Good afternoon, sisters, brothers, and siblings in the struggle,

I’d like to open with some words from Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary thinker and writer, whose words describing the fight of the FLN against French colonialism in Algeria in the 1950s and ‘60s rings just as true today. It goes like this:

“Sooner or later, colonialism sees that it is not within its powers to put into practice a project of economic and social reforms which will satisfy the aspirations of the colonized people. Even where food supplies are concerned, colonialism gives proof of its inherent incapability. Once colonialism has understood where its social reform tactics would lead it, back comes the old reflexes of adding police reinforcements, dispatching troops, and establishing a regime of terror better suited to its interests and its psychology.”

From tactics to uniforms, there are plenty of disgusting similarities between the Baltimore City Police Department and the Israeli Occupation Force. No knock raids CHECK, forced entries CHECK, corruption CHECK, public executions and humiliations CHECK, Overuse of force and violence CHECK. These similarities are purposeful. These are the tactics of Imperialism and Colonialism. Tactics that are meant to subdue and scare the members of oppressed and working-class communities. Frantz Fanon explains the dynamic like this:

“The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies, it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression. The policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action, maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. 

“It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of the peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native. The native cities are deliberately caught in the conqueror’s vise. To get an idea of the rigor with which the immobilizing of the native city, of the population, is organized, one must have in one’s hands the plans according to which a colonial city has been laid out, and compare them with the comments of the general staff of the occupation forces.”

How does the government respond to the issues plaguing our class siblings across the city? … With more police. Food deserts across town, fill the lots with police to survey the community. Kids not taken care of in school due to poor infrastructure, scare them straight with officers in every school. 

Workers wanna organize to protect their rights; they are met with police. People needing shelter and doing what they can to secure the means to survive the day are not met with assistance or sympathy but are instead met with brutality at the hands of police. They are so determined to keep communities policed and subdued that when met with a lack of new officers, instead of looking to solve the root issues in communities and alleviate the pressure on everyone, they double down with drones, AI, and any technological advantage. 

Whether it be Baltimore or Palestine, the capitalist ruling class knows it is outnumbered. However, it also knows that to maintain its power, it must scatter its enemies by any means necessary.

In occupied Palestine, there are thousands of Palestinians held illegally by the Zionist state. These prisoners are kept in dehumanizing conditions, where they are forced to endure torture, collective punishment, starvation, rape, and finally be left to die in said prisons. Those that aren’t held directly in Israeli Prisons have lived in an open-air prison whether they are in the West Bank or Gaza. Watched by cameras, drones, automated guns, soldiers, and illegal settlers, Palestinians have been forced to accept a world that does not offer them peace. And what little corners and pockets of peace they do find are snuffed out by AI targeting and tracking at a rate never before seen.

Here in Baltimore, the police use nearly all the same tactics to surveil and suppress the people of the city. Who remembers the introduction of the spy plane above our skies? Now, it’s drones and cameras on corners, in lots and on the countless BPD vehicles parked around the city. In the prisons, inmates fend for themselves and are not given essentials and bare necessities. All the while, prison officials and correctional officers continue to abuse inmates and get away with further corruption. More people are being held without bail for exponentially longer periods of time awaiting their trials, and to no surprise, some have even died while in the hands of the government.

And this government is willing to pay out top dollar to any corporation that is in the business of oppression and apartheid. These businessmen are Google and Amazon with Project Nimbus, the IOF with its Lavender system, which includes the Where’s Daddy? And The Gospel AI. Here in Baltimore we have X9 Intelligence as the newest tech company to attempt to profit off of the continued boot on the neck of Baltimore.

Whether it be in Palestine or Baltimore, state-sponsored thugs run loose, harassing oppressed communities, protected and armed by the wealthiest sponsors of imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. The Baltimore police are no stranger to these sponsors. Read its history, and you’ll see how from the beginning to now, all BPD has been is a front for white supremacy run by all levels of government in the United States, be it local, state, or federal. Likewise, the Israeli Occupation Forces trace their history back to the murderous gangs and militias of Zionist settlers.

On Oct. 7, when the resistance in Palestine rose up and broke the walls of the open-air prison and reintroduced the Illegal occupation of Palestine on the national stage, they were also casting out the occupier who for decades was the sole cause of all hardship to their people. 

