Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Lessons from the San Francisco strike: How the unions, Democratic Party and pseudo-left betrayed the teachers
For decades, public education has been starved of resources as the
union bureaucracy has suppressed the class struggle. The results are
stark: Educators have been reduced to low-wage workers. To cite only one
statistic, as of 2024, public school teachers earned nearly 27 percent
less in weekly wages than similarly educated workers. Meanwhile, AFT
President Weingarten makes more than $500,000 a year.
Throughout
this period, the pseudo-left spectrum has hung onto the coattails of the
union bureaucracy, defending each and every betrayal as a “historic”
victory and consciously concealing the unions’ pro-capitalist role.
The
betrayal in San Francisco continued this trend, under conditions of an
escalating movement of workers and young people, as workers attempted to
reverse years of cuts.
*****
The pseudo-left told educators they were “winning” precisely as the
district and state were preparing layoffs, functioning as an ideological
shield for the union leadership and the Democratic Party. They have
systematically obscured the essential fact revealed by the San Francisco
experience: that the union bureaucracy, integrated into the Democratic
Party and the state, operates not as an instrument of workers’ struggle
but as the mechanism through which austerity is enforced.
For
educators, parents and students, the lessons are urgent. The
overwhelming strike votes in Los Angeles reflect the same conditions
that drove San Francisco teachers into struggle—poverty wages,
unbearable workloads, chronic understaffing and mounting threats of cuts
and closures. LA officials are already invoking “financial challenges”
tied to declining enrollment and the expiration of federal pandemic
funds, laying the groundwork for a new round of budget cutting that
mirrors, in both language and substance, the regime imposed in San
Francisco.
The San Francisco strike shows that the struggle to defend public
education is a political fight against the entire framework of
capitalist austerity, imposed by the Democrats no less than Trump and
the Republicans. LA educators cannot win by aligning with so‑called
“progressive” Democrats on school boards or in the legislature; these
figures are part of the same apparatus that enforce state oversight and
budget cuts in San Francisco.
2. Los Angeles teachers announce April 14 strike as thousands rally against austerity and war
Thousands of educators and school workers rallied at Gloria Molina Grand
Park in downtown Los Angeles Wednesday as United Teachers Los Angeles
(UTLA) and SEIU Local 99 announced a possible April 14 strike against
the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
The “Fight for LA” rally brought together UTLA, SEIU Local 99 and the
Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, representing more than 68,000
workers. A strike would shut down the nation’s second-largest school
district, affecting hundreds of thousands of students.
The
announcement comes amid a deepening crisis of public education and
American capitalism. It unfolds alongside the illegal US-Israeli war
against Iran, which has killed thousands of civilians and threatens
wider regional escalation.
The war and the assault on education
are bound up with the same class policy. While trillions are funneled
into militarism, social programs are slashed, including billions from
education. At the same time, class struggle is intensifying, with
strikes and protests by workers across the country.
*****
The decisive issue facing Los Angeles educators is political
independence. The struggle cannot be left to union bureaucracies tied to
the Democratic Party and corporate interests.
UTLA President
Cecily Myart-Cruz, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has
called a strike for April 14, demanding a 17 percent raise, higher
starting pay, no layoffs, smaller class sizes and expanded staffing.
SEIU Local 99 leader Max Arias, meanwhile, has kept 30,000 low-paid
school workers without a contract for two and a half years, many earning
just $35,000 annually and facing cuts to hours and benefits, even as
the union proposes a limited “Unfair Practice Charge” action.
Teachers
authorized a strike by 94 percent in January and have worked without a
contract since June. UTLA has delayed action for months, diverting
opposition into “fact-finding” and negotiations while layoffs and budget
cuts proceed. This follows the pattern of the California Teachers
Association, which has kept tens of thousands working under expired
contracts statewide under its fraudulent “We Can’t Wait” campaign.
The
recent San Francisco strike is a warning. More than 6,000 educators
walked out with broad support, only for the union to shut it down within
days and impose a deal backed by Democratic officials that delivered a 2
percent annual raise, a real pay cut.
The delayed April 14 strike
date provides time for another backroom deal, as seen in other cities.
The role of the DSA underscores the effort to channel growing opposition
into the Democratic Party, which, no less than the Republicans, has
overseen the ongoing destruction of public education.
3. US ground invasion looms as Iran war escalates
The catastrophic consequences that will follow a ground invasion flow
from the criminal character of the US/Israeli war on Iran. US President
Donald Trump announced the launching of the war in the dead of night
February 28, less than two days after US and Iranian diplomats met for a
third round of talks in Geneva. US imperialism’s stated goal is the
destruction of Iranian society, which Trump and his fascist Secretary of
War Pete Hegseth have repeated on numerous occasions. Trump once again
reveled Friday in the program of targeted assassinations employed by
American and Israeli forces to eliminate dozens of leading military and
political figures, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
declaring, “They are all gone...We are wanting to talk to them but we
have nobody to talk to. We like it that way.”
This
mafia-style bravado cannot conceal the fact that the war of
extermination has plunged American and world imperialism into an
accelerating crisis. Trump’s plan to decapitate the bourgeois-clerical
regime in Tehran and bring about “regime change” from the air has failed
spectacularly. Iran has responded by seizing control of the Strait of
Hormuz and firing retaliatory strikes on US bases and energy
infrastructure across the Gulf region. Oil and natural gas prices have
skyrocketed, threatening social and economic unrest in the imperialist
centers of North America and Europe as rampant inflation impoverishes
millions of workers.
*****
The deployment of ground troops will give the war an even greater
escalatory dynamic. The 13 US military fatalities reported so far will
rapidly multiply, demanding the sending of ever greater numbers of
troops. Iran would be able to target US positions on Kharg Island, which
lies just 15 miles off the coast, or along the mainland’s coastline if
operations were launched there. Iran would have the ability to reinforce
its defensive positions from its population of 93 million people. One
Australian think tank drew the comparison with the 1915 operation
launched by Britain and its allies during World War I to capture the
Gallipoli peninsula, which resulted in over 250,000 deaths and ended in
failure.
This is not the only comparison one can make between the
present conflict and the First World War. Another is the rapidity with
which all of the major imperialist powers are being dragged into the
war. At the beginning of the week, the European imperialists were still
declaring at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels that this is
“not our war.” By Thursday, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, and Japan released a statement pledging to take part in
clearing the Strait of Hormuz. On Friday, Britain announced it was
permitting the US to use its bases for attacks on Iranian targets being
used to prevent ships passing through the waterway, which serves as a
transit route for 20 percent of the world’s oil. The main fears driving
the Europeans towards escalation in a desperate bid to bring the war to a
swift conclusion are that a prolonged war will cripple their economies
through high energy prices, deprive Ukraine of US-made weapons to
continue the war on Russia, and strengthen the Kremlin financially due
to better oil and LNG revenues.
*****
Washington’s goal is to erase the 20th century by overturning the social
and political gains made by the working class in the revolutionary and
anti-colonial struggles of this period, and return the world to the
naked colonial oppression that characterized the dawn of imperialism in
the late 1800s, with the only difference that the US, rather than
Britain, will be the unchallenged hegemon. To pursue this strategy, the
ruling class requires an intensification of class war at home alongside
military warfare abroad. This is why Trump’s operation to establish a
dictatorship in the US finds no genuine opposition from within the
ruling class and the European ruling elites are systematically
integrating far-right parties into established politics.
*****
Halting
the resurgence of imperialist barbarism demands the mobilization of the
international working class for the socialist reorganization of
society. Workers in the imperialist countries have no interest in paying
hand over fist for the ruling elites’ wars of plunder through steep
price inflation, job cuts, and the elimination of social programs to
fund the military. Their natural allies in the struggle to inflict a
defeat on American and European imperialism are workers in Iran and
throughout the Middle East, who can beat back imperialist conquest only
by taking their place in the global struggle for political power to pass
into the hands of the working class and socialism. This is the program
advocated by the World Socialist Web Site and International Committee of the Fourth International.
