Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Graham Platner: A bogus “pro-worker” face for the Democratic Party in Maine
Platner is being promoted as an outsider, but his campaign was recruited, packaged and launched through the AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party apparatus.
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The AFL-CIO did not search for a socialist, an antiwar candidate or a representative of rank-and-file workers to run in Maine. It searched for a marketable “working class” face: a Sanders donor with a military background, which turned out to include a Totenkopf (death’s head) tattoo and a kill count.
The AFL-CIO’s role in recruiting Platner exposes the class character of his campaign. The AFL-CIO is not a fighting organization of the working class but a corporatist apparatus tied by a thousand threads to the Democratic Party, US imperialism and the capitalist state.
The federation was formed in 1955 through the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, this merger took place “on the explicit basis of anti-communist red-baiting and support for American imperialism’s Cold War agenda.” AFL-CIO President George Meany combined class collaboration at home with support for US imperialism abroad, including the Vietnam War, while the federation’s foreign affairs department worked with the CIA and the State Department to establish pro-US unions and prop up right-wing dictatorships internationally.
Nor was the earlier CIO the pristine model of rank-and-file democracy later mythologized by the pseudo-left. The CIO emerged out of the mass industrial upsurge of the 1930s, but its leadership, working with the Roosevelt administration and the Stalinist Communist Party, blocked the development of a political movement of the working class. Instead, it channeled this explosive movement into a trade union form loyal to the profit system and politically subordinated to the Democratic Party. This was bound up with the preparations of American imperialism for World War II, with the unions accepting no-strike pledges and enforcing labor discipline on the home front.*****
After the world war, both the AFL and the CIO conducted anti-communist purges, driving out socialist-minded workers linked to the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, then the Trotskyist movement. The merger in 1955 was the final stage, not in uniting the working class but cementing the split in the bureaucracy on the basis of a common commitment to American imperialism.
In the decades after the postwar boom, the AFL-CIO’s reactionary role became still more explicit. In the 1980s, it isolated the PATCO air traffic controllers after Reagan fired and blacklisted 11,300 striking workers, opening the door to decades of union busting, concessions, wage cuts and plant closures. The character of the trade unions underwent a fundamental change, as they became nothing more than instruments of the corporations and the capitalist state, a labor police force entirely hostile to the interests of the working class.
The same role continues today. At the May Day Strong events in Chicago, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy and the Democrats sought to smother growing opposition to Trump, war and dictatorship, while figures such as UAW President Shawn Fain promoted economic nationalism and remained silent on US imperialism’s war drive.
Platner’s recruitment by AFL-CIO-connected operatives must be understood in this context. His campaign is an expression of the bureaucracy’s function: to package economic nationalism and pro-union rhetoric as a substitute for class struggle, while channeling opposition back into the Democratic Party.
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Should Platner be elected, he would not enter the Senate as a tribune of the working class. He would join the roster of former military and intelligence figures promoted by the Democratic Party in recent years, including Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, Mark Kelly, Jared Golden, Jason Crow, Mikie Sherrill and Andy Kim.
2. Further light shed on criminal US torpedoing of Iranian ship
A Tehran Times article entitled “IRIS Dena sinking: Survivors testimony, diplomatic delays, and US-India-Sri Lanka role” published on May 2 is based on their interviews. It not only makes clear that the US Navy deliberately sunk the vessel after first disabling it, but also points to the complicity of India and Sri Lanka in the criminal attack.
The IRIS Dena, the Iranian frigate, was returning from multinational naval exercises—MILAN 2026—hosted by India when a US submarine attacked. Of the Dena’s 180 naval personnel crew, only 32 were rescued alive by the Sri Lankan coast guard and 84 bodies were recovered from the water.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, the attack amounted to mass murder carried out thousands of kilometres from the Middle East as part of Washington’s escalating war against Iran. “It sent an unmistakable message: the conflict will be prosecuted wherever the US chooses, unconstrained by international law or convention.”
Underscoring this assessment, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged the US Navy’s involvement, reportedly describing the operation as a “quiet death.”
On the same day, a second Iranian naval vessel, IRIS Bushehr, carrying 208 crew members, sought permission to enter Colombo Port. After initially refusing entry, the Sri Lankan government allowed the ship to dock on March 5 but only after intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic exchanges.