Here in Baltimore, that same spark exists. We saw it during the George Floyd uprisings, just how powerful, determined, and ingenuitive the people of Baltimore can be. We saw how the people took their streets back from the cops and controlled the momentum of all that was ahead. Now more than ever, sisters, brothers, siblings, cousins, and comrades, with fascism here, we will need this spark. To quote the resistance in Palestine:

“There will be no retreat from the path of confrontation, no matter how great the sacrifices are. It is indeed a revolution until the liberation of the land and of the human being.”

Long Live Palestine
Long live Baltimore
Long Live International Solidarity

Thank You

Nov. 9, Harvey, Louisiana – the Palestinian Youth Movement New Orleans and Masjid Omar held a press conference under the heading, “Our children are speaking.” Taking place outside Masjid Omar – a mosque on New Orleans West Bank, where many of the area’s 10,000 Palestinian community members live – kids from as young as five years old to 18 took to the mic to speak out against the Washington-backed and directed genocide being carried out by Israeli occupation forces in Palestine. 

These children and youths expressed themselves in many ways: sharp political analysis, poetry, songs, and chants. The younger ones had to stand on a step ladder to reach the mic. Some described personal loss, naming family and friends murdered by the Zionist occupiers with weapons supplied by Washington and paid for with the tax dollars of U.S. workers who can’t afford rent and groceries.

Chants included “Biden, Trump, can’t you see? Palestine will be free!” and “We want justice, you say how? Justice for Tawfic now!”

Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was a 17-year-old Palestinian born and raised in Gretna, Louisiana. He was shot to death by an off-duty Israeli police officer, an IOF soldier, and an Israeli settler on Jan. 19, 2024, while visiting the West Bank of Palestine. President Joe Biden and local governments in the New Orleans area – including Gretna – have been totally silent about this crime; this echoes their silence about police killings of Black people. 

Louisiana governor and friend to billionaires Jeff Landry (who tried to prevent hungry Louisiana kids from receiving school lunch this past summer) has ignored this crime just as he ignores every other kind of human suffering in the state. 

One six-year-old boy at the press conference said, “Why should you support Palestine? Because you are human.” This cuts to the core. Going along with genocide means forsaking our own humanity. 

One young woman said:

“How can someone be treated so poorly when they’re in their own land? Just visiting family members can be an impossible task due to the checkpoints and walls built to permanently isolate the community. 

“Children come home worried whether their parents are still alive and well. No child should feel this way. Innocent lives are taken away day by day just for being Palestinian.

“The situation is not just a political issue. It is a human issue. Every person regardless of their nationality has the right to live in peace and security. We cannot turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians or ignore their struggle for justice.”

Another young woman with autism spoke about Mohammad Bhar, a 24-year-old Palestinian man with Down syndrome and autism murdered in Gaza by Israeli military personnel who separated him from his family and allowed their dogs to maul him to death. She said:

“Mohammad would have been my friend if he was not left to die a painful and lonely death by the IDF. They let loose their dogs on him and forced his mom, brother, and sisters to leave. Mohammad Bhar could have been my friend. Mohammad Bhar could have been me.”

This writer did not see any local news stations present at the event, even though they covered the recent Taylor Swift concert in minute detail. 

Even though Veterans Day is a federal holiday, only 19 percent of workers employed by private business get the day off. Originally called Armistice Day, it marks the end of World War I “at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918.

Twenty million people were killed during this imperialist war, half of whom were civilians. It was waged between colonial powers that had enslaved hundreds of millions in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Lenin, the leader of the socialist Bolshevik Revolution, called it a “war between the biggest slaveowners for preserving and fortifying slavery.”

The Belgian King Leopold II had killed as many as 15 million Africans in Congo for rubber profits. British capitalists made fortunes from famines in India and occupied a quarter of the planet. Fresh from genocidal wars against Indigenous nations, the U.S. army had killed a million Filipina/os fighting for independence.

Another 50 million people died in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic that may have started at U.S. Army bases in Kansas.

Around 117,000 U.S. GIs died in the war. Three months after the U.S. entered the conflict, at least 100 Black people were murdered in East St. Louis, Ill., by white racist mobs.

Black soldiers returning from combat were among those killed in the race riots that swept U.S. cities in 1919. But World War I was swell for U.S. big business.

According to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler in his book “War is a Racket,” “at least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”

This was back in 1918, when the dollar was worth 16 times as much as it is now.

The du Ponts weren’t even mentioned in “The History of Great American Fortunes” by Gustavus Myers, which was published in 1909. The family’s vast profits from selling explosives during World War I catapulted them into the superrich.

Besides their chemical empire, the du Ponts controlled General Motors, which had been the world’s largest corporation, for decades.

