In December, two children died in Border Patrol custody — that we know of.

Jakelin Caal Maquín, age 7, died on Dec. 8 after being detained many hours in high heat on a prison bus. Sixteen days later, on Christmas Eve, 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gómez died of flu complications after being shunted between four different detention facilities in the six days following his detention.

Both of these children trekked thousands of miles from Guatemala as part of the Central American Exodus of refugees fleeing political and economic violence. Both were accompanied by parents who protected them on that long journey but were powerless to help them in the clutches of the white-supremacist border cops.

Are you ready?

On the evening of Jan. 8, U.S. President Donald Trump gave a televised national address in which he again demanded billions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump justified the federal government shutdown by repeating his racist claims that the refugees are criminals, drug runners and sexual assailants.

He threatened to declare a “national emergency” granting him special powers to bypass Congress and build the wall, including using funds that are supposed to go for disaster relief in Puerto Rico and California.

Two days later, Trump visited the border at McAllen, Texas, for a “border security roundtable.” Surrounded by stacks of drugs and weapons, he admitted it was nothing but a glorified photo-op.

Are you ready?

Democratic Party leaders, meanwhile, show far more concern with using the shutdown as propaganda for their war-mongering campaign to paint Trump as a “Russian asset” than they do for thousands of children in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, furloughed federal workers, or millions of poor and oppressed suffering from cuts in vital public services.

Robert Reich, former Clinton administration labor secretary and frequent spokesperson for the liberal group MoveOn.org, tweeted on Jan. 13: “Trump’s wall and shutdown are designed to distract from the real issue. The president of the United States was asked over the weekend by a friendly interviewer whether he is a Russian agent. He refused to answer.”

To which independent journalist Max Blumenthal aptly responded: “It’s actually the other way around. Trump’s xenophobia, border militarization and cynical shutdown of the federal government are real issues that resonate with real people. Russiagate is the elite moral panic that establishment Dems have chosen to focus on instead.”

Are you ready?

The Pentagon has extended the U.S. military deployment along the border to “assist” the Border Patrol through Sept. 30, ABC News reported on Jan. 15. Currently there are 2,350 troops illegally stationed at the border in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, down from 5,900 in November. But the number is expected to go up again as the Army has been ordered to lay 1,600 miles of razor wire between ports of entry.

Here’s a glaring example of how the capitalist state — those repressive forces that protect the power of the billionaire U.S. ruling class, like the military, police and prisons — are completely exempt from the so-called “government” shutdown, which is actually an attack on jobs and programs relied upon by the working class.

Are you ready?

Speaking of the state: the U.S. war machine is rolling full steam ahead. After pulling a fast one in Syria — Trump claimed Pentagon occupation troops would be quickly withdrawn, and then White House national security adviser John Bolton announced they would remain for months or years – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent the first weeks of the new year on an international junket trying to drum up support for war against Iran.

The U.S. has nearly 1,000 foreign military bases — 95 percent of the world’s total, according to the international Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. The U.S. spends more on the military than the next seven biggest military powers combined.

U.S. troops and proxies are at war in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, throughout much of Africa and elsewhere. Countries currently facing U.S. military threats include Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to name a few.

Are you ready?

It all comes down to a system in crisis: the system of private ownership for profit, which we call capitalism. For decades the rich and powerful in the United States have propped up this system by spending lavishly on weapons, wars and occupations, while taking it out of the hides of workers through high-tech speedups, lower paying jobs and shredding the social safety net.

They have increased the power of the police and ICE, winked at the rampage of racist killer cops in Black, Latinx and Indigenous communities, and mass incarcerated whole generations of young people to keep the working class in check. And increasingly since Trump’s political rise, they are unleashing violent white supremacist gangs to further their agenda of divide and conquer.

Business media are speculating that the next recession is coming or may already be underway. There is overproduction of big ticket items like cars. Retail stores are closing and their stocks are falling. Rents are out of control and homelessness is rampant while millions of housing units go vacant or are purchased by Airbnb speculators. Even workers fortunate enough to have steady, full-time jobs are drowning in debt and only one paycheck away from disaster.

When the bottom falls out of the economy, big hirers like Amazon.com will slash their payrolls too.

Are you ready?

With their powerful strike, Los Angeles teachers are showing the way to fight back, uniting workers, students and communities to defend the future of public education. Im/migrants and refugees who brave Border Patrol tear gas attacks to demand their international right to asylum are showing the way.

