On Sept. 18, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to create a “day of remembrance” for the racist, fascist agitator Charlie Kirk. The date they chose, Oct. 14, is also George Floyd’s birthday.

This is a shocking choice. Charlie Kirk called George Floyd a “scumbag.” By honoring Kirk on Floyd’s birthday, the Senate is sending a clear message. It seems to be celebrating a man who spreads racist hate while ignoring the ongoing fight for justice that Floyd’s death started.

A call for a unified day of resistance on Oct. 14 has gone out in response. The Senate’s resolution “is not about honoring Charlie Kirk,” organizers of the call charge. “It’s about smothering a movement that refuses to die.”

The real crisis: militarism at home and abroad

The Senate’s move is a deliberate attempt to co-opt a date and strengthen a reactionary agenda of white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, and perpetual war. The goal is to divert public attention from critical issues, including:

• The ongoing genocide in Gaza.
• Escalating war plans against Venezuela.
• ICE raids, deportations, and the racist war on immigrant workers.
• The deployment of troops and federal agents in U.S. cities like Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and Los Angeles.

The preparation for potential widespread martial law — a concern underscored by reports that President Donald Trump recently told generals to prepare for war on the streets of U.S. cities.

This domestic militarism is linked to a broader war on the working class. The corporate media, organizers state, would rather focus on Kirk than on the reality that more than 300,000 government workers have been fired, hundreds of thousands more are being robbed of their right to unionize, and people are losing access to health care, food assistance, and housing.

October 14 as a test

Against that backdrop, organizers are calling to reclaim Oct. 14 in Floyd’s memory — with action, not applause lines. The ask is deliberately broad: If you can’t join a march, hold a teach-in; if you can’t host a forum, stage a banner drop; if you can’t mobilize a crowd, hold a picket sign with your union, your community group, your neighbors. The measure of the day isn’t scale but participation.

Suggested actions:

• Speak-outs at schools, transit hubs, and workplaces
• Rallies and marches
• Teach-ins and indoor forums
• Banner drops, art interventions, and vigils

The following have endorsed the call: Arm the Dollz; Black Alliance for Peace; Bronx Anti-War Coalition; December 12th Movement; Freedom Road Socialist Organization; International Action Center; International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Jazz Against Genocide; Mobilization4Mumia; Mutual Aid Scientific Socialism; National Alliance Against Racist Political Repression; National Immigrant Solidarity Network; People’s Organization for Progress; Resist U.S.-Led War Movement; Struggle for Socialism Party; United National Antiwar Coalition; Veterans For Peace, Chapter 021, N.J.; Workers World Party.

To list or find an event: unac.notowar.net/list-your-action-for-october-14-no-to-fascism-and-war-commemorate-george-floyd/

Oct. 10 — On Friday morning, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced what federal workers had been dreading: “The RIFs have begun.” With that social media post, the Trump administration launched mass layoffs across multiple agencies during an active government shutdown — an unprecedented escalation in the war on public sector workers.

By Friday evening, pink slips were flying at the Environmental Protection Agency, the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Treasury. The administration wasn’t even trying to hide its glee. Trump himself posted an AI-generated video depicting Vought as the Grim Reaper, scythe in hand, stalking through federal buildings as workers queue for unemployment.

This isn’t normal politics. This is class warfare dressed up as budget management.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees immediately filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, asking U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to halt the mass firings pending an Oct. 16 hearing. The unions are fighting an uphill battle against an administration that sees the shutdown not as a crisis to resolve, but as an opportunity to gut the federal workforce.

“These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day,” AFSCME president Lee Saunders warned. 

AFGE president Everett Kelley was more direct: “In AFGE’s 93 years of existence under several presidential administrations — including during Trump’s first term — no president has ever decided to fire thousands of furloughed workers during a government shutdown.”

But the layoffs are only part of the story. The Trump administration is also threatening something even more audacious: wage theft on a massive scale.

From layoffs to wage theft

A leaked White House memo argues that furloughed federal workers — as many as 750,000 people — may not receive back pay after the shutdown ends. This would violate the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which Trump himself signed during the last shutdown. But the administration is claiming the law has been “misconstrued,” seizing on technical amendments to argue that back pay must be specifically appropriated by Congress.

