On Sunday, Jan. 30, Miami Cuban-Americans and their supporters gathered at City Hall to caravan with bikes and cars to a rally at the statue of Cuba’s national hero, José Martí. Nearly two years since the election-campaign-filled months of 2020, throughout all of 2021 and now into 2022, these Miami actions have birthed a caravan movement across the U.S. and internationally on the last Sunday of the month – including in the streets of Cuba. 

This international outpouring of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and its right to sovereignty and self-determination was especially noteworthy, as Feb. 7 marks 60 years since the effective date of President John F. Kennedy’s Proclamation 3447, prohibiting “the importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba.”  

Also 60 years ago, on Jan. 31, 1962, under U.S. pressure, the Organization of American States expelled Cuba. Only Mexico withstood the U.S. demand to isolate the revolution. How the situation has changed in 60 years!

In the U.S., caravans kicked off the new year in Miami, New York City, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tempe/Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles. Cars and – where temperatures permitted – bikes took to the streets. Outreach tables, pickets and educational online programs informed public gatherings about the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba. 

In Miami, large posters displayed Cuban-American demands to undo some of the most painful of the 243 new economic blows imposed under Donald Trump and now continued and even expanded by President Joe Biden: reopen the U.S. Embassy in Havana; reunify families; restore direct flights from U.S. airports to provincial Cuban airports; and restore remittances, the right to travel and cultural-scientific cooperation between the two countries. 

In pre-pandemic Canada, pickets regularly reminded U.S. consulates that the Canadian people oppose the U.S. starvation schemes imposed on Cuba. Jan. 30 car caravans carried on the tradition in Montreal, Quebec, plus Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. 

Information on the U.S. caravans are posted by the National Network On Cuba at NNOC.org/calendar with starting times and locations during the week before the last Sunday of the month. Local organizers can send details, images or Facebook event links for posting to SundayCaravan@NNOC.info 

Support mobilized from many countries as shown in this tweet.

On Jan. 12, the U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges of perjury and false mortgage applications against Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, a Black woman who has served in the position since 2015. 

The recent criminal indictment alleges that Mosby used COVID-related loan money to purchase vacation homes. Further, she is accused of falsely testifying under oath that she experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic. 

Mosby’s tenure has been a controversial one. In 2015, she charged six Baltimore police officers with the murder of an unarmed Black man, Freddie Gray. Baltimore cops killed Gray after he ran from officers who were screaming at him and waving their firearms aggressively. 

Following Gray’s murder, the people of Baltimore rebelled against racist police brutality and terror.  

When Mosby announced that she would prosecute the officers involved in Gray’s murder, this drew the ire of many, including the racist Fraternal Order of Police and right-wing politicians. Ultimately, Freddie Gray’s murderers were not convicted. Many returned to their jobs on the Baltimore police force. However, the “law and order” community never forgot Mosby’s attempt to convict the killers. 

Fast forward six years. Mosby announced that her office would no longer prosecute drug users and sex workers in the city of Baltimore in April 2021. This announcement was part of a larger effort to scale back the racist war on drugs that had wreaked havoc in Baltimore’s Black community for decades. This policy change was met with extreme vitriol from pro-police forces. 

The Baltimore Republican Party and its allies called for an indictment of Mosby on anything that could stick. In 2020, the DOJ and Internal Revenue Service investigated Mosby and her husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, for alleged tax law violations. 

Eventually the claims against the Mosbys were found to be without merit and the investigation ended. However, federal investigations resumed after Mosby announced her initiative to decriminalize drug use and sex work. This investigation led to the January indictment. 

To be clear, it’s important to understand that Marilyn Mosby is an imperfect figure. She is not a socialist nor even a progressive. For her entire career, Mosby has been a mainstream Democratic Party politician. 

In many ways, Mosby echoes the “law and order” politics of people like former President Bill Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. This is best demonstrated by the continued prosecution of police shooting victim Keith Davis Jr. Mosby’s office has prosecuted Davis five times, after numerous mistrials and hung juries. The entire case is based on flimsy evidence; consequently, the Baltimore community has continually protested the prosecution. 

With that said, Mosby should still be defended against reactionary and racist attacks. The recent DOJ prosecution is exactly that. The charges against her aren’t based on justice or fairness. They are based on racist political retribution. Even with Mosby’s imperfections, progressives and socialists have a duty to stand in solidarity with Black elected officials against racist attacks. 

It is telling that Joe Biden’s DOJ has brought these charges against the State’s Attorney of a majority Black, working-class city like Baltimore. For better or worse, Mosby is paying the price for executing what she believed were Democratic Party values. She tried to prosecute killer cops and stop prosecuting innocent people. For that, she is under vicious attack. 

It is more important now than ever that the people stand in solidarity with her and other politicians who find themselves under attack for policies that challenge the police and mass incarceration. 