Yellow Vest protesters in France who defy police repression to fight government austerity are showing the way. People from Venezuela to Donbass to Palestine, who refuse to be silently butchered by U.S.-backed fascists, who stand up and fight back against impossible odds, are showing the way.

Are you ready?

Are you ready to end the shutdown of jobs and services? Are you ready, instead, to throw out this rotten system that values rich profits over people?

Are you ready to make a vote of no confidence in capitalism? Are you ready to struggle for a new system, one that puts people’s needs first — for socialism?

Here’s one way to start: Mark your calendar for a public conference on Revolution and Socialism on March 16 in Los Angeles, organized by Struggle ★ La Lucha. Come in person or participate online. Get an orientation; learn what actions you can take now; strategize with like-minded people. Meanwhile, join us in the streets.

On Jan. 11, the San Diego Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition protested the treatment of refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border, which has recently resulted in the deaths of at least three children and one woman from Central America. The coalition was joined by members of the International Migrant Alliance (IMA) Border Solidarity Mission with participants from New York, New Jersey, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.

At an opening rally at the Mexican Consulate, speakers demanded that refugees be treated with dignity and respect; be provided adequate shelter, legal and medical assistance; and that the U.S. government honor the internationally recognized right of refugees to request asylum.

The U.S. must stop trying to criminalize children and adults fleeing violence and extreme poverty in their home countries, exacerbated by authoritarian governments supported by Washington, the protesters insisted. There must be an immediate stop to incarcerating asylum seekers and to the militarization of the border.

Then, at least 80 protesters began the march to the U.S. Federal Building, where the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices are located. They carried banners and signs and spiritedly chanted: “¡Trump! ¡Escucha! ¡Estamos en la lucha!” (“Trump, listen, we are in the struggle!”), “The people united will never be defeated!” and “We didn’t cross the border! The border crossed us!” At the Federal Building there were several more excellent and passionate speakers.

The following day, Jan. 12, about 120 protesters, including many from the same groups, gathered near a Border Patrol station a few miles from the border. After an opening rally presenting the coalition’s demands, people marched through the surrounding residential streets, drawing support from some residents.

Among the signs that protesters carried were four large cardboard gravestones with drawings and the names of the Central American woman and three Central American children who were killed by the Border Patrol’s mistreatment: Claudia Patricia Gómez González, Mariee Juárez, Jakelin Caal Maquín and Felipe Alonzo-Gómez.

About 10 Trump supporters staged a puny counterprotest, chanting “USA! USA!” as if they thought they were at a sports competition instead of addressing life and death matters.

The coalition’s speakers and chants dealt with the unity of the workers and the oppressed people, who are the primary targets of the racist, anti-migrant and anti-refugee policies of the U.S. ruling class.

On Wednesday, the third day of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) strike, picket lines remained strong — while more cracks showed in the armor of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) bosses headed by Superintendent Austin Beutner. You could almost feel the city’s rich and powerful quaking at this week’s massive show of working-class solidarity.

Despite on and off torrential rain, following the morning pickets at every school, UTLA members held successful rallies at seven locations spread out over the entirety of Los Angeles, including offices of LAUSD and selected schools. Numerous sympathy strikes are happening and 1,000 charter school workers represented by UTLA, but not employed by LAUSD, struck against their own private employer.

Significantly, the number of students attending scab-run classrooms fell dramatically, down from 159,000 on Tuesday to 132,000 on Wednesday. That means only 27 percent of enrolled students showed up for classes.

One reason for the decline is that union members and supporters are succeeding in breaking through lies and rumors spread by LAUSD through the media that students might face penalties for being absent during the strike.

“In all, the district says it has lost $69.1 million in state funding based on attendance” since the start of the strike, reported the Los Angeles Times. “Subtract the $10 million a day in wages it hasn’t had to pay its striking workforce, and that’s a net loss of $39.1 million.”

The head of the school administrators union, Juan Flecha, suggested that campuses may need to close entirely because of “dire and unsafe working conditions.” And School Board member Scott Schmerelson broke ranks with Beutner, declaring, “I believe that there are resources available to end this strike.”

Meanwhile, School Board President Monica Garcia, a staunch supporter of Beutner’s anti-union hard line, found herself confronted by more than 100 protesting students, parents and teachers who held a rally outside her home, chanting “Monica, come out!” Instead of responding to the protesters’ demand to meet with them, Garcia called the cops.

