Six years after Lac-Megantic, how to fight for rail safety?

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019
Bosses drive to boost profits led to train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013, killing 47 people. Rail coalition there sent solidarity message to people of East Palestine, Ohio.

It has been six years since a driverless 72-car oil train rolled into downtown Lac-Megantic in Quebec at 65 mph, derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and leveling the city’s downtown on July 6, 2013. But the conditions facing rail…


Fight to keep family planning clinics open that offer abortion

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019
Crowd greets May 31 restraining order against closing of Missouri’s only family planning clinic providing abortion. In foreground, Missouri Planned Parenthood officer M’Evie Mead.

In St. Louis, abortion rights supporters are fighting to keep open Missouri’s one remaining Planned Parenthood clinic, which provides family planning help, including abortion. Across the Mississippi River, Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois, reports that 50% of…


‘I’d like to see the miners fighting back everywhere’

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019
Alyson Kennedy, SWP 2016 candidate for president, center, and Malcolm Jarrett, SWP candidate for Pittsburgh City Council, talk with Christy Cozby, a health care worker in Pittsburgh.

NEW HILL, W.Va. — Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 2016 and a former coal miner, and other SWP campaigners joined Judy Gillespie on her porch here July 20, discussing the SWP’s program. Gillespie got into the…


‘Toilers of the East awakening is part of world revolution’

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019

The selection below is from The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. 1 by Leon Trotsky. It is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July. The Communist International was founded in 1919 by new parties seeking…



US rulers step up threats, sanctions against Iran – US hands off!

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019

Washington continues to increase its substantial military forces in the Middle East, amid deepening tensions with the bourgeois clerical rulers in Tehran, as Iranian Revolutionary Guards provocatively seized a British-flagged oil tanker and its crew of 23, July 19. The…


Independence for Puerto Rico!

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019

Seth Galinsky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York City public advocate, issued the following statement July 24.  Angry over capitalist politicians’ disregard for their lives in the wake of Hurricane Maria, decades of government attacks on their standard of…


Florida prisons ban ‘Militant’ for reporting on prison censorship

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019

Florida prison officials informed the Militant they have impounded issues no. 24 and 25 of the paper, claiming articles reporting on the fight against prison censorship is “a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system.”…


In new victory Gibsons win $6.5 million in attorney fee award

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019
Four generations of Gibson family and their legal team celebrate June 13 after Lorain County jury awarded them punitive damages for effects from Oberlin College’s “racism” smears. School now falsely claims students’ “free speech” was involved, seeking to overturn court order to pay $31.5 million.

On July 17, Ohio Judge John Miraldi awarded $6.5 million in legal fees to the lawyers representing Gibson’s Bakery in its suit against Oberlin College. College officials had helped organize a malicious slander campaign accusing the bakery of racism. The…


25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

Vol. 83/ No. 28 - August 5, 2019

August 8, 1994 ST. PAUL, Minnesota — Some 1,200 United Transportation Union members, joined by more than 3,000 fellow rail unionists honoring picket lines, have shut down the ninth-largest U.S. rail carrier — Canadian Pacific. Workers struck July 13 when…