Never forget Nat Turner

So why should poor and working people commemorate Nov. 11? Because on Nov. 11, 1831, the liberator Nat Turner was executed.

Turner led a revolt of enslaved Africans in Virginia that terrified all the slave owners. Beginning on Aug. 21, 1831, Black people marched from plantation to plantation in Southampton County fighting for liberation. Black Panther Field Marshal George Jackson was murdered 140 years later on Aug. 21, 1971, in California’s San Quentin prison.

The reaction of slave masters was merciless. They thought they were facing another Haitian Revolution.

Soldiers and sailors were mobilized to crush the rebellion. Militia members were sent from both Virginia and North Carolina.

The Rev. G.W. Powell said there were “thousands of troops searching in every direction,” with many Black people killed. The editor of the Richmond Whig newspaper admitted that “men were tortured to death, burned, maimed and subjected to nameless atrocities.” (“Before the Mayflower, A History of Black America” by Lerone Bennett Jr.)

Nat Turner was captured but never flinched. He was executed in Jerusalem, Va. It’s named after the eternal capital of Palestine, also known as Al-Quds.

The slave masters called Nat Turner a “terrorist.” That’s the same term used today to smear Palestinian freedom fighters.

Hanged for the eight-hour day

Labor leaders George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hanged in Chicago’s Cook County Jail on Nov. 11, 1887. Twenty-three-year-old Louis Lingg was also slated to be executed, but he was either murdered or committed suicide the day before.

These martyrs died for the eight-hour work day. Most workers in those days worked 10 or 12 hours a day, sometimes even longer.

On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of workers across the U.S. went on strike to demand an eight-hour work day. Capitalists were terrified. Workers marched from factory to factory urging employees to strike.

Chicago was the center of this movement. Chicago police fired on striking workers at the McCormick reaper works — which later became part of International Harvester — on May 3, killing at least two.

The next day, a protest meeting was called at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. Police attacked the crowd, and someone threw a bomb at the cops. Eight policemen died as well as possibly some protesters.

The ruling class went berserk. Police arrested hundreds, but the bomber, who may have been a provocateur, was never found.

Instead, well-known labor leaders were put on trial for their lives because they supposedly incited the bombing. Years later, Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld courageously pardoned those who had been jailed.

Four of the five Haymarket Martyrs were immigrants. All were labeled anarchists. Trump wants us to hate immigrants while he calls anti-racist protesters “anarchists.”

As he was about to be hanged, Albert Parsons declared, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

Lucy Parsons, a Black woman who was Albert Parsons’ partner, continued fighting for the working class until she died in a house fire in 1942. Chicago police said that she was “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” Lucy Parsons’ books and papers were confiscated by the FBI.

May 1 became the international holiday of the working class. In Mexico, it’s known as the Day of the Chicago Martyrs.

Long live the People’s Republic of Angola!

The People’s Republic of Angola was born on Nov. 11, 1975. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, along with his employees Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House occupant Gerald Ford, sought to kill it. They had the Nazi armies of then-apartheid South Africa invade the African country.

Angola’s independence was historical justice that resonated around the world. Four million Angolans had been kidnapped in a slave trade that lasted four centuries. Brazil’s sugar plantations were fed by Angolan slave pens.

Millions of Brazilians have Angola in their blood. So do some African Americans.

The largest prison in the U.S. is in Angola, La. The sugar plantation which became the core of the prison was named Angola because that’s where the enslaved Africans working there came from.

Today, thousands of slaves work on the Angola prison’s 18,000 acres. The “Angola 3” — Herman Wallace, Robert King Wilkerson and Albert Woodfox — spent decades in solitary confinement on frame-up charges of killing a prison guard before being freed.

Their real crime was forming a chapter of the Black Panther Party. Herman Wallace died of liver cancer a few days after being released.

Five hundred years of Portuguese colonialism in Angola were 500 years of resistance. The founding of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in 1956 was a decisive step. Forced labor was halted only after 50,000 Angolans were killed during the 1961 revolts.

When South Africa invaded Angola, Cuba came to Africa’s assistance. As the Pan African educator and organizer Elombe Brath said, “When Africa called, Cuba answered.” Two thousand Cuban soldiers died fighting alongside their African comrades.

The initial defeat of South Africa helped inspire the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976. The total defeat of the apartheid army at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 led to Nelson Mandela walking out of prison two years later.

So let us remember Nat Turner and the Haymarket Martyrs while celebrating Angola’s independence. And be prepared to stop any new wars for the rich.

