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Ohio–

Across the United States, child labor violations have risen fivefold in a decade. Over 5,000 minors were illegally employed last year alone. Yet instead of strengthening protections, Republican and Democrat lawmakers, the faithful servants of American capital, are systematically erasing them. They are slashing minimum wages for teenagers, eliminating safety databases, and legalizing hazardous work for children.

Let us not mince words: this is not a policy failure. It is the logic of capitalism made manifest. 

Capitalism treats human beings as commodities. Its sole motive is profit. When employers can pay a child less for the same work as an adult, they will. When they can evade oversight, they do. According to Marx, capital is “dead labor, which, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor.” Today, that vampire has set its sights on our children. The elimination of work permits in Indiana, the sub-minimum “training wage” in Nebraska, the removal of hazardous occupation lists in West Virginia. These are not isolated mistakes. They are a coordinated class offensive designed to create a cheaper, more vulnerable workforce. 

The defenders of this system claim it is about “opportunity.” But as Lenin understood, “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.” This is freedom for corporations to exploit, freedom for slaughterhouses to hire children, freedom for fast-food chains to work ten-year-olds past midnight. 

The Biden administration’s meager enforcement efforts were met with a 97% decline in wage and hour cases under the subsequent administration. The state, regardless of which faction holds office, ultimately serves the interests of capital. When those interested require the exploitation of youth, the state clears the path. 

We must not stop our struggle after achieving vital reforms. We need to continue to raise our demands until we establish a system that places human need above private profit. We need socialism. 

The working class must call to action the following:

1. The immediate repeal of all state-level rollbacks to child labor protections and the establishment of a uniform, higher federal minimum wage with no sub-minimum “training” exceptions. 
2. The codification of federal standards that supersede these regressive state laws, ensuring that no child in any state can be legally employed in hazardous conditions or for exploitative wages.

Under socialism, the labor of every person, young or old, would be valued not by its cost to an employer, but by its contribution to society. As Stalin stated, “In capitalist society, labor is a burden. In socialist society, labor is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism” (Report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party, 1930). We do not need “training wages” that teach young workers their labor is worth less. We need education, dignified work, and the guarantee that no child is forced into a factory to support a family. 

The fight against child labor exploitation is inseparable from the fight against capitalism itself. Every hour that a teenager works for sub-minimum wage is an hour that weakens the wages of all workers. For every hazardous job a child is forced to take, more poor kids will be driven into the meat-grinder of capitalism to take menial positions that are dangerous, just as they did in the early 20th century.

But a challenge against the capitalist state is only a plea. True protection will not come from the same legislature that passes these bills. It will come from us, from the organized power of the working class. As Dolores Huerta so clearly stated, “People have the power to solve problems in their own communities. People shouldn’t wait for the power to try and help them.”

The fight against the exploitation of children is a fight for the entire working class. It is a fight against the principle that profit is more important than life. Let the ruling class hear our response. We will not accept a society that treats our children as commodities. We will organize. We will resist. And we will build a movement capable of not just restoring these protections, but of establishing a system where the labor of every person, young or old, is valued for its contribution to human need, not its price on the open market.

The time for half-measures is over. The safety of our youth demands a full-scale defense of the working class. We must be prepared to wage that struggle, not with appeals to the better nature of our exploiters, but with the unshakeable unity of the oppressed.

The National Lawyers Guild Disability Justice Committee condemns proposed changes to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that threaten to punish disabled people for surviving through family and community support. These policy shifts represent a continuation of the long-standing use of the law as a tool to discipline poverty, undermine collective care, and isolate disabled people from the very networks that sustain life.

As reflected in the federal regulatory agenda under Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (RIN 0960-AI94), proposed revisions to SSI rules would reduce or eliminate benefits for disabled people who live with family members, including parents and adult children. These changes would disproportionately impact disabled adults with high support needs, as well as older people forced by economic conditions to rely on shared housing arrangements.

SSI is a program of last resort, providing minimal income to people who are poor and disabled, many of whom have never been able to access wage labor or have been systematically excluded from it. Yet instead of strengthening this lifeline, policymakers continue to impose punitive rules that treat mutual aid, caregiving, and shared survival as grounds for punishment. By counting family support as “income,” the state effectively forces disabled people to choose between basic subsistence and connection to their communities.

This is not administrative reform. It is austerity enforced through bureaucratic violence.

These proposed changes reflect a broader legal and political framework that criminalizes dependency while erasing the reality that all people rely on interdependence to survive. Disability justice teaches that care networks are not fraud or abuse; they are essential responses to systemic abandonment. Efforts to reduce SSI benefits based on living arrangements function to dismantle these networks and push disabled people further into poverty, institutionalization, or homelessness.

The National Lawyers Guild has long recognized that the law is not neutral. It is a site of struggle. In the context of disability benefits, the law is being mobilized to redraw the boundaries of who is considered worthy of survival. These policies echo other attacks on the social safety net that disproportionately harm poor, disabled, Black, and Brown communities, reinforcing a system where economic precarity is weaponized to control and exclude.

As movement professionals, advocates, organizers, and lawyers, we reject frameworks that individualize survival and penalize collective care. We affirm that:

• Disabled people have the right to live in community without losing access to essential benefits.
• Caregiving and mutual aid must not be treated as disqualifying income.
• Public benefits programs must be expanded and strengthened, not restricted through punitive eligibility rules.

We call on movement professionals, advocates, organizers, and lawyers to engage in collective defense of disabled communities facing these changes.

We further recognize that legal strategies alone are insufficient. True disability justice requires building power outside of traditional legal systems, centering those most impacted, and advancing transformative approaches that prioritize dignity, autonomy, and collective survival.

The Disability Justice Committee stands in solidarity with all those resisting these attacks. We commit to using the law where it is useful, challenging it where it is harmful, and organizing beyond it to build a world where disabled people are not punished for living, loving, and surviving together.

Signed,

Disability Justice Committee and Executive Council

Lurking in the deepest bowels of Colorado, a coalition calling itself Protect Kids Colorado has mobilized to push three initiatives onto the Nov. 2026 ballot, each draped in the rhetoric of child protection but rooted in the reactionary impulses of the ruling class. This campaign exemplifies a deeper contradiction within capitalist society: the selective outrage of Christian nationalist factions who proclaim to safeguard “girls in sports” from transgender participation, framing it as a defense of biological purity and fairness. Yet, this same moral fervor evaporates when confronting the systemic exploitation embedded in the capitalist order. 

