We share this piece to commemorate the revolutionary leader Malcolm X who was assassinated 60 years ago on Feb. 21, 1965. 

Malcolm X to me represents the “good” in adversity.
The “loud” in alarm. Mr. X …The scholar – the
Minister & man of great tragedy. To me X was
Unafraid – always ready to battle – not necessarily
with a gun but always with the mind.

Born in Nebraska in 1925 – my dedication to this
giant will never die. Fiery, eloquent and spokesman
for an entire nation of MEN & women too.
X was leader – Black Nationalist too – if alive he
would tell you all yes it’s true. X was a force – who
challenged Dr. King. Intellectual – Influencer &
Intuitive too.

Malcolm X was my hero – then and still is now.
With Flavor Orange in the White House – X would
say how? Mentored by Elijah & sanctioned to
Prison – Likely X would say things happening now
would require immediate revision.

Malcolm X changed the racial climate back in the
day. For me – Malcolm’s legacy will always remain
constant and true to the game. I love his stance on
Education – which he always maintained.
Complex – who could figure Malcolm out? The
Minister – The Man all clothed in power. To me &
many more X is such a tower.

Let’s talk more about Malcolm X – we could talk all
day. Imagine being void of education – X would have
an issue with that. Malcolm! Malcolm! I wish you
could speak! That’s nothing but FACT.

X was gallant – to me – tall as a Tree. Taking great
pride in his culture – all he wanted was for Black people
to live free. Malcolm the Warrior – Hustler and
King … alleged Con Man & Little with a DREAM!
Malcolm X counted & courted defeat. Always on
the move – forever in the streets.

He spoke of heartbreak in the fondest of terms. His
was a mixture of both LIFE’s twists and turns. The
truth about “X” is that he was a King … Like Martin
Luther, he too had a dream. Malcolm X represents
the word Bravery to me – how else did he live in a
Foster Home & never tried to flee? I’d love to see
Malcolm X alive and well – oh what stories he would
sit and tell. Malcolm X would likely say we need to
prepare for tomorrow and that would be true – he
would insist that we snatch the future “he’d say – it’s
there waiting on you.”

What does Malcolm X mean to me – X means hope
and pride. An entire people representing an individual
man – to me X typifies advancement & truth for all
races. Again if he were alive – he’d take us through
the paces. X wasn’t afraid to speak truth to
power – I love that – he wasn’t one to cower.

Troubled & Tried … Malcolm X stayed for the ride.
What’s the name of the movie … “Get on Bus” … I
wish he could have taken all of us.

With X – civil rights became human rights. There are
so many things about Malcolm – again we could talk
all day. We could talk about his many achievements
& by “any means necessary” mantra.

Every “L” was a small seed of its own (in the words
of the Great Malcolm X) losses & lessons to be
used as Courses in Improvement.
Malcolm great in stature – well versed in the ways of
Islam. I pay both honor and homage to this man
because he was bold enough to admit that Black people
needed to come to together against the
“Common Enemy.”

Malcolm X was accused of dealing in hate. I loudly
proclaim this is a falsehood. This man spoke about
oppression & exploitation. He forced us to take an
intricate look at our own hatred – self-hatred – hatred
of our own kind.

This question by Malcolm took me all the way in – at
what we would eventually refer to as “rallies” – X put
forth “Nooooooo – before you come asking Mr.
Mohammed does he teach hate – you should ask
yourself who taught you to hate being what GOD
gave you.”

Finally, I deem Malcolm X an icon – that was then
and this is now!

JoyB is a community organizer with the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly and Struggle for Socialism. She helped found the Prisoners Solidarity Committee.

The commercial and critical success of the 2024 film “I’m Still Here” represents a triumph for the Brazilian people. Directed by Walter Salles, the movie is based on the 2015 book of the same name written by Rubens Paiva’s son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva. 

The film narrates the story of Rubens Paiva’s “disappearance” from the perspective of his wife, Eunice Paiva. If you spend time in the film corner of social media, you might have seen the enthusiasm of Brazilians with the international success of the movie, being the first Brazilian film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. 