Feb. 4 – Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST NYC) convened education, disability, and labor advocates to expose multiple facets of New York City’s chronic student transportation failures and to propose solutions via a School Bus Bill of Rights. 

The event, marking the birthday of civil rights icon Rosa Parks – Transit Equity Day – brought together a diverse group of parents and caregivers, elected officials, including State Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon and the Office of Public Advocate, the local Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and environmentalists.

“Transportation for access to education is now a civil and human right under many laws and international conventions, but just like the people of 1955 Montgomery, we need collective action to get it,” said Johnnie Stevens, who coordinates the School Bus Bill of Rights referendum campaign for “safe, on-time, fully staffed school bus routes for students of all abilities and all housing circumstances.”

Organizers from across the city charged that policy changes before and during the pandemic have led to missed school, health risks for riders and a shrinking workforce. 

Claudia Galicia from Sunset Park explained the Department of Education “authorized the routes to double this year,” adding, “families may be informed when a child in the same school is COVID positive, but the bus routes include children from several schools.”

Bronx parent and Comite Timon leader Milagros Cancel spoke on the resulting inhumanity of long rides for children with medical and neurological conditions. Speaking in Spanish through tears, Cancel urged everyone to march over the Brooklyn Bridge on March 19 for equity in student transportation, saying, “This is criminal what’s happening.”

All attendees agreed: driver, attendant, paraprofessional and bus nurse shortages pre-dated COVID. In the words of Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: “The inequities and inadequacies in our educational system – which existed prior to the pandemic and have been exacerbated by it – extend to our buses. Shortages of staffing, length of rides, and overcrowding are persistent issues which disproportionately harm communities of more color and students with disabilities. The city must work to hire and train more staff at fair wages, develop shorter routes, and provide transparency and accountability throughout these processes.” 

Williams was represented at the meeting by First Deputy Nick E. Smith and other staff. 

Amy Tsai of the Citywide Council for District 75 (special education) reminded the gathering that “there was a huge furlough in 2020, so over that summer, a lot of kids weren’t able to utilize the Learning Centers for related services or instruction.” 

First Vice President of the Citywide Council on Special Education, Paullette Healy, added, “We have special education recovery services that started in December, and families cannot access them because there’s no transportation to get our children home.” 

Sara Catalinotto of PIST NYC said, “We predicted, over 10 years ago, that cuts to pay and Employee Protection Provisions (EPP) would push many school bus drivers and attendants from the workforce.” 

Rima Izquierdo of Bronx Family Autism Support elaborated on the concurrent shortage of school bus paraprofessionals and bus nurses, indicating her child in the background, who was “stuck at home again because his bus para called in sick, and there is no one else designated to ride with him.” 

Labor solidarity

Charles Jenkins of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists NY Chapter, pledged support, saying that workers “need to be paid on a professional level that has benefits so that we can hire the best qualified and the best skilled folks to transport precious cargo.”

Another stated goal of this campaign is to prevent and troubleshoot problems efficiently without bias. Catalinotto cited “inequity in getting route information, let alone solutions, from DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT) depending on how much time, internet access and computer savvy a family has, and in what language they are fluent.” 

Galicia blasted the OPT’s complaint hotline as an exercise in futility, saying: “There are long hold times, no follow-up, and no solutions. I don’t have enough hours of the day to make a complaint – two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon – because the limited travel time of my child is being violated.” 

Parent and advocate Maggie Sanchez testified in detail that: “Students in temporary housing miss more instruction and services, due to transportation problems, compared to their peers. We know what it’s like not to receive a bus route for weeks on end due to a simple address change.”

Beth Heller of Brooklyn Heights added, “Rather than correct the route problems, OPT sent cabs and car services for my child. I had to accompany him to and from school for a total of four hours a day. When OPT neglected to reserve a return trip, it cost $60 to get home. If OPT were to send us to and from my son’s non-public school for a full academic year it would cost $42,300. That could easily pay someone’s salary.”

State Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon offered her support for a School Bus Bill of Rights. Simon congratulated the coalition for “seeing this as a multi-pronged problem, [with] people assigned to and coordinating different areas of the battle.”

Justin Wood of the Clean School Bus Coalition cited evidence that “unhealthy conditions are caused by the diesel and gasoline school buses themselves, creating serious health issues for students, in both general and special education… and we know there’s linkages to severe COVID-19 illness now as well.” 

Event organizers said they had also received messages of encouragement from Teamsters Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera, City Council member Gale Brewer, Community Education Council 17 President Erika N. Kendall, and various labor, education and community activists. 

The Communist Party of Canada views the “Freedom Convoy” as a public expression of the increasingly organized and assertive far right. The clear links between the organizers of the convoy and far-right networks indicate that this is not a spontaneous working-class demonstration. On the contrary, it is part of a global phenomenon: the rise and mainstreaming of the far right, which is demonstrated by the strong support (ideologically and financially) from the US far right and circles close to Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The convoy is filled with Nazi and Confederated flags, election signs for Bernier and all sorts of far-right symbols. The $10 million raised through GoFundMe for this convoy also showcases that this was planned by ultra-right networks. It is certainly not the meagre earnings of the working class that is funding this effort.