Led by anti-LGBTQ+ “activist” Erin Lee, the group submitted over 165,000 signatures for Initiative 110, which seeks to ban surgeries on minors aimed at altering biological sex characteristics, and to prohibit public funding for gender-affirming care. More than 170,000 signatures backed Initiative 109, mandating that schools and athletic associations define sports teams by physical anatomy at birth, effectively barring transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports. A similar number supported Initiative 108, which would ramp up penalties for human trafficking of minors. 

These measures, if passed, would not only restrict transgender youth from essential healthcare and fair participation but would also enforce rigid, state-sanctioned definitions of gender that serve to police bodies in service to outdated hierarchies. 

Similar initiatives are proliferating across the U.S., with over 700 anti-trans bills tracked in 41 states for 2026, including bans on sports participation, healthcare, and bathroom access, highlighting a coordinated assault by bourgeois interests to divide the working class. In Missouri, ballot measures seek to enshrine bans on gender-affirming care for minors alongside abortion restrictions, using trans youth as pawns to simultaneously undermine reproductive freedoms. 

Efforts in Washington, Maine, and Nevada also aim to put trans sports bans directly to voters, reflecting the ruling class’ strategy to legitimize discrimination through electoral theater, to the symphony of inflammatory, unscientific, and sensationalist disinformation campaigns via the media.

These groups, often aligned with MAGA ideology, rally against transgender girls as existential threats while turning a blind eye—or worse, offering defenses—for capitalist pedophiles whose crimes are shielded by wealth and power. Consider the parade of high-profile figures in bourgeois circles, from financiers like Jeffrey Epstein to political elites entangled in abuse scandals, where accusations of child exploitation are dismissed as “fake news” or reframed as consensual indiscretions. The ruling class’ apparatus, including media conglomerates and legal systems, routinely minimizes these atrocities, allowing predators to evade accountability through settlements, NDAs, and influence peddling. 

Capitalism thrives on the commodification of bodies, particularly those of the vulnerable, turning human trafficking and exploitation into profitable industries that bolster the accumulation of capital for the few. The hypocrisy is stark: Republicans accused of shielding pedophiles in the Epstein case, with Democrats charging that GOP refusal to release files protects the elite, while MAGA figures like Trump have been linked to Epstein yet face no reckoning from their base. Right-wing conspiracies like QAnon obsess over fictional pedophile rings among liberals, diverting attention from real abuses by their own, such as Capitol rioters convicted of child abuse who heckled police for “protecting pedophiles.” 

Christian nationalists, who denounce transgender rights as anti-biblical, conveniently ignore their own defenses of abusers, exposing the selective application of “morality” to maintain patriarchal control. The hypocrisy intensifies when examining the so-called “pro-life” stance of these reactionaries. 

While they decry abortion as murder and push for draconian bans that strip women and girls of bodily autonomy, their policies accelerate the immiseration of the working class. MAGA forces, under the banner of family values, have systematically dismantled reproductive rights, gutted social safety nets, and opposed measures like paid family leave or affordable childcare, ensuring that forced births trap women in cycles of poverty and dependence. 

This isn’t about life, it’s about control. In a system where labor power is extracted for profit, women’s rights are subordinated to the needs of capital reproduction. The bourgeois state enforces this through legislation that prioritizes fetal personhood over living workers, all while corporate overlords reap the benefits of a desperate, underpaid workforce. The proclaimed sanctity of life clashes with the reality of capitalist death—through wars, environmental devastation, and healthcare denial—that claims millions annually.

The post-Roe era has deepened inequities, with abortion bans costing the U.S. economy $173 billion annually, lowering women’s earnings, education, and health outcomes, particularly for Black women and the poor, while increasing poverty and single parenthood. Overruling Roe has not been “pro-life” but a continuation of government control over women’s bodies, eroding their autonomy and futures. Pro-life rhetoric, including claims of “feminism,” masks this assault, portraying restrictions as protective while dishonoring women’s dignity and rights.

Compounding this is the complicity of the Democratic Party, which postures as a progressive counterweight but capitulates at every turn. Facing an electorate manipulated by misinformation and economic anxiety, Democrats have increasingly thrown the transgender community under the bus, offering tepid defenses or outright concessions to gain votes from a misinformed public. Rather than mounting a robust pushback against these anti-trans measures, they prioritize electoral pragmatism, echoing centrist appeals that dilute class struggle into identity politics.

This betrayal stems from their role as the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, managing capitalism’s crises without challenging its foundations. By allowing reactionary narratives to dominate, framing transgender rights as a wedge issue, they divert attention from the real antagonists: the exploiters who profit from division. The working masses, fragmented along lines of gender, race, and sexuality, are pitted against one another, obscuring the class antagonism that unites them against the owners of production.

Post-2024 election losses, Democrats have openly blamed their support for trans rights, with figures like Reps. Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi arguing the party went “too far left,” splintering over issues like sports bans and DEI, and retreating from defending trans people in order to avoid offending moderates. This “reshuffling” cedes ground to the far right, prioritizing the hunt for votes over solidarity, and failing to achieve either. Kamala Harris, the candidate who, as an Attorney General in California, pursued transphobic interpretations of criminal justice, and who downplayed the importance of protecting transgender rights in the 2024 election cycle, did not go “too far left” but abandoned the laboring and popular masses of America who have long struggled for change and progress. 

At its core, these phenomena reflect the material base of capitalism shaping its ideological superstructure. Christian nationalism, with its patriarchal and nationalist trappings, functions as a tool to maintain social cohesion amid economic decay. By scapegoating transgender individuals, it channels working-class frustrations—born of wage stagnation, housing crises, and job insecurity—away from the capitalist culprits and toward marginalized groups. Initiative 108’s focus on human trafficking penalties, for instance, appears noble but serves as a smokescreen, ignoring how capitalism’s global supply chains and austerity policies fuel trafficking networks. True protection for children and women demands dismantling the profit motive that breeds exploitation, not performative bans that reinforce bourgeois morality.

The path forward lies in recognizing these contradictions and building solidarity among the oppressed. Workers, regardless of gender, sex, or sexual orientation, must unite to expose how such campaigns perpetuate ruling-class dominance, divide us via chauvinistic and sensationalist spectacles, and inspire nothing but dismay and demoralization amongst the organized working class. Only through collective action—striking at the heart of private property and imperial control—can we forge a society where rights are not commodities but universal realities. In Colorado and beyond, the fight against these initiatives is about much more than transgender inclusion: it’s a front in the broader war against capitalist hypocrisy.

It will breach everywhere—even the canals—

and finally drift to heaven 

but it will not be dead.

