On Sunday, the Venezuelan government and people strongly rejected the deportation of 238 Venezuelans from the United States to El Salvador, where the migrants are subjected to mistreatment and imprisoned under inadequate conditions.

In this regard, the outlet La Iguana TV recalled that the current stigmatization of migrants in the United States would not exist if it were not for the actions of the Venezuelan far-right opposition, which has dedicated itself to creating narratives falsely linking migrants to the Aragua Train, a criminal organization that was dismantled by Venezuelan authorities some time ago.

“The so-called ‘USAID Train,’ led by extremists Maria Corina Machado, Juan Guaido, and Leopoldo Lopez, is responsible for the abuse suffered by Venezuelan migrants who were sent by the U.S. to El Salvador to be interned in the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT),” the Venezuelan outlet stressed.

On Sunday, videos posted on social media showed Venezuelan migrants being deported to El Salvador under degrading conditions—shackled and subjected to mistreatment as if they were criminals.

Relatives of the Venezuelan migrants demanded that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele investigate each case, as many of the deported individuals do not belong to any criminal gang. The families explained that the group of Venezuelans had voluntarily turned themselves in to U.S. authorities to return to Venezuela because they were experiencing hardships in the United States.

Local humanitarian organizations recalled that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has questioned the conditions of the Salvadoran prison system, as inmates are kept away from their families and lack adequate and timely guarantees for their defense.

Once placed in Salvadoran prisons, the deported migrants have no means to understand what crimes they are being charged with, when they will be processed, or what right to legal defense they are granted.

On Sunday, the government of President Nicolas Maduro categorically rejected the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to apply a 1798 law known as the Alien Enemies Act, which links Venezuelan migrants to the Aragua Train to facilitate their mass expulsion.

The Trump administration sent the Venezuelans to El Salvador despite U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg ordering the immediate suspension of deportations based on the Alien Enemies Act.

Recently, the Venezuelan president denounced that the false narrative about the presence of Aragua Train members in the U.S. was promoted by the far right to stigmatize Venezuelan migration. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello also accused the far-right opposition of running a human trafficking network along the Mexico–U.S. border, turning migration into a source of profit.

Source: Telesur

The theatrical events of the previous week between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump, and JD Vance have been grist for all manner of bourgeois media lies designed to obfuscate events. Trump has been touted as pro-Putin. On the other hand, in some so-called anti-imperialist circles he is being hailed as a peace hero.

There is nothing further from the truth on both counts. As of this writing, there are no details of a final peace agreement. Trump’s deal at this date looks more like a 30-day stall (giving Ukraine’s troops a rest and time to resupply arms), rather than a long-term peace agreement that Russia is looking for. What has happened is that the U.S. has resumed sending weapons to Zelensky and that there are continuing talks on how to plunder Ukraine, i.e., “the rare earth mineral deal.”  

It would be important to remind readers that behind Trump are the Pentagon generals and that no recent shifts in tactics or strategy would have been undertaken without their agreement.

Pivot to China

Despite baseless hope that the U.S. has chosen “peace” over the pursuit of imperialist interests — U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels on February 12 (reading off policy drawn from Project 2025), laid out a division of labor in which Europe would continue Washington’s proxy war on Russia while the U.S. pivots to another war of aggression with China in the Asia-Pacific.  

Hegseth’s exact words regarding China: 

 “We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail.” 

This turn of policy has as its backdrop the disintegration of Ukraine’s internal situation, which was based on severe losses on the battlefront. The fact that Ukraine could not win the war was known for some time by the U.S. ruling class and laid out in a RAND Corporation position paper commissioned by the Pentagon. 

Expanding arms industry in Europe

U.S. imperialism has for the time being unilaterally dumped the Ukraine war on its European counterparts to focus on war with China. This has prompted rushed action among European leaders who have followed Washington, lock, stock, and barrel, for the last three years.

The chest-beating in Europe is likely staged to convince the working class of Europe that more sacrifice and suffering is needed and inevitable.