4. Deadly meningitis outbreak in UK due to erosion of public health
A deadly outbreak of meningitis in the county of Kent in England has
claimed the lives of two young people, a 21-year-old student at the
University of Kent and a sixth-form pupil at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar
School in Faversham.
As of March 19, the number of cases had
risen to 29 and is expected to grow. Of these, 13 infections have been
identified as the more dangerous strain, meningitis B, or MenB. The
outbreak is believed to have originated at the Club Chemistry nightclub
in Canterbury, visited by students between March 5 and 7.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and National Health Service (NHS) have declared a national incident.
UKHSA
head Susan Hopkins commented, “I can say that in my 35 years working in
medicine, in healthcare and hospitals, this is the most cases I’ve seen
in a single weekend with this type of infection. It’s the explosive
nature that is unprecedented here—the number of cases in such a short
space of time.”
*****
Chemists are selling the MenB vaccine privately for between £100 and
£120 per dose, and £200-£240 for a two-dose course. Even at this price,
pharmacies have reported shortages.
The
government is also resisting temporarily closing schools in the Kent
area, and the universities remain open, though exams are being conducted
online. This echoes the stance of all parties in parliament at the
outset of the COVID pandemic. Given the two-week incubation period for
the disease to emerge, a limited lockdown would help stem the spread,
alongside contact tracing, vaccination and antibiotic treatment.
Invasive
meningococcal disease, or meningitis, is a life-threatening illness
caused by bacteria or viruses that can develop rapidly and require
immediate antibiotic treatment. The viral strain is less deadly.
According to Professor Paul Hunter at the Norwich School of Medicine,
“You can go from being mildly ill walking around to being dead in less
than a day.”
*****
Symptoms that should be regarded as an early warning not to be
ignored include a stiff neck, aversion to bright lights, a rash that
does not disappear when a glass is pressed against the skin, pain in the
joints and muscles, seizures, diarrhoea and vomiting, extreme
sleepiness and delirium. Health officials are alerting students to seek
medical help immediately rather that attempting to sleep it off. Other
symptoms may include cold hands and feet, headache, fever and rapid
breathing.
MenB is now the most common form of the illness, which
accounted for four out of every five meningitis cases in the UK last
year. The culprit is a bacterium known as meningococcus or Neisseria
meningitidis, which lives in 10 percent of people’s throats at any one
time. It is only a problem if it invades the blood or spinal fluid,
leading to infection of the protective lining of the spinal cord.
*****
Precious time is being lost to halt the spread of the outbreak. The
response of the government to this latest public health crisis is
dictated by its overarching agenda of austerity, as it funnels billions
to the British and NATO war machine. Streeting has already declared that
“The NHS is going to have to get used to the fact that money is tight.”
Labour
has slashed NHS provision of flu and COVID vaccines. COVID boosters
last year were confined to those aged 75+ or immunosuppressed, and flu
jabs to those 65+ or with an eligible health condition. This contributed
to a record surge in flu cases this winter in England, 10 times higher
than in 2023.
Given the speed and severity of the latest
meningitis outbreak, health officials have considered the possibility of
a mutant strain of MenB emerging, with a sample currently under
laboratory examination. This could mean that the effectiveness of the
current vaccine needs to be reassessed, and that the MenB vaccine may
need to be modified.
The family of Juliette Kenny, the 21-year-old
from the University of Kent who died from the infection last week, has
called for greater protection for young people from meningitis. Michael
Kenny paid tribute to his daughter as “a force in this world” who
“spread fun, love and happiness”, saying the illness that took his
daughter “so quickly” could be avoided. “No family should experience
this pain and tragedy. This can be avoided… The work to protect young
people has started. It needs to be more.”
5. More Canadian workers support Will Lehman’s campaign for UAW presidency
Will Lehman for UAW President!
The World Socialist Web Site continues to receive statements of support from workers across
Canada for Will Lehman’s campaign for the presidency of the UAW in the
United States. Lehman is running as a socialist on a program to abolish
the union bureaucracy and place power back in the hands of workers on
the shop floor.
*****
Laurent, a special needs educator:
"To this we must say: Enough is enough! The trade union bureaucracy is
incapable of defending our interests. Worse still, it collaborates with
the state and employers against us. So let’s kick them out and create
new bodies by and for the workers. Forward with the rank-and-file
committees! Vote for Will, the only candidate fighting to help you
reclaim power in the workplace. The only one fighting for the unity of
all workers to bring about real change and achieve the social equality
we deserve!"
6. Iran war threatens contraction of Thai economy
Thailand, along with other import-dependent economies across Asia, is
facing a mounting economic crisis as the criminal US-led war against
Iran drives up global oil prices, which will lead to sharp increases in
essentials of fuel, electricity and transport. This is unfolding as the
new Bhumjaithai Party government—which campaigned on economic growth and
the expansion of domestic tourism and consumption—now confronts the
opposite, even before its cabinet has been fully consolidated.
Up
to 90 percent of Thailand’s crude oil is imported, half of which
normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Crude oil is essential for
transport, industry operations, and the production of fuels and
petrochemicals. It also sources approximately 30 percent of its
liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Middle East, LNG being responsible
for over 55 percent of domestic energy production.
With LNG and
global oil prices surging over 45 percent in price (oil has risen from
around $US70 per barrel on February 28 to over $100) the impact is being
rapidly transmitted into the Thai economy.
*****
Thailand’s crisis expresses, in a concentrated form, the contradiction
between the globally integrated character of modern production and the
limitations of the nation-state, which is incapable of resolving such
crises on a national basis.
*****
For the working class, the consequences will be severe. While the
government seeks to delay the immediate impact through subsidies and
administrative measures, the costs of the crisis cannot be
eliminated—only deferred. As the fiscal burden grows and supply
constraints intensify, workers will face rising prices, reduced real
wages and the threat of job losses as economic conditions deteriorate.
*****
Bangkok is economically deeply integrated into the global economy,
reliant in particular on China, but strategically aligned with US
imperialism. No leading political figure has condemned the US over its
criminal war against Iran.
Fearful of being drawn into the
conflict, Prime Minister Anutin stated the country must remain “as
neutral as possible” in regards to the war. A Thai bulk carrier was
already struck on March 11, as one of several vessels struck in the
Strait of Hormuz by Iran in its bid to stop shipping. While 20 workers
have been returned to Thailand, three remain missing and are feared
dead. Anutin’s cautious response was that the strike was “not
appropriate.”
As the war continues, the position of the new
government will only become precarious, as it confronts demands from the
Trump administration on the one hand, and growing social unrest as
prices continue to soar and the economy and living standards nose-dive.
7. Socialism in the “reactionary” Southwest: Lessons from James Green’s Grass-Roots Socialism
On September 10, 2025, Texas State University fired historian Tom Alter after he spoke at a socialist conference. As the World Socialist Web Site noted, he was targeted both because of his political views and because his scholarship
explores the history of socialism and the working class in Texas. This
history of bitter class struggle, agrarian radicalism, and socialist
organizing defies the carefully cultivated myth of Texas as a bastion of
reaction. Under present conditions in which Texas is home to a massive,
young, multi-national and multi-racial working class, the recovery of
this history carries an unmistakable, explosive contemporary relevance.
Alter’s
work stands in the tradition of an older scholarship on socialism and
working class struggle in the Southwest, whose foundational text is
James Green’s Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895–1943.
First published in 1978, it remains, nearly 50 years later, a valuable
and carefully researched work. Focusing on Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and
Louisiana from the mid-1890s to the mid-1920s, it documents the
political movements, organizations, tactics, achievements, failures and
remarkable personalities that made the American Southwest a center of
socialism in the early 20th century.