M. N.

In a move that signals a harder edge to federal punishment, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will now permit firing squads as an official method of execution and revive single-drug lethal injection using pentobarbital. This policy shift under the current administration reverses earlier restrictions, aims to speed up capital cases, and expands options for carrying out death sentences against those convicted of the most serious federal crimes.

This development accidentally exposes the exact illogical essence of the American “Justice” system. Real life shows that crime and punishment do not exist in a vacuum; they emerge from the economic and social realities that structure daily life for most working Americans:widespread inequality, concentrated poverty in certain communities, unstable employment, and limited access to education and support systems. The unbearable conditions of the capitalist system drive people to crime out of desperation. These pressures generate the conflicts and harms that the state then addresses through its legal machinery. Strengthening the most severe punishments without tackling those underlying conditions leaves the cycle intact while tilting the scales further against those with the least resources.

Economic arrangements that produce sharp divides in wealth and opportunity create environments where desperation, breakdown of community ties, and interpersonal violence become more common. Decades of data show that serious crimes cluster in areas marked by high unemployment, substandard housing, and underfunded public services. Yet the response from the state has long emphasized individual culpability and harsh penalties over structural remedies. The death penalty illustrates this pattern clearly. It is applied unevenly, with strong evidence of disparities based on race, class, and the background of both defendant and victim. Black Americans, who comprise about 13-14% of the population, have historically made up around 34-42% of those executed since the 1970s and a similarly disproportionate share of death row populations. Cases involving white victims are far more likely to result in capital charges than those with Black victims, even when controlling for other factors.

Financially disadvantaged  defendants face additional barriers: limited ability to mount robust defenses, reliance on overburdened public counsel, and decisions by prosecutors that can vary by jurisdiction. Wealthier individuals accused of serious offenses rarely encounter the same trajectory toward execution. This is not random error, but the intended outcome of a system operating within a society stratified by economic power. Those closest to the bottom of the economic ladder—disproportionately drawn from working-class communities—bear the heaviest weight of irreversible state sanctions.

This development is not new. Throughout U.S. history, capital punishment has often aligned with efforts to maintain bourgeois order amid social strain. Periods of economic hardship or labor unrest have coincided with its heightened use or the defense of severe penalties. The selective nature of its application has reinforced existing hierarchies rather than delivering uniform justice. Modern federal expansions, including the addition of firing squads (already authorized in a handful of states), fit this longer pattern of adapting tools of final punishment when authorities perceive a need for stronger deterrence or symbolic resolve.

Advocates argue that such measures protect society and deliver closure. Yet rigorous examinations consistently find little evidence that the death penalty uniquely reduces homicide rates compared to long-term imprisonment. Certainty of apprehension and consistent sentencing appear far more influential factors on behavior than the severity of the ultimate penalty. Studies across jurisdictions show that states without capital punishment do not experience higher murder rates than those that retain it.

For ordinary working people, expanding reliance on execution carries several concrete drawbacks. First, it diverts resources (financial, legal, and political) toward lengthy, expensive capital trials and appeals that could instead support prevention, rehabilitation, mental health services, or economic development in high-risk areas. Second, the documented risks of error remain troubling: since the 1970s, over 200 people have been exonerated from death row, with racial minorities overrepresented among them. An irreversible punishment magnifies the cost of any miscarriage of justice. Third, this approach treats symptoms while leaving causes untouched. It projects state authority through visible severity but does little to alter the underlying conditions, such as job insecurity, eroded social safety nets, and concentrated disadvantage, that fuel much street-level violence. Meanwhile, large-scale harms enabled by economic power, such as corporate decisions that devastate communities or systemic failures in regulation, face far milder scrutiny, if any at all.

The policy also risks normalizing more visible and archaic forms of state killing at a time when public support for capital punishment has declined to historic lows, with Gallup surveys showing popular support hovering around 52% in recent years—the lowest in over half a century. Greater reliance on firing squads and expedited processes may erode the already low level of trust in the fairness of the system among broad sections of the population, particularly in communities that already experience disproportionate contact with the justice apparatus.

In the end, a society organized around deep material inequalities will always strain to deliver impartial justice through punitive escalation alone. True protection for working people and their families comes from addressing root economic and social drivers of harm: stable employment, quality education, accessible healthcare, and reduced desperation. 

Policies that instead prioritize expanding the machinery of final punishment reinforce a framework in which the heaviest burdens fall on those already disadvantaged while the structures generating widespread insecurity remain largely untouched. For example, military recruiters target schools with higher portions of underprivileged youths, and ICE entices desperate workers of all ages to serve as federal police with promises such as sign-on bonuses and student debt relief. 

This latest federal step deserves close scrutiny not as an isolated legal adjustment, but as part of how power and resources are allocated in a divided society. Working families have a direct stake in demanding approaches that prioritize prevention, fairness, and material improvement over spectacles of ultimate sanction.

Since its founding, NATO has been glorified as an innocent, peace-loving defense alliance. 

NATO propaganda has intensified once again in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as NATO has been able to present itself as the apparent defender of countries under attack. Yet at the same time, the image of a peace-loving organization is crumbling. Not least due to the increasingly aggressive behavior of the U.S. as NATO’s founding member and most important actor, it becomes clear that the organization’s self-image and reality are drifting further and further apart, and that this gap can no longer be easily bridged by the prevailing propaganda. It is therefore time to examine what NATO actually is in the first place, why it was founded, and why it is anything but a peace organization.

NATO Activities during the Cold War

When armed conflict broke out in Korea in 1953, the UN supported South Korea; an international coalition also joined the war on South Korea’s side. The UN’s involvement in this war stemmed from the fact that three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were NATO members, and the Soviet Union did not participate in the vote in protest against the People’s Republic of China’s lack of representation in the UN, whereupon the Council, acting on instructions from the NATO member states, adopted a resolution authorizing military intervention. Turkey’s deployment of troops in order to join NATO clearly demonstrates that the coalition decision, passed as a UN resolution, was primarily a step toward forming NATO’s military arm. Even though this event was portrayed internationally as a unilateral attack by North Korea, one must delve deeper into the historical context.

Before 1953 and in the years leading up to it, the South Korean government—operating under the supervision of American troops—carried out attacks through the police and paramilitary groups against groups it suspected of communism. Among the largest of these political attacks were the events that have gone down in history as the “April 3 Jeju Massacre,” in which 30,000 people were killed. The U.S. tacitly condoned these events taking place under its administration and was complicit in them. The fact that South Korea was supported by the UN, due to pressure from NATO, despite this murderous and repressive policy shows that concepts such as human rights and freedom of expression are not on NATO’s agenda. This was to be expected from an organization led by the U.S., which years later admitted to having “accidentally” shot nearly 200 refugees during the No Gun Ri massacre in the Korean War.