While Colombo claimed it acted on “humanitarian” grounds as a “neutral” country, it detained 32 survivors from IRIS Dena along with the crew of IRIS Bushehr, according to a Reuters report published on March 7.
Reuters cited an internal US State Department cable dated March 6 in which Chargé d’Affaires Jayne Howell urged that the crew not be repatriated, adding, “Sri Lankan authorities should minimize Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda.”
The Sri Lankan government complied, delaying the return of 84 recovered bodies for over a week and holding the detained the 240 crew members for nearly five weeks, despite repeated requests from Tehran for their repatriation. During their detention, the crew were barred from speaking to the media.
Only after April 14, following a US-declared ceasefire with Iran, were the Iranian naval personnel allowed to leave Sri Lanka and return home.
Speaking after his return, IRIS Dena captain Zarri rejected claims by the US Indo-Pacific Command that the vessel was armed. “One of the exercise’s conditions was that missiles and torpedoes should not be carried by participating vessels,” Zarri said. He confirmed that the frigate carried neither anti-submarine torpedoes nor strategic missiles, leaving it unable to defend itself against an underwater attack.
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All the evidence—from the technical record of the attack to the harrowing account given by Commander Zarri and his first officer—confirms that the US Navy carried out a deliberate war-crime in torpedoing of an unarmed, immobilized Iranian ship whose crew was in the process of evacuating.
Whether or not they were directly informed of the impending US attack, the Indian and Sri Lankan governments were well aware of the dangers to the Iranian vessels faced. There is no innocent explanation for the delays in allowing them to dock.
The evasions and hypocritical declarations of “neutrality” by Colombo and New Delhi, along with the silence of the imperialist-aligned media, cannot cover-up the fact that these governments were complicit in this US war crime.
3. Trump’s deployment of warships to Strait of Hormuz escalates Iran war
The increasingly desperate actions of American imperialism express the strategic debacle it confronts after 35 years of uninterrupted wars of aggression.
Although officially dominated by Democrats and the labor bureaucracy, hundreds of thousands in the US marched on May Day to oppose war and defend immigrants and democratic rights.
5. Trump withdraws 5,000 US troops from Germany as Berlin steps up rearmament
The announcement by President Donald Trump to withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany and halt the planned deployment of US intermediate-range weapons in Germany marks a further escalation of the crisis in transatlantic relations.
6. Islamist offensive tacitly backed by Paris shakes Mali
On April 25, an alliance of Tuareg nationalist militias and Islamists launched a coordinated offensive across Mali. This offensive shook the ruling military junta, which responded in 2013 to mass demonstrations against the French-led war in Mali by imposing the withdrawal of French troops and allying itself with the Kremlin.
While the junta retained power and control of the country’s more populous southern cities, the Tuareg-Islamist offensive shook it badly. Mopti in the north fell under control of Islamist and Tuareg forces, backed by the Algerian military regime and above all by Paris. In the global context of the imperialist war against Iran and Russia, the conflict between the anti-imperialist aspirations of the Malian working masses and the bourgeois politics of the junta is emerging ever more clearly.
The offensive began with surprise attacks across the country, targeting Kidal and Gao in the north, Sévaré and Mopti in the center, and Kati and the capital, Bamako, in the south. According to the X account of the Russian Africa Corps stationed in Mali, the offensive mobilized between 10,000 and 12,000 fighters. In Kati, it assassinated the junta’s second-in-command, Defense Minister Sadio Camara, a key architect of the alliance with Moscow, with a car bomb.
The day of the initial assault “was truly terrifying, we were afraid,” a Bamako resident told Radio France Internationale (RFI). “We were woken up by heavy weapons fire and then, after an hour of exchanges, we realized it was a terrorist attack. It all started around 6 in the morning and went on until the afternoon.”
RFI also quoted a resident of Mopti, who said: “The population is panicked, there was no market, almost all families are sheltering at home and houses are shut… The gendarmerie and the police station were stormed by the attackers, who now control practically everything.”
The Africa Corps was forced to suddenly abandon Mopti, negotiating the departure of its troops but leaving hundreds of Malian soldiers behind as prisoners of the Islamists. Islamist and Tuareg militias are now trying to blockade energy supplies to Malian cities.