Again, in Hegseth’s own words at the same Brussels meeting, before the uproar swept the press:  

“Expanding your defense industrial base is important, leveling with your citizens about the threat facing Europe. Part of this is speaking frankly with your people about how this threat can only be met by spending more on defense. Two percent is not enough; President Trump has called for 5%, and I agree.”

The European Union and Germany

In response to Washington’s dictates, Europe’s counterparts quickly scrambled to increase military spending. The European Investment Bank lifted rules barring lending for military use, which will also give the green light to other private-sector bankers and bond lenders. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, announced an 800 billion euros war fund over the next four years.   

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new conservative Chancellor-in-waiting, pushed sweeping plans to revive its armed forces with the massive borrowing of over 500 billion euros aimed at upping weapons manufacturing. Germany is the largest European economy. 

Germany’s economy in contraction 

It’s important to note that Germany’s economy has been in severe contraction for the last two years, marked by declining manufacturing. This has resulted in layoffs, including at Volkswagen, which cut 35,000 jobs and shifted some production to Mexico.

The general capitalist decline unleashed in 2008 impacted the world capitalist system and was exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis and the war on Russia. Before the war, European countries depended on cheap gas and mineral imports from Russia and on exports of cars, machinery, equipment, and consumer goods to Russia.

Both sanctions and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, widely attributed to the U.S. Pentagon, have caused scarcity and inflation, which have been borne by Europe’s working class.   

The big winners are U.S. weapons manufacturers

Any increase in weapons manufacturing on European soil will be negligible compared to the European NATO countries’ dependence on U.S. weapons manufacturers. 

Arms imports have more than doubled in the last five years, with 60% from the U.S. This includes almost 500 combat aircraft and other weapons still on order.  

Italy and Britain also bought U.S.- made F-35 fighter jets and Patriot anti-air defense systems. Below is a graph that highlights the U.S.’s position on weapons exports. 

The banks and bond market will be the biggest winners, outside of war manufacturers. The German and European working classes will be the losers. 

Workers must fight back

Every bit of this “rearmament” will cost the working class dearly in the form of greater poverty, cuts in services, higher prices, and slashed wages. Workers’ lives will be at risk if the ruling elite succeeds in the reintroduction of compulsory military service and sending troops to Ukraine.  

The next chapter must be aimed at stopping imperialist war, turning it around to fight the global billionaire class.

Texas Rep. Al Green was absolutely justified for challenging Donald Trump during the wannabe dictator’s March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress.

George Wallace — whose Alabama state troopers clubbed voting rights protesters in Selma 60 years ago — couldn’t have given a more racist speech than Trump did.

When Green, a Black member of Congress, declared “you have no mandate to cut Medicaid,” he was defending 72 million people who depend on the program for their health care. Millions more qualify for it but are not signed up. 

Medicaid covers 62% of those living in nursing homes. It pays the bills for 41% of all births in the U.S.

Nearly half of New York City’s population is enrolled in Medicaid. 

Donald Trump and his co-president Elon Musk want to destroy Medicaid. The billionaire tag team is seeking to wreck Medicare and privatize Social Security as well.

Arkansas and Idaho have already enacted cruel and demagogic “work requirement” legislation that’s designed to kick thousands of poor people off Medicaid. So have Georgia and Ohio.

If people were able to find jobs — with health insurance and accessible by public transit — they wouldn’t need Medicaid in the first place. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 36 million people are in danger of losing their Medicaid benefits under cutbacks being proposed in Congress.

Democratic Party uselessness

After the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson ordered Al Green be taken off the floor, the more than 200 Democratic representatives and senators in attendance should have surrounded Green. It was their duty to defend the 77-year-old disabled Black man while an almost all-white mob of Republicans was mocking him.

Some Democrats, including California representative Maxine Waters, had the good sense and decency to boycott Trump’s speech to his Reichstag deputies.

The least the Democrats could have done was to walk out in solidarity with Al Green. That’s what Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the Black Congressional Caucus, did. 

A few days later, 10 Democrats joined with every Republican in the House of Representatives to censure Al Green. Fortunately, several members of Congress drowned out House Speaker Mike Johnson by singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Johnson tweeted beforehand that Green “disgraced the institution of Congress.” It’s Mike Johnson and every other Trump supporter who’s a disgrace.