After NATO had prevented the working class from seizing power in Korea through its policy of spreading imperialism worldwide—a policy geared toward the needs of its member states’ capital—it turned its attention to Vietnam, the colonial and market territory of French capital. The Viet Minh’s struggle against the French colonial rulers was successful, despite the United States’ efforts to supply its allies with weapons and equipment. The vacuum left by French imperialism’s withdrawal was filled by U.S. imperialism, which established its own regime in South Vietnam. Subsequently, the U.S. refused to implement the clause stipulating that elections should be held throughout Vietnam, as per the agreement signed upon France’s withdrawal. When the Vietnam War broke out, the U.S. stationed troops in the region to support the South. U.S. airstrikes, aimed at rendering the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by North Vietnam unusable, led to the deaths of 100,000 civilians in Cambodia and made Laos the most heavily bombed country in the world.

War crimes committed by the American war machine in Vietnam—such as the My Lai massacre, which claimed the lives of 500 civilians, and the chemical warfare waged through the use of napalm (Agent Orange), which to this day causes various muscle and bone disorders in children—are clear evidence of how brutally this founding member of NATO acted in the fight against communism.

After the Soviets, it’s now the whole world’s turn

Even though NATO’s first military intervention is officially portrayed as the post-Cold War occupation of Iraq, the crimes committed jointly by the imperialist and capitalist countries organized under the NATO umbrella—under various guises—against the anti-imperialist and communist struggle are a direct consequence of this military alliance’s ideology and methods. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military alliance changed its policies and methods and restructured itself. Until that point, the military interventions it had carried out through the UN and other coalitions to give the appearance of a “defensive alliance” were now carried out directly under the name of NATO, relying on the position of the U.S. as the sole world hegemonic power.

The organization’s intervention in the Yugoslav Civil War (1991 – 2001) is a topic on which numerous human rights organizations have issued reports. The airstrikes carried out in present-day Serbia and Kosovo under the pretext of “securing peace” and “stopping the massacres” led to further massacres. The failure to take precautionary measures and the indiscriminate nighttime bombings in areas where civilians might be present led to the deaths of approximately 500 civilians during the war. I would like to add that during these interventions, the Chinese embassy in Serbia was also bombed by NATO, and that the subsequent admission that this was a mistake demonstrates how these attacks were carried out without regard for civilian casualties.

In the post-Cold War era, imperialist conflicts arose over the division of spoils within the alliance, as no united and organized anti-imperialist front had been formed against NATO. The opposition, led by French and German capital, opposed the organization’s decisions, which served the interests of American capital, thereby intensifying the struggle over the shares in this division. This split within NATO was evident in the fact that the allies, who had acted in concert during the first Gulf War, no longer cooperated during the second Gulf War. However, they supported the invasion, which was justified by lies about the production of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. The coalition forces, which justified their objectives by citing the search for weapons of mass destruction, the overthrow of the existing Iraqi government, and the “democratization” of the country, did not withdraw from the country after the invasion was completed and Saddam’s government was overthrown. The imperialist powers, which continued the occupation of Iraq under the pretext of building a new state, destabilized the region as they focused on plundering the country’s surface and underground resources. This development led to the strengthening of militant Islamist groups, which provoked sectarian conflict in Iraq. The events during the 2003 occupation of Iraq make it clear that the adventures undertaken jointly by the imperialist NATO powers—first in Afghanistan and later in Libya under the pretext of bringing peace and a “democratic government” to the region—ultimately served the interests of the arms industry and various capital groups.

The conflicts of interest among capital groups within NATO have once again come to the fore with the war between Russia and Ukraine. In light of Russian imperialism’s expansionist ambitions and its goal of becoming a new hegemonic power, the United States is striving to remain the dominant imperialist power in the world. U.S. capital groups, which are beginning to lose their position in markets (such as the energy and technology sectors) to China and Russia, have expanded NATO toward Russia in order to weaken Russia, which maintains close ties with China.

Looking at the economic reasons behind this policy, it can be said that the U.S. is working to weaken China’s allies—with whom it competes primarily in the trade sector—and to supply the allies of American imperialism worldwide with weapons and equipment.

Germany and other EU countries had already played a decisive role in the struggle over Ukraine several years before the Russian invasion. Then-European Commission President Barroso increased pressure on the pro-Russian Yanukovych government by forcing it to choose between the EU and Russia. Under pressure from Russia, Yanukovych decided against signing the EU Association Agreement. The Maidan protests at the time received massive support from the German government and other allies, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government and the installation of a pro-Western government that signed the agreement. At the beginning of the war in 2022, the other major powers within NATO (led by Germany) once again took a different stance from the U.S. right up until the end, calling for the signing of the Minsk II Agreement and the avoidance of military intervention. The then-German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, had exerted pressure on Ukraine prior to the war. In a statement at a press conference in Moscow, Scholz had indicated that the ball was now in the US’s court. US capital, which viewed Russian imperialism as a threat, convinced Zelenskyy not to implement the Minsk Agreement and to continue the attacks on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Meanwhile, the tables have turned: The U.S. wants a free hand in its struggle with China, while Germany and the EU are providing massive military aid to retain their sphere of influence in Ukraine.

Ultimately, the fact that NATO member states are actively supporting the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza calls into question the sincerity of the organization’s rhetoric about “peace in the Middle East.” NATO, which intervened under the pretext of “protecting” the populations of Kuwait and Libya but plunged those regions into instability and looting, has not spoken out against the genocide being perpetrated by the State of Israel—the gatekeeper of U.S. imperialism—but has instead supplied weapons and ammunition through the states under its command.

The current U.S.-Israeli war against the people of Iran adds to the endless list of wars that have already been waged to strengthen the capital groups of NATO allies. Although Chancellor Merz distanced himself from his initial words of support for this current crime against the peoples of the region, this by no means implies that German imperialism has suddenly sided with the peoples. On the contrary, the German government has been closely monitoring the situation and has concluded that a swift U.S. victory is no longer possible and that an expansion and prolongation of the war would be detrimental to the vast majority of German capital. Nevertheless, the German government is biding its time, waiting until after the war ends—that is, on the ruins of US imperialism’s criminal war—to carry out its economic and geostrategic repositioning in the region. Meanwhile, as a NATO member, German imperialism is supporting this war with weapons and military bases such as Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate. NATO, as a war-mongering organization that protects the international interests of big capital, is the greatest threat to peace and humanity. Ending the imperialist wars of partition instigated by big capital to profit from war, and establishing lasting peace in the world, are possible only through the joint struggle of the working class and the oppressed peoples. In conclusion, we reiterate our call: We must withdraw from NATO, whose history is marked by crimes against humanity and against peace, and ultimately close the NATO bases, which ultimately serve to support imperialist wars.