We understand the frustrations of a growing part of the population. They are justified. Since the beginning of the pandemic, both federal and provincial governments have been busy ensuring that corporate interests are placed firmly ahead of public health. The deaths we mourn from this deadly pandemic are victims of decades of privatization of our public health system. Emergency financial aid programs, whether it be the emergency wage subsidy or the CERB/CRB, have not served to raise the standard of living of working people, but only to barely keep 7 million people afloat. Over 880 000 people were cast adrift last October after CRB was ended. These programs have also benefited big business, big retailers, banks and lending institutions, and real estate speculators. After spending most of the CERB/CRB payments for groceries at Metro, Sobeys or Loblaws (whose CEO’s wealth rose by $4.5 billion after the first year of the pandemic), after paying rent to big real estate speculators such as Timbercreek, after paying off interest on credit cards, not much of the meagre $500 per week was left for people to make ends meet. Just as dangerously, while living and working conditions are deteriorating for the working majority, the government and the political parties in the pay of big business have agreed to increase military spending.

However, these self-proclaimed “spokesmen of the people” refuse to address these questions. They substitute a populist and anti-scientific discourse in order to funnel the anger of the working people towards other workers, particularly immigrants, women, Black and Indigenous People, Muslims, healthcare workers (who’ve been attacked), teachers and other public organizations. Racism, misogyny, violence and hate speech are commonplace in this convoy, which seeks only to divide workers and instill the idea that the enemy is not the bosses, but working people themselves.

This is far from a “freedom” convoy. This is a convoy of hate which has threatened and attacked the civilian populations in Ottawa and everywhere it has passed through.

They don’t say a word about the central issue of defending and expanding our public services, especially our public health care system; about raising wages and controlling the prices of basic necessities; not a word about nationalizing the pharmaceutical industry to stop Big Pharma’s profiteering (which is contributing to the proliferation of variants), about military spending and the danger of war to guarantee corporate profits. Far from attacking the system, they attack the workers struggling to deliver essential services that will save lives, despite systemic underfunding, privatization, and more.

Communists recognize the interests behind this demonstration very well: big business and the far-right (white supremacists, fascists, fundamentalists, the People’s Party, etc.) We know what it means when the far right organizes itself and tries to take root among the unemployed, the unorganized and the bankrupt. We also know that it will take mass political action by the labor and people’s movements to force Parliament to ​legislate hate groups as criminal organizations, to enact and enforce hate speech laws, and to defeat the rise of the ultra-right.

This is why we call on the most conscious workers, the trade union movement, but also on all progressive and democratic forces to block these reactionaries by unmasking them, and to oppose them by fighting for a a genuine people’s recovery that includes:

• A $23 minimum wage and general wage increases, improved working conditions including decent pensions and retirement at 60, stable job creation especially in the manufacturing and value-added industry as well as expanded labour rights;
• EI reform that is non-contributory and accessible to all workers, including first-time job seekers, covering 90% of previous income and that is available for the whole duration of unemployment;
• Price controls and price roll-backs on food, fuel, rents and housing;
• Reverse privatization and make a massive public investment in healthcare and social services;
• Expand Medicare to include long-term care, dental, vision, drugs, and mental health care;
• Create a universal, quality, public childcare system;
• Public ownership and democratic control of banks, insurance companies, energy and natural resources, and the pharmaceutical industry;
• Tax the corporations and the rich; tax relief for working people and the unemployed;
• Strict civilian control over the police, the expansion and enforcement of anti-hate laws, and the designation of hate groups as criminal organisations;
• Reduce the military budget by 75%.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

Source: communist-party.ca

Much has been made of the “diplomatic boycott” by the United States and its allies of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. But what much of the major Western media coverage misses is the historical and geopolitical significance of these games to China—as one of only three Asian host nations for the Olympics (along with Japan and South Korea), and the first Global South country to host the Winter Games. The countries boycotting the 2022 Olympic Games, it seems, see this moment and the history that underpins it as threatening to their global hegemony in both sport and geopolitics.

In 1949, the Communist Party of China decisively prevailed over Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) after 22 years of civil war, forcing the latter to flee to Taiwan. The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) brought a definitive end to a “century of humiliation” inaugurated by the First Opium War, which had seen colonial powers reduce China to the “sick man of Asia.” This sickness had been a byword for the weakness, internal rupture, and forced narcotic dependency of the Chinese body politic—transposed inevitably onto the racialized Chinese body.