Just as bad was the official Democratic Party response to Trump’s speech given by Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin. The former CIA analyst, who served three tours in U.S.-occupied Iraq, actually praised racist Ronald Reagan in her talk. 

When he was California governor, Reagan called his buddy Richard Nixon in the White House and described African delegates to the United Nations as “monkeys.” Later as president, Reagan invaded the Black Caribbean island of Grenada.

Tens of thousands of people died because Reagan ignored the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The washed-up matinee idol deliberately started his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, calling for “states’ rights.” Reagan uttered this white supremacist slogan near where the Black and Jewish martyrs James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Even John Oliver thought that praising Reagan was stupid. The comedian said the two positive things about Reagan were “like, he was our only president to make a movie with a chimp. Or, he’s dead.” 

When she was still a representative and later as a newly elected Senator, Slotkin voted for the misnamed Lankin Riley act. This hate legislation used the murder of a Georgia college student to allow immigrants who have been arrested, not convicted, to be deported. This takes away the presumption of innocence — a fundamental democratic right of anyone facing trial — from those not citizens.

Slotkin was selected to give the rebuttal to Trump just because of her pro-war and anti-immigrant stances.

Repulsive, bigoted slander 

Trump told one lie after another in his 100-minute long speech to Congress. He even claimed that the U.S. spent $8 million to make mice transgender — a whopper similar to the claim of nutjob Alex Jones that frogs were turning gay. 

While Hitler blamed Jewish people for every problem, Trump murders Palestinians and uses transgender people and immigrants as scapegoats.

Many of Trump’s biggest lies were about Black people and Africa.

With no proof whatsoever, he accused Stacey Abrams — the well-known Black political figure from Georgia — of stealing from a $1.9 billion government program. 

Trump mocked Lesotho, claiming that no one has heard of the African country of over two million people. This was also a not-so-disguised swipe at South Africa, whose territory surrounds Lesotho.

While Trump wants to kick out millions of immigrants, he’s offering U.S. citizenship to the white Boer farmers in South Africa who have exploited Black people for centuries.

Trump also bragged that “we’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity.” One of Trump’s first acts after being inaugurated was to revoke a 60-year-old executive order establishing affirmative action in hiring by the U.S. Government.

He and Musk are trying to fire hundreds of thousands of government employees. Black workers account for 18.6% of overall federal employment. Twenty-nine percent of the 640,000 post office workers are Black.

Trump’s allies in Congress want to cut $1 billion from the budget of nearly half-Black Washington, D.C. They’re forcing the city to paint over its Black Lives Matter plaza.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, it will take even more millions in the streets to stop Trump, Musk and all the other billionaires. We can’t depend on the Democratic Party leadership — who just capitulated to Trump by not stopping his budget in the Senate — to save us.

That’s our job. We need to follow the example of Los Angeles activists who are stopping ICE from launching many deportation raids. More demonstrations are needed to protect the post offices and VA hospitals.

May Day marches have to be organized to defend immigrants and all working and poor people. The labor movement should call a new solidarity day.

Only the power of the people can stop Trump and Musk.

The Trump administration announced on March 10 that 47,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers would no longer have collective bargaining rights. The vast majority of these workers perform passenger screening and other security responsibilities at the United States’ various airports. 

The loss of these rights means that TSA workers will no longer be able to legally negotiate working conditions such as hours, health insurance, and progressive discipline. Essentially, TSA is now at liberty to treat its workforce as poorly as it pleases. 

TSA has only been a union shop since 2011, bringing a short union tenure to an abrupt close. The AFGE campaign to organize the TSA workers lasted almost a decade and its conclusion represented a huge step forward for an underpaid and overworked airport security labor force. 

Out of the 47,000 TSA workers in the bargaining unit, more than 25,000 were dues-paying members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest labor union in the federal government. The aim of this policy is clear: to break what is left of public-sector organized labor. 