Asked Tuesday whether furloughed workers would be compensated, Trump responded like a mob boss: “I would say it depends on who we’re talking about. … For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

This is the language of authoritarianism. The message is clear: Loyalty to Trump determines whether you eat.

Federal workers are understandably terrified. “Trump saying he won’t pay us really got me worried,” an EPA employee told reporters. “What’s crazy is that the law is there in black and white. It couldn’t be more clear that legally furloughed employees ‘shall be paid.’ There’s no room to interpret it.” 

A Smithsonian worker expressed broader fears: “There could be a possibility where Trump decides he no longer wants to fund the Smithsonian. They can pretty much take down the entire Smithsonian.”

The two factories that tell the story

Walk through Fort Worth, Texas, and you’ll see the story of a declining empire written in steel and concrete.

At one end of town stands a vast Lockheed Martin plant, where workers in clean rooms assemble guidance systems for missiles. The plant runs three shifts a day. Its parking lot is full, the lights never go off, and the hum of war production fills the night.

A few miles away, the old General Motors transmission factory sits in silence. The windows are broken. Weeds push through the cracked pavement. The GM plant closed in 2009 — 1,100 workers lost their jobs. Lockheed opened its new plant in 2015. It employs 450.

 “Do the math,” a laid-off GM worker told a local reporter. “That’s what happened to this country.”

Capitalism can’t sit still

Corporate media calls this “globalization” or “market forces.” In reality, the U.S. economy has turned from one that made things into one that serves monopoly corporations and finance capital.

Capitalism is a system that must expand or die. A company that doesn’t crush competitors and extract ever-greater profit disappears. That’s true for corporations and for capitalist countries alike.

Profit doesn’t come from “innovation.” It comes from us — the working class. In every shift, part of the day covers wages; the rest produces unpaid value for the boss. That stolen time is the source of profit. The more the bosses can stretch it, the richer they get.

That’s why every struggle over housing, food, and health care is ultimately a fight over who controls the value workers create.

They shipped the jobs away — on purpose

For decades, U.S. corporations could afford higher wages because they had the world’s most advanced industry and access to cheap food and energy. But as other countries industrialized, the bosses sought new ways to keep profits up — slashing wages, busting unions, and exporting jobs.

Manufacturing’s share of the U.S. economy has dropped from about 16% in the 1990s to a little over 10% today, and the U.S. slice of global factory output has fallen as well. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) reports that the U.S. share of world trade in manufactured goods was 7.9% in 2023.

China now produces more than 30% of the world’s manufactured goods. This isn’t just an economic change — it’s a reshaping of working-class power across the globe.

But there’s one exception. The U.S. still clearly dominates in arms production: Between 2020 and 2024, it accounted for 43% of global arms exports, making it the single largest supplier by a wide margin.

The war economy

Defense spending, military contracts, and state procurement dominate advanced U.S. manufacturing. 

Fighter jets, drones, submarines, and missile systems — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics get billions in guaranteed government contracts.

Even the tech giants are in on the game. Amazon’s cloud hosts military intelligence. Microsoft’s $22 billion contract builds “battlefield cloud computing.” Google designed AI to help drones analyze targets.

Big tech AI was built on government-funded research and development and is maintained on Pentagon contracts. The military-industrial complex has moved into Silicon Valley.

Engineers and machinists who could be building trains, housing, or clean energy systems are instead building killing machines. Factories that could make solar panels produce missile components. Entire towns depend on defense contracts to survive.

Every war or near-war means billions more for the weapons industry. Lockheed and Raytheon make their biggest profits not in all-out wars, but in endless, low-level conflict that never ends.

An economy that needs constant war to keep the assembly lines running isn’t strong — it’s sick.

The dollar weapon and the empire’s decay

How does Washington afford endless subsidies for billionaires and corporations while cutting aid for workers? Through the dollar system that acts like a global siphon.