Late in the day, the UTLA announced that there would be another attempt at bargaining on Thursday, Jan. 17. Negotiations broke off last Friday after LAUSD came forward with a new proposal that addressed the lack of school nurses and overcrowded classes, but for only one year, and limited to certain grades. After one year, a clause included in previous contracts would allow the district to again increase class sizes and eliminate nurses and other important staff.

The newly announced negotiations will include Mayor Eric Garcetti, who claims to be playing the role of mediator. However, it’s been reported that Garcetti referred to Beutner’s “strategic plan” to divide the district into 32 small units as a possible vehicle to resolution, if the union would collaborate with him.

Beutner once admitted to a group of businesspeople that this strategic plan could mean that there would be no public education system in Los Angeles by 2021. His plan to make all education, education for profit has been clearly and forcefully rejected by the people of Los Angeles this week.

This is an important fight for union rights, for sure. But it is also a huge labor and community battle to fight for and defend quality public education, at a time when school workers from Oakland to Chicago to the state of Virginia have drawn the line. UTLA and Los Angeles parents and students will win.

Day 3 Valley West rally

[fb_plugin video href=”https://www.facebook.com/mrdavidlyell/videos/2079555948776240/” width=340 ]

Fourteen people were arrested on Jan. 7 on the Gidimt’en clan territory that is within the homeland of the Wet’suwet’en Nation in what is called “British Columbia” by the Canadian settlers.

Elders were at the Gidimt’en checkpoint, women holding eagle feathers against the guns and hard faces of the Mounties as they invaded. The media were blockaded for hours, all electronic communications cut off.

As the militarized Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP or “Mounties”) continued their invasion, they headed toward the nearby Unist’ot’en territory — another of the clans with hereditary chiefs within Wet’suwet’en.

The Unist’ot’en chose to bring down their blockade temporarily out of concern that the unarmed people there would be hurt, vowing to continue to resist the Coastal Gaslink pipeline and all of the pipelines slated to go through Wet’suwet’en territories.

The “crime” that led to the RCMP raid was the resistance of the five traditional clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation to TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline. Their stolen lands are unceded, not subject to any treaty, and they do not consent to the destruction of their lands. Canada fundamentally seeks to exploit and destroy the lands and protect corporate profits.

Across Canada, Indigenous people and allies have come out to defend the Wet’suwet’en. They delay traffic on streets and highways, march, and demand that Canada back down from its doomed and destructive love affair with oil and gas extraction.

Pipeline fighters have confronted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directly, calling him a liar and making it difficult for him to attend some of his meetings. The Union of British Columbian Indian Chiefs has strongly condemned the RCMP’s tactics of “intimidation, harassment, and ongoing threats of forceful intervention and removal of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders from Wet’suwet’en unceded territory.”

Outside Canada, what is happening in Wet’suwet’en homelands is not as well known. Yet actions have taken place in some U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and other locations, and internationally, too.

This is another pivotal moment in the centuries-long defense of Indigenous sovereignty. Wet’suwet’en must be defended from the incursions of settler governments and corporations, just as the sovereignty of Standing Rock was defended in the #NoDAPL struggle.

Liberal government’s repression

Following the invasion of Gidimt’en and the arrests there, Wet’suwet’en chiefs entered negotiations with the RCMP under duress.

An agreement made to let Coastal Gaslink and the RCMP come onto Unist’ot’en territory in return for Wet’suwet’en members having full access to their territory was only supposed to be temporary, until a court hearing could take place. The RCMP has violated the agreement by establishing a police detachment on Wet’suwet’en territory without consent. As a result, solidarity actions need to continue to put pressure on Canada to back down.

Trudeau and his Liberal Party cabinet, as well as nearly all other elected officials in Canada, were silent when the RCMP raided. But make no mistake: the RCMP moved in with the full backing of Trudeau.

Although people in the U.S often think of Mounties as being rather cute and quaint, like the old cartoon character Dudley Do-Right, in fact, they are serving the Canadian government and corporations that seek to roll over Indigenous First Nations and their right to have the final say over what development will happen on their lands.

The RCMP was created as the North West Mounted Police in the 19th century to fight, kill, remove and imprison Indigenous peoples in western Canada and to suppress their ceremonies and cultures. Mounties continue to repress Indigenous resistance to this day.