This is the latest in a series of anti-worker policies forced upon the federal labor force by the Trump and Musk regime. All workers and progressives must stand with federal workers as they face these attacks on their livelihoods and their basic rights as workers. 

Union jobs for all workers! Unions yes! Musk no! 

On March 14, 2018, the news of an attempt on Marielle Franco’s life arrived as a notification in a WhatsApp group. It was a shock, but not unimaginable for a Black, bisexual woman born in the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro who embodied the struggles of the working class to be persecuted in Brazil. 

Franco was on her way home from a roundtable discussion organized by the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), the same party through which she was elected to the Rio de Janeiro City Council in 2016. Franco left the event accompanied by her driver, Anderson Gomes, and a parliamentary aide, Fernanda Chaves. 

Shortly after departing, their car was ambushed in the Estácio neighborhood. The assassins, who were in another vehicle, fired multiple shots. Franco was killed, with three bullets to the head and one to the neck. Gomes was also fatally shot. Fernanda Chaves survived the attack. The investigation into the murders revealed that the ammunition used was linked to a batch sold to the Federal Police.

Throughout her career, Marielle Franco had been a vocal advocate for ending police brutality in Rio de Janeiro, a city notorious for its high levels of police violence. Between 2019 and 2023, the city’s police were reported to have killed 21,498 people, making it one of the deadliest cities in the world in terms of police violence. Given the likelihood of underreporting, the actual number of fatalities is even higher. Franco’s death signaled that her advocacy for victims of police violence had made her a target: someone was deeply bothered by her presence as an advocate in the City Council.

Six years later, in October 2024, two former police officers, Ronnie Lessa and Élcio de Queiroz, were convicted for their roles in Franco’s murder. Lessa received a sentence of 78 years and 9 months, while Queiroz was sentenced to 59 years. Despite this conviction, the crucial question of who ordered Franco’s assassination remains unanswered. 

As a Black, bisexual woman from the working class, Franco embodied the intersectional struggle beyond the borders of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. Her legacy will not be forgotten, and we will never stop demanding the answer to who ordered her murder. 

Marielle Franco, presente! 

On Saturday, March 8, women, transgender and queer organizers in the People’s Power Assembly (PPA) and Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha of Baltimore held a rally, march, and teach-in to commemorate International Working Women’s Day, one of the major initiatives of the newly launched People’s Fightback Network. 

A spirited group including participants from the early Women’s March gathered outside the Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center to hear opening remarks. 

Close to 50 people took to the streets, with chants of “When women’s [trans] [queer] [Black] [immigrant] lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” and “Trump says ‘Get back!’ and we say ‘Fight back!’” echoing off buildings. 

They marched to the Women’s Jail at Greenmount Avenue, where a mini rally was held. Joyce Butler from the People’s Power Assembly delivered a message from Van Green about the terrible conditions women prisoners face at this jail. Melinda Butterfield of the Struggle for Socialism Party (SFSP) spoke about Trump’s attacks on trans prisoners in federal prisons, where they’re being forced into cell units based on their assignment at birth, and not on actual identity. 

The protesters then took to the streets again and marched all the way back up to Calvert Street Park, where the community dinner and teach-in was held. It was reported that the final march, due to Calvert Street being a one-way street, caused significant traffic delays. Again, considering the group’s size, being able to command the street for the entire duration was an incredible demonstration of strength and unity!  At one point in the march, several young children took the lead.

Melinda Butterfield (SFSP) kicked off the teach-in as the keynote speaker, emphasizing that “the fascists running the government plan to eradicate us [the trans community],” and urging “the left to think bigger about how to fight back” by “coupling local work and mutual aid with a larger, national and international fightback, one that seeks to mobilize millions and build alternative forms of political power.” 

Other women/LGBTQIA+ speakers at the teach-in included:

Apryle Everly (PPA & SFSP), who read a statement honoring the revolutionary legacy of Leila Khaled, a prominent Palestinian woman resistance leader who served in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Fidel Green (PPA), who spoke about Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old biracial trans man, and Tahiry Broom, a 29-year-old Black trans woman, both of whom were murdered. Despite clear evidence that both these murders were hate crimes, no such charges are currently being pursued against the people who killed them.

