Puerto Rico teachers union leaders tour New York

Vol. 82/No. 5 - February 5, 2018

NEW YORK — “Puerto Rico has been in crisis since the 1970s, but it has gotten worse since 2006” when the worldwide capitalist economic crisis deepened, Edwin Morales Laboy, vice president of the Puerto Rico Teachers Federation, said at a…


Workers in Venezuela face challenges in capitalist crisis

Vol. 82/No. 5 - February 5, 2018

Workers in Venezuela face growing challenges in the midst of the deepening capitalist economic crisis there, exacerbated by sanctions and other attacks from Washington. Oil production — the country’s main source of hard currency — is at a 28-year low.…


Social disaster in mudslide is result of capitalist rule

Catastrophe in California product of profit system
Vol. 82/No. 4 - January 29, 2018
Above, Sept. 2016, revolutionary government mobilized workers in Yaguajay, Cuba, to prepare for Hurricane Irma. Inset, Skylar Fahlman tries to protect her home by herself in Ventura, Calif., surrounded by Thomas Fire. In revolutionary Cuba, watchword was “no one is left alone.” Under capitalism, it’s everyone for themself.

  Like other government officials and the big-business news media, Rob Lewin, head of the Santa Barbara County’s Office of Emergency Management, blamed residents of Montecito, California, themselves for the deaths and disaster visited on the town by widespread mudslides…


‘Militant’ wins overturn of Florida prison ban — again

Vol. 82/No. 4 - January 29, 2018

The Florida prison system’s Literature Review Committee says that the impoundment of the Dec. 18 issue of the Militant was a “mistake” and has been reversed. Officials at the Florida State Prison in Raiford banned the issue because of the…


San Juan paper under fire for promoting anti-Semitic article

Vol. 82/No. 4 - January 29, 2018

The owners and editors of El Nuevo Día — the largest circulation daily in Puerto Rico — came under fire for printing an anti-Semitic article by columnist Wilda Rodríguez Jan. 8 titled, “What Does the ‘Jew’ Want with the Colony?”…


Washington eases off on Cuba travel advisory

Vol. 82/No. 4 - January 29, 2018

The U.S. State Department announced Jan. 10 that it had downgraded its warning on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens. After alleging last September that its diplomats in Havana had been the victims of mysterious covert “sonic attacks,” the U.S.…


Weeks after lifting ban, Florida prisons censor ‘Militant’ again

Vol. 82/No. 3 - January 22, 2018
Dec. 18 Militant impounded by Florida prison officials

Despite repeated rulings by the Florida prison system’s own Literature Review Committee overturning the impoundment of the Militant, prison officials at Charlotte Correctional Institution in Punta Gorda and at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton, Florida, have impounded another issue of…


Puerto Rican protests say, ‘Stop abuse of the poor’

Vol. 82/No. 3 - January 22, 2018

“The upper and middle class neighborhoods are getting electricity restored, but most poorer neighborhoods don’t have light,” Rufino Carrión told the Militant by phone Jan. 6 from Gurabo in the center of Puerto Rico. A few days before, Carrión, a pastor at…


Washington threatens to deport 200,000 Salvadorans

Vol. 82/No. 3 - January 22, 2018
Washington threatens to deport 200,000 Salvadorans

“We are here because of the misfortunes that the rulers of the United States have caused in our country,” Sara Ramírez, an organizer for Casa Maryland, told protesters in front of the White House Jan. 8, after the U.S. government…


Protests in Puerto Rico: 1 million plus still without power

Vol. 82/No. 2 - January 15, 2018
Protests in Puerto Rico: 1 million plus still without power

Anger is rising in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico over the slow pace of government efforts to restore electricity and other basic necessities more than three months after hurricanes Maria and Irma. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority admitted…