Overcoming these scars, in all their physical and psychological manifestations, was the guiding principle for sports policy in the PRC. Only through this lens can we understand why it fought in such an obstinate, pugnacious, and unabashedly political way for a place in the Olympic movement on its own sovereign terms. China turned the Olympics into a battleground in its contest for legitimacy with the KMT regime on Taiwan and its imperialist backers, elevating the dispute to “the main burden of Olympism,” in the words of Otto Mayer, chancellor of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1946 to 1964. And as with the parallel struggle for recognition by the United Nations, this one ended after three eventful decades in unqualified triumph. University of Hong Kong historian Xu Guoqi relates this fascinating saga in his 2008 book Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008.

The KMT-led Republic of China had sent a solitary athlete to the 1932 Los Angeles Games, followed by larger delegations in 1936 and 1948—the latter, incredibly, as the KMT was losing the most decisive campaigns of the civil war to the Communists. After the regime’s flight to Taiwan, its National Olympic Committee (NOC) gave the IOC pro forma notice that it had relocated to Taipei with no further explanation. Throughout this period, the Soviet Union had pointedly snubbed the “bourgeois” IOC in favor of organizing its own proletarian Red Sport International, complete with “Spartakiad” games to rival the Olympics. But by the 1952 Helsinki Games, the Soviets were ready to join the existing Olympic movement in force (ultimately finishing a close second to the United States in the medal count) and duly urged the fledgling PRC to do so as well.

From its very first approach, the PRC boldly insisted on what would become known as the one-China policy: that it was the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese nation including KMT-occupied Taiwan. The IOC ultimately fudged on the question and extended a last-minute invitation to Beijing as well as Taipei. Nonetheless, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai personally approved the decision to send a team, which arrived in Helsinki the day before the closing ceremony and could not take part in any competition. But merely being there was an unalloyed boon to the PRC’s legitimacy, especially as the rival Taipei-based NOC had withdrawn in protest. Avery Brundage, the notoriously racist American who took over as IOC president that year, complained bitterly that “I did everything in my power to prevent them from taking part. Unfortunately, I had only one vote and because many others present did not feel the same way I was outvoted,” as vocal Olympic critic Jules Boykoff recounts in his 2016 book Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.

This initial success for the PRC’s efforts to participate in the Olympic movement was not to be repeated. In 1956, it was the PRC’s turn to withdraw in protest as Taipei’s delegation insisted on competing in the Melbourne Summer Games under the name “Republic of China.” Two years later, Chinese IOC delegate Dong Shouyi entered into a bracing war of words with Brundage, calling him “a faithful menial of the U.S. imperialists bent on serving their plot of creating ‘two Chinas’” in a resignation letter that concluded:

“A man like you, who stains the Olympic spirit and violates the Olympic Charter, has no qualification whatsoever to be IOC president. … I feel pained that the IOC is today controlled by an imperialist like you and consequently the Olympic spirit has been grossly trampled upon. To uphold the Olympic spirit and tradition, I hereby declare that I will no longer cooperate with you or have any connection with the IOC while it is under your domination.”

Dong would not be the last Chinese representative to evoke an idealized “Olympic spirit”—in opposition to the Americans, who arguably embodied the real one in all its racist ugliness. He would, however, be the last one on the IOC until 1979.

Interestingly, this two-decade hiatus (which actually amounted to a 28-year absence from the Olympic Games, from 1952 to 1980) saw the two most severe diplomatic incidents surrounding the China question at the IOC. Both centered on the KMT regime’s untenable claim to represent the entire Chinese nation as the “Republic of China,” and both ended in bitter defeats for it, even as Beijing was de facto boycotting the entire Olympic movement. In effect, the PRC substituted state-to-state diplomacy—first with the Soviet bloc and then with Western powers after the Sino-Soviet split—for a formal presence within the institutions, closely mirroring its geopolitical strategy.

The first episode occurred in 1959, not long after Dong Shouyi’s acrimonious resignation, when Soviet delegates to the IOC insisted that Taipei’s NOC change its name on the self-evident grounds that it “[could not] possibly supervise sports in mainland China.” The IOC as a whole readily agreed, with even the arch-anticommunist Avery Brundage reluctantly assenting. The U.S. mainstream press exploded in outrage; absurdly, Brundage himself was deluged with hate mail alleging he had succumbed to “communist blackmail.” The U.S. State Department called the decision “a clear act of political discrimination” and even President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned it. The whole affair ended in another embarrassing fudge, with Taipei competing under the name “Taiwan” at Rome 1960 and quietly reverting to “Republic of China” thereafter.

The second, even more damaging incident took place in the lead-up to the 1976 Montreal Games. After establishing diplomatic relations in 1970, the PRC informed Canada in no uncertain terms that the Taipei NOC should not be allowed to compete as the “Republic of China.” After lobbying earnestly but unsuccessfully for the IOC to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s government proposed that athletes from Taiwan compete under the neutral Olympic flag. The IOC grudgingly assented at the last minute, but not before debating whether to move the Games to the United States or cancel them entirely; the Taipei NOC ultimately withdrew.