Set in the scenic Leblon neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro in 1971, the movie tells a story well-known to many Brazilians. Rubens Paiva is one of the few martyrs from the U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorship whose name has endured despite right-wing efforts to erase it from public memory. In schools, Paiva’s story was taught as an example of the senseless cruelty inflicted by the military dictatorship on the Brazilian people, alongside others such as Vladimir Herzog and Stuart Angel.

Rubens Paiva, a former congressman of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB) and a civil engineer, was taken from his family home by armed men. His wife Eunice and 15-year-old daughter Vera were also taken. While Vera returned home after 24 hours, and Eunice was only released after 12 days of detention, Rubens Paiva never came home, and his remains were never found.

In 2014, a bust of Rubens Paiva was unveiled in the House of Representatives in Brasília. This was a poignant tribute to a man who had been “disappeared” by the right-wing dictatorship. During a small ceremony attended by Paiva’s surviving family members, Congressman Jair Bolsonaro left his office and approached the gathering. He shouted, “Rubens Paiva got what he deserved, disgraced communist, bum!” Paiva’s nephew, Chico Paiva Avelino, later recounted in a Facebook post that Bolsonaro spat on the bust before walking away.

This incident marked the first time I heard about the man who would later become Brazil’s president. I remember being shocked by his blatant disrespect for the family members of someone I considered a hero. How could someone be so crass? I was certain his behavior would be deemed unacceptable by people across the political spectrum.

By 2018, when Bolsonaro won the presidential election, he had shown what Avelino described as an “obsession” with Rubens Paiva. Bolsonaro vehemently opposed investigating the cases of those who were “disappeared” by the military dictatorship and consistently blamed Rubens Paiva’s death on the political left. 

Since Bolsonaro’s election, nostalgic sentiment for the repressive military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 has only intensified. The shock I initially felt at the crass attitude of a minor political figure in 2014 has now permeated the country. Brazilians are grappling with the reality of a significant political faction that claims the country was better during the dictatorship and advocates for the reinstatement of military rule.

At the time, the military justified his disappearance with the same excuse Bolsonaro would later claim to be true: that Paiva had been rescued from detention by left-wing comrades. Only decades later, in 1996, did the truth surface through the National Truth Commission, which investigated the crimes of the military dictatorship; it was revealed that the former congressman had died due to injuries related to torture on the second day of his imprisonment. His wife fought courageously and tirelessly for the truth. 

The story told in “I’m Still Here” is not exactly the entire account of Rubens and Eunice Paiva’s lives or all of the oppression exerted by the military during the dictatorship. But it presents the experience of Eunice Paiva through her husband’s disappearance and her strength to deal with its aftermath. It is brilliantly portrayed by Fernanda Torres — nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards and Brazil’s favorite nepobaby (her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was also nominated for the same award 25 years ago for the movie “Central Station,” also directed by Walter Salles).

Brazilians are celebrating the success of “I’m Still Here” with good reason. The film portrays a true story from a period of oppression that should not evoke nostalgia. It serves as a powerful reminder of how dangerously close Brazil came to experiencing another right-wing military coup when Bolsonaro took power in 2018. It reminds us that, as the film’s theme song suggests, we must remain vigilant, for danger always lurks around the corner.

“I’m Still Here” is currently playing in theaters everywhere in the United States. 

For further reading on the role the United States played in the Brazilian military dictatorship, see Vincent Bevins’s I’m Still Here. 

Donald Trump found himself rebuffed on multiple fronts at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, as did millionaire Gov. “Janky Jeff” Landry. The message of resistance sounded both inside and outside the Superdome. 

Despite heavy rain, more than a hundred protesters took to the streets, rallying first at Armstrong Park and then marching as close to the Dome as possible. This was difficult because police blocked routes to the Dome during the march. But a concentration of repressive forces had already been building in the city. 

After the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack and leading up to the Super Bowl (which makes the big tourism bosses a lot of money), the French Quarter has been turned into a military occupation zone. Racist governor Landry flooded the majority-Black city with state police and the National Guard. Checkpoints with armed guards have gone up in parts of the tourism-focused French Quarter.

Even with these hindrances, the crowd defied both Trump and Landry. Coming out at all was a big statement. We can’t give into fear. It’s time to fight. 