Jace Carter (PPA & SFSP), who spoke about reclaiming feminism as a working-class tool for liberation, rather than continuing to allow the ruling class to use it as a tool of U.S. imperialist propaganda. They also spoke about the history of the women’s liberation movement in socialist China. They urged solidarity with the people of China and Korea who continue to resist an escalating threat of U.S.-Asian NATO proxy war against both countries.

(During Jace’s speech, an angry heckler passing by the park attempted to disrupt the teach-in, but Jace continued reading through their speech. A few PPA members in the audience moved swiftly to de-escalate the situation and guided the person away from the teach-in so it could continue without further disruption.)

Khaliah Adhiambo Deya (Progressive Labor Party), who read a solidarity statement from the PLP encouraging supporters to “fight for communism beyond a reform, beyond recognition, beyond the ability to be seen as a human being, because that is the reality that the working class truly deserves.”

Joyce B (PPA), who read a solidarity statement from Tia Hamilton, owner of Urban Reads Bookstore, a Black-owned radical bookstore in the Waverly community. Tia and the store have recently been under constant racist threats of attack from far-right white supremacists, but the local community has rallied to their defense.

Sharon Black (Women In Struggle), who gave closing remarks highlighting the need for the working class to continue to interconnect all of our struggles against fascism.

In recent years, the United States, France, and Canada have provided massive military and police aid to Haiti, while, since last June, foreign troops continue to arrive in the country as part of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS). This “support” is not given to resolve Haiti’s security problems but rather to strengthen the control and repressive apparatus of the Western imperialist countries in a key neo-colony at this time of crisis in the world capitalist system.

Haiti’s strife and chaos are in large part the result of a profound popular uprising by Haiti’s ever-growing lumpen-proletariat, led by an array of “ghetto” armed groups with different histories, ethics, levels of discipline, ideological outlooks, leadership styles, and survival strategies. But they all now agree (at least in principle) that Haiti’s “system” must change, and they are not willing to surrender the power that they now wield to the corrupt political class and its local bourgeois and foreign masters that once used them as pawns.

The imperialists are determined to crush this autonomous popular power, which could become even more dangerous if it learns, develops, embraces, and articulates more clearly a scientific, revolutionary, and consciously anti-imperialist and socialist outlook and programme in the near future.

In Washington’s eyes, this would be, in effect, the frightening emergence of another Cuba (only 50 miles away to the west) and that revolutionary virus could also “infect” the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola and is home to many Haitian migrants and Dominicans with Haitian parentage or family.

Such a development could also threaten the security, from the U.S. perspective, of the Windward Passage, a critical commercial maritime route between Haiti and Cuba for goods from the U.S. Eastern seaboard to the Panama Canal.

So the imperialist trio have stepped up their support to the Haitian National Police (PNH) and their MSS proxies so as to avoid their own direct military intervention (as in 1994 and 2004) and getting their hands and boots dirty. Furthermore, they are militarily and financially overextended with the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Having failed to convince China and Russia to convert the MSS into a genuine UN “peace-keeping” operation, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave up on sending “blue helmets” to Haiti and is settling instead for continuation of the anemic MSS.

Thus the UN is trying to raise $908 million to pay for another year of MSS deployment in Haiti to install an “elected” government that will sign a bilateral 10-year military and economic pact with Washington called the Global Fragility Act (GFA), which we at Haïti Liberté have repeatedly warned about. The new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear that this is still Washington’s goal, despite the wrecking ball that the new Trump administration has taken to many institutions of the “deep state,” like the soft-power juggernaut USAID, which was to be one of the GFA’s pillars.

Already from 2021 through 2024, Washington has done a lot. Just in the past year, the U.S. gave Haiti 10 all-terrain armored jeeps on May 19, 2024, and then it delivered 24 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) MaxxPro vehicles on Aug. 23, 2024. Washington’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) provided the PNH with 10 armored personnel carriers (APCs) from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 2024. On Feb. 14, 2025, the INL again delivered 20 Roshel Captain armored vehicles to Haiti.