Grass-Roots Socialism
challenges the claim that racism and love of the rich and powerful are,
and have always been, endemic to the white population in the Southwest
and thus an explanation for the hold that far-right politics has on the
region today.
The book emerged from Green’s dissertation, which was directed by C. Vann Woodward, whose book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,
was called by Martin Luther King “the Bible of the civil rights
movement.” Green (1944–2016) spent the bulk of his academic career at
the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he was a professor of
history and labor studies from 1977 until his retirement in 2014. The
author of six books on American labor and radical movements, his works
include Death in the Haymarket, a history of the 1886 Chicago bombing and the labor movement of the Gilded Age, and The Devil Is Here in These Hills, a study of West Virginia coal miners that inspired a PBS documentary.
*****
By the 1890s, a sharp class divide had emerged in the American
Southwest. With the closure of the frontier making further westward
expansion impossible, land was increasingly concentrated in the hands of
wealthy farmers, absentee landlords, railroad companies and
speculators. Much of the rural population in recently-established
cotton-farming regions, including the old Black Belt that spanned from
Dallas to San Antonio, lived as highly indebted tenants. The crop lien
system, whereby supplies were provided to poor farmers in return for a
claim on their product, left the population in a permanent state of
penury. In addition to owing much of their yield to creditors, farmers
ended up wedded to mono-crop agriculture and thus vulnerable to both
natural disasters and price swings.
Contrary to stereotype, sharecropping subsumed black and white
farmers alike. But because of the large numbers of destitute black
sharecroppers in the delta regions of the Mississippi river, it was not
until the turn of the 20th century that the scale and scope of the
problem of poor white tenancy in the Southwest was recognized. By then,
the Southwest’s impoverished and disillusioned tenants were
predominantly white.
Despite the growing hold of sharecropping on
the rural poor, by the late 19th century, the agrarian Populist
movement—embodied in the People’s Party, which mobilized farmers against
banks and railroads—was collapsing and merging into the Democratic
Party. Poor Southwestern farmers, schooled in years of struggle against
the US’s landed and industrial elites, were left without a political
home. They sought, Green argues, a new perspective and party that could
explain their circumstances and lead their fight. These layers were
joined by younger, poor agriculturalists and workers concentrated in the
mining and timber industries. Together, they formed the social base of
the emerging socialist movement.
*****
By 1906, for instance, Texas and Oklahoma had 200 socialist party
branches with an average of 10 members. The ratio of dues-paying
socialist members to socialist voters that year in Oklahoma was 1:3 and
1:15 in Texas, as compared to 1:9 in the US as a whole and 1:7 in
Germany. In the 1908 presidential election, socialist candidate Eugene
Debs won 21,425 votes in Oklahoma, 8.4 percent of the total. In Texas,
Debs won fewer—just 8,000—but this was three times more than the
socialist candidate had secured four years earlier, despite the fact
that voter turnout had dropped by 33 percent due to the violent efforts
by the Democrats to disenfranchise voters. In Louisiana and Arkansas,
the vote totals made clear that Debs now had a base in coal mining
areas, in New Orleans, and among timber workers in the piney woods
region.
In 1912, 80,000 people in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and
Oklahoma voted for Debs, again the party’s presidential candidate. By
1914, Oklahoma had more dues-paying members (organized in 960 locals)
than New York, and that same year socialist candidates won 15,000 more
votes than their New York counterparts.
*****
Support for the Socialist Party in the Southwest increased rapidly with the publication and circulation of Julius Wayland’s Appeal to Reason,
first printed in 1895. The socialists’ call for the creation of a
“cooperative commonwealth” resonated with poor farmers, for whom the
concept bore within it the idea of land collectively owned and operated
and in which land speculation was banned. By 1897, Appeal to Reason
had 141,000 regular subscribers in the Southwest and special editions
had circulations more than eight times that amount. Readership was
actually far larger. The magazine switched hands and was read aloud to
the illiterate.
*****
Green also examines the socialist movement’s rank-and-file fighters.
One of the most interesting sections of his work is a discussion of the
Socialist Party’s “Appeal Armies,” which were made up of
ordinary members who bicycled, walked and drove buggies across the
Southwest to sell subscriptions. In 1912, there were 6,000 such
militants in the Southwest. Two years later, the party published a
“Who’s Who in Socialist America,” to feature its most dedicated foot
soldiers. Ninety-four were from the Southwest.
As the party’s influence grew, so did the number of its publications. There was the National Rip-Saw edited by Debs and Kate Richards O’Hare, which by 1913 reached a circulation of 150,000. Others included the Coming Nation, Industrial Democrat, Oklahoma Pioneer, Social Democrat, New Century, Daily Socialist, Pioneer, Tenant Farmer, Laborer, Lumberjack, Sledge Hammer, Otter Valley Socialist, Constructive Socialist, and The Rebel,
a Texas weekly edited by Tom Hickey that combined muckraking radicalism
with an evangelical style, an assault on landlordism, and, in contrast
to publications overseen by Debs, an appeal to racism.
*****
In a chapter of this book titled, “Troublesome Questions,” Green
takes up the Socialist Party’s attitude towards racism and segregation,
major issues in a region increasingly dominated by the Democratic
Party’s Jim Crow system. Many Southwest socialists followed Debs’
example in opposing black disenfranchisement and racial division. The
Socialist Party in Oklahoma led the fight against a 1910 referendum that
would deny blacks the vote. An analysis of 1910 vote tallies reveals
that, according to Green, “a significant positive correlation existed
between the level of opposition to disenfranchisement and the level of
Socialist support in the general election of 1910 (especially in
predominantly white areas).” A black political convention held in
November 1910 issued a statement condemning the Republican Party for
failing to mobilize opposition to disenfranchisement and declaring, “The
negro must turn to the only true friend he has ever had, the socialist
party.”
Understanding the presence and poisonous character of
racism within sections of the white laboring population, Oklahoma
socialist leaders appealed to the workers’ and farmers’ class
consciousness in an effort to beat back the referendum. “The negro
belongs to the working class, and the working class must stand by the
negro,” insisted Oscar Ameringer and Irish socialist Pat Nagle.
However, significant layers within the Socialist Party, most notably
Victor Berger of Milwaukee, embraced, promoted and accommodated
themselves to racism. Southwest socialism’s radical Irish-born fighter,
Tom Hickey, for instance, opposed forming integrated locals, refused to
organize black farmers, and his Texas publication, The Rebel,
sought to outdo the Democrats in terms of appealing to fears over
race-mixing. But racist politics frequently came up against objective
reality. Hickey had to abandon, for example, his opposition to
organizing blacks as part of the building of the Brotherhood of Timber
Workers.
The race question was never decisively fought out within
the Socialist Party. Even Debs, who refused to speak before segregated
audiences, retreated from an open fight on this issue, instead avoiding
the explosive question by insisting that racial inequality would be
overcome when class inequality was solved and thus, there was no need
for a specific socialist program on the race question.
*****
Grass-Roots Socialism details the socialists’ role in the
many hundreds of strikes and labor conflicts that rocked the Southwest
for years. There was, for instance, the five-month-long 1910 strike of
30,000 coalminers in United Mine Workers District 21, which spanned
eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, and north central Texas. There were
the “timber wars” of the early-mid teens in the Piney Woods region of
western Louisiana and eastern Texas. There were the 1911 transport
worker strikes in Texarkana, Dennison and Houston, Texas. The list goes
on.