Trudeau’s dealings with First Nations people are characteristic of the two faces of liberalism. On the one hand, he seems to be a caring young leader who loves to dress up in Indigenous garb and says he supports Indigenous people and reconciliation.

But then his other face is revealed: the ugly face of capitalism and settler colonialism. The right of Indigenous nations to “free, prior and informed consent” was one of Trudeau’s campaign promises, but in practice he and his government have not cared about consent since Canada’s economy is so heavily dependent on gas and oil.

TransCanada is pushing through the $4.7 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline to connect fracking wells in northeastern British Columbia with a liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal on the province’s coast, altogether forming a $40 billion infrastructure project called LNG Canada. “LNG Canada represents the single largest private-sector investment project in Canadian history,” according to Trudeau.

TransCanada is also funding the Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines that have faced widespread opposition.

Wet’suwet’en law long predates Canada

The raided Gidimt’en checkpoint had only recently been established in solidarity with the longtime Unist’ot’en checkpoint, in place since 2009. The Unist’ot’en camp contains permanent structures erected in the path of multiple proposed pipelines. These buildings provide a place for people to stay and a barrier to protect the land and water, and also provide a place where people can come to heal at the land-based treatment center.

Fracked gas and tar sands pipelines have been planned without consent from the Wet’suwet’en’s five clans. They have never surrendered their lands or signed any treaties for their traditional territory, spanning 22,000 square kilometres in northwest British Columbia.

The Wet’suwet’en Nation has resisted the arm-twisting of corporations and the Canadian government. First Nations have often been subject to coercion, including incentives such as job creation and threats to cut off or divert desperately needed funds if consent is not given.

Canadian law had previously recognized the rights of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and five clans, in addition to recognition of the government-sanctioned “Indian Act” band council chiefs. A Supreme Court of Canada ruling confirmed the land’s unceded status in 1997. Nonetheless, the British Columbia Supreme Court recently decreed that Coastal GasLink lines could pass through their lands.

More important, though, the Wet’suwet’en have their own laws. Their laws and systems of governance predate Canada by thousands of years. The people are the final word, not Indian Act band council chiefs.

Unist’ot’en spokesperson Freda Huson said: “I’m here now because this is my home, this is where I live. … The gate is for our protection. We had racists coming in and shooting rifles, ramming my gate with vehicles, and using explosives to blow up my gate. …

“All I am doing is living on my lands that my clan has title and rights to. You say reconciliation? This is not reconciliation. You’re treating my chiefs and us as criminals. We’re not criminals. This is our land.”

How you can support the struggle: Increase awareness of what is happening by posting on social media and attending and organizing actions in your area. Here is a list of Canadian embassies and consulates worldwide. Let them know that people everywhere support the Wet’suwet’en struggle.

Five terms to know regarding the Wet’suwet’en pipeline dispute

No to NATO, War & Racism – March on Wash., DC – March 30

UNAC

A Call for National Mobilization to Oppose NATO, War, and Racism

April 4, 2019, will mark the 51st anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the internationally revered leader in struggles against racism, poverty and war.

And yet, in a grotesque desecration of Rev. King’s lifelong dedication to peace, this is the date that the military leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have chosen to celebrate NATO’s 70th anniversary by holding its annual summit meeting in Washington, D.C. This is a deliberate insult to Rev. King and a clear message that Black lives and the lives of non-European humanity, and indeed the lives of the vast majority, really do not matter.

Since its founding, the U.S.-led NATO has been the world’s deadliest military alliance, causing untold suffering and devastation throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Hundreds of thousands have died in U.S./NATO wars in Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yugoslavia. Millions of refugees are now risking their lives trying to escape the carnage that these wars have brought to their homelands, while workers in the 29 NATO member-countries are told they must abandon hard-won social programs in order to meet U.S. demands for even more military spending.

Dr. King’s words linking the three evils of American society: Militarism, Racism and Poverty, and his deeply profound remark that every bomb that falls on other countries is a bomb dropped on our inner cities, reveal the deep-rooted relationship between militarism and the social, racial, economic and environmental injustices that now impoverish whole cities and rural communities and have plagued our society and the world for a long time. It was exactly one year before he was murdered that Rev. King gave his famous speech opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam, calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and declaring that he could not be silent.