The U.S. and Canada had also delivered a number of Canadian-made INKAS armored cars to Haiti in October 2022. On Feb. 15, 2020, Haiti purchased 15 INKAS armored vehicles from Canada, received by President Jovenel Moïse and Prime Minister Jean Michel Lapin.

France also gave the PNH four armored vehicles worth one million euros on Dec. 7, 2024. Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Canada handed over 42 all-terrain vehicles, out of 59 to be given, to the PNH on Feb. 6, 2025.

Even the United Arab Emirates (UAE) gave the PNH 20 armored vehicles on Aug. 23, 2024.

Despite all these vehicles given, the neocolonial masters are not satisfied with nor trusting of the PNH’s repressive capacity, so they now have close to 1,000 foreign troops as a back-up in the form of the MSS. But they have to keep them equipped.

So on Feb. 10, Le Nouvelliste explained how Washington had given the PNH plenty of “Weapons, Ammunition, and Vehicles” including “nine vehicles, two trucks, two backhoe loaders, two wheel loaders, and a lowboy.” Among the weapons delivered were 600 rifles and an unspecified amount of ammo.

“This is a donation valued at six million dollars,” then President Leslie Voltaire declared at the ceremony to receive it from the INL. “All the equipment is armored. It will strengthen the police’s operational capacity in the fight against armed gangs.”

In addition to all this, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) increased the PNH’s budget to 28.6 billion gourdes ($218 million) and that of the Haitian Armed Forces to 8.8 billion gourdes ($67 million), or 37.4 billion gourdes ($285 million) for the Haitian state’s two armed institutions. (With a budget of $30.57 billion in 2025, spending on national security represents only 0.93% of GDP, but that may change with the new President Fritz Alphonse Jean.)

Despite everything, the armed groups have gained territory and intercepted and burned half a dozen armored vehicles in working-class neighborhoods. State universities are almost no longer functioning in the metropolitan area, schools are closed in the areas held by armed groups, and the underprivileged masses’ informal commercial activities are at a standstill. The masses’ living conditions are becoming untenable, car traffic is slowing down, and the displaced population has reached over 500,000.

The TPC authorities appear to be carefree and only focussed on their personal interests. Their emoluments and expenses are exorbitant in a country where the popular masses and the proletarian layers live in deplorable and unacceptable conditions; Political quarrels over the sharing of power complicate any resolution of the crisis.

This entire bloated military and police arsenal is useless. Haiti’s security problem is a result of the popular masses’ living conditions, to the level of exploitation of the oppressed, and to the impunity associated with corruption.

Progressives must insist on building an autonomous tool for the popular masses to fully emancipate themselves from exploitation and domination. The masses cannot count on the traditional politicians, who are merely pawns of the Western imperialist powers. On the contrary, in the face of the generalized insecurity, the national liberation struggle’s vanguard must take advantage of technological advances to discern and define a theory for Haiti’s national liberation struggle, inspired by Marxism-Leninism, and maintain a presence on social networks for the work of raising awareness among the popular masses. This can bring a permanent mobilization to thwart the imperialist countries’ neocolonial plundering and the waste of the state’s meager resources through orchestrated corruption, nepotism, and overbilling.

It is imperative to destroy the repressive apparatus (army, police, militia, multinational force) and ideological apparatus (school, church, university, and media) of the neoliberal capitalist state in Haiti (which only serves Western powers) to build a socialist society.

No to the military occupation of Haiti.
No to the renewal of the mandate of the MSS in Haiti.
Progressive Haitians, let us unite to struggle for Haiti’s national liberation.
Freedom or Death! Homeland or Death!

Source: Haïti Liberté

Defend the Right to Organize, Protest

Resist Trump’s Gestapo Tactics

Shut Down Immigrant Prisons, Abolish ICE

Palestinian activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was abducted by ICE agents on March 8 and was transferred to the LaSalle detention center (a for-profit ICE prison) in Jena, Louisiana. Yesterday, after major protests, a federal judge temporarily halted his deportation. 