The ruling class’s efforts to suppress the rebellion included
blacklisting workers, disenfranchising poor white and black voters,
intimidating workers at the ballot box, and, particularly after Debs’
strong showing in the 1912 election, hysterical campaigns by newspapers
and politicians that blended anti-socialism with race-baiting of
socialists as “nigger lovers.” In Oklahoma, where the Socialist Party
had its biggest wins in the 1912 election, an anti-socialist newspaper, The Kumrid, was founded by C.E. Guthrie—the father of Woody Guthrie, who became a communist and the bard of the rural poor.
*****
When World War I broke out, the Southwest’s socialists mobilized
around an anti-war program. In Texas, they organized demonstrations in
Houston and other cities. In Oklahoma, the party’s section issued a
statement declaring, “If War is declared, the Socialists of Oklahoma
shall refuse to enlist: but if forced to enter military service to
murder fellow workers, we shall choose to die fighting the enemies of
humanity in our ranks rather than to perish fighting fellow workers.”
Their declaration, understood to mean a call to turn guns on the
officers, won broad support.
Shortly after the US entered the war
in April 1917, Southwest socialists increased their anti-war organizing
efforts. The WCU, the Industrial Workers of the World, and a
newly-formed secret group in West Texas called the Farmers’ and
Laborer’s Protective Association (FLAP) formed an alliance and made
plans for an armed uprising.
By late July, the WCU, a combination
of white tenant farmers, black sharecroppers and Native Americans, had
between 18,000 and 35,000 members. Red flags were raised aloft on barns,
while night raiding parties cut telephone and telegraph wires, blew up
oil pipelines and burned railroad bridges in preparation. Posters
declared, “Now the time to rebel against this war with Germany boys.”
Efforts to break up the WCU met violent resistance.
The alliance prepared for action on August 3, in what is now known as the Green Corn Rebellion. The plan was as follows:
A
large army of Wobblies would march on Washington to overthrow the
government and put an end to the war and the draft. The Working Class
Union should start its own march to the nation’s capital, and link up
with thousands of farmers and workers throughout the land who would also
be up in arms. The Oklahoma rebels would be the vanguard of an army
marching across the South to the sea, living on beef and ripe corn as it
traveled.
The rebels, massing in Oklahoma counties
around the Canadian River, never started marching. A right-wing
citizens’ posse was unleashed to suppress the movement, and roundups and
arrests followed. Hundreds were detained, tried and convicted, and
about 75 imprisoned. Former Congressman William Murray called for the
rebels to be “set up against a hill and shot.” Notably, many newspapers
buried news of the rebellion out of fear that it would kick up similar
efforts.
World War I-era repression continued, ultimately directed from the White
House by the Woodrow Wilson administration and the Democratic Party. By
1919, socialism in the Southwest was strangled, “its most militant
newspapers had been suppressed, its party locals disbanded, and its
boldest leaders imprisoned,” Green writes.
*****
The final chapters of Grass-Roots Socialism, in which Green
discusses the decline of American socialism and its failure to survive
the “desperate years” of 1921–1943, are the weakest part of the book.
While Green documents the falling influence of socialism in the
Southwest and observes that the movement was overtaken by political
repression, the Great Depression and the rise of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, he never explains why the socialist
perspective lost its hold in the region, as it did elsewhere in the US.
Incubating
within the Socialist Party since its inception were two political
currents—the “direct action,” militant industrial unionism embodied in
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the figure of Big Bill
Haywood, and a reformist, electoral approach represented by Victor
Berger that centered on vote-getting and the idea that winning offices
would somehow lead to the gradual realization of socialist policies.
Neither the IWW nor the Berger reformists could articulate a program for
the seizure of political power and the overthrow of the capitalist
economy and state. One stopped at ferocious picket-line battles
metastasizing into a general strike that would banish capitalism and the
other at the “sewer socialism” of electoral politics. Debs, a genuine
revolutionist, straddled these two tendencies and was never satisfied
with either. He saw and sensed their limitations, but was unable to
overcome them.
This political conundrum had its own particular reality in the
American Southwest. Green discusses at various points in the book how
the tensions between the IWW and electoral reformism manifested
themselves in the region. He reviews the conflicts between the
“centralizers” and “decentralizers”—i.e., those in the Southwest who
thought political efforts should hew more closely to the prescriptives
of the national organization with its focus on electoral gains and those
that advocated more independent, radical tactics.
But Green does
not understand that American socialism in the Southwest, and
everywhere, declined because both of these approaches were superseded by
the Russian Revolution of 1917. In fact, Green makes no mention of the
Russian Revolution whatsoever, as if it had no impact on the debates
among Southwest socialists, much less the thinking of workers and poor
farmers. But it was in March 1917, just months before the Southwest’s
rebels declared their intention to overthrow the government in the Green
Corn Rebellion, that the Russian working class drove the tsar from
power. In October that year, the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and
Trotsky, proved that revolution was more than theory when the working
class seized power in the world’s largest country.
By way of its
success, the coming to power of the working class in Russia made clear
that “direct action” limited to battling the owners on the picket lines,
however ferocious, would not solve the problem of capitalist oppression
and war. And the belief that capitalism’s democratic institutions could
be bent to the will of the masses through gradual electoral gains was
equally false. The Bolshevik revolution made clear that the realization
of socialism required a “direct action” not against the capitalist
factories owners, but against the capitalist state. And the satisfaction
of the masses’ demand for “bread, land, and peace” required not working
within the capitalist state’s allegedly democratic institutions, but
creating new organs of workers’ power.
8. Militant support for strike grows at GM Silao Complex in Mexico
Militant support for a strike is rapidly growing among the nearly
7,000 workers at General Motors’ Silao Complex in Guanajuato, Mexico, as
a March 25 strike deadline approaches.
The plant produced 300,000 vehicles last year and is one of the most important auto production hubs in North America.
On
March 4, GM unilaterally suspended contract negotiations for a week
after rejecting the union’s demand for a 20 percent overall increase in
wages and benefits, leaving talks that began in late February still
unresolved.
*****
SINTTIA General Secretary Alejandra Morales Reynoso has stressed that
GM’s profits are soaring, noting that in December 2025 the company’s
sales in Mexico grew 11.2 percent, and its premium channel, which
includes models assembled in Silao, rose 27.7 percent, with the GMC line
achieving its best historical sales results.
In an interview with Conexión Global,
Morales declared, “We don’t want to reach the point of a strike, but we
are prepared for it. … We are requesting a 20 percent raise directly to
wages plus administrative clauses, allowing workers to take their
vacations, improving mealtime in the cafeteria, as well as payment for
transportation.”
Rank-and-file workers speaking to the World Socialist Web Site indicate there is widespread support for a strike but insist that nothing less than the full 20 percent is acceptable.
*****
In related issues, workers are also denouncing intolerable speedups
and the erosion of break times, conditions that the union has only
addressed with a vague and inadequate call for longer meal breaks. A
worker explained, “In some areas they do what they call rotation or they
‘run the line,’ which means continuing to push through trucks or
transmissions or engines during lunch and snack breaks, sending half the
people first and then the other half afterward; that’s how their system
works.”
Another pointed out that, despite its “independent”
label, the union is still effectively controlled by the Center for Labor
Research and Consulting (CILAS), the same law firm that helped set up
SINTTIA in the first place. It is in turn tied to the Solidarity Center,
an organization run by the US AFL-CIO union bureaucracy and funded by
the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government agency founded in
1983 to conduct overtly the kind of political influence operations
previously carried out covertly by the CIA.
The origins of SINTTIA
themselves confirm these concerns. As documented by the WSWS, the
rank‑and‑file group Generating Movement was formed in early 2019 through
regular meetings where active workers discussed how to expel the
gangster‑ridden CTM union from the Silao plant.