It is difficult to provide casualty figures for the losses in the initial assault. According to the Africa Corps, the government and Russian counter-offensive killed 1,000 fighters and destroyed more than 100 vehicles. On the evening of the 25th, the junta issued a communiqué reporting 16 civilian casualties. The true death toll on both sides likely runs into the thousands.
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Numerous reports, notably concerning the use by Islamist militias of fiber-optic guided drones deployed on the Russo-Ukrainian front, point to the role of the pro-NATO Ukrainian regime. Since 2024, Kiev has repeatedly pledged to assist forces in Africa fighting the Russian Africa Corps. On March 26, 2026, less than a month before the offensive in Mali, it convened a governmental meeting on its African policy.
Afterwards, Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of Ukrainian military intelligence who was then serving as head of the Ukrainian presidential office, announced: “For the first time, Ukraine has set itself the objective of comprehensively influencing the situation on the African continent.”
In reality, the Ukrainian regime cannot intervene in the Sahel independently of French imperialism. It is entirely funded by the European Union, whose member states transfer tens of billions of euros to it annually. It acts on behalf of NATO, waging war against Russia but also in the Sahel, where Paris seeks to topple the juntas that demanded the withdrawal of its troops.
Through a series of proxies, Paris is attempting to reinstall a neocolonial regime that would better protect French imperialism’s economic and strategic interests in Mali. Its strategy remains essentially that of its 2011 war in Libya, which paved the way for its war in Mali.
In 2011, Paris, Washington and London responded to the workers’ uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia by arming Islamist and tribal militias to overthrow the Libyan regime. After the fall of the Libyan regime, the flood of arms and fighters leaving Libya destabilized the region. Paris then intervened in Mali, ostensibly to fight the Islamists and protect Bamako. But Paris subsequently negotiated with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad—the FLA’s precursor—to carve out a neocolonial base in northern Mali.
The demonstrations in Mali in 2021–2022 brought to power, within the Malian regime, officers hostile to the French military presence. To shield themselves from Paris’s anger, they built a pragmatic alliance with the Russian capitalist regime. They naturally did not pursue a revolutionary policy, refusing to appeal to working class opposition in France to the widely hated Macron regime, or to mobilize workers and oppressed masses across Africa against imperialism.
The current offensive reveals the limits of such bourgeois politics which, precisely because it rejects a socialist struggle against capitalism, cannot fight imperialism. Rejecting a more egalitarian policy toward rural farmers and herders, which would cut the ground from under the Islamists and Tuareg nationalists, the junta allowed Paris to maneuver with Kyiv, Algiers, the Tuareg nationalists and JNIM. It even negotiated in March with a “Sahel envoy” sent by the Trump administration, Nick Checker, while Trump was bombing Iran.
The Malian army served for decades as a neocolonial instrument of France. Paris is now mobilizing its closest supporters among the Tuareg nationalists and accommodating the role of elements linked to Al-Qaeda, in order to carry out a regime change—but its principal target is not the army. It is the anti-imperialist aspirations of workers and oppressed masses across the Sahel and the whole of Africa.
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The current crisis in Mali points to the urgent necessity of overcoming the obstacle the junta poses to a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. The decisive question is the unification of workers in Mali and across the Sahel with workers in France and all NATO countries, in a socialist movement to halt the ongoing imperialist wars, break the power of the imperialist governments and transfer power to workers and the oppressed masses.
7. Spirit workers lose paychecks and benefits as executives seek $10.7 million in “retention” bonuses
Workers were deliberately kept in the dark up until the last minute. WARN Act notices—legally required advance warning of mass layoffs—were issued only after the shutdown. Spirit’s explanation in its court filing was that publicizing the layoffs earlier “would have hindered its efforts to secure additional funding.”
Spirit has told the court that it does not even have enough cash on hand to organize a structured auction of its remaining assets, including 131 aircraft. Instead, the company is requesting permission to allow it to abandon this equipment or let creditors repossess them. Most of Spirit’s fleet was not actually owned by the airline but leased to it by major banks such as Wells Fargo.
Bankruptcy law prioritizes the company’s secured creditors—the Wall Street banks and aircraft lessors like Wells Fargo—over workers. Pilots, flight attendants and ground staff will get whatever is left after Wall Street has picked the bones clean.