The people leading the resistance

The march was led by the very people Trump and Landry are cynically targeting, with many of these identities intersecting: queer and trans people; immigrants; women; youth; Black people; working-class people — the people who make up the vast majority.

Some organizers of the action were New Orleans for Community Oversight of the Police, Southeast Dignity Not Detention, New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and Queer and Trans Community Action Project (QTCAP).

Chants included “Our bodies, our choice”; “Say it loud, say it clear, Donald Trump’s not welcome here”; “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t mess with us”; and many more. 

‘Trump and Landry are afraid of us’

A speaker with QTCAP said, “We know Trump and Landry are afraid of us. They’re cowards. When Landry finally agreed to do one debate while running for governor, we showed up outside the TV station in Lafayette and made a lot of noise. As soon as the broadcast was over, he got in his car and his driver sped him out of there!”

This writer was there. It was a bit like how Trump sped out of the Dome last night. 

Halftime show becomes a stage for resistance

Inside the Dome, Kendrick Lamar and other performers put on a showcase of Black talent and resistance during the halftime show. 

One of the performers heroically unfurled the flags of Palestine and Sudan before being seized and detained by security. The racist NFL bosses declared him banned for life, while the New Orleans Police Department said that they were “working to determine applicable charges” before finally announcing that he would not be charged. 

What an admission of malice and abuse of power! They were literally scratching their heads for a pretext. But apparently, displaying the flags of these two countries is not illegal yet.  

Community voices speak out

A New Orleans-area Palestinian community member told Struggle – La Lucha: 

“I applaud the man’s courage for taking a risk and showing unwavering solidarity for the Palestinian and Sudanese people during one of the country’s biggest events. Protests like these show that Palestine will remain a thorn in the imperial world’s side until it is free.”

Speaking to SLL, NOLA resident and Palestine-solidarity activist Kevin Ericksen said:

“That man’s action was like a shot in the arm. Thank you, thank you, thank you whoever you are!”

A 19-year-old south Louisiana woman summed up the night like this to SLL:

“This didn’t go how Trump planned at all. And I’m assuming that’s why some news stations added cheers over the boos when they showed Trump.” 

So, let’s learn from everyone who took a stand during the big game. Wherever Trump goes, let’s make sure he knows he’s not welcome.

Organizers from the Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center gathered on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on the morning of Feb. 7 to send a message that the people will not tolerate landlord price gouging in the wake of the recent wildfires. That was how the day began, but not how it ended.

Roughly five minutes into the press conference, a large, organized group of high school students approached City Hall carrying homemade signs and flags from various Latin American countries. The demonstration was entirely composed of local Latinx teenagers who attend a high school about a mile from City Hall.

Once the march arrived, the Harriet Tubman Center emcee, John Parker, took the initiative to combine the two events. He invited anyone interested to speak using the center’s amplified sound system. Many of the young people accepted the offer.

Most of those who spoke identified themselves not only as Latina, Latino or Latinx, but also proudly announced themselves as queer, gay or trans. So why had these students taken to the streets?

This demonstration followed a week of similar protests by Latinx youth, all denouncing Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy. The speakers at the Friday demonstration made it clear that they, too, took to the streets to protest what they called Trump’s fascist deportations directed at the Latinx community.

These are quite literally the children of people being deported. The week leading up to Friday, Feb. 9, saw protests of thousands that blocked highways, walked out of schools, and directly confronted police forces. All of these actions were organized and carried out by Latinx youth.

At the peak of the demonstration, Harriet Tubman Center organizer John Parker led the students in anti-Trump and anti-Elon Musk chants. Another political point raised at the demonstration, which had echoed throughout the week, was: No one can be illegal on stolen land.

What is now called the U.S. state of California is, in fact, stolen Mexican land. In 1846, the U.S. military invaded Mexico under the orders of President James K. Polk. The invasion’s goal was no secret. The U.S. invaded Mexican land in Texas and California to expand its markets fueled by slave labor and to strengthen the position of slave states as opposed to free states.