For decades, oil, food, and nearly all global trade have been priced in U.S. dollars. That forces countries to hold dollars, use Wall Street banks, and buy U.S. Treasury bonds just to keep trade moving. Wall Street turned the dollar into a weapon that props up the empire while draining the world.

When Washington froze $300 billion of Russia’s reserves in 2022, every country saw the warning: Their wealth is safe in U.S. banks only as long as they obey Washington.

Now, nations from China and India to Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, as well as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are moving away from the dollar — buying gold, trading in their own currencies, and building payment systems independent of Wall Street. On Oct. 7, 2025, gold broke $4,000 an ounce — a sign that the dollar’s grip is slipping, along with fears of Trump’s expanding war drive: trade wars, wars in Palestine and Ukraine, and the war buildup against Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

As the financial foundation weakens, the empire turns inward — seeking to preserve profit through repression at home.

Class war at home

While Wall Street and big corporations get blank checks, workers and the poor get the knife.

Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is an assault on survival. It cuts food stamps and Medicaid — pushing millions toward hunger and sickness. It forces people to “work” 80 hours a month, paid or unpaid “volunteer,” to keep health coverage — flooding the labor market with desperate workers and driving wages down.

Fifteen million people will lose health care under the new rules. That’s not an accident — it’s the point. A hungry, sick worker is easier to control.

The administration has purged hundreds of thousands of federal workers and gutted labor protections.

The austerity cuts, surveillance programs, and privatization drives are not separate events. They are a coordinated offensive — a dictatorship of capital to impose deeper exploitation in a crisis economy.

There’s always money for war. Never enough to keep people alive.

War doesn’t build — it destroys

Politicians love to say that military spending “creates jobs.” That’s half true.

Yes, war contracts make factories busy. But war production eats itself. You can’t live in a bomb. You can’t eat a missile. You can’t recycle a dead body.

Weapons don’t build wealth — they burn it.

World War II didn’t end the Great Depression because war is productive. It ended because it put idle factories and workers back to work — but at enormous human and material cost. After the war, the U.S. dominated only because every rival’s factories lay in ruins. That’s not happening again.

The empire abroad, repression at home

U.S. power abroad rests on the same foundation as inequality at home — domination through finance, coercion, and debt. Global South countries are forced to borrow in dollars, privatize services, and open their markets to U.S. corporations. At home, those same corporations cut wages, bust unions, and evict tenants.

The working class, both here and abroad, pays the same price for the same system.

To survive, capitalism must expand — into new markets, new resources, and new forms of exploitation. But every expansion creates new crises. The system’s hunger for profit is endless, and so is the destruction it brings — from shuttered towns in Texas to the burning forests of the Amazon.

Capitalism’s problem is not mismanagement or bad policy. It is the system itself — a machine that devours workers and the planet alike. To end its devastation, we need not reform it but replace it with an economy built on human need, not profit.

We are told, endlessly, that we live in the age of the entrepreneur. You know the story: a lone genius tinkering in a garage, pulling miracles out of solder and silicon, eventually conquering the world with nothing but grit, brains, and a half-dead Macintosh. This is the catechism of Silicon Valley.

However, if you follow the wires backward, the story is entirely different. The most significant technologies of our time — the internet, GPS, touchscreen devices, and even artificial intelligence — were not born in garages. They were incubated in government laboratories, nourished on Pentagon contracts, and carried into the world on the shoulders of public universities.

From the Cold War’s sprawling defense labs to the current supremacy of Google’s AI empire, the state has been the real venture capitalist: planner, financier, and enforcer. It was the government that absorbed the risks, that spent billions on projects whose payoff might take decades, or never arrive at all. And when those gambles produced results, private corporations were waiting to privatize them.

The working class supplied the brains and the labor, as graduate students, engineers, and technicians, often underwritten by public grants. The capitalist class reaped the profits. Innovation, in other words, was socialized. Wealth was privatized.

The marriage of state and monopoly

There is an enduring myth that big business and big government stand on opposite ends of U.S. life. But if you look at Wall Street bailouts or Big Tech’s entanglement with the Pentagon, you see something closer to a marriage.