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Spirit is the opening act of a broader industry crisis. Jet fuel was roughly $80 per barrel in March. By the week ending April 24, the International Air Transport Association recorded an average of $179 per barrel. The Middle East previously accounted for 75 percent of Europe’s net jet fuel imports, according to the International Energy Agency, whose executive director warned in mid-April that European supplies could be exhausted within weeks.
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More bankruptcies in the United States are likely. Industry blog View From the Wing reports one analyst now estimates low-cast carrier JetBlue’s probability of bankruptcy by next year at greater than 75 percent. JetBlue founder Dave Neeleman warned publicly this year that the airline could file this year; it has not turned a profit in six years, carries $9 billion in debt, and faces a potential pre-tax loss exceeding $1 billion in 2026. Frontier Airlines, a direct competitor to Spirit, is already returning aircraft and deferring deliveries.
Spirit’s 17,000 workers must be made whole. They must not be forced to drain their retirement savings while bankruptcy court allocates what remains after the secured creditors are paid.
The tens of billions in windfall war profits of the oil industry and the major banks must be expropriated to fund full compensation for every worker dislocated by the economic consequences of the Iran war.
More broadly, both airline jobs and affordable travel can only be guaranteed by removing the industry from the profit motive. The airlines must be be taken out of private hands and operated democratically as a public utility under workers’ control. The US-Israeli war on Iran must be ended, with full compensation for the Iranian people and the trial of those war criminals responsible for it.
Fighting for this requires new forms of organization for industrial and political struggle. Workers need to build independent rank-and-file committees, connected through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, to organize across carriers, across borders, and in opposition to the union bureaucracies that seek to manage their defeat.
8. New sanctions, threats and military exercises set stage for US assault on Cuba
In what appeared as an offhand remark, Donald Trump openly declared his administration’s intentions toward Cuba with chilling clarity last Friday.
Speaking before a wealthy audience at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches, Trump referred to “Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately.” The comment drew laughter from the crowd, prompting him to elaborate: “Cuba’s got problems. We’ll finish one first. I like to finish the job. On the way back from Iran, we’ll have maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up!’”
Far from a joke, the remarks encapsulate the real trajectory of US policy. On the same day, Trump signed an executive order designating Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” vastly expanding sanctions against the island. The order targets not only the Cuban state but also foreign companies engaged in security, energy, finance, mining “or any other sector … as may be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State.”
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The unraveling US debacle in Iran heightens the danger of what Trump believes will be a rapid surrender by Havana and a political victory he can score ahead of the November mid-term elections.
These political and economic measures are unfolding in tandem with a further militarization of the region. One day prior to Trump’s remarks, the US Navy announced that its “hybrid fleet is ready” following the completion of the Flex 2026 exercises in Key West, Florida—just 90 miles from Cuba’s northern coast.
The exercises emphasized “greater reach, faster decisions and decisive action” across the Caribbean and Central America. While officially framed as anti-drug operations, the drills incorporated advanced artificial intelligence systems, unmanned platforms and rapid-response integration capabilities.
The scale, location and technological sophistication of these maneuvers belie their stated purpose. Flex 2026 took place directly opposite Cuba, coinciding with intensified intelligence-gathering missions mapping the island’s defenses, including flights by MQ-4C Triton drones and RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft, widely used for preparing precision strikes.
Flex 2026 also tested a “kill chain” scenario against alleged “drug boats” as the Pentagon escalates its extrajudicial killing spree that has murdered at least 186 fishermen in the Caribbean and Pacific falsely accused of drug trafficking, underscoring the lawless character of US military activity in the region.
The “hybrid warfare” doctrine being tested—refined through conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East—is now being directed toward Cuba. This strategy integrates cyber operations, intelligence warfare, economic pressure and conventional military force into a unified campaign aimed at regime change.
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Faced with mounting pressure, Havana has responded with a contradictory policy combining concessions and nationalist rhetoric. On one hand, Cuban officials have opened the door to “unrestricted” foreign investment and provided guarantees to US corporations during backroom talks involving sections of the Cuban government.
On the other hand, the government has issued warnings of imminent military danger. On May Day, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his predecessor Raúl Castro led a march of hundreds of thousands to the US embassy, denouncing threats of military intervention and calling on the population to prepare to defend the country.