Official reactions from Canada’s domineering southern neighbor were again apoplectic. U.S. President Gerald Ford and the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee seriously discussed the possibility of boycotting or trying to take over the Games at the last minute. This of course did not come to pass, but Canada took a significant reputational hit in the United States—a testament to China’s growing ability to exploit contradictions within the imperialist bloc. Canada’s independent China policy under Pierre Trudeau stood in stark contrast with that of his son Justin, who marched in shameful lockstep first with Trump’s judicial kidnapping of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, and now with Biden’s “diplomatic boycott” of Beijing 2022 over exaggerated allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Ironically, just a few years after savaging the Canadians, the United States would follow in their footsteps by establishing diplomatic relations with the PRC and (formally) cutting ties with Taipei under the one-China policy. This paved the way for the IOC to resolve the two-China question later in 1979 in its own unique way: by readmitting Beijing and allowing athletes from Taiwan to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei.” Deng Xiaoping personally approved this compromise in an early foretaste of the future “one country, two systems” settlements that would return Hong Kong and Macao to Chinese sovereignty.

The PRC’s delayed return to the Olympic movement, contingent in many ways on bilateral ties with the United States, contrasted sharply from its triumphant entry into the UN in 1971. On that occasion, an impressive coalition of African and other Third World countries—many fresh from their own national liberation struggles—had secured recognition for Beijing and expulsion of the KMT regime over the strident objections of the United States and most of its allies. By 1979, the basis for unity within the socialist and nonaligned camps had so thoroughly collapsed that China and many other Global South countries readily joined the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

Instead, mainland China made its long-delayed and triumphant return to Olympic competition at the 1984 Los Angeles Games—remembered locally as an orgy of Reaganite neoliberalism, American jingoism (amplified by the Soviet-led boycott), and militarized police terror that helped create the conditions for the 1992 Rodney King uprising. They nonetheless marked a high point in U.S.-China relations, with PRC athletes being warmly feted by the hosts. This goodwill was not dampened in the slightest when the women’s volleyball team sensationally defeated the hosts to win gold, in one of the most iconic moments of Chinese sports history.

There was ample reason to believe, even after the trauma of the 1989 Tiananmen incident and subsequent U.S. sanctions, that enough of it remained to propel Beijing to victory in its first bid to host the Games. As it turned out, the United States and its allies had no intention of ceding such recognition to a rising China without a fight.

This article was first published on Qiao Collective and was adapted in partnership with Globetrotter. Charles Xu is a member of the Qiao Collective and of the No Cold War collective.

Remarks by Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield during a special online briefing on the U.S./NATO war threats against Russia and Donbass, Jan. 29. Watch the video here.

For more than two months, there’s been a steady drumbeat from the Biden administration and the U.S. corporate media: Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine. The threat is imminent. It’s not a question of if, much less of why, only when.

It’s presented as a bare statement of fact. No dissenting voices are allowed. The only question up for debate is how strong the response should be. Should it be a direct military response? Is it enough to send weapons, money and advisers to Ukraine? What role should negotiations and sanctions play?

Right now 8,500 U.S.-based troops are on alert for deployment to Europe, in addition to the 64,000 already stationed there.

For those old enough to remember, it’s eerily similar to the buildup to the Iraq War in 2002-2003. 

And like the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” story used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s a complete lie.

The real threat of invasion is not by Russia against Ukraine. It is by Ukraine against the small, independent Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on Russia’s western border.

Let me repeat that: The threat of invasion is not coming from Russia. The threat is from U.S.-armed and -funded Ukraine. Right now, 125,000 Ukrainian troops, half of the country’s military, are concentrated along the borders of the Donbass republics. Washington is pushing, pushing, pushing for Ukraine to attack Donetsk and Lugansk. 

Why? Because the U.S. political establishment, the big banks, Big Oil and the military-industrial complex hope this will force a defensive response from Russia that can be used to justify war, harsher sanctions, more military expenditures and further expansion of the NATO military alliance on Russia’s borders.

Only U.S. rulers want war

The United States is the motor force of this crisis. Russia says it will not invade or start a war. The Donbass republics, which have suffered an eight-year economic blockade and a long conflict with Ukraine that has cost 14,000 lives, don’t want more war. 

Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the oligarchs of Ukraine hate Russia and want to conquer Donbass. But they are terrified of what will happen if the U.S. succeeds in pushing them into a war now. Ukraine’s 2015 invasion of Donbass was roundly defeated by the local People’s Militias and internationalist volunteers. The Ukrainian Army is better trained and armed now, thanks to NATO, but Zelensky knows they are no match for the combined forces of Donbass and Russia.

Germany, the European Union’s biggest economic power, doesn’t want war. Germany needs Russian gas and heating oil to keep flowing to fuel its economy. The German capitalists know that if there is a war, they will have no choice but to buy from U.S. oil companies at greatly inflated prices. The same is true for the rest of Western Europe.

All of these countries are pawns in a deadly game that only benefits U.S. imperialism. The U.S. rulers created this crisis and continue to pour fuel on the fire day by day.