The pattern is consistent: subsidies for research and development, bailouts when markets collapse, regulations drafted to suit monopolies, copyright and patent law weaponized to keep rivals at bay, and defense contracts that run into the tens of billions. The state doesn’t just oversee the game — it bankrolls the team.

Monopoly capitalism has never meant a weakened state. It has always meant a stronger one: imperialist powers fusing state resources with corporate power, ensuring their “national champions” can outgun competitors abroad. The more advanced the technology — especially in the case of artificial intelligence — the clearer this fusion becomes.

Forget the garage

The myth of the tinkering genius is fictional; the reality is blunt.

• The Internet began life as ARPANET, a Pentagon communications project designed to survive nuclear war.
• GPS was conceived and maintained by the U.S. Air Force before being transferred to the U.S. Space Force.
• Radar, microwaves, composite materials — all poured forth from wartime research budgets in the 1940s and 1950s.

The sequence rarely varies: The state socializes risk, spending billions on long-horizon research. Once the technology proves viable, it is delivered into the hands of private corporations, which harvest the profits while the government is left with the costs.

It is, arguably, the largest wealth transfer in modern history. But it is disguised under the genteel euphemism of “innovation.”

The University-Industrial Complex

The state’s role extends far beyond the Pentagon. Public universities, lubricated by federal grants, train the engineers and computer scientists who are quickly absorbed into the orbit of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Faculty labs — often government-funded — produce breakthroughs in algorithms and hardware that are then patented, licensed, or outright purchased by private firms.

The result is a vast ecosystem: the military, public universities, government research agencies, and corporate monopolies locked together. Far from being “footloose” or stateless, Silicon Valley’s firms are firmly tied to the U.S. empire, rooted in infrastructure and research pipelines subsidized by the public.

Google is not Google without DARPA (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Microsoft is not Microsoft without the National Science Foundation. Amazon Web Services is not AWS without Pentagon contracts.

Case study: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is the purest distillation of this system.

• Military birth. From the Cold War onward, the Pentagon poured money into AI for logistics, surveillance, and battle management. DARPA kept the field alive during its lean decades.
• Government-funded breakthroughs. The intellectual backbone of AI — machine learning and neural nets — emerged from university labs funded by the state. Today, the government remains the single largest customer for AI applications, from predictive policing to drone warfare.
• Privatized profits. Tech monopolies scoop up researchers trained at government expense, buy the data infrastructure, and commercialize algorithms whose foundations were laid with federal money.

The result is a textbook demonstration of monopoly capitalism: costs socialized, profits privatized.

Empire, not entrepreneurship

AI isn’t a triumph of the free market. It’s proof that big government and big business still move in lockstep, working for empire.

The state remains the ultimate venture capitalist, underwriting research, guaranteeing markets, and shoring up monopolies when they falter. Innovation is steered not toward public needs — such as clean energy, public health, and accessible housing — but toward war, surveillance, and corporate control.

The history of U.S. technology isn’t about daring entrepreneurs. It is the story of monopoly capital and the imperialist state, marching in lockstep. Until that bond is broken, technology will remain what it has been for more than half a century: a servant of empire, rather than of people.

President Donald Trump’s appearance before hundreds of generals and admirals at Quantico was not a routine address. It was a declaration of war — not on foreign rivals, but on the people in the U.S. 

At a time of austerity budgets and cuts everywhere, the two-hour special assembly of all admirals and generals in command positions worldwide cost approximately $6 million, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It could have been done on Zoom for a few thousand dollars.

Flanked by his so-called Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Trump laid out plans to transform the U.S. military into a domestic instrument of repression, targeting immigrants, Black and Brown communities, unions, women, LGBTQ+ people and anyone who dares resist his agenda.

“We’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump told the brass. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.” He announced the creation of a “quick reaction force” to put down civil disturbances, casting protest as an “enemy from within.” 

He went further: U.S. cities, he suggested, should be used as “training grounds” for the armed forces. The meaning was clear — the normalization of military occupation on U.S. soil.

This was not theater. Trump has already sent National Guard units and Marines to Los Angeles, ordered federal forces into Portland, overseen the occupation of Washington, D.C., and named Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, and New York as future targets. 