The movements against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were watershed moments for the left movement in the United States at the time and are worth revisiting as the U.S. continues its illegal war in Iran. At that point in the early 2000s, leftism had retreated even further to the margins of society than it is today. The Soviet Union had recently been destroyed, communist parties were scattered and divided, and “centrism” was winning elections across Europe and the United States. Liberals dreamed of peace in our time with American imperialism shepherding the world. But these dreams came crashing down in the blood-soaked war on terror, and the subsequent 2008 financial crash. The American left saw a significant resurgence with the Occupy and anti-war movements: millions marched in the streets across the country, and disillusionment with the status quo grew. But the war went on, and Obama rode a wave of hope into drone strikes and more “collateral damage.” 

The long-standing problem of the American anti-war movement since Iraq is that these movements have been focused on ending a particular war, not the system that necessitated war in the first place. It should be educational for us that the anti-war movements that were most targeted by the U.S. government were those that began to consider class antagonisms, and the need for international working-class revolution, such as with the Black Panther Party. Among other factors, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all killed after turning towards internationalism. 

The most threatening thing to the capitalist, militarist class is an anti-war movement that targets the root causes of war: the need for the capitalist class to find new markets and new hegemonies as domestic profitability reaches its inevitable growth limits and imperialist powers compete for continued redivision of the world.

Why haven’t popular anti-war movements of our day moved in this direction and made capitalism the core of their agitation? It isn’t that previous and current anti-war movements are ignorant or full of bad actors. I, personally, spent many years in the streets with various coalitions that fueled the anti-war movement during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as during Obama’s drone strikes and Trump’s current wars. The people want real change. 

The problem, as usual, lies in the public-relations politics of many big-tent organizations. Why alienate anyone with internationalist calls for solidarity and socialism? The main goal of most actions is to be able to give a big number of participants to the press and influence popular opinion by agitational peer pressure. This is not totally ineffective: the Vietnam War was no doubt hampered somewhat by massive popular protests that meaningfully challenged imperialism, racism, sexism, and American culture at large. Yet, millions of Vietnamese people were still murdered.

As we look today at Israel’s ongoing U.S.-backed genocide of Palestinians, the clear resource grabs by Trump in Venezuela, and the self-admitted “holy war” on Iran, the goalposts continue to shift. I find it almost intolerable to sit at No Kings protests under the same American flag that was painted on the jet that brutally murdered 156 Iranian girls. I hear this from organizers all the time: I went to the march, but I felt isolated. It is the same powerless feeling I felt at protests against the Iraq War that were saturated with Obama leaflets. 

As our history as Marxists reminds us, though, the working class always has power, and it is up to us to exercise it. True, we may have to endure a few awkward, sparsely-attended protests as we continue building the infrastructure and connections for a working-class alternative. We may face state persecution, attacks from moderates, and accusations of “purity politics.” But for the dead, the countless lives consumed for the American military-industrial complex and war profiteers, from Wounded Knee to Tehran, we must take a principled stance that only through socialism can war be ended. 

So long as profit is the main catalyst for development in society, war will happen. No individual president or elected official can stop this permanently; only we can. 

And in times like this, it’s always good to remember that the capitalist class exposes its weak points when it wages wars. The same was true for the feudal order as well. Feudal lords battled in the Hundred Years’ and Thirty Years’ Wars over several centuries in an attempt to maintain their dominance. They failed. The capitalist class warred throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries against the labor movement, and in 1917 saw its first ultimate defeat in Russia. American capitalism rose triumphant over the ashes of radicalized capitalism in the form of fascism, destroying the revisionist Soviet Union in its wake to the suffering of hundreds of millions in Eastern Europe. 

Today, the ruling class of imperialist nations continue their wars to maintain the existing social order of dominance over the laboring masses and smaller capitalist states. We see the price in Venezuela, Palestine, and Iran. History tells us that wars cannot solve the fundamental contradictions of a social order, they can only worsen them. War will not save the capitalist class from a working-class reckoning, and it is our duty to work together to usher in this next stage. 

Deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota, known as He Sapa to the Oceti Sakowin (the Great Sioux Nation), organized Indigenous power has secured a vital victory in the ongoing struggle for national sovereignty. This triumph, while perhaps temporary, marks a significant milestone in the long-standing effort to reclaim ancestral lands and exercise self-determination.

The United States Federal District Court for the District of South Dakota in Rapid City ruled in favor of Oceti Sakowin tribes and activists by issuing a temporary restraining order against exploratory graphite drilling near the sacred Pe’ Sla, a site which holds high religious and cultural significance to the Oceti Sakowin people.

Pe’ Sla is a site in He Sapa that aligns with celestial patterns in traditional Lakota spirituality. It is a “bald spot” of prairie in the middle of the otherwise heavily forested mountain range. Used for prayer and sacred ceremonies, much of the land is now tribally owned, ensuring the Lakota can continue their cultural and spiritual practices there.

Spanning several thousand acres, the area is divided between land owned by the sovereign nations of the Oceti Sakowin and territory managed by the U.S. Forest Service. In a 2014 Memorandum of Understanding, the Forest Service formally recognized the site’s profound cultural and religious significance to the Oceti Sakowin, establishing a two-mile buffer zone and committing to the protection of that surrounding area.

This victory did not emerge from a vacuum, nor did it spring from the grace or goodwill of the state administration; it was seized through the disciplined, organized action of the Oceti Sakowin and their allies. When the Forest Service granted the local firm Pete Lein and Sons exploratory drilling rights within the two-mile buffer zone surrounding Pe’ Sla, Indigenous defenders and their supporters immediately mobilized, utilizing every available tactic to halt the encroachment.

Nine tribal nations, representing the entire Oceti Sakowin people, filed suit. They were joined by allied organizations such as the Rapid City based NDN Collective, Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and Earthworks in Washington D.C. The lawsuit alleges that the Forest Service misapplied a “categorical exclusion” to circumvent required evaluations of the project’s environmental and cultural impacts.

Beyond just legal action, activists from the NDN Collective launched an active campaign of civil disobedience, physically stopping the drilling by occupying the site. Starting on Apr. 30, activists set up camps and began religious ceremonies in Pe’ Sla, and several members of the Oglala Lakota Youth Council locked themselves to the drilling machinery to prevent its operation.

Many of those involved in the struggle at Pe’ Sla are also involved in a mobilization against uranium mining in southern He Sapa, where the Canadian-based company Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation plans to begin exploratory drilling seven miles north of Edgemont, SD.

