‘The working class needs to fight to take political power’

Vol. 88/No. 39 - October 21, 2024
Rachele Fruit, right, SWP candidate for U.S. president, speaks to Kate McKinney, a Boeing structural mechanic, Oct. 5 on picket line in Everett, Washington. “Jewish people have been persecuted forever,” McKinney said, pointing to attacks on Jewish students at U.S. campuses.

Fruit joins Boeing picket, builds support for strike SEATTLE — “We’re out here, not for me, but for my son” and other younger hires, Tom Brown, a striking Boeing worker told Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president,…


Endeavor flight attendants protest for equal pay in Atlanta

Vol. 88/No. 39 - October 21, 2024
Endeavor Air flight attendants and supporters protest at Delta Air Lines headquarters in Hapeville, Georgia, Oct. 3, demanding equal pay with Delta flight attendants, improved conditions.

HAPEVILLE, Ga. — Marching behind a big red banner that read “Same work, poverty pay. End the Delta disparity difference,” some 50 Endeavor Air flight attendants, backed by pilots and other supporters, held a spirited protest at Delta Air Lines…


Back people of Israel in a war against Jew-hatred

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Residents of Azaz, northern Syria, celebrate Sept. 28 after learning of death of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah. The Tehran-backed group is hated by millions for helping the Assad dictatorship, along with Tehran and Moscow, crush popular rebellion that began in 2011.

Over the last few weeks Israeli forces have decimated the leadership of Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah; destroying thousands of its rocket launchers; disrupting much of its communication systems; and began pushing it out of…


Devastation by Helene is a product of capitalist rule

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Facing social crisis after Hurricane Helene, working people line up for gas Sept. 29 in North Augusta, South Carolina. Workers, farmers are hit hardest by lack of government preparation.

MIAMI — As daylight broke Sept. 27, Floridians in the Big Bend area around Tampa awoke to devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm. With water levels surging 15 feet above ground level, it hit Steinhatchee and other…


Back dockworkers strike! East, Gulf Coast ports shut

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Hundreds of International Longshoremen’s Association workers picket at Port of Miami Oct. 2 as 45,000 dockworkers strike at 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas for first time in decades.

Some 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Oct. 1, shutting down three dozen ports from Maine to Texas. It’s the union’s first strike since 1977. Forty percent of U.S. imports come through these ports. Like tens…


Boeing strike is a battle for the whole working class

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Picket line outside Boeing plant in Everett, Washington, Sept. 30. Honks and cheers greeted the striking Machinists. “You guys should get what you’re asking for,” one driver shouted.

RENTON, Wash. — “Solidarity really works,” David Forsythe, a retired engineer at Boeing, told the Militant on the picket line here Sept. 27. “This is one of those rare instances in life when you have a chance to do the…


Step up the fight against ban on the ‘Militant’ in Florida prison

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024

“Amnesty International USA is once again calling on the Literature Review Committee to overturn the impoundment decision by Jackson Correctional Institution authorities of the Vol. 88, No. 17 issue of the Militant,” Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research, wrote on…


Working people face challenge of sky-high child care costs

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Child care center in Boise, Idaho, in May 2023. Costs for day care have risen over 220% since 1990, and today swallow up over a quarter of most working families’ incomes.

Government officials, the Kamala Harris election campaign and the liberal big-business media repeatedly claim inflation is a thing of the past. All is well. However, working-class families still face crippling high prices for necessities like food, gas, housing, health care…


The sculptor, the Masks of Sorrow and Stalin’s Gulag

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
At 1962 Moscow art exhibit, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, left, denounced works by Russian sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, right with fist clenched, who defiantly responded that art under Stalin was “rotten” like his regime. Neizvestny’s Masks of Sorrow monuments are dedicated to millions who died in Stalin’s Gulag.

Ernst Neizvestny was a Russian sculptor whose modernist works, despite determined efforts by the Stalinist officialdom of the time to suppress them, left a tribute that stands today to the memory of millions thrown into labor camps or killed resisting…


Richter: ‘Workers, farmers have common interests’

Vol. 88/No. 38 - October 14, 2024
Dennis Richter, SWP candidate for vice president, speaks at union barbecue of striking Prelco glassworkers, members of Confederation of National Trade Unions, in Montreal, Sept. 27.

MONTREAL — “I have a straightforward, realistic program — workers in our millions should take power into our hands,” Dennis Richter, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president, told 32 people at a Militant Labor Forum here Sept. 28.…