This act of political repression is a major escalation by Trump. Already, thousands of our immigrant siblings suffer unjust detention, often in retaliation for organizing for better conditions in their workplaces and communities. During Trump’s first term, ICE agents carried out a mass raid of 680 workers at a poultry processing plant in Mississippi. Many were organizing with the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and had just won a $3.75 million settlement against Koch Foods for wage theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment.

The persecution of Khalil is a replay of the Palmer Raids which targeted immigrants as a means of crushing the growing movement within the U.S. for workers’ rights, women’s liberation, and more. Just as the Palmer Raids were carried out to retaliate against a heroic strike of miners — organized jointly by citizen and immigrant workers — the detention of Khalil is meant to crush the progressive student movement which exploded in protest of the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine. 

Trump is threatening to withhold disaster relief for state and city governments that do not bend to his fascist dictates. He is threatening to defund schools that teach history. The mass firings carried out by Musk and Trump are also part of their campaign of terror. They want to crush the movement for gender equality, environmental justice, Black liberation — anything that stands in the way of their efforts to squeeze as much profit from us as they can.

Our power to resist Trump’s fascist moves derives from our unity, our ability to act as one.

Stand up for our immigrant siblings and demand full legal and labor rights for them all. Close the camps.

Stand with our Palestinian siblings as they struggle to liberate their homeland from the grips of U.S.-funded fascism. Their struggle is ours.

#NotOneMore #AbolishICE #FreeMahmoudKhalil

Workers Voice Socialist Movement is based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Talk given by Melinda Butterfield of the Struggle for Socialism Party at the International Women’s Day March and Teach-In in Baltimore on March 8, 2025.

Video on Instagram

Hello friends, comrades and siblings. Happy International Women’s Day.

Thank you to the organizers for inviting me to speak today. I admit that I really struggled with what I would say. On an important occasion like this, I’d like to give an inspiring, hopeful message about historic victories women have won and the battles ahead. 

But as a trans woman living in Donald Trump’s United States, it’s hard to find anything positive to say. All of our communities are being attacked. The whole working class is under siege. 

My immigrant sisters are subject to ICE terror and deportation, with their families being ripped apart. My Palestinian sisters are engulfed in ongoing genocide in Gaza, despite the ceasefire agreement, with Israel not only making military attacks, but cutting off food, medicine and electricity. My Black sisters here in Baltimore are mourning spouses and children murdered by police or jailed.

And right now, transgender people hold the distinction of being targets for eradication.

Let me say it again: The fascists running the government plan to eradicate us.

It’s taking a toll.

About 10 days ago, an Indigenous trans woman from out west, someone I respect and admire, posted a suicide note on social media. She’d been targeted for months by white supremacist groups. They hung “wanted” posters with her photo in her neighborhood calling her a “groomer.” She was exhausted from fighting so hard for so long, she wrote. She was simply done.

My heart ached for her, for our community’s loss if she went through with it. But I understood. I’ve felt the same way more times than I care to admit recently.

A few days ago, a local friend posted an update to let us know she’s still alive and getting help.

One of the lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order banning gender-affirming care for trans youth was brought by the parents of a young person who committed suicide out of fear of losing access to health care. It’s only been in the last several years that significant numbers of trans kids have been able to get the support and treatment they need, and to see it ripped away is horrifying for those of us who were forced to go through the wrong puberty.

Every trans suicide is a murder.

I’m not here to plead for sympathy and understanding. Pleading has never won queers anything. But I do want you to understand what it means if trans genocide is allowed to continue without resistance from the rest of the working class. 

It will not stop with us – the fascist death machine will come for you and yours, sooner or later.

Attack on trans lives

Trump and his Project 2025 handlers launched an all-out attack on trans lives his first day back in office. A steady stream of executive orders declared that the U.S. government does not recognize the existence of trans people; that we will be deprived of life-saving health care; that we may not use public restrooms; that trans women in federal prisons will be forcibly detransitioned and thrown into men’s prisons to face rape and torture.

