1. Trotskyist leader Nanda Wickremesinghe, Comrade Wicks (1939-2025)
With the establishment of the World Socialist Web Site in 1998, Wicks enthusiastically embraced and grasped the historical importance of this development for the working class. He wrote hundreds of articles for the WSWS, covering a wide range of historical and political issues in Sri Lanka and India.
Wicks was a deeply cultured man. In addition to Sinhala and English, he had studied the ancient language of Pali, associated with the rise of Buddhism in India. He had a broad interest in Sri Lankan and world literature. He was familiar with the works of William Shakespeare and other prominent English authors. He had a keen understanding of history, particularly the millennia-long history of South Asia.
As the gateway to the Sahara, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, Sudan’s location gives it enormous geostrategic importance for imperialism.
Subsidiary companies were created in the NHS in 2006 during Tony Blair’s Labour government. A back-door route to privatization, SubCos flourished during 14 years of Tory-led governments from 2010. By March 2018, 42 NHS Foundation Trusts had either set up, or were in the process of setting up, SubCos. A year later there were over 65.
This tragedy should not have been a surprise. City Buildings Department records include at least 55 complaints having been filed against the building since 2003, with the most recent dating to 2023, all of which are recorded as resolved or closed. It is standard department practice, when denied access to a building after multiple attempts to conduct an inspection in response to a complaint, to mark a case as closed, in order to move on to the deluge of other pending cases. This effectively gives landlords virtual immunity to do as they please, regardless of the severity of the problem.
5. City dwellers in Germany confront dramatically higher priced housing and less available housing
The site erased critical public health resources—vaccine guidance, testing protocols, and Long COVID support. It replaced them with the anti-China, anti-science narrative developed by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the 21st century equivalent of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, which spearheaded the McCarthyite anticommunist witch-hunting of the 1950s.
The right to free, high-quality education for all is a social necessity. But, like every other democratic right, it requires a political struggle by the working class to abolish the parasitical and outlived capitalist system, expropriate the wealth of the oligarchy, and redistribute society’s resources to meet human needs, not private profit. This requires the fight for socialism—the reorganization of economic and political life on the basis of social equality and democratic control by the working class itself.
When the west coast dockworkers’ contract expired in 2022, the ILWU kept its members on the job for more than a year without a contract. But when workers responded to endless delays by taking job actions on their own, the union worked with the Biden administration to rapidly impose a new contract before workers had time to review it.
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.
19. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help
20. Please Join an International Online May Day Rally!
On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.
The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.
Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.
These developments underscore
the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working
class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and
repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program
to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It
will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and
build a society based on equality and human need.