Why now? The global capitalist system is in crisis. It was spiraling toward recession even before the pandemic struck. While some billionaires and sectors have profited handsomely from the COVID crisis, U.S. imperialism’s overall profits and strategic dominance are threatened at every turn. 

In particular, the oil industry – thoroughly entwined with the biggest U.S. banks and the military-industrial complex – has been in crisis for over a decade. Oil and gas prices never rebounded to the heights reached before the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. That’s why Obama, Trump and Biden have targeted oil producers like Venezuela, Iran, Syria and Iraq, and of course Russia, with blockades, sanctions and war to stem the flow of oil and gas. 

U.S. capitalists are desperate to stop the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project slated to bring Russian gas to Europe.

NATO arms Ukraine’s fascists 

There is one other group that is eager for war. It’s neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, the Azov Battalion, Patriots of Ukraine and C14, that have run rampant since the U.S.-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected government in 2014. These groups have been fully integrated into Ukraine’s military and security apparatus. 

According to officials and activists in Donbass, neo-Nazi battalions have been deployed to towns and villages on the ceasefire line separating Ukraine from Donetsk and Lugansk. These fascists speak of the residents of the region as “cattle” and “insects” and routinely call for genocide to recapture the region. In the event of a Ukrainian invasion, they will form the spearhead.

The U.S. is truly playing with fire. Even if, despite all the buildup of weapons and mobilization of troops, calmer heads prevail in the Pentagon and Biden gives the order to pull back or slow down, there is no guarantee that the neo-Nazis, now armed with NATO weapons and training, will obey. Likely they will feel that Biden has betrayed them, as they are now saying about Zelensky. 

Why is the Biden administration collaborating with neo-Nazis? 

You won’t see it in any of the current media war propaganda. But over the past few years, several articles have documented how U.S. and European white supremacists have gone to Ukraine to train with these groups. Some have participated in the war on Donbass. The FBI even admitted that a group involved in the Charlottesville fascist riot where Heather Heyer was murdered had trained with Ukrainian nazis. 

Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The inspiration of the modern day fascists there is a creep named Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis. Today’s Ukrainian government recognizes Bandera as a national hero. 

After the war, the United States nurtured Ukrainian Nazis as a weapon against the Soviet Union, just as Nazis were recruited for NATO and the U.S. war machine. It’s a relationship that goes back decades. We should encourage people who voted for Biden as a rejection of Trump’s white supremacist program to demand answers from him.

What we must do

I want to say a little about what we must do to oppose the U.S. war drive. 

At this moment, the most important thing we can do is show visible opposition to a U.S. war with Russia. We need people to go out in the streets with signs, banners and leaflets, organize car caravans, social media blasts, the more the better, while wearing masks and taking all necessary health precautions for the pandemic. Not just in Washington, D.C., or New York City, but all over the country, in cities and towns large and small.

That’s why Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party are joining with other anti-war groups to call for National Days of Action from February 4 through 12 to say “No War on Russia and Donbass! U.S.-NATO Out of Ukraine!” Baltimore, San Diego, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Minneapolis are among the places planning activities. 

Wherever possible, we should encourage existing anti-war groups to endorse and we should join any actions they may announce. Those of us with experience in the U.S. movement are aware of the rivalries and sectarianism that exist among these groups, many of which have existed since the Iraq War era. These are long-term issues that we need to work on as a movement. But right now, the most important thing is to make opposition to war with Russia visible.

The George Floyd uprising was just one-and-a-half years ago. The capitalist rulers have certainly not forgotten it. Taking to the streets is the best way to raise the specter of that uprising in their minds and give them pause on their drive toward war.

War danger and the working class

Finally, let’s address the problem of how we can reach out to poor and working people. How do we talk to our family members, co-workers and neighbors about this issue?

One big hurdle we have to overcome is that there is very little understanding among people in the U.S. about Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries. Through no fault of their own, many people in the U.S. cannot identify Ukraine on a map, and most have probably not even heard of Donetsk and Lugansk. 

If people have any impression of Russia, it’s most often old Cold War anti-communist stereotypes. U.S. war propaganda plays off these stereotypes, despite the fact that socialism was overthrown and the Soviet Union broken up three decades ago. 

Explaining what’s actually happening with Ukraine, Russia and Donbass, and educating people about the role of the U.S. and NATO in Europe, is very necessary. But it may not immediately grab people’s attention out on the street or get them to take a leaflet or consider joining a protest.

However, we can get people’s attention by connecting the war danger to the urgent concerns of their daily lives and struggles. Right now, hundreds of thousands of families are facing eviction around the country as pandemic eviction moratoriums end. But the Biden administration’s priority is a war with another nuclear armed power on the other side of the world. 

Congress can’t manage to pass Build Back Better’s modest social and infrastructure measures. But there was overwhelming bipartisan support for the Pentagon’s $768 billion annual budget passed last month. 