According to its application, the company intends to drill holes up to 700 feet deep at 50 different locations on state land, with each project lasting roughly two weeks. Similar drilling proposals for federal land are currently being evaluated by the U.S. Forest Service. Court hearings for this are scheduled for the May 20 and 21.

This project is proceeding under a “fast-track” permit issued by the Trump regime, part of a broader mandate to open publicly-managed lands for private exploitation.

As the administration accelerates the opening of federal lands and systematically guts the Forest Service budget, it has become clear that there is an intentional effort to dismantle long-standing protections for over 193 million acres of American wilderness. The ultimate objective is the complete privatization of these lands, handing them over to extractive industries. Due to the fact that Indigenous peoples represent a fundamental barrier to this project, the state has resorted to forced displacement.

The provocations by state and federal authorities here are merely the latest in a relentless history of attacks against the Oceti Sakowin and Indigenous nations at large.

After the long, drawn out wars of conquest during the late 1800s, the United States government signed the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, which recognized He Sapa and all lands west of the Missouri river in present-day South Dakota as part of lands “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Oceti Sakowin as a “permanent home.”

Known as Wamaka Og’naka I’cante (“the heart of everything that is”) in Lakota, the entire mountain range is considered sacred to the Oceti Sakowin, not just Pe’ Sla.

Following the 1874 Custer expedition’s discovery of gold, which triggered a massive influx of illegal settlers, the U.S. government attempted to purchase He Sapa in 1876. The Oceti Sakowin refused. In response, the U.S. launched an unprovoked war of aggression that same year. Despite heroic resistance, the Oceti Sakowin were eventually defeated, and their land was unilaterally seized in 1877.

The illegality of this seizure was so absolute that in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Oceti Sakowin, ordering the U.S. government to pay $106 million in compensation. The tribes refused the settlement. Their position remains steadfast: the land was never ceded by tribal authorities, and their continued resistance declares with firmness that it is still not for sale

In a testimony to Congress in 2023, Oglala tribal president Frank Star Comes Out said:

“The United States broke its treaty promises when it invaded our territory to make war. After the defeat of the United States and the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876, Congress attached a ‘Sell or Starve’ rider to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876, 19 Stat. 176, which cut off rations to our people in an attempt to coerce us to sell the Black Hills to the United States. Yet, we stood firm, and the United States was unable to secure our consent to the sale of the Black Hills. We said then — and we have repeated for generations — that the Black Hills are not for sale.”

The victory at Pe’ Sla is a testament to the fact that the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty is inseparable from the global fight against extractive capital. We Marxist-Leninists recognize here that, the state is not a neutral arbiter of law but an instrument of the ruling class. The “fast-track” permits and the gutting of the Forest Service are not mere policy shifts; they are the machinery of primitive accumulation, where the remaining commons are seized to offset the falling rate of profit in the metropole.

The Oceti Sakowin’s refusal of the 1980 settlement is a profound rejection of the commodification of the earth. It asserts that land is not capital to be bought and sold, but the material basis for national existence. By physically occupying Pe’ Sla and locking themselves to the machinery of production, the Oglala Lakota youth have engaged in the highest form of class struggle: direct confrontation with the forces of private property.

However, as long as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie remains intact, these victories will remain temporary. The state’s drive toward privatization and environmental degradation is an existential necessity for the capitalist mode of production. True liberation for the Oceti Sakowin,and the protection of Wamaka Og’naka I’cante, requires a unified revolutionary front that recognizes the Indigenous struggle as a vital part of the  struggle against imperialism. The land is not for sale because the future of the working class and the survival of the planet depend on its liberation from the hands of the exploiters.

This struggle demands more than passive observation; it requires the active mobilization of the international working class. We must move beyond “solidarity” in name only and do our utmost to organize the Indigenous Nations and integrate their struggle for self-determination as an integral part of our eventual socialist revolution. 

We can support the front-line defenders at Pe’ Sla and those resisting uranium mining in the southern Hills by contributing to the NDN Collective and the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance. We must organize within our own communities to disrupt the flow of capital to the extractive industries that seek to desecrate Indigenous land. The fight for He Sapa is a fight for the future, not just for the Oceti Sakowin, but for all who wish to preserve a home on this Earth.

As the Lakota say, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ: we are all related. The Indigenous struggle is inseparable from the movement for a truly free, democratic, and progressive society; one that finally represents the collective will of the people rather than the insatiable greed of the bourgeoisie.

Fire has recently become the weapon of choice for workers disillusioned by the capitalist system and frustrated with the antagonisms of the bosses and owners. Rather than condemn these relatable expressions of justified rage, we implore workers nationwide to let these fires inspire us to organize to put an end to the root causes of our collective suffering. 

It only takes one person to burn down a warehouse. When we work together we can seize control of our own workplaces and build the infrastructure to burn the entire system that oppresses us, lighting the way for a truly democratic economy by and for the masses.

Fires have been started by workers at warehouses in Ontario, California as well as in Queens, New York, and Molotov cocktails have started fires at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home and a Tesla sales office in Louisiana. 

Of these incidents, the Ontario fire at a paper products warehouse garnered the most attention on social media due to a post made by the alleged suspect in which they recorded themselves setting paper products ablaze while repeating the phrase:

A similar video has also gone viral, showing another worker recording themself sitting on top of a shipping container, joyously kicking their legs, while the warehouse behind them burns. 

These fires come as many working-class Americans are reaching our breaking point due to increasing exploitation at the workplace, dwindling wages amid rising costs of living, expanding political repression, the destruction of communities for the development of data centers and other capitalist vanity projects, and being forced to shoulder the increasing financial burden of the bloodthirsty war on Iran. 

While some armchair academics, disconnected from the plights of workers, may spend their time critiquing the long-term efficacy of these fires at accomplishing their own personal idealized version of “revolution,” working-class revolutionaries must look at the situation for what it is: an outcry of frustration and despair by those who cannot see a viable path forward.

These fires are an organic expression of the desperation we currently feel due to the many points of crisis in the capitalist system. It is our duty to make clear to our fellow workers that destruction is not the only option. 

We, the workers, have revolutionary potential when we organize together, as we can learn from studying the history of labor struggles in the U.S., such as the Bread and Roses Strike and the Ludlow Massacre.

The capitalist class should cower in fear of the collective power of the working masses, not only under the threat of these attacks on production to continue, but that, with the right organization and discipline, this discontent may intensify into a movement in which we control the means of production ourselves. 

