Cuba shows road to end threat of nuclear war

Vol. 87/No. 31 - August 21, 2023
Cuban President Fidel Castro places wreath for victims of atom bomb at memorial in Hiroshima, Japan, March 3, 2003.

“We have never considered the idea of fabricating nuclear weapons, because we don’t need them,” former Cuban President Fidel Castro said in 2005, recorded in the book My Life. “What’s the purpose of producing a nuclear weapon when your enemy…


Imprisoned for opposing US war drive, Debs ran for president

Vol. 87/No. 31 - August 21, 2023
At rally in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs speaks against first imperialist war and in support of Russian Revolution. U.S. rulers tossed aside Constitution’s protection of free speech for him and others, put him in prison. Debs was leader of rail workers, Socialist Party.

The selection below is from Eugene V. Debs Speaks, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for August. Debs, a railroad union fighter and pioneer socialist agitator, supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The excerpt is from his speech to…


3,700 Toronto-area workers strike Metro grocery stores

Vol. 87/No. 31 - August 21, 2023

TORONTO — Workers at 27 Metro grocery stores in the Greater Toronto Area walked off the job July 29 after voting down a proposed contract. The strike includes 3,700 clerks, cashiers, department managers, and pharmacy and Starbucks staff. They are…


Hotel workers strike against Sheraton Vancouver Airport

Vol. 87/No. 31 - August 21, 2023

RICHMOND, British Columbia — “We are staying strong in our fight for a living wage. Solidarity from other unions is very important,” Ana Wong, a housekeeper for over 30 years at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport and member of UNITE HERE…


Catherine Burks-Brooks helped launch Freedom Rides in 1961

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023
Above, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, left, speaks with Freedom Riders, seated from left, Charles Butler, Catherine Burks-Brooks, Lucretia Collins and Salynn McCollum in white waiting room in Birmingham, Alabama, bus station, May 17, 1961. Inset, Burks-Brooks smiles in mug shot after being arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, 11 days later.

The 1961 Freedom Rides were one of the watershed events in the Black-led working-class fight to overthrow Jim Crow segregation that changed social relations in the U.S. forever. Among those fearless, determined fighters involved in this moment in history was…


Discussions on unions, politics mark librarians’ conference

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023
Discussions of defense of constitutional freedoms, “woke” book bans, need for unions today, politics led to high sales of Pathfinder books at American Library Association conference.

CHICAGO — Nearly 16,000 librarians from public, school, prison and military-base libraries, along with publishers, authors and vendors, gathered here at the McCormick Place June 22-27 for the American Library Association conference. The gathering took place amid increased attacks on…


Rail workers fight for control of safety, working conditions

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023
Amtrak 2021 Montana derailment killed three, injured 49. NTSB found BNSF had not maintained the tracks and slashed the workforce, boosting workloads and causing fatigue.

LINCOLN, Neb. — There are thousands of rural towns across the U.S. crisscrossed by railroad tracks where trains pass through daily. Since the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern derailment and burn-off of some 900,000 pounds of toxic vinyl chloride in East…


Strikes by actors, writers are a ‘fight for all the workers’

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023

LOS ANGELES — Two weeks after members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went on strike, joining the workers from the Writers Guild of America who walked out May 2, several unions and other workers…


Putin expands draft as Ukraine forces advance

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023
Protest at Times Square in New York City July 30 organized by Russian-born opponents of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

For almost a year and a half, Ukrainian working people have pushed back Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion aimed at subjugating their country. Putin is now expanding the age of conscription to replenish his battered forces, while taking further steps…


NY meeting marks anniversary of opening of Cuban Revolution

Vol. 87/No. 30 - August 14, 2023
Celebration of 70th anniversary of July 26, 1953, Moncada attack opening Cuban Revolution was held in New York July 29. Inset, featured speaker, Cuba’s ambassador to U.N., Gerardo Peñalver Portal.

NEW YORK — Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Gerardo Peñalver Portal, was the featured speaker at a celebration here of the 70th anniversary of the attacks led by Fidel Castro on the U.S.-backed dictatorship’s Moncada army garrison in…