The plan is clear: concentrate military power against the working-class, multinational centers of resistance that anchor U.S. cities.

Building a political guard

Hegseth railed against “woke garbage,” vowed to purge dissenting officers, and pushed directives that would gut protections against racism and sexual abuse, including rape. Even seemingly trivial rules — like beard bans — carry a racist edge, aimed at forcing out Black and Muslim soldiers, sailors and marines.

Hegseth has begun an “anti-woke” purge of the officer corps. He has fired dozens of senior officers, including the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs, other top generals, combat commanders, and other commanders.

The goal in eliminating Black, Latine, women, lesbian, gay and trans officers is to ensure a political guard in the mold of the Waffen-SS.

Trump’s demand was explicit: any officer unwilling to join this war on the “enemy within” should resign. 

This was no isolated provocation. It is the spearhead of a coordinated, multi-front offensive to consolidate personal rule and unleash a historic assault on the U.S. working class.

This authoritarian offensive reaches far beyond the barracks. Trump has moved to neutralize every potential source of opposition — indicting critics, hounding media outlets, and leaning on corporations and social media platforms to silence dissent. TikTok, newly brought under oligarchic control, is being reshaped as a tool for suppressing digital protest.

Harshest on the most oppressed

As always, the harshest blows fall on the most oppressed. ICE operates as a Gestapo-like force, detaining tens of thousands without charge and deporting two million, according to Homeland Security, within months — spreading terror in immigrant neighborhoods and leaving families too frightened to leave their homes.

Meanwhile, the assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a calculated attempt to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement. Corporations are eagerly complying, weaponizing discrimination to strip workplace rights from Black, Asian, Latine, Indigenous, women, lesbian, gay and trans workers.

Trump’s vow to use major cities (all with Black mayors) as “training grounds” makes the racist logic clear. Deployments to Los Angeles, Portland, Memphis, and the occupied capital (Washington) are not about “crime waves.” They are military operations designed to crush popular protest and silence resistance.

Purges and austerity

The authoritarian offensive extends deep into the government itself. The administration has purged an estimated 300,000 federal workers, clearing the way to turn the machinery of government into Trump’s personal party apparatus.

But authoritarianism here has a class purpose. “Make America Great Again” is not a carnival slogan or nostalgic appeal. It is a program to restructure U.S. capitalism by restoring profitability and global supremacy. And the chosen method is as old as capitalism itself: the ruthless intensification of exploitation.

Wages must be driven down, unions crushed, with the police and military force unleashed to discipline labor.

Trump’s bombast is camouflage; his tantrums are tactics. The real goal is to expand the U.S. government’s role in repressing working-class resistance and securing the conditions for renewed profits.

Class war budget

Trump’s budget exposes the blueprint: massive tax giveaways to the wealthy, financed through deep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and every program working people depend on to survive. 

In Marxist terms, this is not mere fiscal policy — it is the government acting as the executive committee of the capitalist class, orchestrating a direct transfer of value from labor to capital. Workers lose the meager social wage they fought to win; capital reaps the reward in the form of subsidies and tax relief.

And this is only the opening salvo. What is being prepared is not one round of cuts but a rolling offensive — a sustained assault on living standards and democratic rights until resistance is broken.

Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

This is not McCarthyism in the midst of a booming postwar economy, when red-baiting was used to pacify a labor movement still on the rise. What we face today is far more dangerous: repression unfolding in the middle of a crisis economy defined by what capitalist economists call a “K-shaped recovery.”

The metaphor is telling. The upward line represents the soaring fortunes of the asset-owning capitalist class, fattened by imperialist super-profits and speculative bubbles. The downward line marks the opposite reality: a working class pushed into stagnation and decline, with its wages flat and its social wage gutted by austerity. 

The conclave at Quantico, the ICE raids, the mass purges, and the austerity budget are not disconnected episodes. They are interlocking parts of a single program: the construction of a dictatorship to wage open war on the working class.

At the U.N. on Sept. 25, just days before the assembly of generals and admirals, Trump laid the groundwork for a U.S. invasion of Venezuela. In the last month, U.S. forces sank three boats off Venezuela’s coast. 