In our current political situation, in which the capitalist class is launching an endless stream of assaults against working people both domestically and internationally, it can often feel like the only option is an outburst of justified rage. This tactic is however insufficient to genuinely challenge the power of the capitalist class, and often results in even harsher crackdowns on revolutionaries by the bourgeois state in the long run. 

The series of workplace fires that began in April have been viewed positively by large sections of working people who understand and relate to the frustrations of the alleged arsonists, but such acts should not be viewed as the only model for resistance. As workers we must bring together those disgusted by the exploitation inherent to the capitalist system to organize a unified and disciplined revolutionary strategy which can pair acts of sabotage with a broader strategy of building working-class power: one that will genuinely challenge the capitalist class’s reign and take control of our economy for ourselves.

Following years of complaints about overcrowding, spread of disease, rampant starvation, freezing temperatures, beatings by sadistic guards, and medical neglect, ICE concentration camps have recently claimed two more victims: Alberto Gutiérrez-Reyes, 48, and Emmanuel Damas, 56. In clear violation of any “freedoms” promised by our bourgeois republic, the current fascist administration has argued in the courts that its agents should be able to kidnap people based on their appearance and ability (or lack thereof) to speak English. The administration is outright demonstrating genocidal intent: they want to cull the population of people who don’t align with white supremacist notions of “American” identity. While targeting people from South or Central America, federal forces are even abducting Native Americans.

Alberto Gutiérrez-Reyes was a husband and father, who had lived in this country for decades. His “immigration enforcement” nightmare began on Jan. 9, when Customs and Border Protection did a roving raid in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. They drove around the neighborhood for hours, snatching people based on the color of their skin, and Gutiérrez was among those kidnapped that day.

While this clearly violates the “freedoms” promised by our bourgeois democracy, Gutiérrez was held in Adelanto, a GEO Group for-profit camp in California with a long record of medical neglect resulting in illnesses and deaths. The people imprisoned there have been heard shouting “¡Nos tratan como perros! ¡Nos tratan como perros en jaulas!” (“They treat us like dogs! They treat us like dogs in cages!”). There have been continuous reports of infectious diseases spreading. People who manage to get antibiotics share them with others who are refused treatment, leaving nobody with the appropriate amount of treatment. There have been ongoing reports of people fainting, yet still being denied medical attention.

When Erick Gutiérrez, Alberto’s son, visited the camp on Feb. 22, he saw that his father had yellow skin and yellow eyes, clear indicators of jaundice, signaling severe liver or gallbladder dysfunction. He needed daily medication for his type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol, but reported being neglected by the staff at the camp. Jaundice is a predictable result of untreated diabetes. Alberto fainted on Feb. 25, then died on Feb. 27. This was just fifty days after being healthy enough to work construction. Erick asserts that:

Emmanuel Damas came from Haiti to seek asylum after his country was destabilized by centuries of French colonialism and US imperialism. Despite being here legally, he was kidnapped from Boston in Sep. 2025. After months of false imprisonment in multiple facilities, he developed a tooth infection. His brother, Presly Nelson, says the toothache was reported on Feb. 12. The medical personnel in CoreCivic’s for-profit camp Florence in Arizona ignored Damas’ complaints and failed to treat him. As he developed sepsis, cried from extreme pain, and started collapsing, the fascist guards laughed and accused him of “faking.” He was taken to a hospital just in time to die on March 2. His was the tenth known immigration concentration camp death of 2026.

In genocidal, fascist fashion, ICE’s press releases have tried to dehumanize its victims by calling them “criminal illegal aliens.” The agency writes ridiculous lies about “safe, secure, and humane environments,” in the same statements where it reports the preventable deaths of the people it dehumanizes.

We must demand the closure of these camps, the abolition of ICE and CBP, and legal rights for all migrants as absolute minimum demands in our struggle for the liberation of working people. The politicians, concentration camp investors, and their foot-soldiers must all be brought to justice. This can only be accomplished by an organized working class, with a relentless commitment to eradicating racism, ableism, and fascism.

“There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner.”

V. I. Lenin, “Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration,” 1913.

Amidst the mass death and suffering the various imperialist powers are currently inflicting on the world’s most vulnerable people, a critically underestimated consequence of this exploitative violence is the increasingly widespread food insecurity and risk of outright famine faced by many of its victims. 

From Sudan to the Gaza Strip, the capitalist class’s unquenchable thirst for profits drives it to employ a combination of both blatant acts of open warfare and military aggression, and more subversive and sinister forms of imperialist meddling, in order to facilitate unhindered and unchecked resource extraction. This synthesizes into a particularly deadly concoction of political and economic instability brought about by internally and externally driven bloodshed and environmental degradation, directly leading to heightened risk of starvation for millions.

According to this year’s Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), famine was confirmed in two places in 2025: Gaza and Sudan, both of which are experiencing violent armed conflict and genocide of their populations. In fact, across 47 countries and territories currently undergoing food crises, 22.9% of their populations, or about 266 million people, are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. Roughly 147 million of those people, or 55.7%, are experiencing said food insecurity due to armed conflict and war, with another third of the total due to climate change, and the remaining 11.3% brought about by economic shocks, without a doubt caused by the previous two issues. 

The portion of the population of these countries experiencing acute hunger has doubled over the past decade, from 11.3% in 2016, to 22.9% in 2025. This is due in large part to the intensification of regional conflict, the inter-imperialist scramble for unexploited resources, and increasingly-apparent climate collapse.

Economic interests in a given region lead the imperialist countries to devise methods of effectively facilitating rapid, unimpeded extraction of natural resources, one  of which is by means of clandestinely providing material support to different factions in proxy conflicts. In the case of Sudan, foreign capital has set its sights on three main exports: gold, oil, and agricultural products, primarily in the form of livestock, oily seeds like sesame, and gum arabic. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a U.S.-Israeli client state which, as of late, has come into its own as a regional imperialist power, owns a stake in practically all of Sudan’s vast gold wealth, amounting to roughly $1 billion worth of gold exports annually. The ongoing genocidal civil war in the central African nation is in large part fueled by this very gold trade, with the two warring factions, the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and the Chinese-backed Sudanese government, competing for control of this vast mineral wealth, with the civilian population of the country unfortunately being caught in the crossfire. As if the conflict were not convoluted enough, recent investigative reports have shown that guided bombs and howitzers manufactured by Norinco, a Chinese state-owned defense corporation which China sold to the UAE, and then the UAE subsequently supplied to the RSF, were used in the mass killing of Sudanese civilians.

While the above-mentioned competition between imperialist powers of all sizes for the redivision of the world’s economic spoils often takes the form of proxy conflicts and subterfuge, as is the case in Sudan, it unfortunately also manifests as outright military aggression directly perpetrated by the imperialists themselves.