At the same time, Havana continues to appeal to rival powers for support. In late April, during a gathering in Moscow involving Stalinist and bourgeois nationalist organizations forming a so-called “International Socialist Network,” Fidel Castro Smirnov, the grandson of Fidel Castro, denounced the US embargo, stating it has cost Cuba more than $144 billion and is now “asphyxiating” the island. His remarks—“Fidel is here with us. Dreaming, riding on,”—were met with a standing ovation.
This participation underscores efforts by the Cuban leadership, alongside figures such as Nicaragua’s Sandinistas and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, to maintain ties with Moscow while navigating escalating US aggression.
Yet these maneuvers reveal the fundamental bankruptcy of the Cuban ruling elite and all bourgeois nationalist leaderships. While one wing appeals to Russia and China, another reportedly engages in discussions with Washington aimed at overseeing a transition toward a pro-US regime, similar to developments in Venezuela, where sections of the Chavista leadership have overseen the transformation of the country into a US semi-colony following the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro.
9. Brazil’s unions isolate São Paulo education strikes
The struggles of teachers and students in São Paulo are part of a growing movement of the international working class against the austerity policies driven by the capitalist crisis and the effects of the war against Iran.
10. Australian Labor government axing public sector jobs to deepen budget cuts
The Albanese government is slashing thousands of public service positions—a warning of what is to come in next week’s budget.
11. Union presents pay-cutting offer to New Zealand nurses
Nurses and healthcare workers should reject the offer presented by the NZNO, which would slash wages and do nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals.
12. The new code of silence: Texas Tech University bans gender and sexuality teaching and research
In a sweeping attack on freedom of speech and thought and science, Texas Tech University (TTU) in Lubbock, Texas, a public institution that serves 42,000 students, has issued a near total ban on the teaching, research and discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). This is in line with other attacks in Texas university systems.
The draconian directive, announced in an April 9 memo from University Chancellor Brandon Creighton, is an obvious appeal to social and intellectual backwardness and an attempt to shove ultra-right Christian ideology down the throats of faculty, students and staff. This is only the thin end of the wedge, laying the groundwork for a far broader assault on critical investigations of modern society and, ultimately, of capitalism and the oppression and violence that flow from it. The “illegalization” of entire fields of study in this authoritarian manner has only sinister, Nazi-like implications.
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According to the university’s new policy, courses cannot include any materials that “center on” the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity. The issues cannot be raised in any university setting, no student can engage in research or write on the subjects, undergraduate and graduate courses, certificates, and programs that address sexual orientation and gender identity are now banned, and all future faculty hires must take into account the university’s new code of silence.
Even “incidental references”—defined as a single sentence—must be avoided and “alternate materials” swapped in. If this is impossible, the incidental references cannot be discussed. “There are no exceptions to the Alternate Materials Rule for core, undergraduate courses,” states the memo.
AI will be used to search out sexual orientation and gender identity themes.
Allegedly, students currently conducting research on or enrolled in programs that relate to SOGI can finish their studies, SOGI-related work by faculty already employed at TTU can continue, and references can be made to SOGI legal and political policies and demographic data where necessary. In addition, if the study of the subjects is required to attain professional certifications and credentials, students are permitted to do so.
However, the limits placed on these circumstances are so extreme as to make it impossible to actually investigate or discuss sexual orientation or gender identity.
Thus, if a textbook addresses the question, professors are instructed to skip over it. If the issue comes up in relation to another subject—for instance, the fact that James Baldwin, the major 20th century African American author, was gay—it can be noted in passing, but not taken into consideration in discussions of Baldwin’s life story, much less his art.
Even in instances in which sexual orientation and gender identity are topics that must be learned or a person will be disqualified from his or her profession—such as counseling and the health sciences—TTU bureaucrats first must be notified of the fact and second, reserve the right to determine that the curriculum actually is not necessary.
The ACS Committee may require changes if, upon further review and consultation with the respective Provost, the committee determines the material is not strictly required by the relevant licensing or credentialing body, or if the content disclosed under patient and clinical care is determined not to be strictly required for such care.
In short, far-right ignoramuses who know nothing about science or society will be telling future doctors or therapists, for example, what they can and cannot know.
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The TTU Board of Regents’ absolute equating of sex and gender is one of the most degraded aspects of the policy. Under its “Two Human Sexes Requirement and Biological Science” section of the memo, the university declares, “State and federal law and TTU System guidance dictate that only two human sexes, male and female, are recognized.” It adds, as part of its “Prohibition on Endorsement of a Gender Spectrum,” “Instructors may not teach that gender identity is a fluid spectrum, endorse the existence of more than two genders, or decouple gender from biological sex as a factual or scientific baseline.”