Speaking from the podium at the U.N., Trump warned, “We will blow you out of existence / obliterate you.”

Trump is not merely eroding norms. He is actively constructing an apparatus of power designed to crush organized opposition. His invocation of “the enemy within” is not rhetoric. It is a declaration of class war.

Quantico was a show of force and a statement of intent. The White House is remapping the instruments of state toward political domination. The question now is whether the working class meets this offensive with fragmented outrage — or with collective power strong enough to turn back the billionaire oligarchs who would trample democratic rights to secure their domination.

While Donald Trump was delivering a war rant at the United Nations, the New York Times was reporting: “Cache of Devices Capable of Crashing Cell Network Is Found Near U.N.”

The Times reporting reads like a spy thriller.

The Times says: “The Secret Service discovered more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers, which could disable cellular towers or be used to conduct surveillance.”

The Times even manages to suggest that there are “only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation, including Russia, China.”

Like so many slick thrillers, it dresses a flimsy premise in technobabble, counting on the reader’s gaps in knowledge — and a willingness to be swept along by the fantasy.

The Secret Service’s SIM-card narrative doesn’t add up

The idea that hoarding SIM cards is the key ingredient for “taking down” a cellular network doesn’t align with how mobile systems actually fail. Localized outages are usually driven by radio-layer disruptions — interference, spoofing, or misconfigured infrastructure — rather than by placing calls from thousands of numbers.

Mass SIM inventories are far more consistent with high-volume criminal schemes, such as spam, fraud, or call-center-style operations, where disposability and rotation are crucial. They are not, on their own, evidence of a credible plan to deny service.

In reality, degrading connectivity in a limited area hinges on equipment and expertise at the RF layer — specialized radios and know-how — not warehouses of SIM cards. While any such activity is likely illegal, it underscores why invoking “lots of SIMs” as the linchpin of a terror plot reads like a misunderstanding of telecommunications, not a plausible threat model.

If investigators truly found mountains of SIM cards, the likelier explanation is profit-motivated call volume — not a scheme to knock out cellular service.

‘Story is bogus’

Robert Graham at the Cybersect Substack headlined his commentary: “That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus.”

“What they discovered was just normal criminal enterprise, banks of thousands of cell ‘phones’ (sic) used to send spam or forward international calls using local phone numbers. Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate [internet-based phone service] provider and the mobile phone network.

“The backstory is a Secret Service investigation into threats sent to politicians via [text] messages. …

“The Secret Service is lying to the press. They know it’s just a normal criminal SIM farm and are hyping it into some sort of national security or espionage threat. …

Graham does a complete breakdown of the hardware that’s reportedly being used in the SIM farm and how that might be used. Then adds:

“The Secret Service hypes this as some sort of national security threat that can crash cell towers. The reality is that this is just a normal criminal threat that sometimes crashes cell towers. …

“The point is: while criminals do sometimes crash or overload cell towers, an actual foreign threat can do this much easier than using SIM farms. In any event, there are thousands of cell towers around New York City satisfying 10 million subscribers, so crashing a few won’t make much difference.”

Fare Ain’t Fair campaign goes to Brooklyn’s streets

Sept. 21 — The Fair Ain’t Fare Campaign took the struggle against outrageous cost of riding the subway or a bus to Brooklyn today. More than 50 people rallied outside the Parkside Avenue Q and B train station Sunday afternoon to demand a rollback of the current $2.90 fare.

That’s 58 times what it was in 1948. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) wants to increase it to three bucks, a 60-fold increase.

The Fare Ain’t Fair Campaign wants a rollback of the fare, which is a transportation tax on poor and working people. The effort was initiated by the December 12th Movement and is supported by other people’s organizations.

Speakers at the rally included human rights attorney Roger Wareham, a member of D12’s international secretariat. It was pointed out that the MTA shells out $2.8 billion every year in tax-free interest to the banks and wealthy bondholders.

Those are the real robbers, not poor folk who jump the turnstiles or sneak past a fare box. As the Fare Ain’t Fair Campaign says, the poor won’t pay more!