Donald Trump is a fascist and must be fought by any means necessary.

Trump’s brand of fascism is rooted in the Confederacy and the slave-owning system, the overturn of Reconstruction, and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.

Bigotry, racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQ+ extremism are part of this fascism’s weaponry. 

It’s incredibly anti-worker (don’t be confused by any campaign demagogy). During a live conversation on X with Elon Musk in August, Donald Trump said that striking workers should be fired. Billionaire Musk, a key player in the Trump campaign whose racism is rooted in his apartheid South African origin, said on Oct. 30, just days before the vote, that under Trump, workers should be prepared for “economic hardship,” that cuts are coming.

Trump has promised to appoint Musk as chief government efficiency officer. That means that Musk’s talk of economic hardship — he’s already made painful cuts and waged anti-union warfare at his own companies — should be believed.

Trump’s fascist rallying cry is Make America Great Again — MAGA. Most take this as a reference to the post-World War II period in the U.S.

The U.S. empire

After World War II, U.S. capitalism emerged as the world’s dominant imperialist power. While Europe and Japan were devastated by the war, the mainland of the U.S. remained untouched. 

Unlike war-ravaged Europe and Japan, the United States’ industrial capacity was intact and had even grown due to wartime production. Germany was disabled to the point where its industrial output reverted to levels seen in 1890. Meanwhile, U.S. industry surged forward.

U.S. imperialism was triumphant, and the rival imperialist powers were put on a leash but not eliminated. The list of imperialist capitalist powers hasn’t changed much since World War I. The United States is the dominant imperialist power, with Britain, Germany, France, and Japan as satellite imperialists. They comprise the Group of Five, now known as the G7, including Canada and Italy. After the Second World War, many colonies became independent while remaining economically exploited as neocolonies.

In the U.S., after World War II, a military-industrial complex emerged that dominated the economy (President Dwight D. Eisenhower, an Army 5-star general, named it). Wartime research and development led to significant technological development, which was applied to peacetime manufacturing. Consumers had deferred purchases during the war, creating a surge in demand for goods afterward. 

At an economic conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the U.S. established a world monetary system dominated by the U.S. empire. The U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency. Bretton Woods also established the IMF and World Bank as a means of U.S. influence, dominating the economies of almost every country. 

1945-46 massive strike wave

Following World War II, there was a massive wave of strikes across the U.S. in 1945–1946, which secured better wages, working conditions, and benefits — such as pensions and health insurance.

Communist-led workers’ movements swept every imperialist country. The communist parties in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal were widely popular.

The United States responded with NATO, the U.S.-commanded military alliance aimed at the Soviet Union and its new Eastern European allies, and to put down any revolutionary movements in Western Europe.

The U.S. also launched the Marshall Plan, which put $20 billion into Europe (in today’s dollars, about $220 billion to $230 billion) and made similar economic assistance to Japan, meant to smother the rising revolutionary struggles. Germany and Japan rose again as imperialist economic powers but without military industries or major armies, as required by U.S. treaties. Both are occupied by the U.S. military, with the most significant U.S. military bases outside the U.S. itself. The absence of costly military industries and armies actually boosted their economic growth.

In Western Europe and Japan, workers — mostly socialists and communists — fought for and won benefits greater than anything achieved in the U.S., such as medical care, sick leave, vacation time, retirement, public transportation, and much more.

In response to the post-war strike wave and the rising popularity of socialism in the U.S. and around the world, an anti-communist witch hunt was launched in the U.S. Communists and socialists who had been the backbone of the labor unions were forced out of the unions, attacked, and some imprisoned. The unions were severely weakened, never to recover the strength they had shown, though their gains were not cut back until the 1970s.

Opportunists in the union leadership

The witch hunt was used to put opportunists into the union leadership who would collaborate with the bosses. Working-class solidarity was stifled, while a sense of entitlement and privilege was promoted.

As Lenin noted, the superprofits of imperialist plunder made it “possible to bribe the labor leaders and the upper stratum of the labor aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the ‘advanced’ countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.”

According to official government statistics, the all-time peak employment of workers engaged in manufacturing in the United States was in 1979. That’s when the cuts seriously began.

1979 recession was pivotal

The year 1979 was the start of a recession that was a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. capitalism — possibly even more significant than 1929.

The recession from 1979 to 1982 was anything but ordinary, not merely due to its intensity but because of the lasting changes that followed its conclusion.