We cannot be silent either. As Rev. King taught us, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Every year NATO has held its summits, people around the world have organized massive protests against it: in Chicago (2012), Wales (2014), Warsaw (2016), Brussels (2017 & 2018) — and 2019 will be no exception.

We are calling for a peaceful mass mobilization against this year’s NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 30. Additional actions will take place at the opening of the NATO meeting on April 4. We ask you to make every effort to join with us in Washington DC, or, if not possible, organize a rally or demonstration in your area. We need to show, in the strongest possible way, our opposition to NATO’s destructive wars and its racist military policies around the world.

We also invite you to add your, and/or your organization’s name to the list of supports of the anti-NATO, Anti-War and Anti-Racism mass actions in Washington DC. Please go to the web site at http://no2nato2019.org to add your organizational or individual endorsement of the action or to make a donation to build the action.

You can also contact us by email: Contact@No2NATO2019.org.

Thank You.

Steering Committee for the March 30th Anti-NATO Mobilization:
• Bahman Azad, Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases • Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace • Leah Bolger, World Beyond War • Alison Bodine, Mobilization Against War and Occupation • Gerry Condon, Veterans For Peace • Miguel Figueroa, Canadian Peace Congress • Sara Flounders, International Action Center • Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance • Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ • Madelyn Hoffman, U.S. Peace Council • Tarak Kauff, Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases, Veterans For Peace • Marilyn Levin, UNAC • Joe Lombardo, UNAC • Tamara Lorincz, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace • Jeff Mackler, West Coast UNAC • Alfred L. Marder, U.S. Peace Council • Sarah Martin, Women Against Military Madness • Nancy Price, WILPF-US Section • Paul Pumphrey, Friends of the Congo • Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace • Paki Wieland, CODEPINK • Phil Wilayto, Virginia Defenders • Ann Wright, Veterans For Peace, CODEPINK • Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance

Press Conference: Friday, Jan. 18th, 6:30AM at Maya Angelou High School. 300 E. 53rd St. LA 90011. Parents and students will speak in support of the teacher strike and they will explain to other parents that students will NOT get in trouble for absences during the strike. Please spread the word! Thank you for your continued support for the strike! This press conference is being organized by Union del Barrio in conjunction w UTLA chapters and other community organizations.

Conferencia de prensa: viernes 18 de enero, 6:30 a.m. en la escuela Maya Angelou High. 300 E. 53rd St. LA 90011. Los padres y los estudiantes hablarán en apoyo de la huelga de maestros y les explicarán a otros padres que los estudiantes NO tendrán problemas por las ausencias durante la huelga. ¡Pasa la voz! ¡Gracias por su apoyo a la huelga! Esta conferencia de prensa está siendo organizada por Union del Barrio en conjunto con miembros de UTLA y otras organizaciones comunitarias.

[embedfb https://www.facebook.com/events/968508683338032/ social_plugin=false ]

If the first day of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) strike was dramatic, then the second truly showed the strength of the union and its supporters.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, speaking to union members, reported that 100 percent strike participation by schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country’s second largest, continued on Jan. 15.

Some 30,000 members were out on strike, he said, joined by thousands of parents, and community and labor allies. “Our picket lines grew on the second day,” Caputo-Pearl explained.

Also, for the second day in a row, more than 50,000 people rallied in downtown Los Angeles. This time their target was the headquarters of the California Charter Schools Association, which UTLA calls “a corporate lobby group powered by millions in donations from wealthy privatizers like Eli Broad so they can buy school boards and push the corporate takeover of schools.”

A new front opened in the struggle against school privatization on Tuesday as teachers and school workers went on strike at Accelerated Charter School in Los Angeles. It’s the first strike at a charter school in California, and only the second ever in the U.S. Workers there are “fighting for basic rights,” said Caputo-Pearl, adding, “We are reshaping the charter school debate.”

He also reported that a Loyola Marymount University poll found that nearly 80 percent of people living in Los Angeles County support the teachers — a phenomenal amount.

Scott Scheffer of Struggle-La Lucha gave an example of the widespread support. “When I was leaving from the morning picketing yesterday to go to my job, I was traveling north on the 110 Freeway. As I was approaching an overpass, I saw that there were a number of people, each holding up a sign on the overpass so that commuters could read them. Each one had one letter on it and it just said one word: TEACHERS.

