In what the union itself admits is the first time in county history that all its members walked out together, an endless stream of workers flooded into the streets of one of the largest urban centers in the world. Social workers, janitors, nurses, mental health aides and clerical staff became a river that shut down crucial public services and reminded the city’s billionaires and bureaucrats where real power lies.
In an election campaign characterized by banalities and lies, the SEP and its candidates have been alone in telling workers the truth.
We state bluntly that the election will resolve nothing for working people. Whatever the outcome on May 3, the incoming government will be one of reaction, committed to a predetermined agenda of huge cuts to social spending, wages and working conditions to make the working class pay for the budget deficit and the crisis of capitalism. It will oversee a vast increase in military spending in preparation for war, above all against China.
Behind the banalities lies a rightward shift by all major parties. Notwithstanding the sniping and snarling, there is agreement on the demands of the Australian and American ruling classes for the prosecution of war, the gutting of social spending and the assault on the conditions of the working class.
We have stressed that the decisive question is building an independent and socialist movement of the working class, directed against Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition, the Greens and the entire capitalist political establishment. That is the only means of halting the descent into a catastrophic world war, along with fascism, dictatorship and mass poverty.
Eighty years after the start of the Nazis’ war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which cost the lives of at least 27 million Soviet citizens, the German ruling class is once again planning war against Russia.
They are following a well-worn historical pattern aimed at dominating Eastern Europe, plundering Ukraine and subjugating Russia in order to incorporate its raw materials and sales markets. The growing trade conflicts with the United States are intensifying this trend.
This arms madness, however, goes even further. The German government seeks to achieve strategic independence from the United States and dominate the whole of Europe militarily and economically.
The ruling is particularly significant given that Judge Ziegenhorn was the same judge who initially signed the search warrant and is a former prosecutor. It must also be noted that the UC Board of Regents, which fought to uphold the seizure, includes California Governor Newsom and many other high-ranking Democrats.
Mahdawi was taken into ICE custody on April 14 after appearing at the Colchester, Vermont, office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, for what he was told was an interview for citizenship. In fact, it was a trap which ICE had prepared to snatch Mahdawi. The deportation was halted by the order of Judge William Sessions III, in response to a habeas petition filed by Mahdawi’s lawyers. The Trump administration’s attorneys sought to have the petition quashed in order to keep Mahdawi in ICE custody and ultimately deport him from the US.
Mahdawi was a leading figure alongside Mahmoud Khalil in the student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza at Columbia University in 2023 and 2024. Khalil remains in ICE detention in Louisiana after being kidnapped by agents from his New York City apartment in a warrantless raid on March 8.
The Carney Liberal government will be a government of austerity, rearmament and war, as already indicated by its cribbing of key Conservative policies. In the name of strengthening “Canadian sovereignty” and “economic resilience,” it will implement the Trump-like policies that the ruling class is baying for. These include: massive social spending cuts to finance corporate tax cuts and tens of billions of dollars per year in increased defence expenditure; the evisceration of all environmental and other regulatory restraints on capital; and the permanent prohibition of strikes impacting transport, logistics and other critical infrastructure.
Based on photos obtained by the World Socialist Web Site, the crowd protesting Trump was substantially larger than the crowd listening to the would-be Hitler. This demolishes the picture presented by the media of Trump as an invincible colossus.
At the rally itself, an insulated and delusional Trump presented a picture divorced from reality. In his typical campaign-style stream of consciousness, the 78-year-old con man repeated, for 90 minutes, many of the same lies he has been spewing for over a decade.
Kneecap's manager, Daniel Lambert tells RTÉ’s Prime Time that the band is ‘on the right side of history’
With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team of anti-science quacks now installed by Trump at HHS, with the entire public health apparatus at their fingertips, the bank robbers are truly in control of Fort Knox. While studies are prioritized into the fake vaccine-autism connection, the NIH has cut funding for grants by $5.5 billion and canceled more than 300 grants announced, including studies on Alzheimer’s and autism. The Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, a major supporter of school-based autism interventions, has been gutted, and programs like Charting My Path for Future Success, which helped students with disabilities transition from high school to college or work, have been eliminated.
New Zealand’s entire political establishment, including the opposition Labour and Green parties, along with the corporate media, are busy stoking anti-Chinese hysteria. Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Radio New Zealand that the new Defence Capability Plan builds upon those made by the previous Labour-led government. In 2023, Labour’s Defence Minister Andrew Little declared that NZ had a “stake” in the South China Sea and signed strategic pacts with Fiji and Japan.
An immense price is being paid by the working class for the huge military build-up. The government has frozen wages across the public sector and sacked thousands of workers. The healthcare and education systems are run-down and starved of funds.
The SEP has campaigned at the Sanhinda Sevana flats near the Kolonnawa city center. Sanhinda Sevana is an 11-storey building with 240 flats, each just 42 square metres. These have been provided for poor families from Colombo city, forced out of their homes to make way for urban development to attract wealthy investors.
The Urban Development Authority is responsible for these flats, but does not maintain them adequately: waste disposal is not done properly, the lifts always break down and noise levels are high due to poor design. Many people said they lost their jobs after being compelled to move.
14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
15. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help
16. International Online May Day Rally this Saturday!
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.