Beginning in August 1979, the long-term rise in manufacturing jobs that had characterized U.S. industrial capitalism began to reverse, leading to a sustained decline. By the time the Great Recession hit in 2008-09, U.S. manufacturing employment had fallen to 11.5 million, the lowest figure since 1941, which marked the shift from the Great Depression to the wartime economy of World War II.

Across the U.S., whole industrial districts were ravaged. Cities such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, which were mighty centers of heavy industry, were cut down, and the great steel mills and factories that had dominated the world’s markets were shuttered. The other great industrial center, Detroit, Michigan, the unionized hub of the U.S. automobile industry, was devastated.

Gone with the old factories and mills are millions of well-paying union jobs.  

But it’s not just old industries like steel and auto. In Silicon Valley, California, the factories — or fabs as they are called — that produced computer chips and those that assembled computers are mostly gone. 

U.S. manufacturing jobs have been decimated. Once a source of stable, well-paying jobs (32% of the workforce in 1945-46), manufacturing now accounts for only 8% of all U.S. employment. 

Union membership fell from 34% to 10%

This has pushed U.S. workers into lower-paying service jobs (many offering only part-time hours), reshaping the U.S. workforce. Union membership fell from 34% in the 1950s to around 10% in 2023, mostly in public-sector government jobs, with only 6% in private-sector jobs. 

Today, living standards are on the biggest decline since the 1930s, driven by the acute rise in prices of consumer goods and services. Prices are 20%+ higher than they were pre-pandemic. Labor conditions are deteriorating, with more part-time and lower-paying government jobs, an increase in second jobs, and little full-time job growth. Health care, education, and many social programs have been cut or eliminated. Food prices are soaring, and housing has become almost unaffordable. In April 2024, CNBC reported that 65% of the workforce lives paycheck to paycheck; wages barely cover essential expenses, such as rent, groceries, utilities, and transportation.

U.S. capitalism in decline

U.S. capitalism has been in decline for decades. The economy has increasingly shifted into unproductive military production, that is, production for destruction, not consumption.

In 2016, Donald Trump’s first presidential run, the election centered on the years of economic decline. Donald Trump promised to revive economic prosperity while prioritizing “America First.” He presented himself as an “outsider” challenging the Washington establishment and to “Make America Great Again,” referring to the post World War II 1950s era.

At the time, Bernie Sanders was winning the Democratic Party primaries, talking about socialism and channeling working-class anger over economic austerity. The party machine blocked Sanders and put in Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton.

Trump picked up Bernie Sanders’ anti-corporate message. He told Yale Business School Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld that he copied Bernie Sanders’s campaign because it was so effective. But Trump’s message played on despair and criminalized the victims, the poorest and oppressed; he whipped up racist hatred of immigrants and was wildly venomous against trans people. 

So much of what Trump says is racist fantasy. His attacks on immigrants are all lies.

Immigrants not taking away jobs, housing

Immigrants aren’t taking away jobs and housing. In fact, it’s just the opposite — immigrants expand jobs and housing.

A key factor for U.S. economic growth is immigration, which boosts the labor force, consumer spending, and tax revenues. The U.S. population grew by 0.9% in 2023, primarily through immigration. Capitalist profits come from labor and require an expanding workforce to grow.

Without sustained immigration, U.S. economic growth would fall because of the slowing workforce growth. 

Immigrants comprise 18.6% of the U.S. labor force as of 2023 and are crucial in various industries, including construction, health care, retail, and leisure, which face high labor demand. Legal immigrants form most of the foreign-born population, contrary to frequent rants about “illegal” immigration. Immigration is not the cause of declining wages.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rants are meant to whip up racism and are a diversion from the real cause of the loss of jobs and housing — the capitalist profit system.

Trump’s policies won’t stop U.S. capitalism’s decline. But their purpose is to enforce austerity while diverting working-class anger away from the capitalist ruling class. 

They won’t succeed, however. The opposition is already there. Around 40% of those registered to vote did not do so. Although Trump got 51% of those who voted, he actually got only 28% support of people of voting age. Three out of four in the U.S. did not vote for Trump. There was no overwhelming mandate for Trump or his policies.

This opposition can be mobilized into action to put a stop to the racist attacks, the anti-trans assaults, the sexism, and violations of women’s right to make their own choices, the union-busting and economic hardship.

Russia has announced a $60 million diesel shipment to Cuba during bilateral meeting in Havana.The Russian assistance, authorized directly by President Vladimir Putin, represents an international effort to help stabilize Cuba’s energy sector.