Further, anti-immigrant deportation policies did not begin under Donald Trump. The U.S. has a long history of xenophobic laws and violent anti-immigrant raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its predecessors. In fact, President Joe Biden broke Trump’s deportation record just last year.

For the U.S. government, whether led by a Democrat or a Republican, to deport anyone from land stolen from their ancestors for the purpose of strengthening chattel slavery is as evil as it is ludicrous.

All progressives must join the Latinx community in resisting Trump’s mass deportation policy. This expansion and escalation of Manifest Destiny cannot be tolerated, whether it is aimed at Indigenous, Palestinian or Latin American communities.

The Pentagon will send another 1,500 active-duty soldiers to the Mexican border to support President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, an American official said yesterday. This would bring the number of troops on the US-Mexico border to 3,600.

A logistics brigade from the Airborne Corps based in Fort Liberty, North Carolina, will be sent, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the matter in public.

The troops going to the border are expected to help install barbed wire barriers and provide necessary transportation, intelligence and other support to the Border Patrol. The logistics brigade will help support and sustain the troops.

The first group of 1,600 active duty soldiers has already been deployed to the border, and nearly 500 more troops from the 10th Mountain Division are expected to begin mobilizing in the coming days.

In addition, another 500 marines were deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to help prepare the facility for the arrival of a flow of detained migrants, he told AP.

Meanwhile, the Border Patrol said that schools and churches are not targets of their raids.

Texas governor, Greg Abbott, reported on his official website that as part of his collaboration with the Trump administration to deport and arrest migrants, he authorized his state’s National Guard to provide support to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to eradicate, arrest and assist in the detention and deportation of anyone who is here illegally.

“Let no one dare to violate our sovereignty!”

“Let no one dare to violate our sovereignty! Mexico is a free, sovereign and independent country,“ emphasized President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo before hundreds of people from Michoacán who gathered in the community of Zirahuén.

“You are not alone, you are not alone!” was heard on several occasions. It was the cry of the attendees who accompanied her to the ceremony to deliver fertilizers to this land, which produces one out of every three dollars from agricultural exports.

Faced with the current geopolitics, where the figure of the US president, Donald Trump, has created new bilateral relations, the president warned: “We Mexicans are always ready to defend our country”.

Faced with the Republican magnate’s threats to deport millions of undocumented people in the United States, including fellow Mexicans, the head of the executive branch reminded him:

“The United States would not be who it is without the Mexicans who work on the other side of the border.”

From this state — which for decades has been one of the main sources of migrants to US soil — Sheinbaum Pardo emphasized that although her fellow citizens across the northern border sent $65 billion dollars to their families last year, that figure represents barely 20 percent of their income.

“80 percent stays in the United States, (the Mexicans there) pay taxes and improve the US economy,” she emphasized.

Accompanied by Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla; the Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué, and other federal officials, the president affirmed that the president and the entire people will defend the compatriots and, in case they wish to return, ”here we embrace them.”

She emphasized the value of her fellow citizens: “We Mexicans are the best workers in the world, let no one say anything about Mexicans. The best farm workers? Mexicans. The best construction workers? Mexicans. The best factory workers? Mexicans. The best service workers? Mexicans.”

She pointed out that Mexico is strong because it has a history and a culture that comes from the original peoples, and from the heroes and heroines who built the nation.

And that description, of heroes and heroines, was given to the countrymen and women who earn their living day by day in the United States.

The head of the executive branch highlighted the program to provide free fertilizer to small producers. She recalled that it was former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who promoted this project during the last six-year term and today it is a constitutional right.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – Buenos Aires

By glorifying the figure of William McKinley, president of the United States between March 4, 1897 and September 14, 1901, Donald Trump is trying to find a universally acclaimed precedent for his controversial policies in the political history of the United States. McKinley was assassinated, Trump miraculously escaped the same fate on July 13, 2024 in Pennsylvania. But unlike the New Yorker, McKinley was a man of the political class. Except for a short period of two years (1869-1871) when he practiced law, he spent his entire life in the world of politics.