The group’s
courageous efforts culminated in a democratically decided campaign to
oppose forced overtime and speed‑ups in solidarity with the 40‑day
national GM strike in the United States that began in September 2019,
temporarily forcing GM to halt production in Silao. This budding bridge
for cross‑border class struggle was systematically sabotaged when
Solidarity Center operatives and their partners in CILAS intervened with
cash payments and promises of posts, hand‑picked a pliant leadership,
and legally registered SINTTIA while sidelining and effectively
destroying Generating Movement’s independent organization.
International
union bodies are now trying to channel the anger in Silao into safe,
pro‑corporate channels. Global IndustriALL, to which SINTTIA is
affiliated, and Brazil’s National Confederation of Metalworkers
(CNM/CUT) have issued statements denouncing GM for refusing to meet the
union halfway to avert a strike.
Workers at Silao view such
gestures with growing suspicion, since these organizations, like the
Solidarity Center, specialize in declarations and symbolic delegations
precisely to preempt any genuine international struggle that could block
the “race to the bottom” imposed by the global auto giants.
*****
Disillusionment with SINTTIA has fostered internal currents, but workers
warn that these are just another trap. “Within SINTTIA there is a
current that calls itself the Blue Movement whose objective is to get
rid of the advisers and have the rank and file take control of the
union,” said one worker who has attended recent assemblies. “But I don’t
think they can be trusted because they were part of the previous
committee.”
*****
The fear of mass layoffs is well-founded, fueled by reports of plant
closures in northern Mexico and job cuts internationally. One worker
cited reports that Volkswagen is preparing to fire 50,000 workers and
warned, “If the global situation is affecting VW, GM would be no
exception.”
This understanding points directly to the
international character of the fight now emerging in Silao. The 2019
solidarity action by Generating Movement with the US GM strike
demonstrated the power of coordinated action across borders, briefly
disrupting GM’s North American supply chain.
Today, the same
logic applies even more acutely. In an epoch of war and global crisis,
corporations like GM play a crucial role in state policy and war
production—as they did in the Second World War—making them a strategic
pillar of the ruling class.
*****
There already exists a network to launch an effective, international
fight against transnational corporations and all capitalist
exploitation, the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees (IWA-RFC), whose construction is at the center of the campaign of Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman for United Auto Workers president.
9. Australian Robodebt coverup deepens: No one held accountable
More than a decade after Australia’s notorious Robodebt regime was
launched in 2015—causing immense suffering to about 450,000 welfare
recipients by falsely accusing them of owing the government huge
debts—every official inquiry has ended with all those responsible going
scot-free.
In fact, in its final report last week the Albanese
government’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) went even
further than Labor’s 2023 royal commission into the scheme by totally
exonerating the former Liberal-National Coalition government leader most
directly involved in Robodebt—ex-Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
In addition, not a single government minister or official will be
prosecuted. Instead, two former relatively senior public service
executives were named as “corrupt” for allegedly misleading the
Coalition government’s cabinet or the federal Ombudsman over the
legality of the scheme, with no prosecutions recommended on the grounds
that no admissible evidence exists.
This has caused shock and
outrage among the victims and their families, some of whom have
campaigned for years for some kind of justice. Among them is Jenny
Miller, whose son, Rhys Cauzzo, took his own life in January 2017 while
being pursued for a false debt of up to $28,000.
*****
Robodebt was deliberately designed to slash billions of dollars from
social spending—in fact, nearly $2 billion was directly stripped from
recipients—and to cut off welfare payments, coercing recipients into
seeking low-paid work, all for the benefit of the corporate ruling
class.
*****
No reliable statistics exist on the number of suicides that resulted. In
2018, however, the Senate was given figures showing that, from July
2016 to October 2018, some 2,030 people had died after receiving a
Robodebt notice.
*****
When Robodebt victims, including the loved ones of those who had
committed suicide, publicly objected to their persecution, government
ministers unlawfully released selected confidential information from
their welfare files to corporate media outlets, such as the Australian, in efforts to blacken their names and intimidate other victims.
Labor’s
royal commission report described how public servants at all levels
were placed under intense and threatening pressure by the government
ministers, and any reservations were quashed, to implement the Robodebt
scheme to meet welfare-cutting targets. The former ministers most criticized in the report were Morrison and fellow former social security
ministers Alan Tudge, Christian Porter and Stuart Robert.
The
royal commission report said that once the unlawfulness of Robodebt
became obvious, the response of these ministers “was to double down, to
go on the attack in the media against those who complained and to
maintain the falsehood that in fact the system had not changed at all.
The government was, the DHS and DSS ministers maintained, acting
righteously to recoup taxpayers’ money from the undeserving.”
Yet
none of these ministers will be held to account. In a sealed 56-page
chapter of its report, the royal commission referred a handful of
individuals—now known to be five public service officials plus
Morrison—for possible criminal or civil action. At the time, Morrison
said he was not among them.
*****
The Labor government happily accepted the outcome. In a joint
statement with other cabinet ministers, Social Services Minister Tanya
Plibersek said: “Robodebt was illegal and immoral and nothing like it
can be allowed to happen again. I’d like to thank the Commission for
their work. We’ll keep working to deliver a fairer social security
system for all Australians; a system that treats people as human
beings.”
In reality, like the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor
governments before it, the Albanese government pursues similar methods
to Robodebt. For example, it enforces a “mutual obligation” regime that
compels most welfare recipients to undertake an arbitrary number of job
applications, training courses or volunteer activities each month in
order to keep their payments.
Last September, the Albanese
government attempted to deflect from the ever-more glaring Robodebt
whitewash—and avoid legal liability—by agreeing to pay $475 million in
additional compensation to victims. That took the total financial payout
to more than $2.4 billion, but a large chunk of that went to lawyers
who ran class actions in the Federal Court.
Nearly a decade after
the scheme was introduced, Robodebt has now passed through every stage
of Australia’s supposed accountability system, including parliamentary
hearings, a royal commission, an Ombudsman’s investigation, several
tribunal and court cases, and, finally, a corruption inquiry. The end
result is a damning indictment, from which definite political
conclusions need to be drawn.
*****
The hostility to the Robodebt cruelty, which still exists throughout
the working class, needs to be transformed into a conscious struggle,
against the entire political and corporate establishment, including the
Labor government.
Decent welfare entitlements, on which the
recipients, including the jobless, disabled and retired workers can
live, are a basic social right. But to achieve that requires a socialist
program to totally reorganize society to meet the pressing social needs
of the working class, the vast majority, not the private profits of the
super-rich.
10. Expansion of Kansas detention facilities; protests against Missouri police serving as ICE enforcement
As part of the rapid expansion of the US immigration enforcement
apparatus, the Leavenworth, Kansas City commission voted 4–1 in early
March to approve a permit allowing the private prison corporation
CoreCivic to reopen a shuttered facility as an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) detention center.
The Midwest Regional
Reception Center facility has been closed since 2021 after its contract
with the U.S. Marshals Service was not renewed amid mounting scandals
over violence, understaffing and abuses that rendered it temporarily
unprofitable. Its reopening under an ICE contract underscores the extent
to which such facilities are not closed on principle but merely lie
dormant until new revenue streams emerge.*****
Civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties
Union, warned that reopening the facility would expand a detention
system long associated with abuse, lack of oversight and inhumane
conditions. Religious groups, local activists and former prison workers
joined in opposition. Despite this, city officials approved the permit,
citing the risk of costly litigation and the desire to impose regulatory
conditions on the facility rather than lose control entirely.
The
Leavenworth expansion is part of a broader federal effort to rapidly
expand immigration detention capacity by reopening closed private
prisons and contracting with corporations like CoreCivic. At the same
time, the federal government is deepening collaboration with local law
enforcement agencies through programs administered by US Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS). This dual strategy—expanding detention infrastructure while
deputizing local police—marks a significant escalation in immigration
enforcement and the repressive powers of the state.
At the center of this expansion is not only repression, but profit.