The announcement of the supply of Russian fuel was made during the Meeting of the Co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Commission for Economic-Commercial and Scientific-Technical Collaboration, which began sessions in Havana. The bilateral meeting is headed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko and Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas.

“Following instructions from our president, Vladimir Putin, Russia is ready to provide emergency assistance to sister Cuba in connection with the current situation in the energy sector,” Chernyshenko said during the bilateral meeting. The Russian assistance follows a significant collapse of Cuba’s electric power system on October 18, which left much of the country without electricity for approximately 72 hours. Electricity service was not restored until the early hours of October 21.

According to the latest report from Cuban energy authorities, issued on November 1, the island continues to experience a deficit in electricity generation, although they have ruled out the possibility of a new disconnection from the national grid.

The Russian assistance, authorized directly by President Vladimir Putin, represents an international effort to stabilize Cuba’s energy sector, which has faced serious challenges due to the lack of fuel and the deterioration of its electricity generating facilities as a result of the economic blockade imposed by the U.S. government. The effort also comes at a time when Cuba is recovering from two major hurricanes that have recently hit the island.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – Buenos Aires

El pasado 5 de noviembre se celebraron las elecciones generales en Puerto Rico. La gran esperanza con la que miles de boricuas, sobre todo, la población juvenil votante quería que se convirtiera en realidad, no ocurrió. Los meses de propagandas mentirosas y asquerosas en contra de la Alianza compuesta por el Partido independentista Puertorriqueño y el Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana, influyeron en la ciudadanía envejecida que representa la mayoría en esta colonia y que ha sido golpeada por un sistema colonial neoliberal diseñado para servir a los grandes intereses del imperio gringo y sus secuaces aquí en el archipiélago. Los actos de corrupción y las muchas irregularidades en el proceso electoral por parte del partido oficialista, el Partido Nuevo Progresista, incluyendo votos de personas ya fallecidas, que fueron intentos desesperados para frenar el empuje de la Alianza, favorecieron a su candidata Jeniffer González.

Sin embargo, fue un evento histórico donde el candidato por la Alianza, el dirigente del PIP, Juan Dalmau, logró posicionarse en el segundo lugar, desplazando así al Partido Popular Democrático, que por décadas se había turnado con el PNP, la administración de este gobierno colonial. 

Pero los próximos cuatro años prometen ser uno de luchas incesantes que se convertirán en la pesadilla del nuevo gobierno. El despertar de toda una nueva generación de jóvenes y del 60 porciento del pueblo que votó en su contra, así ya lo está dejando mostrar en sus expersiones de repudio con el dicho “yo no me quito”.

El gabinete que está formando la nueva gobernadora está plagado de hombres misógenos y violentos que así ya lo han demostrado en administraciones pasadas y que ella ha rescatado.

Somos colonia de EUA, y por lo tanto, no somos inmunes a su realidad. ¿Cual serán las repercusiones de la victoria de Trump aquí? La Jeniffer pertenece al Partido Republicano de EUA y siempre ha salido a la defensa de Trump. 

Por otro lado, está el inversionista gringo radicado en PUR para beneficiarse de la Ley 60 de exenciones contributivas, el billonario parásito John Paulson que se ha hecho propietario de los hoteles más lujosos de la isla y construye mansiones para que millonarios extranjeros se radiquen aquí y sigan desplazando a nuestra población. Se dice que será nominado para Secretario del Tesoro en la administración Trump. Su política extrema de reducir los gastos del gobierno abonará asimismo a la política de la nueva gobernadora para el abandono del pueblo que ya ha sufrido por la imposición del neoloberalismo extremo. 

Esta combinación peligrosa será indudablemente un combustible más para nuestra lucha por la independencia.

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

• Part 1: Populists fought the ruling class
• Part 2: Populism or fascism?
• Part 3: The history of Black Populism
• Part 4: Two paths after slavery’s end
• Part 5: A Cuban perspective on race and revolution

In preparing Part 4 of this series on the history of the populist movement, I included a section comparing the starkly different post-slavery trajectories of Cuba and the U.S. While preparing that material, I spoke with a young Cuban woman of African descent. We met her during our U.S. Friends Against Homophobia and Transphobia delegation to Havana in 2023. Here, she is identified as “R” for “respondent.”

Gregory E. Williams: My article concerns the legacy of the Civil War in the United States. Both Cuba and the U.S. abolished slavery after a long struggle. But the reality in the two countries is quite different today because of the two different social systems: capitalism in the U.S. and socialism in Cuba. 

