US rulers exploit crisis in Venezuela as pretext to push attacks on Cuba

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019

Washington is using the ongoing economic crisis facing working people in Venezuela to further its main goal in the region — weakening the Cuban Revolution. The U.S. Treasury Department’s latest round of sanctions target two maritime companies and an oil…


Jim Spaul: 30 years building the communist movement

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
Jim Spaul campaigning for the Communist League in Dalston during the 2015 general elections. March 31 meeting in London celebrated Spaul’s political life as a party leader and member of the National Union of Mineworkers. Spaul was “a party man,” speakers said.

LONDON — “Jim Spaul came to recognize more is needed to emancipate the working class than militant trade unionism, as important as that is,” Communist League Central Committee member Jonathan Silberman told a March 31 meeting here to celebrate 76-year-old…


Ukrainian rail workers rally for higher wages, better conditions

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
Members of Free Trade Union of Railway Workers of Ukraine and union supporters march in Kiev March 19 for wage increase, pensions, medical care and protection against layoffs.

Some 500 rail workers, members of the Free Trade Union of Railway Workers of Ukraine (VPZU), and trade unionists from across the country picketed the central office of Ukrainian Railways in Kiev March 19. The union is demanding a wage…


Cuban health workers deliver aid to cyclone-hit Mozambique

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
Cuban doctor treats patient in Mozambique after Henry Reeve brigade of health workers arrived to provide care to those injured and ill from devastating Cyclone Idai that hit March 14.

A brigade of 40 Cuban health workers have been in the coastal city of Beira, Mozambique, providing aid to those injured and ill in the wake of a devastating hit there by Cyclone Idai March 14. The storm wreaked havoc…


SWP candidate for State Assembly speaks at community meeting in NJ

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
Inset, Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey State Assembly, and Seth Galinsky, SWP candidate for New York City public advocate, speak at April 1 meeting of Regional Alliance of Students and Professionals at La Luz del Mundo church in Jersey City, New Jersey. Above, Sherman shows meeting participants Militant and Pathfinder books on working-class struggle.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Fifty people attended the April 1 meeting of the Regional Alliance of Students and Professionals to hear Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey State Assembly, speak about her campaign. The meeting here, part…


Workers protest gov’t raid at factory in Texas

Demonstrate against ICE arrest of 284 workers
Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
Protesters outside factory in Allen, Texas, during April 3 immigration raid. Immigration and local cops surrounded plant, detaining 284 workers, in largest factory raid in decade.

ALLEN, Texas — Two hundred Immigration and Customs Enforcement police and local cops surrounded the CVE Technology Group factory here April 3 and arrested 284 workers. They were accused of not being authorized to work in the U.S. It was…


Rail barons slash training, safety in move to boost profits

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019

Freight rail bosses across North America are cutting training time and standards — on top of reducing crew size and running much longer trains — to save money and boost profits, regardless of the risks to the safety of rail…


SWP moves out to expand political reach of the party

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019
“For years I’ve hated how capitalism pits everyone against each other,” nurse Mickale Hensley, left, in her front yard, told SWP member Maggie Trowe in Williamstown, Kentucky, April 5.

REEDLEY, Calif. — Socialist Workers Party members and supporters from the Bay Area and Los Angeles spent two days in California’s agricultural heartland, the Central Valley, April 6-7. They knocked on doors to meet and get to know fellow working…


Asian Studies conference goers debate politics, get books

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019

DENVER — There were over 350 panel discussions and film presentations at the 2019 Association for Asian Studies Conference here March 21-24 on a wide variety of subjects. These included the Japanese rulers’ abuse of Korean “comfort women” during the…


Erbil book fair draws thousands, reflects Kurdish gains

Vol. 83/No. 16 - April 22, 2019

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region, Iraq — The 10-day-long 14th Erbil International Book Fair opened here April 3, attracting tens of thousands of people seeking novels, poetry and books on science and technology, religion and philosophy, social sciences and politics. The annual…