‘Convict Chicago cop who killed Laquan McDonald’

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

CHICAGO — Some 300 people rallied outside the Leighton Criminal Court Building here Sept. 5 on the opening day of the trial of cop Jason Van Dyke, who gunned down 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014. Van Dyke is charged…


Workers at Whole Foods, Target take steps to organize

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

Talk of the need for a union among retail workers is in the air. Workers are getting fed up with low wages, speedup, threats of layoffs and abusive work schedules. And the expansion in the capitalist economy means workers are…


Sankara books welcomed at NY Burkina Faso festival

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018
Above, participants in Festival Ouaga New York cultural event in the Bronx Sept. 1 enjoyed musicians and artists from Burkina Faso. Inset, table featuring books by Thomas Sankara and other titles by revolutionary working-class leaders attracted interest.

NEW YORK — The fourth annual Festival Ouaga New York, a two-day cultural event, attracted hundreds of participants, most of them immigrants from Burkina Faso now living in New York, other East Coast cities and abroad. Well-known musicians and artists…


Kentucky UFCW workers strike at Four Roses plants

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

COX’S CREEK, Ky. — Following a 100 percent solid vote authorizing a strike, 53 members of United Food and Commercial Workers locals 10-D and 23-D walked out Sept. 7 at two Kentucky Four Roses bourbon facilities. Spirited picket lines went…


Demand US rulers sign peace treaty with NKorea

SWP: Washington’s troops, weapons out now!
Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

The Socialist Workers Party offers “unconditional solidarity with the Korean people’s struggle for withdrawal of all US troops and weaponry from the peninsula’s soil, skies and waters,” Steve Clark said in a Sept. 7 message on behalf of the SWP…


Chicago hotel workers fight for health care, higher wages

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018
Hotel workers on strike in Chicago picket Hyatt Regency Sept. 7. “We need health insurance no matter what our hours were the previous months,” waitress Rafaela Sandoval told the Militant.

CHICAGO — Beginning at 5:30 a.m. Sept. 7, thousands of hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 1, went on strike here to demand year-round health care and wage increases. Their union contract expired Sept. 1. Housekeepers, doormen, bellhops, cooks,…


Decay of US rulers ‘world order’ opens room to fight

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

The U.S. capitalist rulers’ liberal imperialist world order, imposed following their emergence as the victor from the second imperialist world slaughter, is decaying and coming apart at an accelerated pace today. And some of them recognize this. The Donald Trump…


‘Workers need independence from capitalist state, parties’

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

“I like to see a working person running for office,” Christina Etapa told Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Illinois, when he knocked on her door in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago Sept. 9. “All these…


Miami airport workers rally, press for union contract

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018

MIAMI — Some 60 airport workers and supporters rallied at Miami International Airport Aug. 30 to back Envoy Air customer service agents fighting to win their first union contract. Envoy is a subsidiary of American Airlines. Envoy workers do the…


Gangs, drugs and violence are built into capitalist rule

Vol. 82/No. 35 - September 24, 2018
Civil rights fighter Gloria Richardson pushes aside National Guardsman’s bayonet at July 21, 1964, Cambridge, Maryland, protest. Crime rate dropped 75 percent after start of Black rights protests there. Working-class solidarity counters dog-eat-dog morality of capitalism.

CHICAGO — As of Sept. 7, some 2,074 people have been shot here this year, and 381 of those died. The impact, especially in largely African-American neighborhoods on the South and West sides, has been devastating. And there have been…