“As I got closer, I could hear what must have been every single horn honking in all the northbound lanes, and when I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw people flashing their headlights,” Scheffer reported. “I can’t remember ever seeing this kind of public support for a strike, and it made me realize that this is more than a strike by the union. This is the communities defending their children’s education.”

LAUSD Superintendent “Austin Beutner is scrambling,” said Caputo-Pearl. “He did not expect the strength of the strike, of the community and the labor movement.” Beutner held a press conference where he had some parents make the ridiculous claim that union teachers don’t care about their students because they all send their own children to private schools.

Beutner and those behind him have also been spreading lies in the corporate media, claiming that the union refuses to negotiate, and spreading rumors that students who are absent during the strike will be penalized. Neither of these claims is true.

In response to the scare campaign, Unión del Barrio-Los Angeles has called a press conference for Friday, Jan. 18, at 6:30 a.m. at Maya Angelou High School, 300 E. 53 St. in South Central Los Angeles. There, parents and students will speak out in support of the teachers’ strike and explain to other parents and students that they will not get in trouble for being absent during the strike. Everyone is encouraged to attend and show their support.

Video en español: Ruben Tapia (KPFK) sobre huelga de maestros

[fb_plugin video href=”https://www.facebook.com/strugglelalucha/videos/255804242007469/” width=”350″]

One hundred years ago, on January 15, 1919, counterrevolutionaries murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, founders of the German Communist Party.

Rosa Luxemburg is often overlooked as one of history’s most important Marxist thinkers. She must also be remembered for her tremendous contributions to the international workers’ movement leading up to and following Russia’s Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917.

Luxemburg was born in 1871 to a Jewish family in Russian-occupied Poland. An accurate history of her life cannot overlook her Jewish identity. At the time, czarist Russia’s rulers often incited pogroms — mass murders — against Jewish communities.

Luxemburg’s childhood was rife with these violent acts of anti-Semitism, along with everyday experiences of anti-Jewish oppression. She also experienced ableism throughout her life because of a visible limp, the result of childhood illness.

At age 16, Luxemburg became involved with the revolutionary socialist movement in Poland, headed by the Proletariat Party. Under pressure from the police, she left Poland for Zurich, Switzerland, where she attended university and participated in the local labor movement.

She quickly became a main contributor to the Proletariat Party’s paper and one of its leading Marxist theoreticians. In 1898, Luxemburg obtained German citizenship and settled in Berlin, the heart of the international socialist movement at the time.

Rosa immediately took up work for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She found the party dividing due to a growing reformist trend. Luxemburg quickly jumped to defend the principles of Marxism and revolutionary thought, and to call out reformism and revisionism in the movement.

In 1905, Luxemburg went to Czarist-controlled Warsaw to participate in the unsuccessful Russian revolution of that year, where she continued to secretly write for her party’s paper. After being imprisoned, she was expelled from the Russian Empire and returned to Germany with one of her most important theoretical ideas: that mass strikes constituted a most important aspect and necessity of the workers’ struggle for a socialist revolution.

Revolutionary opposition to imperialist war

Many political writers emphasize Luxemburg’s theoretical disagreements with Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party and leader of the Russian Revolution. Some do so in order to argue that Luxemburg was opposed to the Bolsheviks and to discredit the socialist nature of the October Revolution. In particular, they point out that Luxemburg challenged Lenin’s position on the right to self-determination for all oppressed peoples.

Nevertheless, Luxemburg and Lenin had far fewer differences than they had commonalities; in fact, they agreed on almost all fronts, and Lenin held Luxemburg in very high regard. From the start of World War I, both Karl Liebknecht and Luxemburg took the correct position against war and imperialism, in opposition with most of the social democratic movement at the time.

Between 1906 and the beginning of World War I in 1914, Luxemburg spread a revolutionary anti-war, anti-imperialist message among the masses. In 1910, a growing divide in the Social Democratic Party — between reformists who supported the prospect of German imperialist war and true anti-imperialist revolutionaries — reached its peak, and the party divided along those lines, with Rosa at the helm of the revolutionary grouping.

In 1914, the parliamentary representatives of the German Social Democratic Party voted unanimously — excluding one member, Karl Liebknecht — to back the German government in favor of the war. In response, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and a small number of other revolutionary socialists formed the Spartacus League, dedicating themselves to continuing the anti-war struggle in Germany, despite harsh repression.