Immigration detention has become a multibillion-dollar industry
dominated by a handful of private corporations. CoreCivic and its chief
competitor GEO Group derive a substantial portion of their revenues
directly from ICE contracts, which generate hundreds of millions—and in
some cases over a billion—dollars annually, binding immigration policy
ever more directly to corporate financial interests.
These
contracts are frequently structured to guarantee income regardless of
how many people are actually detained. So-called “bed quotas” or minimum
occupancy clauses require the government to pay for a fixed number of
detention beds whether they are filled or not. By 2020, ICE was paying
approximately $20 million per month for empty beds under such
agreements.
More broadly, studies have found that a majority of private prison
contracts require governments to maintain occupancy rates as high as 80
to 100 percent, effectively obligating authorities to keep facilities
full. This creates a direct financial incentive to expand arrests and
detentions in order to meet contractual thresholds.
*****
The implications of this policy were sharply revealed last month in
Branson, Missouri, where hundreds of residents packed City Hall on
February 10 to oppose a newly approved Section 287(g) agreement. Passed
with less than 24 hours’ public notice, the agreement authorizes local
police to act as federal immigration agents—empowering them to “identify
and remove” individuals suspected of lacking legal status. The measure
was pushed by Police Chief Eric Schmitt, who justified it by citing
alleged gang threats while acknowledging that authorities “couldn’t
prove” individuals were gang members—underscoring that enforcement would
proceed on suspicion rather than demonstrable evidence.
Residents responded with outrage. Protesters carried signs reading “No
ICE in Branson” and warned that the policy would erode constitutional
protections, including due process and the presumption of innocence.
Many expressed concern that the powers granted under 287(g) would be
used arbitrarily, particularly against immigrants and low-income
residents, while undermining trust in local institutions.
*****
The connection between these developments is not incidental but
systemic. In Leavenworth, detention capacity is being expanded and
guaranteed through lucrative contracts. In Branson and hundreds of other
cities, local police are being integrated into the enforcement pipeline
that will supply detainees to fill these facilities. The result is a
coordinated apparatus in which arrests, detention and deportation are
increasingly organized according to financial imperatives.
The
opposition that has emerged—from protests in Leavenworth to mass turnout
in Branson—reflects growing anger among workers and youth at policies
that threaten democratic rights and target vulnerable populations. Yet
these struggles remain fragmented and localized, while the expansion of
detention and deportation proceeds at the national level, backed by both
major parties and powerful corporate interests.
The working class must draw the necessary conclusions. The fight against
mass detention, deportation and the transformation of local police into
agents of federal enforcement cannot be waged through appeals to the
same institutions that are implementing these policies. It requires the
independent mobilization of workers, students and young people across
the country.
11. First of two reports on Berlinale short films: A search for social cohesion and direction in a world full of war and disasters
The
selection, which also included animations, offered some whimsical
pieces, many focused on individual emotions, as well as thoughtful
explorations of social and historical issues.
12. Australian PM heckled at Lakemba mosque over support for Gaza genocide, war
Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony
Burke received a hostile reception when they attended Lakemba mosque in
southwest Sydney yesterday, with congregants denouncing them for
supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the broader US-led war
throughout the Middle East.
The incident, which went viral on
social media and was widely reported in the press, provided a rare
glimpse of popular anti-war sentiment. Throughout the genocide, mass
hostility has alternately been blacked out and defamed by the media.
Since the US launched its assault on Iran, the press has been full of
propaganda justifying the illegal war.
Albanese and Burke were at
the mosque, the largest in the country, for Eid prayers marking the end
of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan. Their visit was coordinated with
leaders of the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), which manages the
mosque. They evidently thought this would be a benign photo opportunity.
But
those plans went awry. Footage shows congregants standing up and
shouting that Albanese and Burke were “genocide supporters.” They have
“supported the killing of our brothers and sisters” one man yelled.
*****
Appeals for the congregants to “sit down” fell on deaf ears. When the
same LMA representative urged attendees to show “respect” to Albanese
and Burke, one man responded: “they don’t respect us.”
*****
The reaction among ordinary congregants was entirely fitting. Given
their record and their ongoing actions, the appearance of Albanese and
Burke had the character of a provocation.
*****
For
more than two years, the Labor government has steadfastly supported
Israel’s assault on Gaza, even as it has claimed at least 75,000 lives
and been branded as a genocide by all reputable human rights organizations and experts in international law.
Labor has not only
backed the historic war crimes politically and diplomatically, but has
also materially aided the mass slaughter, including through the export
to Israel of key components for the F-35 fighter jets that have leveled Gaza.
Now Labor is an active participant in the broader war
throughout the Middle East, which the genocide was always aimed at
facilitating. Albanese was among the first world leaders to endorse US
President Donald Trump’s utterly criminal attack on Iran and has since
committed an advanced Australian warplane, missiles and personnel to aid
the war of extermination against that country of 93 million people.
*****
In seeking to justify their invitation to Albanese, the LMA said it had
been an opportunity for members of the Muslim community to politely
discuss their concerns with the Labor government, including over its
inadequate response to Islamophobia. That line reflects the
middle-class, community politics of the LMA which is oriented to the
political establishment and to government.
13. Hundreds of immigrants illegally jailed in Michigan
In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) changed its
position on mandatory detention, alerting its agents that any immigrant
who had arrived in the US illegally could be subject to mandatory
immigration detention. Prior to this change, mandatory detention without
bond was largely reserved for immigrants who had committed serious
violent or drug-related crimes in the United States.The result is that thousands of immigrants have been placed in a
position where they are ineligible for immigration bond hearings and are
not permitted release from ICE detention until their removal from the
United States, however long that takes. This policy change turns on
legal hairsplitting of the definition of when an immigrant is “seeking
admission” at the US border. Immigrants who are determined by DHS to be
“seeking admission” are seen as neither having been “admitted” nor
having been “not admitted” into the United States, and thus not
permitted released from ICE detention once arrested.
As immigrants
subject to the DHS’s new mandatory detention rules are unable to secure
release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention
through traditional bond pathways, an enormous number of habeas corpus petitions have been filed in federal district courts. Habeas corpus
is a legal right which dates back to the 1215 Magna Carta, permitting
detained individuals to challenge the legality of their confinement by
the government. It is specifically enshrined in Article I, Section 9,
Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
Habeas corpus is
therefore not simply an element of American jurisprudence but a
fundamental democratic right that dates back over 800 years. It is being
employed now against severe administrative overreach and attacks on
democratic rights. When a habeas petition is granted, the detained person must either be released or a bond hearing must be granted by the government.
In Michigan federal courts prior to 2025, immigration-related habeas
petitions were rare. Neither the Eastern nor Western District saw more
than five cases per month between 2008 and September 2025. After the DHS
widened the scope of immigrants who are subject to mandatory detention,
this number spiked, with more than 800 habeas petitions filed between August 2025 and February 2026.
Despite the fact that more than 90 percent of these petitions have been
granted, immigrants who are granted bond hearings by immigration courts,
organized under the Department of Justice (DOJ), are routinely denied
bond or given excessively high bond amounts, in blatant defiance of the
spirit of federal court grants of habeas corpus.
*****
The DOJ’s crowing about the “integrity and competence” of its
immigration judges flies in the face of the brazenly ideological
directives they have been given to deny as many asylum claims as possible. Immigration judges have unquestionably been given similar marching orders concerning immigration bond hearings.
The DHS’s attempt to widen the scope of mandatory immigration detention preceded its current push to expand detention centers across the United States.
This is a necessary outgrowth of the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant
pogrom and its broader attack on the working class. Underscoring this
point are the increasing revelations of atrocious detention center conditions.
