This is the third of six resolutions adopted unanimously by the Ninth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US). The resolution was introduced
by a report to the Congress, given by Eric London.
*****
1.
The construction of a dictatorship in the United States is centered on
the escalating assault on immigrant workers. ICE, transformed into a
paramilitary force, is carrying out a mass deportation operation. Armed
agents stalk the cities, seizing workers at workplaces, schools,
hospitals and courthouses. More than 10,000 were seized in the first
week of July alone, as the White House ordered stepped-up worksite
raids. Hundreds of thousands have been detained and deported since
Trump’s return to power.
2. A nationwide network of concentration
camps has been constructed across the United States in which men, women
and children are held without charge. A staggering $45 billion has been
appropriated for the camps alone, part of nearly $250 billion committed
to ICE and CBP through the end of Trump’s term. Under the Alien Enemies
Act of 1798, immigrants have been seized without hearing and rendered to
foreign prisons, including hundreds deported to the CECOT concentration
camp in El Salvador. The administration has openly threatened to
suspend habeas corpus—the right to challenge one’s imprisonment before a
court, enshrined in Article I of the Constitution—for immigrants. A
right abolished for immigrants is abolished for all, and its destruction
is the spearhead of the assault on the democratic rights of the entire
working class.
3. The state kills, and no one is held to account.
Fifty-two immigrants died in ICE custody in the first 500 days of the
second Trump administration. In Minneapolis, federal agents gunned down
Renée Nicole Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a nurse and union
member who stopped to film an arrest, after which Vice President JD
Vance declared the killer “protected by absolute immunity.”
4. On
July 7 in Houston, ICE agents shot down Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a
52-year-old construction worker who had spent 35 years building houses
in the city, as he drove in his work van on the way to a job. The
witnesses to his killing, including his brother, were thrown into
detention, while the government shields the name of the killer and the
FBI investigates the victim. Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, agents
fired seven shots into the car of Joan Sebastián Guerrero, a 26-year-old
Colombian worker with a valid work permit and a pending asylum claim,
then dragged him from the wreckage and handcuffed him as he bled to
death in front of his wife and daughter.
5. The regime’s war on
immigrants has provoked the most significant eruptions of opposition in
decades. The killings of Good and Pretti brought 100,000 people into the
streets of Minneapolis and set off mass protests and high school
walkouts against ICE across the country in January and February 2026. In
city after city, ICE raids have been met by crowds confronting the
agents and neighbors organizing to protect one another. This movement
against ICE fed directly into the “No Kings” demonstrations, among the
largest in American history.
6. The Minneapolis events were a
strategic experience for the entire working class. Out of the mass
protests against the killings came growing calls from below for a
general strike. The trade union apparatus rejected these calls.
Confronted with a movement demanding the mobilization of the full power
of the working class, the union bureaucracies refused to organize even a
single work stoppage. The state’s Democratic governor deployed state
troopers and the National Guard not against the raids but to shield the
agents from the population, hailed a “partnership” with Trump’s border
czar and presented as a “retreat” what was in fact a redeployment of ICE
agents to other cities.
7. In Congress, the Democrats staged
performative “no” votes, dropped every proposed restriction on Trump’s
ICE Gestapo agents, and cleared the way for tens of billions in new
funding for ICE and CBP. The deportation machine Trump wields was built
and expanded under Democratic administrations. Obama, the
“deporter-in-chief,” expelled more than 3 million immigrants, more than
any president before him, while constructing the detention
infrastructure and surveillance systems that ICE now employs. Biden
maintained the camps, used Title 42 to carry out millions of summary
expulsions, unleashed mounted Border Patrol agents against Haitian
refugees at Del Rio, and deported more people in his final year in
office than in any single year of Trump’s first term.
8. The war
on immigrants is the spearhead of the construction of a police state
directed against the entire working class. A force that can murder a
construction worker on his way to work and face no consequences can and
will be turned against strikers, demonstrators, and every form of
popular opposition. In the Prairieland case in Texas, 15 protesters
against ICE were sentenced to a combined 556 years in prison on charges
of “material support for terrorism”—sentences of a length reserved for
serial murder, imposed by the same government that pardoned 1,600
participants in the January 6 coup, including the fascists who assaulted
police. The Prairieland defendants are political prisoners, punished
for their opposition to the attacks on immigrants, not their conduct.
The fascistic incitement against immigrants serves both to divide the
working class against itself and to habituate society to state violence.
The assault on immigrants at home is also inseparable from the eruption
of imperialist violence throughout the hemisphere. Indeed, many of
those targeted for deportation have fled the catastrophic conditions
produced by American imperialism in Latin America and internationally.
9.
The assault on immigrants and refugees is international in scope.
Behind the ramparts of “Fortress Europe,” the European powers have
turned the Mediterranean into a mass grave, in which tens of thousands
of refugees have drowned over the past decade. They finance the Libyan
militias that intercept survivors and return them to torture camps,
imprison asylum-seekers in island camps, and adopt, one after another,
the deportation policies once associated only with the far right. From
the United States to Europe to Australia, the ruling classes answer the
movement of workers with razor wire, detention and death.
10. But
the division that the ruling class seeks to impose collides with an
objective fact: globalized production has created a single international
working class. Since 1980, the development of the world’s productive
forces has added more than 2 billion people to its ranks. For the first
time in history, the majority of humanity lives in cities, and the labor
of workers on every continent is bound together in production chains
that span the hemisphere and the world. Every commodity is the product
of this collective international labor. There is no “American” economy
apart from the labor of workers born in Mexico, Central America, the
Caribbean, Asia and Africa, and the immigrant worker in an American
plant, warehouse, or field is the living embodiment of the international
unity of the working class. The nationalism directed against immigrants
is a reactionary revolt against the objective structure of modern
economic life. The unity of the working class is not an aspiration; it
is an objective reality, which the party fights to make conscious.
11.
This Congress reaffirms the resolutions of the party’s 2014 and 2016
congresses on the defense of immigrant workers and the unity of the
workers of the Americas and renews their call under conditions of the
greatest assault on immigrant workers in American history. The workers
of North, Central and South America—exploited by the same transnational
corporations, confronting the same oligarchy—must be united in a common
struggle against imperialism and its border regime.
12. This Congress advances the following demands:
The
immediate and unconditional abolition of ICE, the Border Patrol and the
entire Department of Homeland Security—the police-state apparatus
constructed on a bipartisan basis after 9/11—and the dismantling of the
entire machinery of deportation, surveillance, and detention
The
shutdown of every concentration camp, the immediate and unconditional
release of every detainee, and the return, with full restitution, of all
who have been deported, including those rendered to CECOT
The freedom of the Prairieland prisoners and all those jailed for opposing ICE
The repeal of the Alien Enemies Act and every statute of the police-state framework and the inviolability of habeas corpus
The withdrawal of the National Guard and of ICE from every city
Full
accountability for the killings of Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo
Salgado Araujo, Joan Sebastián Guerrero and all those murdered by ICE
and the Border Patrol—from the agents who pulled the triggers to the
officials of both parties who built and direct the machinery they serve
Full
citizenship and democratic rights for all workers, regardless of where
they were born, and the right of all workers to live and work in
whatever country they choose
13. These demands will not be
realized through the courts, nor through the Democratic Party. They will
be realized through the independent mass mobilization of the working
class: the defense of immigrant workers by their coworkers and
neighbors, organized through rank-and-file committees in every workplace
and neighborhood, and the mobilization of the full industrial and
social power of the working class against the police-state buildup. The
defense of immigrants is the defense of the working class as a whole,
and a component of the fight for the unity of the workers of the
Americas in the world socialist revolution.1. Elon Musk becomes the latest Nazi decorated by the Zelensky regime
In
honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and the world's leading
promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once
again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for
"democracy."