Our ability to travel safely between states was already extremely limited, just like our pregnant cisgender sisters. Now our passports are being invalidated, too. The State Department is systematically making it impossible for trans people to leave or enter the country.

Government websites and facilities have been scrubbed of all references to trans people – even the Stonewall National Monument, where trans people of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera led one of the first great battles of the modern queer rights movement.

Trans students are not to be allowed to use school restrooms, play sports, or have their true names and identities acknowledged by school staff. Teachers who do so are threatened with arrest as sex offenders.

The brunt of these attacks will fall first and hardest on Black, Brown and Indigenous trans people, who are already the biggest targets of anti-trans violence. 

Trump’s executive orders are being challenged in court, and often have no legal basis. But what matters is that institutions and companies are rushing to comply anyway.

Hospital systems in New York, California and other states immediately fell in line, cancelling appointments and prescriptions for trans youth. Threatened with funding cuts, domestic violence and rape support groups dropped all reference to trans people.

DoorDash, the food delivery company, has ordered its workers to use their “legal name” when making deliveries instead of chosen names. Many trans people rely on this kind of work, and this decision puts their lives in danger. 

A friend in the South who works for DoorDash told me, “I’m so scared.”

First they came

What does it mean when official policy restricts one small group in society from existing in public, unable to access health care, find a job or hold onto one? What does it mean when this group is cut off from the ability to travel, while politicians and media relentlessly blame them for society’s ills? 

What does it mean when this group is deliberately isolated from other communities that should be natural allies? What does it mean when violence against them is not only tolerated, but encouraged?

I believe it’s a warning to every other marginalized group, the working class, and anyone who thinks about fighting back: You could be next.

Trans people make up an estimated 1% to 2% of the population. The vast majority of us are workers, but there’s no sector of the economy that is reliant on trans people in the way that agriculture, construction, and restaurants are dependent on immigrant labor. To the ruling class, we are expendable. We can be exterminated as an example to others, and since trans lives are so devalued, they believe few will rise to object on our behalf.

In my trans community, in New York, everyone is hurrying to secure whatever health care and documentation they can, establishing networks for DIY care, helping each other with mutual aid, and packing emergency go bags. We all know the moment is fast approaching when we may have to flee or be killed. It’s simply understood among trans people that this is the situation we face.

But I think it’s important for reproductive rights activists, community organizers, union members, Amazon workers, unemployed people to understand what’s happening. Because the only way any of us survive what’s coming is if we take seriously the need to protect and support each other.

The word is solidarity: An injury to one is an injury to all.

No more business as usual

We need the left to think bigger about how to fight back. It’s not just that electoralism and the Democratic Party have proven utterly bankrupt in the fight against fascism. Local work and mutual aid are crucial, BUT. If that work isn’t coupled with a larger, national and international fightback, one that seeks to mobilize millions and build alternative forms of political power, then all it amounts to is hospice care, not liberation.

Business as usual is over. Millions already have or soon will lose their jobs and benefits. Millions will be displaced. It’s already begun. 

What would it look like to mobilize the affected communities and movements all over the country to occupy Washington, D.C., and refuse to leave? How would that require us to think about things like self-defense and community defense, in ways we haven’t seen since the Black Panthers and the Civil Rights Movement?

We need to think more inclusively as our enemies try to make us more isolated from each other. We need to think about what kind of power we need to challenge fascism and genocide.

For me, hope lies in the example of the Palestinian people, and especially Palestinian women. I’m old enough to remember when having a Palestinian speaker at a movement event was rare and controversial. I remember when the inclusion of Palestine solidarity was considered a reason by many to split the anti-war movement. 

But in the last 18 months, the whole world rose up for Gaza – because against all odds, the Palestinians never surrendered. They never gave up on the dream of liberating their homeland, and never will.

Trans people will continue to be born. We walk through fire to be our true selves. Like the people of Palestine, trans people will struggle, will endure, generation after generation, until liberation.

Please repeat after me:
Trans women are women!
Trans men are men!
Nonbinary people are who they say they are!
Intersex people exist!
Reproductive rights, transition rights: Our bodies, our choice!
Death before detransition!