At the age of 33 McKinley entered the House of Representatives for the Republican Party. In 1890 he proposed and succeeded in getting a law passed increasing import tariffs. Shortly afterwards he was elected governor of Ohio and, in 1897, president of the United States. It was during his term of office that the country became a world power: he achieved the annexation of Hawaii by taking on the local government’s four million dollar debt and the following year he took advantage of the defeat that the Cuban mambises had inflicted on the Spanish army to get involved in the Cuban war of independence and seize the island, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. The pretext was to “provide aid” to the Cuban patriots, even though they didn’t need it. However, in order to strip Spain of its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Washington needed to enter the war.

As the Cubans did not ask for their help, an incident had to be fabricated that would enrage US public opinion and justify US intervention. The self-inflicted attack on the battleship Maine, anchored in Havana Bay to evacuate the citizens of that country, which mysteriously blew up on February 15, 1898, precipitated the entry of the United States into a war that had already been won by the Cubans but was taken away from them precisely by McKinley. It was under his presidency that the United States went from being a regional power in Central America and the Caribbean to taking the first steps in the construction of a global empire.

And it is this man, McKinley, a supporter of economic warfare with his tariffs; of direct military action, as in the case of the war against Spain; or appealing to money to buy an island like Hawaii who, not by chance, has been repeatedly praised by Trump. It was he who, having defeated the Spanish monarchy in the Philippines and Guam, ordered Pentagon cartographers to include those two distant Pacific islands on US maps.

This brief sketch allows us to decipher and put into perspective some of Trump’s initiatives. For example, ordering the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. His blind faith in import tariffs has its most notable precedent in McKinley, only in today’s highly interconnected global economy such a policy is doomed to failure, and Trump himself will pay dearly for it. As an unscrupulous businessman he believes that everything has a price, that anything can be bought or sold. Patriotism, honor or dignity are meaningless words to the tycoon.

If McKinley acquired Hawaii, why not do the same with Greenland, especially when Denmark and European governments are displaying a scandalous apathy in the face of Trump’s outburst? Why not use economic blackmail to turn Canada into the 51st state of the United States? And although for now there would be no need for a self-attack – the current version of Maine – the lies, fake news and cowardice or passivity of many politicians can have the same effect. If George Bush convinced the world that there were “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”, which was blatantly untrue, why would the powerful media apparatus that the United States controls on a global scale not be capable of deceiving half the world when spreading a lie as scandalous as “the presence of Chinese soldiers in the Panama Canal”, or that his administration is surreptitiously run by the Chinese Communist Party? Or to convince world public opinion that someone who enters the United States illegally is a criminal, as the serial liar Marco Rubio claimed?

Beyond these parallels, the truth is that with his bluster and contradictions Trump represents a danger to international coexistence and a return to the most brutal and brazen phase of imperialism. Those naïve souls who thought that it had disappeared, replaced by benevolent globalization, are now silent. Imperialism exists, and will continue to generate pain and death everywhere, destroying the environment, promoting wars and sowing poverty with both hands. Trump’s illusory attempt to resurrect US unipolarism, or “American superiority”, is a chapter closed under lock and key by the history of an international system whose current architecture has been radically and irreversibly modified in the direction of a multipolar power configuration, whose gravitation grows day by day.

Source: Cuba en Resumen

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Within the first three weeks of his second presidential administration, Trump’s crimes have included:

• Fascist round-ups of immigrant workers, with hundreds being deported in military aircraft while being shackled. Trump is setting up a concentration camp for immigrants in Guantánamo on land stolen from Cuba.
• Trump launched a storm of anti-trans attacks, radically removing trans people’s rights, banning gender identity from all official documents such as passports, banning transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports, and restricting or even eliminating gender-affirming care.
• Menaced Colombia with a trade war when Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro protested the mistreatment of Colombian immigrants.
• Trump is seeking to take over Greenland, annex Canada, and is threatening to invade Panama. Thousands of U.S. troops have been sent to the Mexican border. Trump has ridiculously ordered renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
• Now, Trump wants to seize Gaza and kick out two million Palestinians who have survived 15 months of genocide.
• Yet, with all of his attacks on Latin America and Palestine, the first country that Trump bombed was the African country of Somalia.

Trump has a special hatred for Africa and all Black people. He wants to turn back the clock to the days of undisguised white supremacy.