North
Lake Detention Center in Baldwin, Michigan, the largest ICE detention
center in the Midwest, has been the site of dozens of 911 dispatches
since it was reopened on June 16, 2025. ICE blusters that the facility
has “higher detention standards than most US prisons” and that all
detainees are provided food, medical care and opportunities to speak
with their lawyers and family. An ICE spokesperson ghoulishly stated to MLive that the medical care at detention centers is “the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”
14. In Washington, far-right Japanese prime minister backs war on Iran
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met with US President Donald
Trump in Washington on Thursday where the two discussed Tokyo’s
involvement in the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran. While the
far-right Takaichi government has avoided making a formal statement,
Tokyo has in fact backed the war from the start.
The summit took place at the White House for approximately 90 minutes,
during which Takaichi reiterated her support for Washington’s illegal
attack on Iran. She echoed Trump’s phony rationale for the war
declaring, “Iran must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.”
Takaichi obsequiously groveled before Trump, telling the fascistic
president, “I firmly believe that it is only you, Donald, who can
achieve peace across the world.”
*****
Even as Iranian civilians, including children, are being targeted by the
US and Israel, the highly hypocritical joint statement from Japan and
the European nations condemned Iran, the victim in this conflict, in the
“strongest terms” for what it called attacks on commercial vessels, on
civilian infrastructure, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Claiming “freedom of navigation” as a “fundamental principle of
international law,” the statement declared, “We express our readiness to
contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the
Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in
preparatory planning.”
In other words, plans are being made to send military forces to Iran
to aid the US as Washington discovers that assassinations of the
country’s top leaders and widescale bombing have not been enough to win
the war. This is being done under the guise of protecting shipping and
“freedom of navigation,” the same rationale that has been used to
demonize China and prepare for an even more catastrophic conflict in the
Indo-Pacific.
*****
The war and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz have had a major
economic impact. Dubai crude oil rose to $166 a barrel on Thursday, a
new record-high, up from $71 on February 27. In Washington, Takaichi
declared, “We’ve brought plans with us to calm the energy market.” These
plans involve Japan’s massive $550 billion planned investment in the US
in a tariff agreement reached last year.
15. Teamsters bureaucracy lines up behind Trump’s DHS nominee Markwayne Mullin
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien appeared in person at Senator Markwayne
Mullin’s confirmation hearing this week, following his earlier public
endorsement of Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS). Before testimony began, Mullin embraced O’Brien visually
underscoring the political alliance between the Teamsters bureaucracy
and the domestic police state.
Mullin’s nomination was then advanced out of committee by an 8-7 vote
after Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania supplied the
decisive vote. That margin was necessary because Republican committee
chairman Rand Paul refused to support Mullin, citing, among other
things, Mullin’s past praise for the assault Paul suffered at the hands
of his neighbor and his refusal to offer a real apology. Mullin now
appears likely to win confirmation on the Senate floor, where
Republicans hold a narrow majority.
Before testimony even began,
Mullin embraced Sean O’Brien, who then took a seat next to former
Speaker of the House and former California Republican Rep. Kevin
McCarthy. Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a supporter not
only of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, but also of the ongoing
illegal war against Iran and the war against Russia in Ukraine, also
sat in the front row in support of Mullin. The scene provided a fitting
image of the political relationship on display throughout the
proceedings: the open alignment of the Teamsters bureaucracy, both
political parties, and Trump’s next thug to head the Department of
Homeland Security.
Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, opened the hearing by denouncing
political violence and recalling an assault he suffered years ago. He
noted that Mullin had stated publicly he “completely understood” why
Paul had been assaulted by his neighbor.
“I just wonder if someone
who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right
person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the
proper use of force,” Paul said.
While Paul was openly hostile to
Mullin, Democratic Michigan Senator Gary Peters cordially thanked him
for meeting with him before the hearing and welcomed Mullin’s family. He
then said that Democrats were prepared to fund all of the Department of
Homeland Security, except Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
until “reforms” were enacted. “We just want ICE to follow the same rules
as local police,” Peters said. “Local police” in America routinely kill
more than 1,000 people per year, overwhelmingly workers and poor
people, with virtual impunity.
*****
In his opening questioning of Mullin, Paul played a video showing
Mullin previously threatening to fight Sean O’Brien and then defending
his actions in multiple media appearances. In one podcast, Mullin
declared, “I’m not afraid of biting... and I don’t care where I’ll bite,
it’s just going to be a bite.”
Paul asked Mullin whether he
thought “fighting” was a good way to resolve political differences.
Mullin replied, “As you can notice over my shoulder here is my good
friend Sean O’Brien.”
O’Brien beamed as Mullin described going on his podcast and reconciling their differences.
On O’Brien’s podcast in October 2025, Mullin openly celebrated his
relationship with the Teamsters president. Mullin noted that “President
Trump loves” O’Brien and that Trump helped the pair become partners.
*****
O’Brien’s endorsement of Markwayne Mullin for secretary of the DHS
exposes the class character of the Teamsters bureaucracy. On March 6,
after Trump named Mullin to replace Kristi Noem, O’Brien declared, “If
anyone is willing to stand their butt up to protect America, it’s
Markwayne Mullin.”
*****
O’Brien’s appearance at Mullin’s hearing also confirms the broader analysis made by the WSWS after the 2024 Republican National Convention,
which explained that the union bureaucracy is “a natural base of
support for fascism.” Completely integrated with management and
dependent on the capitalist state, the bureaucracy is hostile to any
independent movement from below. O’Brien’s support for Trump’s DHS
nominee is not a personal aberration but the political expression of
that social function.
Workers need new organizations of
struggle—rank-and-file committees independent of the bureaucracy,
uniting immigrant and native-born workers alike on an internationalist
basis against deportations, war, fascism and capitalism.
16. 6,000 US DHL workers authorize nationwide strike action
Roughly 6,000 workers at international logistics corporation DHL voted
by 96 percent to authorize strike action earlier this month. The
contract for members of the Teamsters in 16 states expires with DHL
Express on March 31.
This is the latest in a growing list of worker struggles against the company, which employs 600,000 people across the globe.
*****
DHL, like many other logistics companies has been shifting its
operations as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. A rapid increase
in package volume prompted an expansion in operations that could not be
sustained. When volumes began to return to pre-pandemic levels,
companies like DHL sought to re-balance their books at the expense of
workers with sub-inflation pay raises and layoffs.
In 2025, DHL announced the layoff of 8,000 workers in Germany and
over the past several years it has laid off hundreds in the US. This
came as revenue fell for DHL from $84.2 billion in 2024 to $82.9 billion
in 2025.
However, the reduction in revenue is not a simple sign
of economic distress. DHL actually increased its profit by 3.7 percent
to over $6.1 billion in 2025, overcoming revenue losses from trade
tensions with the United States.
These figures expose any claim from management that they cannot afford to pay more for worker play, conditions and benefits.
*****
Today DHL Express workers face an even more intransigent union
bureaucracy in bed with management. Since becoming Teamsters President,
Sean O’Brien has overseen the sellout of UPS and the subsequent
elimination of nearly 100,000 jobs there, the destruction of 22,000 jobs
at Yellow Inc., and the sabotage of Teamster members' participation in
the Minneapolis general strike against ICE occupation.
O’Brien in
particular has positioned himself as an ally of the billionaire fascist
President Trump. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024,
has boasted of speaking to Trump multiple times a month and has
endorsed Markwayne Mullin to head the Department of Homeland Security,
whom he had previously challenged to a fist fight during a Congressional
hearing.
This is an expression of the pro-capitalist orientation
of the union apparatus. O’Brien is working to market himself and the
Teamsters as a useful ally to Trump through their ability to control
strikes and suppress the class struggle.
16. Haitian asylum seeker found dead in Pittsburgh after ICE detention
Daphy Michel
Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker with documented
mental illness, was found dead in a Pittsburgh bus shelter on March
2—still wearing the ankle monitor that Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) had fitted on her five days earlier, when it released
her alone into an unfamiliar city in freezing weather, more than 40
miles from her home, without notifying her family or her attorney.
Michel
entered the United States through a legal port of entry in Brownsville,
Texas, on December 14, 2022, paroled in under a discretionary
authorization for urgent humanitarian reasons. She subsequently filed
for asylum. At the time of her death, an immigration hearing was
scheduled for April 16 in Orlando, Florida—her case was still pending.
Her brother Carlo, who had been waiting for her release, lives legally
in the area under Temporary Protected Status (TPS)—the same status the
Trump administration has repeatedly sought to terminate for Haitian
immigrants.
*****
On September 3, 2025, she was arrested after a neighbor called 911 to
report that Michel was experiencing a mental health crisis. Charleroi
police, who had prior contact with her and knew her history, arrested
her on misdemeanor charges of harassment and terroristic threats. As is
typical in the United States, instead of dispatching emergency mental
health services, police were sent. She was taken to Washington County
Jail and held on a $10,000 bond, waiting nearly six months for a
hearing—including waiting for a mental health evaluation that reportedly
never fully materialized.
When Michel finally appeared in court
on February 26, the judge dismissed both misdemeanor counts, saying
there was no victim. But freedom was not waiting for her. The Washington
County Public Defender’s Office confirmed that ICE had placed a
detainer on her jail file—a formal request to be notified before she was
released. ICE used that detainer to intercept her release from county
custody and transfer her directly into federal hands.
*****
The following day, February 27, ICE processed Michel at its Enforcement
and Removal Operations office in Pittsburgh’s South Side and enrolled
her in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. A private
contractor fitted her with a GPS ankle monitor. Then she was
released—alone, in an unfamiliar city, with no transportation home, no
coordination with her family and no follow-up plan.
The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement to reporters,
defended its handling of the case: Michel had been released, it said,
“with all of her belongings, including a fully charged phone, in sunny
weather in the middle of Pittsburgh, where public transport is readily
available.”
The claim is a study in selective truth. February 27 did reach a high
of 50°F in Pittsburgh—a mild afternoon by late-winter standards. What
DHS did not mention: the temperature fell to exactly 32°F that night.
The following day, February 28, the high was 27°F. By the night of March
1—the night she is believed to have died—the temperature had dropped to
5°F. ICE released Daphy Michel into a pleasant Thursday afternoon and
left her to survive a week that ended in single digits.
Pittsburgh’s
South Side in late February is roughly an hour from Charleroi by car.
The only bus connecting the two runs a few times a day and requires
first reaching downtown Pittsburgh. Michel had no home in Pittsburgh, no
family in the city and no confirmed place to stay. Between the night of
February 27 and the morning of March 2, there is no public account of
where she went, whether she sought shelter or whether anyone saw her.
*****
On the morning of March 2, Port Authority maintenance workers found
Michel at a bus shelter on East Carson Street, beneath the Smithfield
Street Bridge on the South Side—less than 2 miles from the ICE office
where she had been processed. She was on the ground, unresponsive,
without a pulse. Emergency responders administered naloxone,
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a defibrillator three times. She was
transported to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, where she was pronounced
dead. Doctors told her family the cause was cardiac arrest.
Data
from her ankle monitor suggested she may have been dead for many hours
before she was discovered. She was still wearing the ankle monitor when
she was found.
*****
Michel’s death is not an aberration. It is the deliberate policy of the
Trump administration, carried out with the compliance of the Democratic
Party at both the local and national level.
Last year, Democrats and Republicans in Congress together approved more
than $45 billion for a massive expansion of ICE detention capacity. The
Washington County Board of Commissioners, which turned Michel over to
ICE, is composed of two Republicans and one Democrat. Pittsburgh and
Allegheny County—where the ICE detention center is located—are governed
by Democrats who consider themselves part of the party’s so-called
progressive wing. The county government passed a toothless resolution
barring its employees from cooperating with ICE. It did not prevent what
happened to Daphy Michel.
*****
What happened to Michel fits a well-documented pattern. According to
The Marshall Project and other outlets, detainees arrested in major
cities such as Chicago have been transferred to facilities in Texas,
Indiana and Michigan—hundreds of miles from their families and legal
support. The National Immigrant Justice Center has documented cases in
which individuals leave detention with little more than paperwork, no
transportation and no clear path back to the communities where they were
arrested.
The Vera Institute of Justice has documented instances
in which immigrants with serious psychiatric conditions were released
from detention without adequate planning, continuity of care or
confirmed support. In one documented case, a detainee deemed mentally
incompetent was released after prolonged confinement despite clear
evidence he could not safely care for himself.
Michel’s case is not isolated. Nurul Amin Shah Alam,
a nearly blind Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, was dropped by Border
Patrol agents at a closed Tim Hortons coffee shop in Buffalo, New York,
in freezing temperatures. Five days later he was found dead on the
street, miles away. His family was never notified of where he had been
left.
*****
The death of Daphy Michel is not the result of a few bad actors. It is
the product of a system—built and funded by both political
parties—designed to terrorize immigrant workers and the working class
communities they are part of. She came to the United States seeking
asylum. She was surveilled, jailed, intercepted and abandoned. The
bracelet beeped. No one came.
17. Iran warns UK government it is “participating in aggression”
Iran has warned Keir Starmer’s Labour government that it views
Britain as “participating in aggression” for allowing the United States
to use UK bases in its military operations.
In a phone call to UK
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
warned that London’s actions “will definitely be considered as
participation in aggression and will be recorded in the history of
relations between the two countries”. He told Cooper, “we reserve our
inherent right to defend the country’s sovereignty and independence.
*****
Information from flight tracking sites reveals the important role
Britain is playing in facilitating offensive operations. Leaving from
Fairford, US bombers are having to take a longer route through Gibraltar
and the Mediterranean to reach Iran as they are not permitted to pass
over the airspace of several European countries. Airlive reported, “The
unusual flight path is a direct result of hardening stances in Madrid
and Paris. While the UK and the US remain closely aligned on the
necessity of the strikes, France and Spain have officially denied
overflight permissions for missions categorized as ‘offensive.’”
In
Parliament March 1, Starmer—after being denounced by the Trump
administration—defended the decision not to join the bombing campaign,
insisting that his refusal was “deliberate … and I stand by it” while
declaring backing for a US regime operation in Iran.
Following
Iran’s warning Friday, Starmer’s official spokesman repeated, “We didn’t
participate in the initial strikes, and we’re not getting drawn into
the wider war.” The line was again rehearsed: “We have authorised the US
to use our bases for a specific defensive and limited purpose in
response to Iran’s continued and outrageous aggression, and we’ve always
said that this is the best way to eliminate the urgent threat and
restore a path to diplomacy.”
*****
Everyone knows that the bombing operations against Iran are an offensive
operation, in which at least 1,444 have been killed and over 18,000
injured, and has nothing to do with “self-defense” by the US and its
Israeli client state which has just spent almost two and a half years
destroying Gaza in a genocide.
18. Workers Struggles: Asia, & Australia
Australia:
Thousands of Victorian school teachers prepare to strike
Tasmanian public sector workers maintain industrial action
Glencore copper refinery workers in Townsville strike for pay rise
Mater hospital nurses in Queensland strike for pay parity
Bangladesh:
Apparel workers protest over outstanding payments
India:
Madhya Pradesh power workers strike for pay rise
Bihar: Chausa power plant construction workers strike for better conditions
Karnataka: Road toll collectors at Balagavi walk out over wage underpayments
Korea:
Samsung Electronics semiconductor workers approve strike action
Pakistan:
Capital Development Authority workers protest in Islamabad
19. Please defend and help free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk! Please add your name to our petition!
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.