Cuba doesn’t have racist housing discrimination or police murdering hundreds of Black people every year like in the U.S. So I am comparing that in one section of the article.

What do you think about the progress Cuba has made regarding equality of people of African descent since 1959? Does Cuba have racism in any way comparable to the United States?

R: In Cuba, the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 brought radical changes to the lives of people of African descent. But, although the progress is unquestionable, manifestations of racial discrimination still persist since it is not so easy to reverse centuries of racist and discriminatory attitudes in 65 years.

 In 2019, the National Program Against Racism and Racial Discrimination was created as a strategy at the highest management level to provide a definitive solution to these issues. 

However, it is important to mention that the signs of discrimination based on skin color, which may still be present in Cuban society, are not at all comparable to the situation in the United States. All Cubans equally enjoy the same rights and access to opportunities under the legal protection of the Constitution of the Republic.

GEW: This gives a good context for people to understand. Of course, racism is a continuing problem because of the centuries of racist colonial oppression, as you say. But, Cuba is proactive and making new advances, not just resting on the old achievements of the revolution. 

This is one thing I really respect about the Cuban revolutionary approach. As with gender and sexual rights — areas where Cuba is advancing — it is a question of how to move forward. By contrast, with the capitalist class’s attacks in the U.S., we are moving backward. 

En español 

Al preparar la cuarta parte de esta serie sobre la historia del movimiento populista, incluí una sección que compara las trayectorias marcadamente diferentes de Cuba y EEUU después de la esclavitud. Mientras preparaba ese material, hablé con una joven cubana de ascendencia africana. La conocimos durante nuestra delegación de Amigos de Estados Unidos contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia a La Habana en 2023. Aquí, se la identifica como “R” de “encuestado” o “respondent” en inglés. 

GEW: Mi artículo trata sobre el legado de la Guerra Civil en los Estados Unidos. Tanto Cuba como Estados Unidos abolieron la esclavitud después de una larga lucha. Pero la realidad en los dos países es bastante diferente hoy debido a los dos sistemas sociales diferentes: el capitalismo en Estados Unidos y el socialismo en Cuba. 

Cuba no tiene discriminación racista en materia de vivienda ni policías que asesinan a cientos de afrodescendientes cada año como en Estados Unidos. Así que estoy comparando eso en una sección del artículo. 

¿Qué opinas sobre los avances que ha logrado Cuba en materia de igualdad de los afrodescendientes desde 1959? ¿Cuba tiene un racismo comparable al de Estados Unidos?

R: En Cuba, el triunfo de la Revolución en 1959, trajo consigo cambios radicales para la vida de los afrodescendientes. Pero, si bien los avances son incuestionables, aún persisten manifestaciones de discriminación racial, pues no es tan fácil revertir en 65 años siglos de actitudes racistas y discriminatorias.

En 2019 fue creado el Programa Nacional contra el Racismo y la Discriminación Racial como una estrategia, al más alto nivel de dirección, para dar solución definitiva a estos temas. 

No obstante, resulta importante mencionar que las muestras de discriminación por color de la piel, que puedan aún estar presentes en la sociedad cubana, para nada son comparables con la situación en EEUU. Todos los cubanos, disfrutan por igual, de los mismos derechos y acceso a oportunidades bajo el amparo legal de la Constitución de la República.

GEW: Esto proporciona un buen contexto para que la gente lo entienda. Por supuesto, el racismo es un problema continuo debido a los siglos de opresión colonial racista, como usted dice. Pero Cuba es proactiva y logra nuevos avances, y no se basa simplemente en viejos logros de la revolución. 

Esto es algo que realmente respeto del enfoque revolucionario cubano. Al igual que con los derechos del género y la sexualidad – áreas en las que Cuba está avanzando – es una cuestión de cómo avanzar. En cambio, con los ataques de la clase capitalista en Estados Unidos, estamos retrocediendo.

November 7, 2024 –  On Wednesday night, Venezuelan President Maduro expressed his solidarity with the Cuban people as Rafael, a Category 3 hurricane, made landfall with winds reaching up to 175 kilometers per hour.

“We are sending a ship with humanitarian aid that will arrive in Cuba in four days. We are preparing a second shipment with additional aid,” he said, referring to a load of approximately 300 tons that includes supplies, construction materials, and first aid equipment.

“Solidarity and brotherhood will continue to be the fundamental principles uniting our nations,” Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil affirmed from La Guaira port.