In the case of Gaza, the state of Israel, armed to the teeth and funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars by the United States, has been engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people for the past two and half years, deliberately targeting civilians and preventing desperately-needed food aid and fuel from entering the besieged enclave. 

While on the surface, Israel’s fascist Zionist ideology does call for the dehumanization and extermination of Palestinians, there are also direct economic interests at play. A 2019 report put out by the UN Conference on Trade and Development details the discovery of some 1.7 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Levant Basin off the coast of Gaza, which would undoubtedly be a lucrative investment opportunity for corporations from around the world.

This frenzied scramble for the remaining unexploited fuel and mineral resources of the world is pursued either through open militaristic jingoism (as in Gaza and now Iran), or through more “diplomatic,” subtle means in the form of economic partnerships, trade deals, and indirect proxy conflicts (as in Sudan).

Either method winds up facilitating the same unfortunate consequence: massive environmental destruction. A scientific study published in May 2025 reveals that more carbon was emitted in the first fifteen months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza than the annual greenhouse gas output of more than a hundred different individual countries, like Costa Rica and Estonia. Gold mining in Sudan, though typically performed by small-scale, artisanal mining operations (as opposed to larger, industrialized ones), poses dire health risks to the population and biosphere, as mercury contamination, deforestation, and soil erosion are prevalent in mining areas. These problems are only worsening as the global demand for gold increases.

This widespread destruction of the environment, whether by carbon emissions or the spread of toxic chemicals, directly leads to crop failures and poor harvests, while global temperatures rise and average yearly rainfall plummets, contributing to more severe droughts and lower agricultural production.

The imperialist countries’ never-ending hunger for still-larger pieces of the rapidly-shrinking pie leads them to employ an assortment of tactics ranging from covert operations and the stoking of existing social tensions, to open acts of military aggression and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, all in a deliberate attempt at destabilizing and overwhelming targeted nations.

This frantic and panicked pursuit of more profits attained through total control and unhindered extraction of quickly-dwindling deposits of unutilized natural resources directly causes massive environmental damage, speeding up the warming of the planet, leading to the increased risk of food shortages and famine we see today.

If the entire capitalist-imperialist system is not dismantled, we as a species are facing a bleak, inhospitable future, where starvation and malnutrition are the norm instead of the exception. In order to avoid this catastrophic fate, the global working class must stand shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with one another and fight to create a better, more equitable world. Our societies must run on the basis of working-class democracy, sustainable development, and planned production for the needs of the many, not the profits of the few.

The tenant movement is on the rise. Across the country, including in the Twin Cities, tenants are forming bargaining units – from a single building to unions spanning across entire cities – to stop rent increases, win reforms to improve basic living standards, and even call for  political action and change. This movement is a working-class movement, and its most ambitious goals – abolishing rent, housing for all – are embryonic expressions of the demand for working-class socialist revolution.

What makes the tenant’s movement part of the worker’s movement? Tenants are not a class unto themselves. Tenants may belong to any class: they may be workers, who make a living by selling their own labor, and who are exploited; or they may be bourgeois (i.e., capitalists) who own tools, machines, and land, and who exploit the workers. But it is the working tenants, the poor and exploited tenants, to whom the tenant movement properly belongs. The wins demanded by tenants are demanded for and on behalf of the working class.

The goals fought for by the tenants movement are initially economic, fighting for access to a better-quality commodity – in this case housing, a market in which landlords try to maximize the rents charged, while tenants struggle to minimize the rents paid. This is an irreconcilable contradiction, in addition to the actual quality of the housing. The movement demands rent caps, proper sanitation, working heat, and clean water. The working-class tenant, unlike the bourgeois tenant, does not have the funds to simply buy better housing – they  must fight against the landlords to improve the quality of the commodity that they need to survive.

The working tenant senses the injustice inherent in the system, and begins to attempt to explain it: because the landlord is taking the tenant’s money and returning a sub-par product, the landlord is “exploiting” the tenant; because rent is a burden on an already low wage, we need to “abolish rent”; because there are homeless, we need “housing for all.” But the fact that this commodity is as plainly necessary as food and water means that the working tenant swiftly moves from economic demands (i.e. affordable, sanitary, and safe housing), to political demands (abolishing rent and landlords).

These oversimplified attempts at reasoning are not complete, and fall flat without an understanding of class relations and contradictions: the landlord does not “exploit” the tenant – he simply sells a commodity. “Abolishing rent” would mean abolishing housing as a commodity. Creating “housing for all” means encroaching on “free market” competition promised by capitalism. Commodification and free market competition are fundamental rights enshrined in the U.S. (and all bourgeois) constitutions. As soon as the working tenants’ demands shift from the economic to the political, they became a declaration of war on the whole capitalist system, as well as on the government which protects it.

Once we, as a class or as a considerable section of our class, have reached this level of consciousness, we can look back and see that our initial demands were based on too narrow of assumptions. The oppression we experience at the hands of the landlords is merely a facet of the oppression we experience at the hands of the capitalist class. Rent is only high relative to our low wages, the real site of our exploitation, where we are paid less than what our labor power produces while the bosses and owners collect the surplus value. The dilapidated buildings across all major cities of this country are products of competition, profiteering, and a government sworn to protect profit over human lives. Housing is not available to everyone because the capitalists prefer to keep a certain portion of the population desperate, willing to work for pennies. This follows the same law of capitalism that demands that a certain fraction of the population be unemployed or underemployed.

From here there are two roads: either we can resign ourselves to “work within the system,” narrowing our goals to “reasonable” economic improvements, or we proudly declare our demands more firmly, and explicitly state that we want to abolish rent and landlords, and provide affordable, safe housing for all. 

By doing so, we would acknowledge the ongoing class war and consciously take up the fight against oppression and exploitation. We should not shy away from this; we should not balk at accusations of “idealism” or “authoritarianism.” We want the overthrow of the capitalist government, for the benefit of the working class, and for the establishment of a true democracy through the workers’ seizure of power over the state and production. We want to suppress capitalism, overthrow the “rights” of private property; we want to centralize housing in the hands of a workers’ state, to fix rent at a small fraction of workers’ incomes, to repair and maintain all dilapidated housing, and to build safe and affordable housing for all.

If we demand revolutionary goals, but denounce revolutionary methods, we land ourselves on the first road, trying to work “within the system,” but with a radical-sounding coat of paint covering hollow demands. By doing that, we would be doing no more than misleading workers and tenants, and damning them to a life of squalor. It’s time to free ourselves from capitalist oppression, exploitation and crisis. It’s time the workers controlled their housing!