Month: March 2019

‘No imperialist regime can ever conduct a just war’

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019

This week’s Book of the Month is The Socialist Workers Party in World War II: Writings and Speeches, 1940-43 by James P. Cannon. The excerpt below is from “A Statement on the U.S. Entry into World War II, December 22,…

Kentucky teachers fight state moves against union, pensions

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Kentucky teachers rally March 7 to protest government moves to attack their union. Sickouts over seven different days have closed schools and succeeded in stalling threatened cutbacks.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — “It just feels like we can’t trust the system right now,” Sheri Tabor, a teacher in Oldham County, told the Louisville Courier-Journal March 7 as she rallied at the state Capitol here. She and hundreds of other…

Locked out Quebec aluminum workers reject bosses’ ultimatum

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019

After 14 months picket lines remain up at the massive ABI Becancour, Quebec, aluminum smelter after locked-out members of United Steelworkers Local 9700 voted down the latest concessions contract. An overwhelming 82 percent of the strikers voted “no” at a…

Cuba: ‘We will defend our revolution, no matter what’

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Members of Cuban delegation attending U.N. Women’s Month activities speak at March 16 New York meeting. From left, Yenisey González, president of National Union of Cuban Jurists in Granma province; Manuel Vázquez, deputy director of Cenesex, the National Center for Sexual Education; Teresa Amarelle, general secretary of Federation of Cuban Women; Miguel Barnet, president of the Union of Writers and Artists; and Luis Morlote, UNEAC vice president.

NEW YORK — “We are living through a time of many threats because of the aggressiveness of the U.S. government,” Teresa Amarelle, general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), told a meeting of more than 150 people here…

Chicago Symphony Orchestra players strike to defend pensions

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019

CHICAGO — Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians put down their instruments and raised picket signs March 11, opposing management’s demand to replace their guaranteed “defined benefit” pension with “direct contribution” savings accounts.  “What they’re proposing would not be even with what…

Algerian protesters say, ‘We need to get rid of the system’

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Teachers hold placards outside Algiers post office March 13, reading at left, “You have millions. We are millions of teachers” and in center, “I dream of a democratic Algeria.”

The movement in Algeria demanding the immediate resignation of ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika continues to pick up steam. Working people view his March 11 announcement that he would not run in upcoming elections, coupled with postponing elections until after the…

Syrian gov’t, Moscow step up strikes on opposition forces in Idlib province

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019

Stepped-up bombing of Syrian rebel-held communities in Idlib province by the government in Damascus and its backer in Moscow  are deepening the ruinous conditions eight years of war have inflicted on working people there.  Conflicting interests among the capitalist powers…

Long view of history on display at Iraqi museum

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Left, Pathfinder editorial director Steve Clark, left, and Ögmundur Jónsson in Assyrian gallery of Iraq National Museum. Photo posted online by Iraqi Museum Friends, Feb. 18. Right, The only statue of a woman in the Neo-Assyrian galleries (911-612 B.C.), which has massive statues and carvings of kings and their male servants. Rise of class-divided society degraded the status of women, images of whom were frequent millennia earlier.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The greatest of all battles confronting the working class in the years ahead is “the battle to throw off the self-image the rulers teach us, and to recognize that we are capable of taking power and organizing…

New York protests demand gov’t give immigrants driver’s licenses

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Protest in Riverhead, Long Island March 12, part of actions in New York, New Jersey and other states demanding driver’s licenses for immigrants, a move that would strengthen working class.

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — “What do we want? Driver’s licenses. Why do we want them? To drive without fear!” some 170 people chanted in English and Spanish as they marched through this town of 14,000 March 12.  The marchers were overwhelmingly…

SWP takes campaign to small towns, rural areas

Vol. 83/No. 13 - April 1, 2019
Fidelina Santos buys Spanish edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? from Tom Ricci and Naomi Craine in Chicago March 12. They were campaigning door to door with Dan Fein, SWP candidate for mayor. Ricci, a rail carman, said, “This was the opposite” to his experience canvassing for Democrats years ago. People were “enthusiastic about communist literature.” Workers they met bought three books by SWP leaders and a Militant subscription.

At the heart of the week-in, week-out, political work of the Socialist Workers Party and its sister Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. is party members going out of the cities far and wide to talk…