Rafael caused significant damage in Artemisa, Mayabeque, and Havana, three provinces where the electricity service was cut off. In Artemisa, authorities reported damage to hospitals, schools, homes, roofs, and the electrical grid. In Mayabeque, the main impacts occurred in banana and cassava crops.

Hurricane Rafael made landfall at 4:20 p.m. local time (9:20 p.m. GMT) along the southern coast of the Artemisa province and left Cuban territory more than two hours later via the northern coast of Pinar del Río. The Cuban Meteorological Institute recorded winds up to 185 kilometers per hour (115 mph) and rainfall reaching 200 millimeters (7.9 inches).

On Thursday, while rains continue in Cuba, President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed that his administration is focusing its efforts on infrastructure recovery tasks following the hurricane’s passage.

Lazaro Guerra, the Director of Electricity at the Ministry of Energy, reported that the power supply had already been restored in several areas of Matanzas, Sancti Spíritus, and Holguín.

By midday Thursday, Rafael was moving toward Mexico at 155 km/h (96 mph), impacting the weather conditions in El Salvador, where afternoon and nighttime rain and storms are expected.

Source: teleSUR / Resumen

Joint statement of revolutionary organizations in Russia:

Comrades! Today, we stand together against the capitalist system, for the conquest of power by the workers and for the deprivation of this power from the bourgeois exploiting class. The reference point and beacon for us in this struggle, the best proof of the rightness and necessity of our cause, is the main event of the 20th Century – the October Socialist Revolution of 1917.

Great October is already 107 years old, but since this event is epochal, determining the main vector of development of human history for centuries to come, it is not subject to any aging. Let us repeat what is well-known and obvious to everyone who looks at the process of world development objectively and does not distort it to please the bourgeois class.

The significance of October is that for the first time in history, power was taken by the oppressed and exploited, workers and peasants, dispelling the myth that only representatives of the propertied classes could rule. This became possible thanks to the revolution carried out under the leadership of a proletarian party seasoned in class battles — the Bolshevik Party.

The immediate consequence of the seizure of power by the workers was the construction of a socialist state. In this state, thanks to the liberation of labor from the yoke of capital, there was an unusually rapid and comprehensive rise in productive forces, which made the economically and politically backward country the flagship of world development. A socialist society was created — a society of people of high culture, high level of education, high civic morality. This is the basis on which the Soviet people were able to achieve the Great Victory over fascism. They were able to be the first in space and nuclear energy. They were able to ensure peace for the world in the period after the Second World War.

The bourgeois counterrevolution of the late 1980s – early 1990s destroyed all these achievements, destroying the socialist social system, the socialist state — the USSR — and demonstratively shooting the remnants of Soviet power in 1993. Bourgeois propagandists today are trying to prove that the counterrevolution took place due to the unviability of socialism. Lies! The bourgeois revolution became possible as a result of the ruling CPSU ceasing to express the interests of the working class and all workers, and stooping to accepting and implementing the restoration of capitalism under the guise of “perestroika” and the “market” course.

The list of bitter and gloomy things capitalism has brought to our land and lives is endless. Suffice it to say that it has created a monstrous stratification between rich and poor, made people’s position in society and their very lives (medicine is now paid for!) directly dependent on the thickness of their wallets, deprived the workers of all rights and all opportunities to influence the fate of their country.

Capitalism has literally showered us with the most disgusting vices of bourgeois society and also drawn us into an endless series of conflicts and bloody wars on national grounds, the largest of which, the current war with the Nazi regime in Ukraine (and that regime arose only thanks to capitalism), is unfolding before our eyes.

The longer this goes on, the more obvious it becomes that the only way out for the workers is to achieve a new socialist path of development, to break the bourgeois system. No reforms or elections will change anything here. And so our eyes are turned to the example of the Great October.

The bourgeois government understands all this very well and strives to nip any movement toward a new revolution in the bud. Repressions against activists follow, bans on peaceful public events under a variety of pretexts, as well as any manifestations of protest in general. There is a desire to ban the very political literacy of the opponents of the bourgeois regime — the teachings of Marxism-Leninism — equating it with “terrorist” and “extremist” ideologies. But we know from the experience of the 1917 revolution that the thicker the lid that the bourgeoisie tries to push on the cauldron of workers’ protests, the stronger the explosion will be.

Long live the 107th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution!
Long live the coming October!
Happy Revolution Day!

Central Committee of the Russian Communist Workers’ Party (RKRP-CPSU)
Presidium of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party (OKP)
Central Committee of the ROT FRONT
Executive Committee of the Labor Russia movement

Translated by Melinda Butterfield