Biden and Harris have not met any of their campaign promises to curb racist police brutality – in fact, they have been promising more money for cops. But they are collaborating with white supremacist movements abroad.

On social media, many people have made the point that huge shipments of U.S. weapons arrived in Ukraine before people even received their four meager home COVID tests by mail. This example really shines a spotlight on the skewed priorities of the U.S. government at a time when everyone can see the utter collapse of public health in this country.

We’re working to develop attractive, easy-to-read flyers that talk about these issues and can be used for leafleting at actions in the coming weeks. We will make them available for download in the next few days. The articles on Struggle-La-Lucha.org also have a ton of helpful facts and information you can use.

Hold a picket line. Have a banner drop. Give out leaflets at your subway stop or school. Notify the local media. Participate in social media blasts. Take photos and videos and share them online and with us. Every action we take right now makes a difference.

Atlanta – “More than a third of all Georgians fatally shot by law enforcement since 2010 were killed at home,” according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Channel 2 Action News investigation.

When police respond to a call for help or to intervene in a domestic violence case, it often ends with cops killing the residents, especially when they are Black or Brown. White residents who call the police for similar incidents tend to stay alive and get the help they need.

Tenisha Felio is still tormented after she called 911 in December 2010. Her husband James, the father of their three young boys, physically abused her. He was lying asleep in bed, naked and unarmed, and within ten minutes after police arrived, he had been shot dead.

A wrongful death lawsuit against the Lawrenceville Police Department has been filed by Felio’s family.

Friends and family of mentally ill Air Force veteran Anthony Hill demonstrated in DeKalb County because Hill, completely naked and unarmed, was shot in his apartment by police on March 9, 2015. The cops’ excuse was that he made a threatening move.

Former DeKalb County Police Officer Robert Olsen was sentenced to 20 years, with 12 years in prison and 8 years probation, for the killing of Hill. This means he will only serve 12 years for his criminal, murderous act.

A no-warrant murder

Holli Gooch was at her home on Dec. 16, 2010, when six officers in Bartow County came to her door looking for a friend of hers who didn’t live there. She told them they could not enter without a warrant. The officers then kicked in her door and rushed into the home with guns drawn.

Gooch, who had a history of mental illness, panicked and ran into her kitchen. Officers said she grabbed a hammer and wielded it as a weapon, according to a lawsuit filed by her family. The police shot her four times and the mother of two died on her kitchen floor. 

Others killed by police include:

Lori Knowles, who called Henry County 911 after she took too much medication and needed help, according to the audiotape.

Her husband begged the police, “Please don’t hurt her,” but it was too late. Police had entered the home and shot Knowles when she refused to drop her handgun.

Struggle-La Lucha covered the police murder of Rayshard Brooks extensively.

On the night of June 12, 2020, Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by Atlanta Police Department (APD) Officer Garrett Rolfe.

Disgustingly, the killer cop was reinstated by the Atlanta Civil Service Board last May. Rolfe is still facing charges of felony murder, aggravated assault (5 counts), violation of oath (4 counts) and damage to property.

His accomplice Devin Brosnan faces charges of aggravated assault and violation of oath (2 counts).

While Ahmaud Arbery was not killed by active members of the police department, his killers were former police officers, and were protected by law enforcement in Brunswick. 

On Feb. 23, 2020, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was murdered in Satilla Shores, a neighborhood near Brunswick.

His murderers were interviewed, their narrative accepted and they were sent home without question. It wasn’t until a people’s struggle demanding justice exploded in South Georgia that these white supremacists were brought to trial and found guilty!

An investigation into “prosecutorial misconduct” in the Ahmaud Arbery murder case is currently underway as of this writing.

White supremacy serves ruling class

No matter what the talking heads may say, white supremacy does not serve the needs of the poor and working class. The so-called “free market” was constructed and functions within a white supremacist society, period.

The exploitation and domination of nonwhite people will continue to be an integral part of the capitalist market system, because it is built into the structures of the market. Therefore, when we challenge white supremacy, we are also attempting to dismantle capitalism.

Pitting white workers against immigrant workers or other workers of color serves capitalism and its ruling class. We only need to look at recent events to prove this fact. 

The white supremacists who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are tools of the ruling class because they serve to send fear into the hearts of others wishing to dismantle capitalism. “Bourgeois democracy isn’t so bad compared to fascism,” is the message we are supposed to hear.

For white workers, the tactics of stirring up racial, economic fear and anger helps to keep them fighting against their own class interests.

We can’t depend on the courts, the voting booth, etc., whose whole purpose is to keep us divided. They will never end police brutality, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and sexism. 

Only a united working class fighting to own the means of production under a socialist economic system will achieve this goal and liberate the whole world. Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, Arab and white, gay, straight, trans, women and men – together we can dismantle this oppressive capitalist system. 

Struggle-La Lucha received this message from a collective of communists in Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic, about the danger of U.S, NATO and Ukrainian military intervention against Russia and Donbass.