It was because of the campaign and the people’s anger that the MTA delayed the planned increase until January 2026. The people can stop it!

Protesters marched on the home of MTA CEO Jenno Lieber, who calls the fare hike a “fare adjustment.” Lieber, who hauled in $400,000 last year, doesn’t have to worry about a $3 fare.

The activists found plenty of supporters marching down Flatbush and Church avenues. After leaving Lieber’s house, they held a final rally in front of the Church Avenue Q and B train station.

You can contact the Fare Ain’t Fair Campaign at fareaintfair@protonmail.com

Roll back the fare, coast to coast!

It has been three months since the public killing of Baltimore Arabber Bilal “BJ” Abdullah by the Baltimore Police Department while he was experiencing a mental health crisis. Since then the city has only intensified the police presence across the city.

Following the deaths of not only BJ but two other Baltimore residents – Pytorcarcha Brooks and Donte Melton Jr. – there were two city council hearings. In these hearings, the community expressed its long-standing concerns and problems with the Baltimore Police Department. 

During this period of time, there were two mass overdoses in the Penn-North area of Baltimore, July 10 and 18. Following both of these tragic events, BPD launched brutal raids and intensified its patrols of Black communities. Notably, one raid at Douglass Homes saw apartment doors kicked in and rooms searched and trashed as men, women, and children were forced to line the curb and outer courtyards surrounding the public housing project. The police found nothing in that raid and no arrests were made, but a community was left shocked, uprooted and embarrassed. 

The second council hearing took place as the same day a trial was to be held for Baltimore Police officer Curlon Edwards, who is facing many charges, including first-degree rape of a 16-year-old girl. No information has surfaced regarding this trial since the day it was posted to happen. Also, on this day, Aug. 27, the body camera footage of the death of Donte Melton was released. His death was ruled a homicide. The family is currently pressuring the city, demanding justice for their murdered son; the officers involved are believed to still remain in their roles.

The city claims that its approach to crime and violence is one that treats it as a “Public Health Crisis.” They applaud the use of “community-focused solutions” headed by nonprofits that work with the city government; however, in practice, it is these same nonprofits and services that were thrown under the bus following the deaths of three Baltimore residents.

Also, both city and state officials have sidelined these organizations by colluding to bring state troopers into Baltimore. Far from pursuing community-focused solutions, they have simply increased the police presence. 

This move is a slap in the face to Baltimore residents. As the city claims to care for the welfare of its people, it orders in more police to terrorize and occupy the city. If the city was truly treating poverty, violence and crime as a public health crisis, why have they not moved to end the food deserts across the city? It should be noted that all three previously mentioned deaths happened in city council district 9. Within this district sit the Sandtown-Winchester, Upton, and Harlem Park communities, all of which reside in a food desert.

The city’s moves are all to satisfy the fascist Trump regime. Trump has continually threatened Baltimore with Federal occupation and a mobilization of the National Guard. While city and state leaders take online and to the media to bash and “fight back” against Trump, in reality, they will continue to carry out his wishes of “returning law and order” to what he views as “crime-ridden hellholes.” 

At all levels of government, elected officials seek to maintain the racist occupation and apartheid of the city and its residents. Nationally, Baltimore’s fate is linked with that of D.C., Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, Portland, and Chicago. All of these cities have been threatened or occupied by Trump and the federal government.

As city and state officials parade the idea that more police in the city, brought by the Maryland State Troopers, will “make communities safer” and “improve the quality of life in our city,” it is obvious that what the people need is not more police. In Baltimore, communities are demanding an end to food deserts, an increase in proper mental health services and crisis response, and an end to the violent and racist practices of the Baltimore Police Department.

Struggle-La Lucha spoke with Andre Powell, a community organizer with the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly, about the Trump administration’s threats to deploy federal military forces in the city.

SLL: Like everyone, we have seen the back-and-forth between Trump, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, and Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott, with Trump threatening to send the National Guard to Baltimore City. How does the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly view this?