The
National Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee (NSC-RFC) was founded by
shop floor workers in June 2023, on the eve of the last strike, after it
became clear to them that the United Steelworkers (USW) bureaucracy
would not wage a genuine fight for workers' demands.
The abject subservience of both sides of the table was summed up by the Financial Times,
which reported that the government made no mention whatsoever of
freeing former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from
their US prison cells.
The
growing confrontations between Ukrainian workers and forced
mobilization exposes the lie that Ukrainian society uniformly supports
the disastrous imperialist proxy war.
Trump
will attempt to use the uncertainty surrounding the elections fomented
by his baseless charges of election fraud and compounded by his attack
on mail-in voting to manipulate the elections and possibly suspend them
altogether.
Logistics
workers at the DHL Supply Chain warehouse in Muntinlupa City, Metro
Manila have been on strike for more than a week in a battle for their
jobs.
The
Albanese government is creating a wartime-like atmosphere, directed
against countries deemed to be threats to Australian national security
or foreign relations, particularly China, Russia and Iran.
The
executive board of the Volkswagen Group has begun preparing workers at
the core VW brand for an extension of the cutbacks that began at the end
of 2024. The process could ultimately end in the break-up of one of the
world’s largest car makers.
Tauranga
City Council failed to act on repeated warnings about the risks posed
by the location of the Beachside Holiday Park, where six people were
killed in a landslide in January.
A worker who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site described a disastrous combination of cutting corners, broken equipment and a general high-pressure working environment overseen by the subcontractor Samsic that led to Robayo’s death.
A Montreal Airport worker, who worked alongside Robayo, contacted the World Socialist Web Site to speak out about the fatal incident. He was especially incensed by the attempts of Samsic Assistance, Robayo’s employer and a globally operating provider of “business services,” to place the blame on the victim.
As
public funds bankroll corporate relocation, entertainment unions
enforce the competitive framework and suppress a unified struggle
against job destruction.
Pennsylvania
has confirmed 393 cases across 28 counties, nearly two-thirds of them
in adults, as national kindergarten vaccination falls to its lowest
level on record.
The
right to scrutinize any further deal before strike action is suspended
must be enforced from below. This basic principle of rank-and-file
democracy must be restored.
These events took place under conditions in which negotiations between
Ankara and the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
Abdullah Öcalan, are continuing, and in which the parliament this month
adopted a law related to those talks.
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.
The global trade war Trump has unleashed since returning to the White
House has hit Canada especially hard. But it is one front in
Washington’s drive to secure control of the world’s markets, resources
and strategic chokepoints through a violent redivision of the globe.
Trump,
the would-be fascist dictator, is determined to crash the Canadian
economy in order to reduce the country to a vassal state or annex it
outright as the 51st state.
This is the content of the publicly proclaimed “Donroe Doctrine,”
asserting unchallenged US dominance over the Western Hemisphere: plans
to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, the January invasion of
Venezuela and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro, the bullying
of Mexico, the strangling of Cuba. In this way American imperialism is
laying the groundwork for a third world war, with China its main target.
That war is, in fact, already underway: the US-NATO war against Russia
and the war against Iran are its opening fronts.
*****
The terms Washington demanded before talks collapsed included
restrictions on Canada’s right to negotiate trade agreements with
countries outside North America and the gutting of cultural and
sovereignty protections. In essence, Trump demanded that Canada
surrender the attributes of an independent state. He has said as much,
sneering that Canada wants “the benefits of being a State, without being
one,” and declaring, “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US! They do 95%
of their business with the U.S., with us, the exact opposite!”
The
costs are already being paid by workers on both sides of the border. A
tariff is a tax on imports passed on to consumers in higher prices. The
500-plus products covered by the latest round—plywood, cement, dairy,
clothing, appliances, etc.—feed directly into American workers’ housing,
grocery and utility bills. When steel tariffs were imposed in 2018,
they created an estimated 1,000 jobs in steel and destroyed 75,000 in
industries that use it.
The doubling of auto tariffs threatens a bloodbath in an industry
whose parts cross the border multiple times before a vehicle is
finished. Some 861,000 vehicles built in Canada were sold in the US last
year. Trump’s post spelled out the blackmail: “Build in the U.S. and
there are ZERO TARIFFS.” The aim is the wholesale transfer of production
south of the border—the deindustrialization of Ontario and Quebec—with
the whip of unemployment used to drive down wages in both countries.
Canadian
workers have already borne years of this: 3,200 Stellantis workers in
Brampton on layoff since early 2024, more than 1,000 jobs destroyed at
GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersoll, and up to 90,000 jobs now at risk.
American workers will be hit from the other side: Ottawa’s C$27.6
billion retaliation list—steel, dairy, appliances, farm equipment, pulp
and paper, electronics—targets jobs in US industry and agriculture.
The Canadian bourgeoisie opposes Trump only insofar as his “America
First” agenda cuts across its own imperialist interests. Using Trump as a
foil, the Liberal governments of Justin Trudeau and Carney have shifted
official politics sharply to the right—rearmament, ruthless austerity,
and the gutting of workers’ democratic and social rights, including the
right to strike.
Canada’s ruling class is no less vicious in its
persecution of immigrants, going so far as to have its border guards
hand people over to Trump’s fascistic ICE thugs. All Ottawa asks is
recognition of its first “right” to the profits from exploiting Canada’s
workers and resources, and a place as junior partner in a “Fortress
North America” trade and military bloc.
*****
For its part, the union apparatus has embraced the trade war on both sides of the border. UAW President Shawn Fain hailed Stellantis for “bringing good jobs back to America” as Brampton workers sat on layoff. Unifor and the Canadian Labour Congress answer not by opposing tariffs but by demanding Canada’s own. Marty Warren, Canadian national director of the United Steelworkers—a union that purports to speak for workers in both countries—declared: “This isn’t a war as in guns and boots on the ground, but this is an economic war. It’s up to our generation to… not lose control of our sovereignty and our Canadian economy.”
This foul nationalism goes hand in hand with the bureaucracy’s support for rearmament and war preparations against China. It seeks to divert widespread popular hostility to Trump—to oligarchy, dictatorship and war—into reactionary channels. But workers cannot fight American imperialism by lining up behind Canada’s imperialist bourgeoisie or any of its factions.
*****
We call on autoworkers, steelworkers, and all workers in the US,
Canada and Mexico to build rank-and-file committees, unified through the
International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. By
mobilizing the industrial and political power of the continent’s working
class, this movement will fight to: oppose every layoff and closure
carried out in the name of the trade war; stop war and dictatorship;
defend immigrant and refugee workers; and to link their struggles with
workers throughout Latin America confronting the same imperialist
violence.
The integrated economy of the Americas, built by the
working class of every country in the hemisphere, must be taken out of
private hands and reorganized on socialist foundations: the banks and
major corporations transformed into public utilities under democratic
workers’ control, production directed to social need rather than private
profit and imperialist war. This requires the fight for workers’
power—for workers’ governments in the United States, Canada and
throughout the hemisphere, and for the United Socialist States of the
Americas.
The
decisive question two weeks into the strike is whether we organize
ourselves to win or allow the United Steelworkers bureaucracy to fritter
away our strength until we are starved into accepting another sellout.
On August 6, Jonathan Cowan told the New York Times that his
organization, the ostensibly “moderate” Democratic Party think tank
Third Way, was “preparing for the next war that is coming.” Cowan was
not referring to Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the accelerating
descent into fascism, but rather a $15 million campaign to discredit
socialism.
The phrase “third way” was used in the 1990s to
describe the politics of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, US President
Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, supposedly
dismissing the distinction between left and right as irrelevant. The
1999 Blair-Schröder paper “The Way Forward for Europe’s Social
Democrats,” warned against equating social justice with equality of
outcome, rejected public expenditure as a measure of social conscience,
and called for transforming welfare into a “springboard to personal
responsibility.”