On his second day in office, Trump rescinded President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 executive order banning discrimination in hiring by the federal government and its private contractors. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah has rightfully called Trump’s campaign against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), an effort at resegregation.

Trump’s attendance at the Super Bowl depends on the message “End Racism” being removed from the end zone.

Darren Beattie — Trump’s pick to be the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs — is an open bigot.

Beattie wrote on X: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” 

The apartheid connection

Donald Trump’s entire life as the offspring of a real estate mogul has been coated with bigotry. Trump and his daddy were sued by the U.S. government in 1973 for refusing to rent to Black people.

Trump took out full-page newspaper ads when five innocent Black and Latinx youths were framed for assault in the 1989 “Central Park” case. Trump has never apologized, even though the Exonerated Five were freed after years in jail and compensated.

One of the five, Yusef Salaam, has been elected to the New York City Council.

On Feb. 3, Trump condemned South Africa for a law that has taken small amounts of land from whites. Thirty years after the fall of apartheid, whites still control 70% of land in South Africa, all of it stolen from Africans.

Trump whined on his Truth Social account that “South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.” The term “certain classes” means white settlers.

Trump is now suspending all U.S. aid to South Africa, most of which funds HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. That’s as genocidal as the U.S.-made bombs that killed thousands in Gaza.

Fox News and all fascists call any efforts at land justice in South Africa to be “White Genocide.” During Trump’s first administration, two pro-apartheid white farmers from South Africa — Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets — met with National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Kriel and Roets also met with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officials. This shows how this agency, which is being shut down by the Trump regime, was about U.S. domination, not helping people. 

Elon Musk — Donald Trump’s virtual co-president — is the son of an apartheid-era emerald mine owner. Musk also attacked the land law, as did Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Vice President JD Vance’s mentor is the billionaire Peter Thiel, who was brought up under apartheid. Thiel’s millions in campaign contributions were vital in electing Vance as a U.S. Senator from Ohio.

Alongside Trump’s attacks on immigrants, Palestinians, and Black people are his vicious attacks on transgender people. Bigotry hurts all poor and working people.

Trump & Co. want to return to the days before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which helped smash open colonial rule. Millions of people need to come out in the streets — as we did during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 — to stop this fascist regime.

Activists gathered outside the Zionist consulate in Los Angeles on Feb. 6 to denounce war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House visit and the continued U.S. imperialist escalation against the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and all of Palestine. 

Organizers from several organizations participated in the demonstration, including the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Al-Awda – The Right to Return Coalition, Code Pink, and Justice 4 Palestine.

During the event, alleged reports of a possible shooter in a building across the street brought out the police and fire department. John Parker of the Harriet Tubman Center addressed the crowd:

“This is not going to scare us away. We know that police and the state will try to discourage protests with fear and sometimes intentional provocations.  I don’t know if this was them or a fascist Zionist trying to scare us, but the point is, it will not stop us. It will just encourage us to do more.” 

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

Nurses employed at the University Medical Center in New Orleans began striking on Feb. 5. Originally, the National Nurses Organizing Committee – the union representing 600 nurses in the UMC system and affiliated with National Nurses United – only planned on a two-day strike. But now it’s set to last through Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 9 because of contract requirements of the replacement-worker staffing agency. 

They went on strike back in October as well. So, this is the second time the union called a strike and yet they still don’t have their first contract because the bosses at LCMC Health System have been stalling. The nurses voted to unionize in December 2023 and have been in these contract negotiations since March 2024. Enough is enough! 

In a press release, RN Shonda Franklin said:

“We don’t take this decision lightly. But so many of us are tired of seeing our fellow nurses leave UMC because management can’t ensure basic things like uninterrupted lunch breaks on our 12-hour shifts. It’s time for a change, and a strong contract is how we get that done.”

These nurses and other medical workers are always there when our community needs them. They were there to take care of the victims of the New Year’s Eve French Quarter terrorist attack, just as they were all throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, they were dealing with dangerous understaffing, long hours, and many other problems caused by the for-profit healthcare system. 

History proves that the needed workplace change won’t come without a union and a struggle. These nurses are showing how to do it.