Andre Powell: We have to understand that Trump’s threats have nothing to do with addressing urban crime and everything to do with normalizing martial law as a tool of capitalist crisis management. What the billionaire ruling class fears isn’t street crime — it’s the growing solidarity among multinational working-class communities to unite against racist divisions and demand economic and political justice. We need to resist now. 

Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard are racist. The pattern is unmistakable: He has exclusively threatened cities led by Black mayors. This is another key reason why everyone must fight to stop these plans.

It is costing one million dollars a day in Washington, D.C., to station the Guard. Let that sink in. This is millions of dollars that could be spent on affordable housing, healthcare, education, food and, of course, jobs.

SLL: What kind of organizing strategy is the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly developing to counter this threat?

Andre Powell: That’s the most important question. We’re engaged in mass political education — distributing literature, posting flyers, and conducting outreach to build the kind of broad-based resistance that can stop a federal military occupation. Our approach draws from the civil rights movement’s model of sustained civil disobedience, including coordinated work stoppages and mass mobilization. 

Concretely, we’ve called for an outreach day and civil disobedience training.  We want to prepare people.  

SLL: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Andre Powell: Yes, we have also issued a special appeal to the National Guard troops, calling on them to refuse billionaire Trump’s illegal orders.  

Instead of deploying the National Guard to suppress working-class communities, these resources should be addressing the ongoing climate disasters that have devastated the Southeast and West. Months after Hurricane Helene, communities in western North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia are still rebuilding without adequate federal support. Meanwhile, Texas flood victims and California wildfire survivors remain in crisis.

Real security would involve preparing our most vulnerable communities for the next climate emergency: ensuring seniors and working-poor families have access to air conditioning before the next deadly heat wave strikes. 

We said, “Do the right thing — go home to your families, children, loved ones and community.  Don’t defend billionaires!  Stop the trillions spent on wars abroad and at home, fight poverty and racism.”  Those are the things we are saying.

New Orleans, Sept. 16 – a crowd gathered across from Jackson Square Wednesday evening to protest Donald Trump’s threats to send troops into the Big Easy as well as the state capital, Baton Rouge.

This rally and march, organized by PSL, took place just one week after a similar one on Sept. 9. A half dozen other groups participated including Unión Migrante and Palestine Youth Movement. At both actions, the crowds were clear: They see through Trump and Landry’s lies.

A PSL organizer named Ed addressed the crowd before marching, saying:

“It’s an occupation by the billionaire class against the working class to further criminalize us. You want to solve crime in our communities?

“Give us universal health care. We haven’t seen a minimum wage raised in decades. Give us the right to form a union. Give us quality education. And until we have a people-powered, people-funded, people-organized economy, the criminalization of our people will only continue.”

He emphasized that even though Trump’s fascist movement is controlling the government right now, both ruling parties are for the rich and against the people. Trump did not create the oppression and injustice in our society, but he took the reins of a racist, capitalist system ready for him to exploit with his cronies. 

Ed continued:

“Who passed the 1994 crime bill that swelled up the prisons in the United States? Democratic President Bill Clinton.

“When we look at our own city in the ‘90s, who swelled up OPP [Orleans Parish Prison]? A Democratic DA, Harry Connick Sr., had OPP overflowing. … Democratic President Joe Biden is walking around our country a free man, and he’s a war criminal. …

“And ICE right now is running around empowered. The KKK took off the white sheets and now they’re wearing face masks, terrorizing our neighborhoods! …

“Right now, we have a cancer alley right here, and it’s creating the demise of southern Louisiana. If you’re going to send law enforcement down here, go ahead and arrest all these CEOs of these petrochemical companies. That’s who needs to be arrested.

“What crimes are being committed? The biggest crime in the city of New Orleans is wage theft. And it’s a crime being committed by all of these people in these office buildings and businesses all over the French Quarter. We want to talk about crime?

“Shame! Brothers and sisters, we need to recognize that we have a system that’s oppressing us, and we will continue to organize and resist. …

“There will not be freedom in this country until the capitalist system is abolished. …

“We’re living in a very dark hour right now. Fascism isn’t coming. Fascism is here. But our message to Congress, our message to the President and the Trump administration is that another world is possible, and we’re going to organize to bring it into being.”