The Washington think tank Third Way was founded
in 2005 by Cowan, Bennett, Jim Kessler and Nancy Hale out of the gun
control group Americans for Gun Safety. Staffed by Clinton
administration veterans, its institutional ancestor was the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC) established by Al From in 1985, which sought to
replace the Democratic Party’s traditional connection to “organized
labor” with an orientation toward the emerging technology sector.
Clinton chaired it in 1990-91 and carried its program into the White
House: NAFTA, the abolition of Aid to Families with Dependent Children,
repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act providing for bank regulation, and the
passage of the 1994 crime bill.
By the time the DLC dissolved in
2011, Third Way had already assumed its functions. That January, Obama
named JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley as White House chief of
staff. Daley had joined Third Way’s board of trustees the previous July
and described its agenda as “moderate, pro-business, and pro-growth.”
Cowan called the appointment brilliant and praised Daley’s business
credentials as a means of deepening relations with the private sector.
Third
Way’s current target is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),
whose candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City, Denver,
Detroit and statewide in Michigan and Florida. Cowan said the money
would fund opposition research, polling, social media operations and
political education for Democratic activists and officeholders. It would
target not only DSA members but candidates such as Michigan Senate
candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whom Cowan accused of performing the “DSA
dodge” by accepting its support while remaining distant enough to avoid
the label of socialist.
A week later, journalist Ken Klippenstein published a leaked Third
Way email dated July 23 announcing the hiring of a “Director of
Anti-Extremism” to counter what it called radical and illiberal forces
within the party. DSA activists, the email claimed, “want something
closer to Cuba than to Scandinavia.”
This is of course a grotesque
anticommunist slander. The DSA actually advances a social program that
falls well short of the Great Society liberalism of Lyndon Johnson, let
alone Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They do not seek the expropriation
of the billionaire oligarchs, which is a prerequirement for genuine
socialism, but minor reforms that would leave the financial aristocracy
untouched, but give the Democratic Party a “left” fig leaf.
*****
Nine days after Cowan announced Third Way’s current “Anti-Extremism”
campaign, DNC Chair Ken Martin closed the party’s summer meeting in
Austin by calling the Democratic Party a “big tent,” urging members to
stop applying litmus tests after delegates resolved their deadlock over
whether to demand abolition of ICE or merely its reform by adopting both
resolutions. A decision on Israel and Palestine was deferred until
after the midterms.
The call for a “big tent” and the Third Way
purge are two sides of the same operation. Asked how it defines
extremism, Third Way spokesperson Kate DeGruyter said its effort targets
the DSA, not liberal Democrats, without explaining where the line
between them falls.
Cowan issued an open letter and op-ed against
El-Sayed before the Michigan primary because of his DSA affiliation,
although El-Sayed is not a DSA member and identifies as capitalist.
Third Way senior fellow Yemisii Egbewole, a former Biden White House
official, labeled Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong as
“not a real person” after she called for a one-year moratorium on AI
data center construction.
Third Way’s “anti-extremism” campaign
defends specific corporate prerogatives, including the massive AI
infrastructure buildout. In response to Trump’s AI Action Plan, Third
Way published an agenda urging Democratic leaders to reject pessimism
about the technology, allocate federal land for data centers and work
with industry to accelerate development. On March 12 it circulated a
memo advising Democratic campaigns on the issue.
Third Way’s own
research shows the unpopularity of its position. Its polling found data
centers less popular than every other category tested, including Trump
and both major parties. A June focus group found swing voters, including
self-identified liberals, siding with Tucker Carlson that data center
campuses do not justify their costs. Yet Third Way commissioned this
research and continues advising Democrats to support the buildout.
The organization’s political reach is reflected in its congressional
Honorary Co-Chairs. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons joined in
2011, Representatives Suzan DelBene and Scott Peters in 2015, and Marc
Veasey, Darren Soto, Sharice Davids and Marilyn Strickland in 2021.
Two
positions are particularly significant. DelBene chairs the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, which in 2018 recruited an
unprecedented number of former CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council
and State Department personnel into Democratic congressional races. Ten
of the 22 districts prioritized in the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program went
to military-intelligence candidates.
*****
Third Way is a policy and messaging operation for the corporate wing of
the Democratic Party, financed by unidentified donors and staffed by
former officials of administrations whose policies it defends. Its
output supplies Democratic officeholders with the vocabulary for
defining the limits of the politically permissible.
The final federal investigation into the fatal August 11, 2025
explosion at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works exposes the failure of the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to protect workers
from hazards that management refuses to correct. For more than a decade,
OSHA repeatedly inspected Clairton while conditions that contributed to
the deaths of steelworkers Steven Menefee and Timothy Quinn remained
uncorrected.
The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
(CSB) concluded that their deaths, as well as two of the five serious
injuries, could have been prevented or reduced had occupied buildings
been moved away from hazardous coke oven gas piping or constructed to
withstand an explosion.
The danger had been identified decades
earlier. In 2003, a US Steel Process Hazard Analysis team recommended
studying the location of occupied buildings around the coke batteries.
Management rejected the recommendation. Then, in 2010, another coke oven
gas explosion injured 20 workers. Yet the company still did not conduct
the siting study or move workers away from the danger.
*****
The failure at Clairton developed over successive Democratic and
Republican administrations as workplace safety was increasingly
subordinated to corporate interests.
Under Barack Obama, OSHA
rescinded the interpretation US Steel had relied upon. But the
administration’s broader regulatory policy required agencies to weigh
the benefits of regulations against costs, economic growth and
competitiveness, and to select the “least burdensome” means of achieving
regulatory goals.
Trump made the pro-corporate logic explicit,
ordering agencies during his first administration to eliminate two
regulations for every new one issued. Biden revoked the order and
claimed to restore workplace protections, but for four years OSHA still
did not require US Steel to address the Clairton siting hazard.
Trump’s
return brought an even broader attack, with agencies ordered to
identify at least 10 regulations or guidance documents for elimination
for every new one issued. His administration also sought to eliminate
funding for the CSB, the agency whose report now documents how the
Clairton deaths could have been prevented.
Yet the federal
government showed an entirely different degree of determination when
ownership of US Steel was declared a matter of “national security.”
Biden
blocked Nippon Steel’s acquisition in January 2025. Trump, who had also
opposed the takeover during the campaign, ordered another federal
review and ultimately approved it under a National Security Agreement
giving Washington extraordinary authority over specified US Steel
decisions. The takeover closed less than two months before the Clairton
explosion.
Presidents, cabinet officials and the Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United States were mobilized to determine who
would own US Steel and how the corporation would serve the strategic
interests of American capitalism. Yet for more than a decade the
government failed to ensure that Clairton workers were protected from
hazards capable of killing them.
*****
Every element of the Clairton disaster exposes not only OSHA but the
United Steelworkers bureaucracy, which has functioned for decades as a
mechanism for suppressing rank-and-file opposition rather than a force
fighting for workers’ lives.
The USW maintains joint
labor-management safety committees at Clairton and every unionized US
Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs facility. These committees, built on the
premise that the union and the company share a common interest in
“safety,” gave the USW bureaucracy full knowledge of the unrepaired
hazards, the unwritten water-washing procedure and the unresolved
facility-siting question for years. At no point did the union mobilize
its membership, authorize safety strikes, or make public the dangers its
own representatives were aware of. Instead, safety was handled the way
concessions have always been handled: behind closed doors, through joint
committees insulated from any accountability to the membership.
Rather
than mobilizing workers to force US Steel to eliminate the dangers at
Clairton, the bureaucracy has tied steelworkers’ interests to the
profitability and strategic interests of the American steel industry.
This was expressed most clearly during the fight over Nippon Steel. The
USW demanded that US Steel remain “domestically owned and operated,”
praised Biden when he blocked the acquisition and praised Trump when he
pledged to do the same. The union declared that foreign ownership
threatened US “economic and national security” and argued that domestic
steel production was essential to critical infrastructure and the
military.
The same nationalism underlies the USW’s support for tariffs and
trade-war measures. In 2025, the union welcomed Trump’s steel tariffs as
a means of combating China and protecting an industry it called the
backbone of US “critical infrastructure and national security.”
This
perspective identifies workers’ interests with those of “their”
corporation and national government. Instead of mobilizing steelworkers
internationally against the corporations, the USW tells workers that
their future depends upon strengthening US Steel, defending American
manufacturing and increasing US competitiveness and military power. Once
workers are told their jobs depend upon the profitability and
competitiveness of “their” company, demands that interfere with
production—from higher wages to shutting down dangerous equipment—are
presented as threats to the industry workers are supposed to defend.
*****
This is the same bureaucracy now negotiating the future of 23,000 US
Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs workers, with the current contracts set to
expire September 1. Master bargaining opened July 20, and US Steel has
already shown its hand: a five-year wage proposal it promoted publicly
while concealing, until a follow-up meeting, a plan to shift major
medical, drug and vision costs onto workers and their families. The
USW’s own bargaining update accused the company of deliberately hiding
the healthcare takeaways behind the wage numbers.
*****
Rank-and-file committees, independent of the USW apparatus, must be built in every plant and mine to:
Reject any contract negotiated behind closed doors and demand full membership control over bargaining demands and ratification;
Prepare
and coordinate joint strike action across US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs
to recover decades of lost wages, gutted pensions and other concessions
handed to the companies by the bureaucracy;
Abolish the joint
USW-management safety committees, which function to manage and conceal
hazards on behalf of the corporations rather than eliminate them, and
replace them with safety committees controlled by and accountable only
to workers;
Establish workers’ control over production quotas
and health and safety decisions, including the unconditional right to
stop production when dangerous conditions exist, without retaliation or
loss of pay, and full access to OSHA inspections, maintenance records,
Process Hazard Analyses and internal safety studies;
Launch an
independent rank-and-file investigation into the deaths of Menefee,
Quinn, Nelson and Stepp, and hold accountable everyone responsible for
their deaths, in management and in the union bureaucracy alike.
Such
committees, linked through the International Workers Alliance of
Rank-and-File Committees, would unite workers across plants and national
borders. American steelworkers have no interest in competing against
workers in Japan, China, Canada, Mexico or anywhere else for the benefit
of US Steel, Cleveland-Cliffs or Nippon Steel. Their common interest is
in fighting the corporations’ drive for greater production and lower
costs at workers’ expense—and in wresting control over their safety and
their livelihoods away from a bureaucracy that has shown, at Clairton
and everywhere else, that it will not do so on their behalf.
In a powerful interview that aired Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America,
the family of Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at the
Department of Veterans Affairs who was shot and killed more than seven
months ago by Customs and Border Protection agents, spoke at length with
George Stephanopoulos about the US government’s ongoing cover-up of
their son’s murder.
Pretti was the second US citizen murdered in Minneapolis during
“Operation Metro Surge,” one of several immigration kidnapping
operations targeting large cities as part of the Trump administration’s
mass deportation operation. On January 7, Renee Nicole Good, a
37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross.
Neither Ross nor the
Customs and Border Protection thugs who shot Pretti in the back have
been charged with a crime more than seven months after their murderous
actions were caught on camera.
Michael Pretti, Alex’s father,
began the interview by stating, “We really want to get the facts out of
what happened to Alex that day... We’ve seen what happened, the videos
are pretty clear, but we want justice, we want accountability from the
people that did this to Alex.
“He was a good man, he cared deeply
about his community. Minneapolis was his community. He wanted people to
be treated fairly, no matter what walk of life, what their background
was.”
*****
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos correctly observed that following
Pretti’s killing, a series of Trump administration officials made public
statements blaming Pretti for being shot and killed by the immigration
police.
Former US Border Patrol commander and neo-fascist Greg
Bovino claimed without evidence following the shooting that it appeared
Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Then-Department
of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Pretti “committed an
act of domestic terrorism,” while White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Stephen Miller characterized Pretti as “an assassin.” Pretti never fired
or even pulled out the pistol he was legally carrying. Miller’s message
was reposted on social media by Vice President JD Vance.
“Disgusting is what that was,” Michael said in response to the Trump officials’ smears of their murdered son.
*****
After reviewing the slanders issued by the fascists in Washington
following Pretti’s murder, Stephanopoulos asked whether any Trump
administration officials had reached out in the months since to retract
their statements, apologize or otherwise speak to the family about Alex.
The family confirmed that no officials had.
“What does that tell you?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“They don’t care,” the family replied.
*****
The killing was not an aberration. Customs and Border Protection
agents were deployed to Minneapolis as part of a military-style
occupation directed against immigrants and the entire working class.
Like the police, the immigration Gestapo exists to enforce the interests
of the capitalist ruling class through intimidation and violence. The
vast apparatus built up by Republican and Democratic administrations
alike has now been placed at the disposal of Trump’s erection of a
presidential dictatorship.
The fight for justice for Alex Pretti
and Renee Good requires the independent political mobilization of the
working class. It cannot be entrusted to the Democratic Party, whose
officials helped build the deportation and police state apparatus, or to
the federal agencies carrying out the cover-up. Workers must demand the
identification, arrest and prosecution of Pretti’s killers, the
withdrawal of federal agents from American cities and the dismantling of
the immigration Gestapo.
The Trump administration on Monday launched what Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent called an “economic D-Day” against Iran—a campaign of
secondary sanctions aimed at every country, bank and company that trades
with Tehran, above all China, which took roughly nine-tenths of Iran’s
oil exports before the US blockade choked them off.
Six months of
US and Israeli bombardment, which killed at least 3,468 people in Iran
by June 10, has not brought down the government in Tehran, and most
shipping still avoids the Strait of Hormuz. The administration is now
carrying the war into the world economy, on a course that leads to
confrontation with China.
*****
The war was conceived as a means of seizing the chokepoint of the
world’s oil supply and gaining a decisive advantage over China. Instead,
the United States confronts a political debacle, and it is China’s
position that has been strengthened.
The sanctions campaign is an
attempt to recoup by economic force what could not be won by bombing,
and it aims that force at Beijing. Washington has paused the bombing
since late July but has not renounced it; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
said Monday that “by no means are we foreclosing using kinetic strikes
anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz or around Iran.”
The war the sanctions are meant to salvage began on February 28, when
Washington and Tel Aviv started the bombing. A cease-fire in April and a
June 17 memorandum with Tehran lifted the blockade and let Iran export
oil until Washington broke the arrangement in early July by sending
ships through a route in the strait to which Iran had not agreed. When
Iran fired on the ships the US struck back, and on July 8 Trump declared
the cease-fire over. The blockade was reimposed. On August 17, the day
the memorandum expired, Trump said of Oman, with which Iran is
negotiating a shipping corridor, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb
the shit out of them.”
*****
Asked on Monday why the sanctions were not being imposed at once,
Bessent replied: “Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy
bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”
Bessent’s
statements are an admission of the provocative character of US actions.
Desperate to shore up its geopolitical position, it is taking a series
of increasingly reckless and desperate steps, whose impact is to widen
the global scope of the war.
The Financial Times wrote in
an editorial Tuesday that the operation “seemed more like a series of
warning shots fired from far offshore,” and concluded that it “amounts
to another risky gamble on a road that, for both sides, ultimately has
to lead back to the negotiating table.”
However, the sequence
Washington has followed does not lead to a negotiating table. It leads
to a widening global conflagration, centrally targeting Russia and
China.
Members
of the Socialist Equality Group (New Zealand) exposed the fascist
Ukrainian court’s frame-up of the young Trotskyist leader, who is
sentenced to 15 years in prison for “treason” for opposing the war.
Fernando Cerimedo, the Argentine political operative described by The Economist
as “MAGA’s man in LatAm,” is being held in preventive detention in
Bolivia, accused of ordering the attempted murder of his former partner,
the lawyer and activist Nadia Beller.
Cerimedo was among the most prominent propagandists at the
intersection of the Trump administration, the US intelligence apparatus
and the installation of far-right governments from Buenos Aires to
Tegucigalpa.
Beller, 33 and four months pregnant, was shot three
times outside a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra on the night of August
17 by two assailants dressed as delivery drivers who arrived on a stolen
motorcycle. She survived the attempt.
Cerimedo was detained the
following morning at Viru Viru airport attempting to board a flight to
Buenos Aires. A judge imposed the maximum term of preventive detention,
180 days. A search of his residence reportedly turned up evidence of a
bot farm and large quantities of cash. He is being held in a section of
the prison reserved for state officials and members of the security
forces.
Cerimedo denies involvement. His lawyer has advanced the
theory that Beller staged the shooting herself in order to “destabilize”
the Bolivian government—a claim amplified by Argentine President Javier
Milei, who reposted messages questioning whether her wounds were real.
*****
The prosecution’s case rests on material extracted from Cerimedo’s
telephone. According to Beller’s attorney, Jerjes Justiniano, one
message reads: “Don’t tell anyone. But Enrique’s friend sold us out,
remember? Nadia. Either we eliminate her now or we’re screwed. Do you
know anyone who can do the job?”
Other messages recovered from the device were sent by an individual
identified as E.C.G. on the day of the shooting. “Brother, they just
shot her,” one reads. Afterward: “We have the phone just in case,” and
“Apparently no organs were compromised.” Investigators reportedly found
11 deleted calls between the two men that day.
E.C.G. has been
identified as Erik Correa González, intelligence chief under Bolivian
President Rodrigo Paz. Former President Evo Morales has stated that the
operation was designed to pin the killing on him: Beller was lured to
the hotel by an anonymous message offering information about a complaint
against Morales, and Cerimedo—according to Beller’s own
account—encouraged her to go despite her expressed fears for her safety.
Beller
has called the attack a “state crime,” charging involvement by the
government and the police. From her hospital bed she stated that she
decided to speak publicly because “until I speak directly to the
Bolivian people, they are going to finish what they attempted to do.”
*****
The Paz government came to office this year committed to placing the
full weight of Bolivia’s prolonged economic crisis on the backs of the
working class. The response was a massive 50-day general strike. That
movement was betrayed by the union leadership of the Central Obrera
Boliviana (COB), which channeled the immense militancy of miners,
teachers and other workers back into negotiations with a government that
had answered the movement with a state of exception and the deployment
of troops in the streets.
The assassination attempt, with the
participation of a state intelligence officer, against a politician who
claims she opposed the government, is not a private matter, but a
political action.
The plot is the logical culmination of
Cerimedo’s political trajectory as a key operative serving Washington’s
interests across the region.
His back story is murky at best. He
has claimed to have been offered a full scholarship to attend Harvard
University, to have trained with the US Navy Seals and to have served in
the Obama White House. There is no credible evidence to support any of
this.
Until 2019, he was working for the nominally “left” faction
of Peronism, organizing digital operations for the Peronist Youth in La
Matanza and running social media campaigns that re-elected Peronist
mayors in the province of Buenos Aires. He crossed over, he says, for
love: “My wife is a fan of Javier Milei.” More likely than not, he
followed more lucrative opportunities.
During the pandemic, his outlet La Derecha Diario
attacked public health measures and published disinformation about
vaccines, including the fabricated claim that Argentina’s regulatory
agency had confirmed doses contained graphene.
His first operation
of continental significance came in Brazil in 2022. Days after Jair
Bolsonaro’s defeat, Cerimedo hosted a livestream titled “Brazil Was
Stolen,” alleging that voting machines had been manipulated. He repeated
the claims before the Brazilian Senate. Days later, Bolsonaro’s
supporters stormed Congress and the presidential palace in Brasília in a
failed coup attempt organized from the highest levels of the state.
He
then joined Milei’s 2023 campaign, claiming credit for the chainsaw
brandished at rallies. In Chile he commissioned polling used to
influence the constitutional referendum that would have replaced the
constitution inherited from Pinochet. In Bolivia, his Numen Academy
trained Catalina Paz, the president’s daughter, now an adviser to his
government. And in Honduras he says he coordinated Trump’s Truth Social
post endorsing Nasry Asfura—the same Asfura exposed in the
“Hondurasgate” recordings discussing the financing of “information
cells” to destabilize Mexico and Colombia, and the imprisonment or
assassination of opponents.
Cerimedo’s business partner is Brad
Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, who supplies the
voter-targeting technology through their Buenos Aires consultancy Numen.
“Brad set up all the infrastructure that I work with,” Cerimedo has
said.
*****
The decisive connection, however, runs through Washington and Miami.
In
May 2023, Cerimedo registered NUMEN Advisors LLC in North Miami. Three
months later, a memorandum filed with the US Justice Department under
the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records a contract between
Numen and Damián Merlo’s Latin America Advisory Group to work on Milei’s
campaign—including approaches to members of Congress with emphasis on
south Florida, and to the Heritage Foundation, CSIS, the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council.
Merlo’s own record is
documented in the same FARA filings. He worked for the US Interests
Section in Havana in 1996-97 under State Department contract, screening
Cuban applicants for emigration. From 2002 to 2007 he was a program
officer at the International Republican Institute responsible for its
Cuba, Mexico and Brazil programs, including a grant to the Cuban
Democratic Revolutionary Directorate in Miami.
As explained by a La Jornada investigation, FARA
disclosures record Merlo’s meetings with Viviana Bovo, longtime adviser
to Marco Rubio; with Ricardo Pita, former Ted Cruz aide and now senior
adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department; with
Florida Republican Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira
Salazar; and, on January 13 of this year—10 days after the seizure of
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—with Joseph Humire, who heads
Americas security affairs at the Department of Defense, the office
supervising regional security cooperation and military sales.
Parscale, meanwhile, attended a meeting at Mar-a-Lago also attended by Rubio and Salazar.
When
Cerimedo engaged Merlo in 2023, he was securing much more than a
publicity deal. He was being integrated into the institutional
circuit—Miami, the Cuban fascistic organizations, south Florida
legislators, the hemispheric security bureaucracy—through which US
policy toward Latin America is made.
*****
The reaction of the regimes implicated has been immediate. Milei
declared Cerimedo “someone who is not part of our space and has no
connection with us of any kind,” despite official records showing 13
visits to the Casa Rosada after Milei took office. He then attributed
the affair to a conspiracy involving Evo Morales, Lula and
“castrochavismo.” In Chile, the chief adviser to President José Antonio
Kast’s election campaign has been formally questioned in Congress over
his ties to Cerimedo. Bolivia’s Paz has not appeared in public since the
arrest.
In fact, what has been exposed is a US-backed
transnational apparatus of disinformation, subversion and violence,
operating with the participation of intelligence services and reaching
into the highest levels of the Trump administration. Fifty years after
Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras convened his counterparts in
Santiago to establish Operation Condor’s joint information bank and
multinational task forces, the same methods are being reconstructed.
The
nominally left governments of the region offer no alternative. Despite
their current denunciations of this fascistic conspiracy, their
consistent accommodation to Trump demonstrates that bourgeois
nationalism provides no means of opposing imperialism or fascism.
As part of a global cost-cutting offensive, food and beverage giant
PepsiCo is seeking to impose further cuts to real wages and working
conditions at its Smith’s Snackfood factory in the Brisbane suburb of
Tingalpa.
Aggressively, the management has announced a ballot to try to push
through its demands without agreement from the three trade unions
covering the more than 400 workers at the site, while counting on the
union officials to stifle workers’ anger.
Workers should vote No
as a first step to fighting for better conditions and winning support
from other PepsiCo workers nationally and internationally.
The
management’s move follows talks with the Australian Workers Union (AWU)
and United Workers Union (UWU), which have production and warehouse
members, and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), which has members among
maintenance workers.
Together with a factory at Regency Park in
Adelaide, the Brisbane plant produces potato chips and other snacks,
under brands including Smith’s, Doritos, Red Rock Deli, Twisties and
Burger Rings.
As well as workers’ pay demands, the company has
rejected virtually all the limited claims submitted by the unions, such
as higher duties payments, limits on CCTV surveillance, a 30 percent
night time shift allowance and allowances for workers’ licences and
tickets. The only concession is a first aid allowance of just $22.26 per
week.
*****
According to the latest “Priced Out” report by Everybody’s Home, a
housing advocacy group, renting a mid-priced unit in Brisbane or any of
Australia’s capital cities now costs more than half a single worker’s
median take-home pay of $70,000. Over the past five years, median
apartment rent in Brisbane has risen by more than 62 percent.
For
workers paying off a mortgage, the situation is just as serious. Three
central bank rate rises this year, endorsed by the Albanese Labor
government, have cost an average homebuyer, paying off a $735,000 loan,
nearly $4,000 a year.
PepsiCo’s low wages are part of a drive to
dramatically boost profits at the expense of its workers around the
world, half of whom are in the United States.
*****
Following pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment
Management, which took a $4 billion stake in the company, or 2 percent,
PepsiCo embarked on a global efficiency drive. From late 2025, this
included the company cutting its workforce from 319,000 to 306,000.
The
latest cuts included 105 permanent jobs at its Main Street distribution
and bottling site in Columbia, South Carolina, the shutting down of
warehouse operations at its Skelly Drive facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
laying off 184 local logistics and forklift operators, and production
line closures at several locations, including two Frito-Lay plants in
Orlando, Florida.
PepsiCo chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta was paid
$US28,814,759 in total compensation for fiscal year 2024, while the
median PepsiCo employee was paid just $US53,551 that same year. That
works out to a pay ratio of 538 to 1. PepsiCo’s median employee would
need to work more than five centuries to match what Laguarta made in a
single year.
*****
Last week, a worker at the Adelaide plant told a World Socialist Web Site
campaign team that UWU members want to quit the union because it does
not fight for them and does not even respond to their calls for
assistance. Another said some workers were working 60 hours a week to
survive. That is happening in Brisbane as well.
To avoid another
sellout, Smith’s workers need to take matters into their own hands. This
means building a rank-and-file committee to direct the struggle, led by
workers on the shop floor, not highly paid union bureaucrats. This
committee must be open to all workers, permanent or casual, directly
employed or labour-hire, union or non-union.
This committee would
draw up demands based on workers’ needs and a plan of action through
which to fight for them, including strikes and other industrial action.
Such demands could include:
An immediate 40 percent pay rise across the board, to recoup previous losses.
Monthly cost-of-living adjustments to prevent further real wage cuts amid soaring inflation.
No
more labour-hire—secure jobs for all! All labour-hire workers to be
offered direct employment. All casuals to be offered permanent
positions.
No speed-ups! A safe workload clause, so production targets cannot be used to justify unsafe pace or unreasonable pressure.
All
improvements to wages and conditions to be extended to all PepsiCo
employees, including at the Adelaide factory and internationally.
The
way forward is through a unified struggle—bringing Smith’s workers
together with those in other PepsiCo facilities throughout the food
industry and beyond, across Australia and globally—against the onslaught
on wages, conditions and jobs.
Police in Omaha, Nebraska, have been forced to stop carrying electric
shock gloves in most Omaha Public Schools (OPS) following public
outrage over their use on two students, including a child in a
special-education program. But police officers from the suburb of
Bellevue who are assigned to two OPS schools continue to carry the
devices, as do officers in several neighboring districts.
The
shock gloves are the same which Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) plans to spend up to $20 million purchasing for federal agents.
In
June 2025, the Omaha City Council approved, as part of the police
department’s consent agenda (a block of items voted on without separate
discussion), a $65,924 purchase of 40 pairs of G.L.O.V.E.
devices—Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters—for school resource
officers, a routine budget item that drew no public debate at the time.
The gloves were used twice during the 2025-26 school year, both times on
students. In the first case, an officer shocked a trespassing student’s
wrist for roughly two seconds during a fight at Omaha South High
School. In the second, at the district’s Integrated Learning Program,
which serves students with social, emotional, behavioral and learning
needs, a student who had thrown a chair and struck a security guard was
shocked twice, once for about a second and again for two to three
seconds.
Democratic Mayor John Ewing, a former Omaha police deputy
chief, and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer reviewed both incidents and
pronounced them, in their own words, “the safest use-of-force option in
the rare times when it is used.”
That assessment was not shared by
the roughly 30 parents, students and community members who packed an
Omaha Public Schools board meeting on August 17 to denounce the devices,
after the story broke nationally. Omaha Central High School student Lux
Tipton told the board her twin brother has autism and that a shock
device could compound rather than de-escalate his outbursts, saying his
safety could be put at risk “not only mentally but also physically.”
A
strike would disrupt both commercial-aircraft certification and
military production under conditions of expanding US wars and
preparations for conflict with China.
One year ago this month, on August 11, 2025, President Donald Trump
stood before cameras at the White House and declared “liberation day”
for the nation’s capital and ordered the military occupation of the city.
Washington
has not seen a sustained armed military presence of this scale and
duration since the Civil War, when Union forces garrisoned the city
against Confederate attack. At its peak, the roughly 5,000 troops
deployed were more than the number that General Robert Ross and Rear
Admiral George Cockburn brought in 1814 when British forces sacked and
burnt the capital.
Trump, invoking Section 740 of the District of
Columbia Home Rule Act—a provision permitting the president to
commandeer the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under conditions of
“an emergency nature”—announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi would
assume direct control of the city’s police force. Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth was directed to “coordinate with governors” to “authorize the …
National Guard as he deems necessary” and to be “prepared to send the
military if needed.”
Some 800 National Guard troops from several Republican-governed
states flooded the streets of Washington. In any other location, this
would have been a flagrant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which
bars the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement.
But the District of Columbia, under direct congressional rule, is an
exception.
The pretext was as transparent as it was cynical.
Violent crime in Washington had been falling since 2023. The city’s
crime rates in 2024 were already at their lowest levels in three
decades, according to the Department of Justice’s own figures—and remain
so today, one year on. Nevertheless, Trump seized on the attempted
carjacking of a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency
(DOGE) operative to declare a “public safety emergency,” despite the two
teenage suspects already being in police custody.
“The National Guard are not protecting or serving for my benefit,” said Regina, a Washington D.C. resident, to the World Socialist Web Site.
“I think what Trump is doing is ridiculous. It’s not helping … he’s
doing it because this is who he serves: the banks, the billionaires.
He’s got billionaire people on his team.” She added, “He’s a monster and
we need to get him out of here.”
Stopping crime was never the
point. With each successive deadline, rather than withdrawing, the
administration has escalated. Deployment end dates have shifted half a
dozen times, from November 30, 2025, to January 20, 2029—the day Trump
is constitutionally required to leave office. What began as 800
troops—legally authorized for no more than 30 days under the Home Rule
Act’s provision, which expired September 10, 2025—metastasized into a
permanent military presence exceeding 5,000 at its peak during last
month’s July 4 festivities.
On November 20, 2025, U.S. District
Judge Jia M. Cobb found the deployment unlawful, ruling it usurped the
role of civilian police. The administration’s appeal has served only to
buy time to maintain and expand it.
*****
Among the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of
Independence against King George III was precisely the stationing of
standing armies among the civilian population without the consent of the
governed. That the 250th anniversary of that document was used as a
subterfuge for assembling an occupying force is a calculated obscenity
against every principle the Declaration represents.
Troops have
conducted “presence patrols” through federal parks, Metro stations and
residential neighborhoods, enforced youth curfews, supported ICE
operations and conducted homelessness sweeps. NPR has reported that
“legal experts, activists and watchdog groups worry the Trump
administration could fundamentally change the way the military is used
on U.S. soil,” citing the “upcoming 2026 midterm elections” as a
flashpoint for “what armed troops on the streets could mean as voters
cast ballots.”
More significant still is the role such a force
could play in a future contested election. On January 6, 2021, Trump’s
fascist foot soldiers besieged the U.S. Capitol to prevent the transfer
of power following his 2020 electoral defeat. Mobs constructed gallows
on the steps of the legislature. Armed thugs moved through the building
searching for members of Congress. For three and a half hours, the military did nothing—intervening only once it was clear the coup had failed on the ground.
The
lesson Trump drew was not that his objectives were wrong, but that his
methods were insufficient. Since returning to power, he has moved
deliberately to correct those deficiencies: building up military
presence gradually, staffing it from loyalist states, normalizing it
incrementally. The Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling granting presidential
immunity for “official acts” has removed the last formal legal
constraint on this process.
The occupation of Washington has not unfolded in isolation. It has
run alongside ICE deployments across the country, including the
effective occupation of Minneapolis, which provoked mass protests
nationally. As agents were withdrawn from some cities in the face of
popular resistance, they were redeployed—critically, to the nation’s
airports. In March 2026, the WSWS reported
that “the administration is normalizing the use of armed immigration
agents in major civilian spaces under the pretext of ‘security,’ while
its political allies openly describe these measures as preparation for
election intervention.”
The deployment has been sustained by the
political capitulation of local Democratic officials and the complicity
of the national party. As the anniversary arrived, the military
occupation of the capital has been treated as a local issue; no
prominent national Democratic leaders issued statements. When Trump
first ordered the occupation, the Washington Post editorial
board treated it as a well-intentioned tactical error, writing that the
city’s non-existent crime problems “are not the types of problems that
can be easily tackled from the Oval Office or by swarming the city’s
streets with Humvees.” Instead, the editorial advised Trump to pursue
“sustainable fixes” like hiring more police officers.
Collaboration,
not opposition, has been the Democratic Party’s organizing principle
throughout. When the 30-day window elapsed, outgoing Democratic Mayor
Muriel Bowser provided
the administration a critical workaround, pledging in September 2025 to
give Trump full operational collaboration with the Metropolitan Police
without further invocation of the Home Rule Act.
*****
The national pattern is identical. In November 2025, DSA New York
City Mayor Zohran Mamdani traveled to the White House—one day after
Trump had called for the execution of Democratic lawmakers—to announce a
“partnership” with the fascist president. As the WSWS wrote
at the time, this “represents the upper middle class that the DSA
speaks for aligning itself with the oligarchy for which Trump governs.
These forces are more afraid of social revolution than they are of
fascism.”
Throughout this year, cities across the country and
internationally have seen mass protests, with workers and young people
demonstrating genuine courage and determination. The fatal flaw has not
been the absence of numbers but the persistent orientation of these
mobilizations toward pressuring Congress and the Democratic
Party—institutions that have demonstrated, again and again, that they
will not act.
The WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party have advanced the
construction of independent rank-and-file committees in workplaces,
schools, hospitals and neighborhoods—organizations capable of mobilizing
the working class independently of both corporate parties against
assaults on living standards and democratic rights alike. Such
committees have their precedent in the revolutionary Committees of Correspondence and Committees of Safety
through which American colonists organized their revolt against the
British crown—updated now to the conditions of the 21st century and to
the task of working class emancipation from the oligarchy that has
seized the republic those committees helped found.
These
organizations must be guided by a program aimed not at pressuring the
Democratic Party, but at mobilizing the industrial and social power of
the working class to force the fascist government out of the streets,
the airports, and Washington itself as part of an international movement
for socialism.
Speaking
at the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei Berlin state election campaign
launch, the party's honorary chairman explains that 35 years ago it was
not socialism but Stalinism that collapsed, and that today's crisis
demands the working class reclaim its revolutionary traditions.
*****
Created with the assistance of Socialism AI, below is a English bulleted outline of Ulrich Rippert's presentation:
I. Introduction: A Completely Changed Political Situation
The Berlin state election takes place in a fundamentally transformed context — "nothing is as it was before"
The capitalist system is in an advanced stage of collapse, not only in Germany but worldwide
Daily announcements of mass layoffs, plant closures, wage cuts, and social spending cuts
AI and modern technology are being used to destroy jobs and drive exploitation to immeasurable extremes
Capitalism, based on the exploitation of wage labor, is destroying the very foundation of its own existence
The ruling class is responding to this historic crisis as it did in 1914 and 1939: with war and dictatorship
II. The War Hysteria and Historical Amnesia
Rippert asks: have they lost their minds in the Chancellery and Berlin's City Hall? Have they forgotten what Berlin, Germany, and Europe looked like at the end of WWII? Have they forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The present war hysteria — permeating every pore of propaganda and politics — expresses the desperation of the ruling class in the face of capitalism's historic crisis
III. Why Capitalism Survived After WWII — and Why Those Conditions No Longer Exist
After WWII, German capitalism survived for only two reasons:
The United States financed reconstruction with billions in credit
Workers' revolutionary struggles were suppressed by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union
Neither condition exists any longer
The postwar decades featured close transatlantic cooperation — Kennedy rode with Willy Brandt through West Berlin and declared "Ich bin ein Berliner!" at Schöneberg Town Hall
Today, the center of the capitalist world crisis lies in the United States
A "gangster named Trump" sits in the White House, representing the reactionary interests of an oligarchy of multibillionaires, using increasingly brutal and fascistic methods
Transatlantic cooperation has become transatlantic confrontation — a tariff and trade war
To MAGA, the German government responds with "Deutschland über alles!" and presents itself as Europe's leading military power
But the government is mistaken if it believes it can simply repeat the war terror of the two world wars — resistance is growing worldwide
IV. The Mood Among Workers and the Political Realignment
In conversations with colleagues, relatives, and acquaintances, one keeps hearing: "Things simply cannot go on like this!"
Everyone senses not only the threat but the unease — a tremendous social upheaval is in the air
Workers are asking: what can be done against rearmament, the drive toward war, mass layoffs, the rise of the AfD, and the return of the fascist threat?
It is becoming ever clearer that the fight against war requires a fight against capitalism — and that this demands a socialist programme and an international strategy
In the face of growing resistance, all establishment parties are drawing closer together and circling the wagons
The Left Party calls for cooperation with the CDU; a large part of the CDU/CSU already cooperates with the AfD
They are united in a party of war, social cuts, and dictatorship, stretching from the Left Party to the AfD
Great class battles have already begun; the Berlin election must be seen as part of a tremendous counteroffensive against the government and its all-party alliance
V. The Revolutionary Traditions of the Working Class
Quoting the SGP election statement: "Just as the ruling class is reviving its reactionary traditions of imperialism, war and fascism, the working class must revive its revolutionary, socialist and internationalist traditions."
The Berlin election coincides with an important anniversary: 35 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification
VI. What Really Happened in 1989–1991
The events were accompanied by a deafening propaganda campaign claiming socialism had failed and capitalism had triumphed — that freedom, democracy, and prosperity for all were beginning
The reality was entirely different: thousands of enterprises were shut down; hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, incomes, and social security; thousands of libraries and cultural institutions were closed; every social achievement in the GDR and Soviet Union was smashed
Today, faced with mass layoffs and war, the memory of that social devastation is returning
VII. The Kelvion Strike and the Lessons of the Past
Employees at the Kelvion machine factory in Thuringia began an indefinite all-out strike to prevent relocation and plant closure (~300 workers producing heat exchangers; Kelvion has 3,000+ employees total)
IG Metall is trying to prevent the strike from spreading, fearing a chain reaction; the strikers are reaching out to colleagues at other sites
The significance: an interesting discussion has begun among the workers, partly reflected on social media
One female worker reports that many remember their experiences from the post-Wall period — it feels like déjà vu: "Back then we made a mistake and allowed all of that to happen. We must not make that mistake again today."
The lesson: to fight successfully today, the lessons of the past must be drawn. To understand what "went wrong" 35 years ago, one must answer: what is socialism, and why were the GDR and the Soviet Union not socialism but Stalinist regimes?
It was not socialism that collapsed, but Stalinism
VIII. The Early Revolutionary Workers' Movement in Germany
The cradle of socialism stood in Germany — Marx and Engels' ideas won great influence among the working class
The Communist Manifesto became the foundation for building the first great socialist workers' party under August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who awakened the working class to political life
Workers were highly conscious of their role in society and of their economic and political power — they knew they created all of society's wealth and that a general strike would make clear who actually keeps society running
Everything that exists in Germany in the way of democratic and social rights was created by the working class under revolutionary Marxist leadership: universal, equal, and general suffrage; public education and the modern school system; freedom of opinion and of the press against censorship; social insurance and the state pension system
The ruling class always stood on the side of reaction — supporting the Kaiser and his authoritarian state; later, after the 1918 November Revolution overthrew the monarchy, the industrial barons and banks financed the Nazi Party and brought Hitler to power in 1933
If one asks why the ruling class is once again ruthlessly abolishing basic democratic rights and building a brutal police state that paves the way for the far right, the answer is: the bourgeois class in Germany has no democratic traditions whatsoever and has always stood on the side of reaction
IX. The SPD's Betrayal of 1914 and Its Consequences
With the early SPD's success, a strong opportunist current grew — arguing for gradual transition to socialism and rejecting revolutionary seizure of power
At the decisive moment — the start of WWI in 1914, when the question of war or revolution was on the agenda — the SPD leadership capitulated and voted for the Kaiser's war credits
This was a fundamental betrayal and a shock for the working class, the effects of which lasted for a long time
Since then, the SPD has been a loyal pillar of capitalist rule, playing a key role in every subsequent crisis in suppressing workers' revolutionary struggles and securing bourgeois rule
Today: the SPD is one of the main war parties, sitting in government with the CDU/CSU; its defense minister demands Germany be made "war ready"; its finance minister organizes social devastation far outstripping "Agenda 2010"; together with the trade union bureaucracy, it pushes through mass layoffs and social cuts
The SPD is rightly hated by millions of workers
X. The Russian Revolution and the Birth of Stalinism
With the SPD's betrayal, the leadership of the workers' revolutionary struggle shifted to Russia
The Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky drew the correct conclusions: the same contradictions of capitalism that lead to war also lead to revolution
When the tsarist system collapsed in early 1917, they were prepared — they seized power and established the first workers' state
The Russian Revolution inspired and mobilized millions worldwide; new revolutionary communist parties were founded
The revolution was the beginning of world revolution and could not survive within a national framework
When the revolution spread to Germany in the November Revolution, the Social Democratic government under Ebert and Noske strangled it and murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
After the initial revolutionary wave was halted, capitalist countries attacked the first workers' state on 14 fronts, exerting massive economic, political, and military pressure
Under this pressure, Stalinism emerged: a privileged layer developed within the revolutionary party and state apparatus that abolished workers' democracy and established a bureaucratic dictatorship
Against Marx's internationalist slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!", Stalin advanced the nationalist position of "socialism in one country"
On this nationalist basis, Stalinism became the most important counter-revolutionary force within the working class
XI. Trotsky, the Left Opposition, and the Fourth International
Trotsky built the Left Opposition — the socialist opposition to Stalinism
A virtual civil war developed within the Soviet Union; tens of thousands of revolutionary workers and intellectuals were convicted on false charges and murdered in the Moscow show trials of the 1930s
Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940
Two years earlier, he founded the Fourth International, which continued the fight to defend the socialist perspective and drew the lessons from the betrayals of both social democracy and Stalinism
XII. Stalinism's Disastrous Role in Germany
In Germany, Stalinism had especially disastrous consequences: Stalin's theory of "social fascism" — branding the Social Democrats as "social fascists" — split the working class and paved Hitler's way to power
Trotsky and the Left Opposition tirelessly fought against this and for a united front — a joint mobilization of all workers through which Hitler and the Nazi terror could have been prevented
After 1945, the Stalinists again played a key role in disarming the workers and preventing a revolutionary uprising
The reactionary policies of Stalinist governments, pursued in the name of socialism, fueled anti-communist sentiments
But as long as the Soviet Union existed, it still exerted pressure on capitalism; many postwar reforms were the product of its very existence
XIII. The Dissolution of the Soviet Union and Its Consequences
The contradiction between the nationalist policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the increasing globalization of production followed a relentless logic — the Soviet Union had to be integrated into the world market
The Trotskyist position at the time: there were only two possibilities — either the Stalinist bureaucracy would be overthrown by the working class in a political revolution and the world revolution carried forward, or capitalist relations would be restored
Out of fear of the working class in the Soviet Union and worldwide, the Stalinist bureaucracy fled into the arms of imperialism, smashed up state property, and re-established capitalist relations, with devastating consequences for the working class
The dissolution of the Soviet Union set in motion a process in which the leading capitalist powers — above all the US — deployed their military might to assert dominant positions as world powers; one war followed another
Today's situation — the Ukraine war as a NATO staging ground against Russia, the genocide in Gaza, the war against Iran, preparations for war in the Pacific against China, US military intervention in Latin America — is the form in which the Third World War is developing
This process began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union
The very same driving forces of the world economy that triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union are also acting on the capitalist states and are leading either to world war or world revolution
XIV. Why History Matters for the Election Campaign
Rippert anticipates the question: why speak about history at such length when this is about the Berlin election?
The answer: the election is taking place at a time when all the ghosts of the past have returned. The historic crisis of capitalism is taking ever sharper forms. Mass layoffs are reaching a scale not seen since the Great Depression. The ruling class is once again turning to war, social cuts, and dictatorship.
Not a single problem in Berlin state or federal politics can be solved without breaking the power of the financial aristocracy and its banks and corporations
The working class must prepare for revolutionary struggles; for this, it needs a revolutionary socialist party
"We are that party. We are Trotskyists."
The strength and confidence of the SGP stem from having drawn the lessons of history — fighting for many years without compromise against every form of opportunism and nationalism, defending the international socialist programme that is gaining ever greater significance today
XV. Call to Action
Make this election campaign a powerful political offensive
Study the SGP's election statement and programme; become a member of the party
Distribute and discuss the election statement with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances
Vote SGP on September 20
Make the Berlin state election the starting point of a rebellion against the policies of war and social devastation
The
criminalization of thought in Ukraine is a dress rehearsal for what
capitalist governments worldwide, including in Brazil, have in store for
all those who rise up against war and fascism.
Workers
and young people must oppose the use of the judiciary as a weapon to
suppress and neutralize political opposition, and must defend democratic
rights.
The
statement followed a letter from the Socialist Equality Party (UK) to
STWC Convenor Lindsey German on August 14. It is a blow against efforts
to silence Bogdan’s defense campaign, including a mass media blackout.
