Families, former inmates, SWP protest conditions at Georgia jail

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020
At speak out protesting conditions at Cobb County Detention Center in Marietta, Georgia, Doug Jenkins, above, testifies about being incarcerated there during lockdown. Inset, Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia, speaks at hearing.

MARIETTA, Ga. — “It’s monstrous what they are doing. How do we allow this?” asked Wanda Webb, one of dozens of family members and former inmates who spoke out at a Feb. 18 meeting here protesting conditions at the Cobb…


Capitalist economies wobble as coronavirus cases spread

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020
Above, women in Tehran wear masks Feb. 23 after coronavirus outbreak, which has taken over 50 lives in Iran. Inset, trader on New York Stock Exchange. Shares slumped on reports disease has spread to Iran, northern Italy, more as world economy slows.

Media worldwide headlined the news Feb. 24 with reports that coronavirus infections and deaths were spreading outside China, where it originated, with spikes in South Korea, Japan, Iran and northern Italy. Capitalist governments around the world either admit their health…


Kennedy: ‘All workers should back Asarco strike’

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

SAHUARITA, Ariz. — “I will get out the word about your strike wherever I go. This strike is important and bringing more solidarity to bear is important. My campaign is behind you 100%,” Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for U.S. president,…


Women in Iraq say no to segregation of protesters

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

Hundreds of women took to the streets of Baghdad, Najaf, Nasiriya and Basra Feb. 13 to protest demands by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that women and men attending anti-government protests and encampments be segregated. “We refuse,” 20-year-old Ruwayda Khteer told…


Back Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign Contribute to $25,000 fund!

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

Socialist Workers Party candidates Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett are on the campaign trail, speaking at public meetings; talking to working people door to door in cities and towns, small and large; joining social protests; walking picket lines with workers…


‘Communism is not a doctrine but a movement’

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020
Meatpackers march June 12, 2000, from United Food and Commercial Workers union hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Dakota Premium plant gate in fight that won union recognition. Communists “have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole,” wrote Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto. “They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.”

Below is a chapter from The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes. It is entitled, “Communism Is Not a Doctrine but a Movement.” Copyright © 2019 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by…


Bosses step up spying on workers — on and off the job

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

Bosses across the country are seeking greater control over workers’ lives, both on and off the job. This includes more sophisticated surveillance of employees at work and new rules to force workers to change their health and personal habits, and…


Join 2020 May Day international brigade to Cuba!

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

“I have been wanting to go to Cuba ever since I heard about the May Day brigade. I think it is a great opportunity to exchange culture and check out the political differences between Cuba and the U.S.,” Brian Wickman,…


‘Second-class status of women arose with class society’

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020
Women garment workers in Dhaka fighting for union rights, better wages and conditions, October 2014. Bangladeshi “fashion” industry workforce of 4 million is 80% female. Women in these factories have joined union struggles, advancing their confidence and status.

The Spanish-language edition of Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women by Joseph Hansen, Evelyn Reed and Mary-Alice Waters is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March. This Marxist classic on women’s liberation began as a 1954 debate…


Fight for gov’t-funded, cradle-to-grave health care!

Vol. 84/No. 9 - March 9, 2020

The U.S. government, the most powerful imperialist power on the planet, like every other capitalist power around the world, is far from prepared for the spread of coronavirus. The virus is new, no one is immune, and it will take…