Despite the fact that the conflict is presented as a Ukrainian-Russian conflict, one should look at the situation more globally. 

The current situation can be assessed as an information war against Russia. Information attacks are a way of pressuring Russia and forcing it to make concessions. There is intimidation with sanctions and military presence: If Ukraine provokes Russia, and Russia responds, the West threatens its participation in the conflict.

If you look at the broader background, there is a redistribution of the energy market. The U.S. has seen that exporting energy resources is profitable. And this information war is provoking a rise in energy prices. 

Spreading disinformation about Russia is a tool to strengthen the right wing, both in Europe and in Ukraine itself. It increases the possibility of an escalation of the war in Donbass. And it gives capital the opportunity to exploit right-wing sentiment around the world. 

Ukraine methodically refuses a peaceful solution to the Donbass conflict. In addition, this propaganda distracts attention from socio-economic problems. 

Against the backdrop of the pressure, arms sales to Ukraine are increasing.

Moreover, the war does not stop in Donbass, although the media, which are engaged in the escalation, ignore this fact. And for us there is a prospect that such aggravation can lead to an escalation of the war. 

Information warfare and media pressure are affecting the psychological state of people in Donbass, exacerbating anxiety, which is already provoked by economic problems and the situation with COVID. It is in the interest of the residents of Donbass to begin the peace process.

The corporate media and politicians claim that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. It’s a big lie, just like the lie about Iraq’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Actually, Washington is pushing U.S.-armed Ukraine to invade two small independent republics, Donetsk and Lugansk, on Russia’s border. They want to provoke a response from Russia to justify NATO intervention. 

Fight COVID, evictions and poverty, not Russia

Workers are facing crises right here at home. Why is Biden preparing to send 8,500 additional U.S. troops to Europe on top of 64,000 already stationed there? Why did Congress raise Pentagon war funding when they can’t even pass Build Back Better legislation or protect people’s basic democratic rights, like the right to vote and reproductive rights?

Millions of $$ in bombs and bullets, can’t deliver masks and tests

Between Jan. 21 and Feb. 1, the U.S. delivered 500 tons of weapons and military supplies to Ukraine. Yet many people have still not received their four free home COVID tests in the mail. Pharmacies have signs saying, “Free gov’t masks not yet available.” Imagine if Washington put the same effort into fighting the COVID pandemic and providing healthcare. How many of the nearly 1 million U.S. lives lost could have been saved?

Biden: Stop supporting Ukrainian fascists

Ukraine has sent white supremacists and neo-Nazis to the front line to threaten Russia and the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk. Biden went back on his promise to curb racist police violence against Black and Brown communities. Meanwhile the Pentagon is training and arming Ukraine’s hate groups, who are no different than those who attacked the Capitol last Jan. 6.

Banks and Big Oil profit from Pentagon wars

U.S. Big Oil companies and banks want to stop the flow of Russian oil and gas to Western Europe. They want to force their European allies to pay extortionate prices for U.S. fuel instead. We don’t need another bloody war for oil profits! 

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El año del tigre ha comenzado en Puerto Rico con la gente en las calles, y promete ser una lucha larga y multitudinaria.

Parte de la lucha por la liberación de esta colonia, están esas otras batallas del diario vivir que no se pueden separar del movimiento por la descolonización y la soberanía; y que eventualmente al fusionarse, lograrán romper las cadenas impuestas por el imperio yanqui.

En cuestión de días, y como respuesta al recién aprobado Plan de Ajuste de la Deuda impuesto por la criminal Junta de Control Fiscal del Congreso de los Estados Unidos, que plantea un escenario de tanta austeridad que llevaría al pueblo a la más absoluta  miseria, se han levantado en paro amplios sectores del servicio público desde jubilados, bomberos, maestras y maestros, y hasta la policía. Ante los cuales, el gobierno local responde con la insensible postura de decir “cada cual escoge su trabajo”, como si un sueldo de miseria fuera el destino de los servidores públicos.

A este ambiente de lucha, se han sumado las ambientales reclamando la no imposición de las llamadas mini plantas nucleares y el cese definitivo de la generadora AES con su carbonera tóxica, ambas para la generación de energía. 

También se suman a esta ola de reclamos en la calle, las exigencias de derogación de la Ley 22 que hace de Puerto Rico un paraíso fiscal para millonarios extranjeros que nos roban el terreno.

Como ejemplo de una acción espontánea del pueblo, se convocó por las redes, a una concentración en una de nuestras playas públicas que millonarios extranjeros pretendían usar como su playa privada porque construyeron una casa de $1 millón de dólares en el lugar. A la acción acudieron familias enteras para disfrutar de nuestro bien común con comidas, música y deportes de playa dando el mensaje de que las playas – por ley – son un bien público y no dejaremos que invasores extranjeros se apoderen de lo nuestro. Una de las consignas más usadas estos días es la de ¡”Gringo go home”!

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci