Note: A “pogrom” is a violent riot meant to harm, intimidate and expel oppressed minority groups. The word entered English through Russian and Yiddish and referred mainly to anti-Jewish riots in the old Russian Empire stoked by the Czarist regime. Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) was one of the most infamous pogroms. It was carried out in Germany by the Nazis in 1938. The name referred to the shards of glass littering the streets after fascist mobs smashed the windows of Jewish synagogues, shops, and other buildings. The Klan’s decades of terrorism following the U.S. Civil War provide many more examples. 

Recent weeks have seen the mainstream press alight with reports that a rash of “antisemitic attacks” had gripped the city of Amsterdam. According to CNN, Fox News, and CBS, “Israeli” soccer fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team were targeted by a violent antisemitic mob simply for being Jewish. Thousands of “Israeli” soccer fans and fascist thugs had traveled to Amsterdam in the week preceding M. Tel Aviv’s Nov. 5 match with Dutch soccer club Ajax.

This narrative is not just patently false and misleading. It is strategic in its attempt to position all pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic. This narrative is particularly pernicious considering the events that preceded the clashes in the street between Zionists and pro-Palestine activists. 

This is not to say that there were no physical and violent confrontations between pro-Palestine protesters and M. Tel Aviv soccer fans. There certainly were. However, the violence was not borne from anti-Jewish hatred but from self-defense against a genocidal regime and that regime’s fascist mobs. 

In the days leading up to the Nov. 5 match, the M. Tel Aviv fans made the city of Amsterdam their own fascist oyster. On the day before the match, a mob of Zionists in town for the match burned a Palestinian flag in Dam Square. These impromptu fascist demonstrations broke out across central Amsterdam. Video footage showed M. Tel Aviv fans setting off flares and chanting, “Let the [Israeli army] win” and “F**k the Arabs.” 

The Zionist mobs also attacked houses displaying Palestinian flags on the day before and the day of the match. On the day of the match, the Zionist soccer fans marched to the stadium chanting similar anti-Arab slogans as the day prior. This fascist mob had an escort to the stadium from the Dutch federal police. 

And to be clear, these Zionist pogrom demonstrations weren’t necessarily spontaneous. Ahead of the match in Amsterdam, the Zionist mouthpiece Jerusalem Post reported that Mossad agents would accompany M. Tel Aviv to the match. The Zionist entity knew it would have to protect its fascist masses and be prepared to cry antisemitism the second that the people of Amsterdam inevitably fought back against the fascist invasion of the city. 

After the match itself, the fascist mobs began to make their way back to central Amsterdam. It was at this point that pro-Palestinian groups began to attack the fascists themselves. Some used scooters, and some simply confronted the Zionist thugs in the street. 

Not so strangely enough, the mainstream media was absolutely silent as Zionist mobs vandalized Arab businesses, chanted “Kill the Arabs,” and attacked a Palestinian taxi driver. The second that the people of Amsterdam stood up to these fascist thugs, the media became awash with stories of rabid antisemitism in Amsterdam. Netanyahu sent in the occupation’s air force to “evacuate” the Zionist soccer fans. Amsterdam’s mayor described the event as an anti-Jewish pogrom. 

A pogrom did occur in Amsterdam, but it wasn’t anti-Jewish. It was an anti-Palestinian and, more broadly, anti-Arab pogrom perpetrated by fascists whose Judaism is weaponized in the imperialist press. Frankly, the M. Tel Aviv Zionists are far closer in practice and politics to the sort of fascists who marched through London’s Jewish neighborhood in the famous 1936 “Battle of Cable Street” than they are to the Jewish community who experienced the terrors of Kristallnacht and Tsarist pogroms. 

As long as the U.S. imperialist genocide of Palestine continues via its Zionist satellite, Zionists should expect to be confronted wherever they travel en masse to spread their terror. 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

Following is an article by Clarence Thomas regarding the 56th Anniversary of the 1968 San Francisco State College Strike. On Nov. 6, 2024, the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University hosted a luncheon honoring veterans of the 1968 Strike that contributed to making the College of Ethnic Studies possible. The Strike, which lasted 5 months, was the longest student strike in U.S. history. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union played a significant role in the Strike. William “Bill” Chester, International Vice President of the ILWU, was part of the Select Committee, which was responsible for negotiating with student leaders to reach a settlement that resulted in establishing a Black Studies Department and a School of Ethnic Studies.

On Nov. 6, 2024, the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University held a luncheon to commemorate the “56th Anniversary of the 1968 Student Strike,” led by the BSU (Black Student Union) and the TWLF (Third World Liberation Front). I was invited to attend the luncheon as a veteran of the strike, whose activism, along with many others, contributed to the founding of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State and the movements for Ethnic Studies nationwide.

History of the 1968 strike!

The BSU initiated the strike. The strike started on Nov. 6, 1968, and ended on March 21, 1969, making it the longest strike by students at an academic institution in the United States. The strike had an intended revolutionary character because we, the students leading the strike, “considered ourselves revolutionaries.”

This is how the U.S. government described the strike: “One of the most effective confrontations in the history of the U.S. student movement, the San Francisco State College (SFSC) strike will no doubt serve as a precedent for future campus disruption. The strike has been unique in many ways. Differing completely from the events at Columbia University in 1968 or the recent disruptions at Cornell and Harvard. The SFSC strike witnessed the formation of new alliances, the use of new tactics, and the mobilization of unprecedented support. The effectiveness of the strike can be attributed primarily to the leadership of the SFSC Black Students Union.” *

On strike, shut it down!

The strike was initiated, as mentioned earlier, by the BSU. It was focused on challenging white supremacy in the curriculum of academia, specifically at SFSC, and creating a Black Studies Department as an alternative for Black students to increase the admission of Black students and students of color to the college.

The Central Committee initially had 10 demands which included:

• The establishment of a Black Studies Department.
• The hiring of Dr. Nathan Hare as its chairman with a full professorship, and with the Department’s ability to grant bachelor’s degrees in Black Studies.
• Open enrollment for Black students in 1969.
• That no disciplinary actions be administered to any students, workers, teachers, or administrators during and after the strike.
• That in the Fall Semester of 1969, all applications of non-white students be accepted.
• That George Murray, Minister of Education for the Black Panther Party, maintain his teaching position on campus for the 1968-1969 academic year.

The Third World Liberation Front!

Members of the Central Committee of the BSU, led by Terry Collins, reached out to Mexican American student activist Roger Alvarado and many other third-world student leaders to organize the Third World LIberation Front (TWLF). This was truly a revolutionary concept that not only expanded the base of striking students but also put forward the demands of all students of color, circumventing the college administrators’ attempts to divide and conquer. This was a wonderful example of building unity and working-class solidarity.

The TWLF demands included:

•  That a School of Ethnic Studies be established, having the right to hire and fire any faculty member, director, or administrator.
•  That 50 faculty be allocated to the School of Ethnic Studies, 20 of which would be for Black Studies.
• That in the Spring Semester, the College would fulfill its commitment to non-white students by admitting those who apply.

International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) supported the strike!

During the student strike, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 1352 at SFSC “declared the first strike by faculty in higher education in California.” The San Francisco Labor Council approved the strike sanction. The union struck to protest against racism at the college. The ILWU local leaders and members walked the picket line. Local 10 provided casual longshore jobs to faculty members, workers, and students on strike, demonstrating once again that solidarity is not an empty slogan and that “An Injury to One is An Injury to All.”

Lessons learned during the strike!

I entered SFSC in the Fall of 1967. Two months later, l was facing expulsion and prison time for defending the rights of Black students to have self-determination and a voice on campus. This was the precursor to Nov. 6, “On Strike Shut It Down”! It was at SFSC that l learned the true meaning of “dare to struggle, dare to win.” How to organize and build coalitions. The importance of political education. How to write a flyer, press release, and conduct a press conference — the importance of studying and applying what l learned into actual practice.

I can’t fail to acknowledge the training and knowledge I received during my participation in the Black Panther Party during those years while active at SFSC. I could not separate those organizations or struggles. Recognizing and understanding the importance of international solidarity. One of the most important lessons of all was working to build alliances with the community. 

The BSU had an off-campus center in the Black community. We also had the support of elders such as Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Carlton Goodlett, progressive physician, PhD, writer, entrepreneur, publisher, and leftist; Ronald V. Dellums, Berkeley City Council member in 1968; Willie L. Brown, attorney and California assemblyperson; Dr. Asa Davis, PhD, historian; Eileen Hernandez, president of NOW (National Organization of Women); and Rev. Cecil Williams, pastor of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.

Conclusion

The “1968 Student Strike” ended in partial victory. The BSU and the TWLF agreed to settle the strike with the Select Committee of the administration. In 1969, a College of Ethnic Studies was founded, the first ever in the nation, composed of Black Studies, Asian American Studies, and La Raza Studies departments. 

The striking students did not achieve an autonomous School of Ethnic Studies. We could not secure the hiring of Dr. Nathan Hare, whom we in the struggle refer to as the “Father of Black Studies,” because of how he put his academic career on the line during the 1968 Strike! He should have been the first Chairman of Black Studies. This, indeed, was no small loss. The demand for an increase in the admission of students of color led to the formation of the Educational Opportunity Program at all California State Colleges. There were over 700 students and other strikers who were jailed, brutalized, and terrorized by the San Francisco Tactical Squad.

Many of the veterans of the strike were unable to attend the 56th Anniversary luncheon, such as Pastor Arnold Townsend, who recently passed away and was in attendance at Dr. Nathan Hare’s Memorial in late August. I was determined to attend the luncheon, notwithstanding my own health issues. I am grateful to be among those represented for this momentous occasion.

In solidarity!

Clarence Thomas

Class of 1970, San Francisco State College, Member of the Central Committee Black Student Union;
International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 retired;
Co-founder DeClare Publishing

Author:

• “1934: A Year of Good Trouble – Million Worker March Anniversary,” 2024
• “Cleophas Williams: My Life Story in the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10,” 2023
• “Mobilizing in Our Own Name: Million Worker March,” 2021

www.millionworkermarch.com

* Excerpted from:  Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders, Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress- first session (part 22) pg. 571.”

Aboubakar Alassane of the West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO) explains how Nigeriens are enduring the consequences of unprecedented floods that devastated their economy already crippled by sanctions.

In the aftermath of devastation left behind in the wake of unprecedented floods, Nigeriens are rebuilding their livelihoods and economy with the help of the several relief measures instituted by the government to drastically cut prices of essential commodities and services.

The Sahel-wide flooding between June and October has exacted a particularly high toll on the people of Niger, destroying crops, cattle, houses and infrastructure in one of the world’s poorest countries whose economy had already been strangled by the seven month-long sanctions.

By late September, at least 339 were killed, many more injured, and 1.1 million people displaced by the floods caused by unprecedented rain affecting almost 190,000 hectares of cultivated agricultural land in a country with one of the highest child malnutrition rates.

Maradi region, the agricultural hub of south-central Niger, was the worst affected, with “the equivalent of an entire month’s worth of rain falling in a day,” said Aboubakar Alassane, a member of the coordination council of West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO).

Masses of livestock, which is also one of the most important sources of foreign exchange in Niger, were washed away in the Agadez region in the Sahara desert in central-north Niger, destroying the sole livelihood of nomadic communities.

The floods have further eroded the food supply that had already been dwindling, with agricultural land and pastures shrinking due to deficit rainfall over the five years before this deluge.

This climate catastrophe took place as Niger was already suffering under the harsh sanctions imposed by the regional bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), egged on by France, following the ouster of the regime of Mohamed Bazoum, perceived domestically as a puppet of France.

Mass protests against the military deployment and economic domination of the country by its former colonizer culminated in a coup led by the head of his presidential guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, removing Bazoum on July 26, 2023. A military government called the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) was formed.

Sanctions followed on July 30, without any notice period. State assets were frozen. A no-fly zone was imposed. The borders of this landlocked country were closed immediately. Even those trucks that had already cleared the paperwork were halted at the borders. Between July 30 and October 31 that year, 42,037 tons of various goods worth over 23 million US dollars were prevented from crossing into Niger.

Alassane recounted that immediately after the sanctions were imposed, the price of a 25 kg bag of rice nearly doubled from 12,000 to 21,000 CFA Franc, a colonial currency through which France continues to exert monetary control over its former colonies in West Africa.

A 75 kg bag of corn, “which had never exceeded 23,000 CFA, was selling at 40,000. Millet prices rose similarly, with niébé beans reaching 47,000 CFA, up from 20,000-25,000 before sanctions. Within a week, people were forced to line up in long queues before stores” to buy the limited supplies of food items that had to be rationed, he added.

The foreign market for onions, one of Niger’s main irrigated crops over 90% of which used to be exported, was cut-off. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were unable to sell their produce. Many more involved in its supply chain and export lost their livelihoods. The government is still struggling to resolve the disputes that arose between farmers, transporters and exporters due to the sudden inability to make payments.

Neighboring Nigeria, on which Niger depended for 70% of its electricity supply while its Uranium powered France’s nuclear plants, cut-off power in violation of the bilateral agreements. “Electricity was rationed to 4 hours per neighborhood in Niamey. Dosso and Tillaberi only had electricity for 6 to 8 hours, when the old thermal generators, purchased in the 1980s, did not break down,” he added. Students were not able to study after dark.

Desperation and misery increased amongst the poorest as a consequence of the economic devastation caused by the sanctions, ostensibly imposed to ‘restore democracy’.

Sanctions have only served to consolidate popular support of the military government

Be it “Cuba, Russia, DPR Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger”, sanctions have always been imposed to make the people suffer “to turn them against their governments.” However, like in all these countries, it has “had the opposite effect,” maintains Alassane.

In the immediate aftermath of the coup removing Bazoum, Niger was divided between those who supported the coup and those who opposed it, he explained. It was amid this confrontation tearing Niger’s political fabric two ways, that the ECOWAS imposed sanctions and threatened war with the backing of France.

“We had never given anyone the mandate to kill us because a president was deposed by a coup,” Alassane protested. He described what followed as a “patriotic surge” that united the country behind the CNSP, which consolidated its popular support by ordering the French troops out of the country and demonstrating its commitment to implement the popular will.

France refused to withdraw its troops, provoking mass demonstrations outside its military base and embassy in Niamey. “The march amid the pouring rain on September 2, 2023 was an unprecedented display of popular strength in the history of Niger, Alassane said. “Some even say that the proclamation of the country’s independence did not draw as large a crowd proportionally to the population.”

Later that month, neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso vowed to defend Niger if attacked, having also suffered sanctions after similar popularly supported coups in recent years removed French-backed regimes and forced its troops out of the two countries. The trio came together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

ECOWAS, on the other hand, was a divided bloc, with its member states facing domestic opposition to the war from popular movements and opposition parties. France announced retreat in late-September and completed the withdrawal of its troops by the year-end.

In January 2024, the AES states announced their decision to withdraw from ECOWAS, threatening to halve its geographical expanse and disrupt the 15-member bloc’s trade and service flows worth almost USD 150 million annually. Amid this existential crisis looming over ECOWAS, its leaders met in late February and lifted the economic sanctions “on purely humanitarian grounds.”

However, “we still feel the effects,” Alassane said. With no confidence in the economy which suffered missed deadlines for payments due to a freeze on transactions due to sanctions, “businesses are closing one after another.”

“Spare parts for vehicles and other mechanical equipment are slow to arrive. We are forced to repair using second-hand parts, which are often defective. The automobile fleet, which is essential for a landlocked country, is shrinking more and more. Every day, we see people struggling with old broken vehicles.”

Niger relies on the port of Cotonou in Benin for most of its imports of machines, spare parts, equipment, and food essentials, while exporting cash crops, uranium and other minerals. Although the sanctions imposing border closure were lifted, Alassane said that the CNSP has been forced to keep the border closed from Niger’s side due to threats of terror attacks.

The official reasons stated by France for stationing its troops in its former colonies in this region was to fight these terror groups it had helped spawn across the Sahel with its participation in the war destroying Libya. During its nearly decade-long troop deployment, terror attacks only increased.

After being compelled to withdraw, France is accused of aiding these terror groups to destabilize these AES states. “France has set up new military bases on the Beninese side of the border to train terrorists to carry out attacks on Niger and Burkina Faso,” Alassane said, explaining Niger’s compulsion to close the Beninese border despite the consequent shortages.

Already reeling under the pressure of this economic crisis, the Nigerien people were additionally hit by the country-wide floods this monsoon. Although floods in this season are common in the region where even the deficit rains pour heavily in short bursts, the scale of devastation left in its wake this year is “unprecedented”.

Relief measures

The CNSP has taken several measures to provide relief, including “a 50% reduction in the cost of medical procedures, examinations, and other services in public hospitals and health centers,”  Alassane said. To increase domestic food availability, the CNSP has banned exports of cereals and pulses outside the AES countries.

Despite being heavily reliant on imports for its own food needs, “more than 50% of the harvest were exported to Nigeria” over the last years because farmers could not find remunerative prices in the local market, he explained.

To mitigate this problem, the CNSP has launched a campaign to provide remuneration to the farmers by purchasing their produce above the market price, while making it available for the domestic consumers at a subsidized rate.

80% of the farming is done on high lands which escaped the devastating impact of the floods, Alassane added. In fact, the yield has been “excellent” due to above-average rain. The government is prioritizing securing this harvest. All these measures have “drastically” dropped the prices of cereals, he said. The price of a 75 kg sack of millet is now down by about 45% since July.

With the price of cement slashed by 50% through waiver on certain taxes on the commodity and exemption of its inputs from taxation, “new construction projects are visible in capital Niamey and other main cities”.

Despite all these travails the Nigeriens have endured in the crosshairs of climate catastrophe and sanctions, at no point did it undermine the popular support for the CNSP, Alassane insists. “As proof” he points out “each time the CNSP announces the holding of the National Consultative Council” under the pressure of the ECOWAS, France and its Western allies, it has been forced to backtrack due to popular opposition.

This council, he added. “is set up every time there is a coup d’état to declare” that the military is only ruling as a “transitional government” whose decisions will be reviewed by the Council until a new constitution is drafted and power is ceded to a civilian government after an election. Mali and Burkina Faso have constituted such councils.

However, Nigeriens do not want this council. Every time there has been a coup in the past, the Council has served as “a door for Western imperialism” to intervene, be it through NGOs or other blocs of civil society, to ensure that another French puppet takes power when the transitional period comes to close, Alassane explained.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

Donald Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war against the entire working class. These choices are a domestic version of the Pentagon’s “shock and awe” invasion tactics and are meant to smash any opposition.

Here’s a preliminary list of these bigots:

Matt Gaetz

Trump’s selection for Attorney General is the accused sexual predator and Florida congressperson Matt Gaetz. This pig loves Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which was George Zimmerman’s excuse to kill the Black teenager Trayvon Martin.

When the Black Lives Matter movement swept the United States, Gaetz, like Trump, wanted to suppress it. Gaetz offered to hire Kyle Rittenhouse — the killer of two anti-racist activists in Kenosha, Wisconsin — as an intern.

He is also a fan of the fascist Great Replacement theory, which claims white people are being “replaced.” 

This lie was the rallying cry for Nazis to march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and kill the anti-racist Heather Heyer.

Gaetz is guaranteed, if confirmed as Attorney General, to carry out a witch hunt against progressive organizations and individuals, particularly those supporting Palestine. Even if individuals are found not guilty, the legal costs will be steep, and activists tied up.

Pete Hegseth

Fox News bigot Pete Hegseth is Trump’s choice to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s body has tattoos associated with white nationalism and Nazis.

At the Pentagon, Hegseth will carry out racist, sexist, and homophobic attacks on GIs and civilian personnel. He wants to purge all transgender members of the armed forces.

While Trump and Hegseth are targeting Iran and China, they also want to shoot down protesters at home.

Marco Rubio

Florida Senator Marco Rubio is slated to be Secretary of State. He’s a fanatical enemy of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and all other countries and movements that threaten Wall Street’s rule in this hemisphere. 

A cheerleader of genocide against Palestinians, Rubio also threatens Iran and China. For anybody who believed Trump’s phony anti-war noises, Rubio’s appointment should be a wake-up call.

Kristi Noem

Trump chose South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be Secretary of Homeland Security, a title that sounds like something out of the Third Reich. She gave Trump a bust of Mount Rushmore with his face on it.

(The tourist attraction, which desecrated the sacred land of the Lakota Sioux nation, was sculpted by Ku Klux Klan member Gutzon Borglum.) 

Despite Noem’s gift, she was passed over to be Trump’s vice-president pick, possibly because she wrote how she shot her 14-month-old puppy Cricket because it was allegedly “untrainable.”

The classic song Mississippi Goddam was written and performed by Nina Simone. What Mississippi has been historically for Black people, South Dakota — where the Wounded Knee massacre took place — is for Indigenous nations.

Noem pushed for legislation to suppress water protectors, like those in North Dakota, who attempt to stop dangerous pipelines. That’s one reason why the governor was barred from entering the state’s nine Indigenous reservations. 

The No. 1 job for Noem will be to deport millions of immigrant workers and their families. Trump wants to cancel Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from war-torn countries.

Assisting Noem in these fascist roundups will be “border czar” Tom Homan, who, in the previous Trump administration, had children separated from their immigrant parents.

Also helping to carry out these raids will be Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff. The fascist declared at the Oct. 27 hate rally held in New York City’s Madison Square Garden that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy, who hates vaccines that have saved millions of lives, was picked to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. The nut job claims that the COVID-19 virus was targeted so that Chinese and Jewish people are more immune.

Michael Huckabee

The former Arkansas Governor, who had 16 people executed, was appointed ambassador to the Zionist state occupying Palestine. The Christian nationalist claimed, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” 

We need millions in the streets 

As outrageous as these picks are, nobody should think that Trump “can’t get away with it.” Behind Trump is a battalion of billionaires. Only a massive struggle will stop them.

Like the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Trump’s fascist program will be met with resistance. Such a movement has to include unions, community groups, students, the homeless, and more. The first job will be to fight Trump’s immigration raids.

 ¡No Pasarán! Trump shall not pass!

2 p.m. Saturday
November 23
Harriet Tubman Center For Social Justice
5278 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles

For more information: 323 306-6240

Mass struggle can defeat capitalist reaction

Millions of people are angry, depressed, and disgusted at Trump winning the capitalist election. Many are terrified.

They have a right to be. Trump says “no price tag” will stop him from deporting millions of immigrant workers in fascist roundups.

His campaign spent $215 million on TV ads attacking transgender people. Bigots are being encouraged to assault Transgender people, their families, and allies.

Text messages have been sent to Black people across the country, ordering them to report to plantations and pick cotton as enslaved people. 

Yet, for all of the bluster of Trump and Fox News, the convicted rapist is hardly getting any more votes than he got four years ago. It’s the Democratic vote that has fallen like a rock.

Wars and hunger don’t produce enthusiasm 

Trump was able to appeal to people sick of wars because Biden shipped at least $175 billion of weapons to Ukraine. Another $17.9 billion of bombs and shells were sent to Netanyahu’s apartheid regime that’s committing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. 

Getting war criminal Dick Cheney to endorse Kamala Harris didn’t help either. For many in the Arab and Muslim communities, Trump couldn’t be worse than the genocide enablers Biden and Harris.

What has four years of Joe Biden as president done for the working class? Rents went through the roof, increasing by nearly 30% from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to January 2024. 

A record-high 653,104 people were counted as homeless in January 2023, with over 256,000 of them unsheltered in the winter. The $193 billion spent on the proxy war against Russia and Netanyahu’s genocide could have housed hundreds of thousands of people.

Food prices rose by 27% between January 2020 and September 2024. It was obvious that capitalist monopolies were responsible.

Even the White House admitted that “four large meat-packing companies control 85% of the beef market. In poultry, the top four processing firms control 54% of the market. And in pork, the top four processing firms control about 70% of the market.” 

Biden’s response was to let SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits — formerly known as food stamps — be cut by at least $95 per month on March 1, 2023. 

While the White House refused to sue monopolies, McDonald’s did. The exploiter of over two million low-wage workers and the largest purchaser of beef filed an antitrust suit against the four biggest meat packers on Oct. 4. 

How many of the 49 million people who had to use food banks in 2022 didn’t see any point to vote in 2024?

Capitalists claw back concessions

The 2020 elections were held after the Black Lives Matter movement had swept the United States. As many as 26 million people had taken to the streets.

It was because of these millions that Kamala Harris was made the Democratic candidate for vice president. If the 2020 election had been held months earlier, when the movement was at its height, Biden’s 7 million vote margin over Trump would have been greater. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck earlier that year, billionaires and banksters were frightened. Not so much for their own health, although thousands of them fled their Manhattan penthouses.

They were terrified of what tens of millions of workers suddenly thrown out of work would do. That’s the reason why their Congress approved “economic impact payments” that gave thousands of dollars to tens of millions of families.

For the first time in nearly 50 years of cutbacks and union-busting, many poor and working people felt they had gotten a little bit ahead. Rents were frozen while evictions and foreclosures largely stopped.

The number of people living under the absurdly low federal poverty level dropped by 14.5 million people. The number of Black and Latinx children living in absolute poverty dropped by 60%.

So it was all the more painful when Biden and the Democratic Party-controlled Congress let the American Rescue Plan’s anti-poverty measures expire in 2021.

The number of people living in absolute poverty rose by 14.5 million people, while the share of children living in poverty rose by seven percentage points. 

Meanwhile, rising prices — largely the result of monopolies grabbing as much profit as they could — canceled any wage gains made by the working class.

The capitalist class recoiled from the anti-poverty measures they felt compelled to carry out at the height of the pandemic. They even think it was these limited programs that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement instead of hundreds of years of oppression.

Fightback to survive

Their rebellion against those concessions makes the wealthy and powerful all the more vicious. Trump, Vance, and their string pullers like Elon Musk and Wall Street hedge fund operators plan to launch an offensive against the working class at home.

They want to axe every program won by the working class in the last 90 years, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Capitalists seek to jack up the retirement age to 70. 

Trump will use the U.S. government’s deficit created by the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget and $950 billion in tax-free interest payments as the excuse to do so.

At the same time, Trump & Co. is targeting the rest of the world, particularly the People’s Republic of China.

Trump’s scheme to bring industry back to the U.S. is fueled by the needs of the military-industrial complex. But his plan to super-size tariffs on imported goods may self-destruct.

While before World War II, the vast majority of manufactured items were produced in the United States and Western Europe, today they’re largely made in Asia, Brazil and Mexico.

Trump’s tariffs will be a wage cut for the entire working class. People will have to fight back.  

Next year will be the bicentennial of the first world capitalist crisis. Since 1825, recessions or depressions have occurred every 10 years or so.

While shutdowns during the pandemic may have delayed the next recession, it will break out sooner than later.

The Democratic Party will do nothing to protect us. Many of its big shots are calling to retreat from any opposition to bigotry.

We need to organize ourselves to stop Trump’s raids against immigrants. Union organizing drives are the best weapon against all the Elon Musks.

One of the first steps is to demonstrate against Trump’s “inhoguration” on Jan. 20, 2025. Mass struggle is our only way to survive.

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.