There is neither a federal nor state law that states that there are only “two human sexes, male and female.” And while it is an aim of the extreme right, the First Amendment has not yet been overturned. People are free to say whatever they want about sex and gender.
Beyond that, historical and contemporary evidence demonstrate that gender norms shift over time and vary across cultures. Homosexual sex was not uncommon among Roman men, and it was not regarded as a violation of male social norms. In Afghanistan today, some segments of society raise daughters as Bacha Pash—that is, female children are treated as boys until the age of puberty. In South Asia, Hijra are formally recognized as a third gender. Even in societies that have traditionally had more rigid categories, what has been expected of men and women has constantly changed, as cultures evolve and people push against, reject, and transform what is considered socially “acceptable” behavior.
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Both gender and human sexuality are fascinating and very complex realms of social reality, bringing together questions of biology, psychology and culture. They are universal, inescapable, and impact everyone. They are deserving of scientific inquiry, social reflection and artistic exploration. When society finally began to throw off the yoke of religious obscurantism, social humiliation and prudishness that for centuries surrounded these realms of the human experience and to understand these subjects as worthy of serious investigation, it took an important step forward.
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The Christian right-wingers who penned TTU’s policy wish to, as Trump revealed in his promise to return Iran to the “stone age,” bring the world back in time. They fantasize about some sort of mythical-biblical age in which, in their mind’s eye, to be a woman means to pop out infants and a man to run around clubbing animals for dinner. The consideration of anything otherwise is blasphemy to be denounced by the priests of the high order.
An aspect of the memo that is less well-developed but equally, if not more, dangerous, is the attack on those who are not heterosexual. While much of the TTU board’s order focuses on assaulting the idea of gender fluidity, the study, discussion and research of sexual orientation is also banned. The very words “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “queer,” can no longer exist at TTU, much less be the subject of investigation and discussion.
Homosexuality is commonplace in society and widely accepted by the majority of the US population, which generally also believes that LGBTQ+ communities should have special anti-discrimination protections. The ultra-right, however, has always viewed romantic and physical relationships that defy social boundaries with terror, because they bear within them the prospect that people will unite across divides and challenge those in power. At TTU, these layers, knowing that support for the Trump administration’s policies is faltering and they are isolated and increasingly hated, hope they can stoke ignorance and use fear as some sort of bulwark.
In an effort to win support for its policy, the Board of Regents includes prohibitions that tap into frustrations over the identity-politics approach that has come to dominate academia over the course of the last several decades.
They write,
To ensure academic objectivity, faculty are prohibited from teaching as absolute truth that: ● One race or sex is inherently superior to another; ● An individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, consciously or unconsciously; ● Any person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of race or sex; ● Moral character or worth is determined by race or sex; ● Individuals bear responsibility or guilt for actions of others of the same race or sex; or ● Meritocracy or a strong work ethic are inherently racist, sexist, or constructs of oppression.
The standards outlined here are directed at the reactionary notions, preached widely in the social sciences and humanities, that all whites are racists, all men are oppressors, all heterosexual individuals are privileged and that these hierarchies constitute the social structure, are systemic and institutional, inescapable tools of domination that benefit all within the majority group. The New York Times has been a leading proponent of this view, with its 1619 Project rewriting American history in order to fit this narrative. Concepts like “color-blind racism,” propagated by sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, apply these notions to contemporary reality. For years, DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] efforts have become the mainstay of the Democratic Party and what passes for American liberalism or radicalism.
When applied to the classroom, these racial, gender, and sexuality-based approaches, with zero progressive content, have been enormously damaging, serving as grist for the mill for the far right. For years, sociology courses have, to varying degrees, subjected students to the gospel of “white privilege,” terrorizing those who question the validity of the concept, which is rooted in a rejection of economic class as the basis of oppression, bulldozes over all social and historical complexities to arrive at a pre-determined idea that the root of society’s problems has and always will be “whites,” full stop.
13. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Bolivia:
Chile:
Mexico:
Puerto Rico:
Canada:
Long-term care and nursing home workers in Ontario seek new contracts
United States:
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