From prison, Rosa highly praised Russia’s 1917 socialist revolution, issuing calls for German workers to join the international movement. In November 1918, German revolutionaries freed Luxemburg from prison and she hastily resumed agitating and organizing the masses. Her efforts helped reinvigorate the revolutionary socialist struggle in Germany, and in December 1918 she founded the German Communist Party alongside Karl Liebknecht.

In January 1919, workers in Berlin rose up, but their movement, lacking adequate preparation, was crushed. Just two months after her release from prison, German proto-fascists assassinated Luxemburg and Liebknecht with help from the right-wing Social Democrats, who betrayed their whereabouts and enabled the fascists’ agenda.

Luxemburg gave her life to the international socialist struggle, and must be remembered as a disabled, Jewish and revolutionary woman who made brilliant theoretical contributions to Marxist theory, strategy and tactics.

Jameek “Meek” Lowery went to the Paterson, N.J., police station before dawn on January 5 and asked for water and help. Cops at the Frank X. Graves Public Safety Complex refused to give him either.

Lowery videoed the callous response of the police on his Facebook page.  Before going to the police station, Lowery was taken by ambulance from his home to the St. Joseph’s University Medical Center. Lowery then left the hospital and went to a police station seeking help before being taken back to the hospital.

Two days later, the 27-year-old African-American father of three children was dead. Lowery had a broken cheekbone and fractured eye socket. People in Paterson want to know who beat him to death.

On Jan. 8, protesters marched in downtown Paterson and demanded answers. Paterson police responded by pepper spraying them and confronting people with nightsticks.

Cops arrested local Black Lives Matter leader Zellie Thomas, a Paterson school teacher, and New York City activist Hawk Newsome. Members of the People’s Organization for Progress and American Muslims for Palestine joined the protest.

No autopsy results for Lowery have been released, but it’s claimed that he died of bacterial meningitis. Five hundred people die in the U.S. annually of this disease. Socialist Cuba has a vaccine for this illness that saves lives, but it’s barred from import to the U.S. by the U.S. blockade of the Caribbean nation.

As deadly as meningitis can be, it couldn’t have caused Jameek Lowery’s broken cheekbone and eye socket. Nor could it have been the cause of his bruises and scratches.

Patterson’s 150,000 people live in a city that historically produced so much wealth yet is now so poor. Known as “Silk City,” thousands of the city’s workers were employed in silk mills, now all closed. The famous 1913 Paterson silk strike was broken.

Real estate sharks are converting former silk mills and other factories into luxury condominiums, like the Silk City Lofts downtown.

People are fighting back against this war on the poor. They are demanding justice for Jameek Lowery and his family.

MLK Day March to Reclaim the City
Hosted by Youth Against Displacement and Coalition to Protect Chinatown & LES

Monday, January 21, 2019 at 12 PM – 2 PM
229 Cherry St, New York, NY 10002

From the illegal megatowers the City wants to build in Two Bridges in Lower East Side, to the East Harlem and Inwood rezonings, to privatization of NYCHA and public land, to the Amazon headquarters in LIC subsidized by our tax dollars, it is clear Mayor de Blasio wants to turn our city into a banking account for the 1% at the expense of the people who live and work here. Everywhere across the city, people are standing up against the gentrifier-in-chief Mayor.

This Martin Luther King Day, we will gather at the 80-story Extell luxury tower, which has a “poor door” to separate low- and middle-income families from the rich. This is de Blasio’s legacy of segregation and economic racism. Dr. King would be so aghast to hear that this Mayor even shamelessly brands himself the “progressive leader” of the city. From Extell, we will march to City Hall to tell the Mayor: WE WILL NOT BE MOVED!

Are you ready to take up the fight to save your lives and your neighborhoods? join our march to reclaim the City that’s supposed to work for the people, not the richest 1%. We demand the Mayor:
1. Stop City agencies from evicting tenants on behalf of landlords to deny the tenants’ rights of due process
2. Stop selling public land (including NYCHA) and end 421-a tax exemption
3. End the City’s pro-developer rezonings. Pass community-led rezoning plans that put people first and protect workers, tenants, small businesses and schools, like the Chinatown Working Group plan.

When: MLK Day, January 21, 2019, @ 12 noon
Where: Cherry and Pike Streets, Lower East Side (F train to East Broadway)