Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: September 29-October 5
- 25 years ago:
Ariel Sharon provocation triggers Second Intifada
50 years ago:
Workers Revolutionary Party begins campaign against British police repression
75 years ago:
Truman approves NSC-68 and vast expansion of US military
100 years ago:
Dancer Josephine Baker premiers in France
2. Democrats, corporate media cover for Trump’s military coup
On Saturday, Trump ordered the deployment of US troops into Portland, the largest city in Oregon and the center of a metropolitan area of more than 2.5 million people. He claimed that the city was a “war zone,” in which Antifa terrorists were laying violent siege to government buildings and, in particular, to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement regional office there.
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Trump’s portrayal of Portland is a lie. In reality, a few dozen protesters, often seated in lawn chairs, wave signs against ICE’s mass detentions, exercising their First Amendment rights. When ICE vehicles arrive, they march peacefully. They are unarmed. The only violence has come from ICE itself, whose agents have repeatedly used so much tear gas that a nearby school had to relocate after children fell ill.
The presidential order for troops to use “full force” against civilians is a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, and an assault on the basic principles of democratic governance and the constitutional foundations of the American republic. It is worth recalling that it was the dispatch of British troops to attack, intimidate and arrest citizens of Massachusetts that touched off the American Revolution, 250 years ago.
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Even under conditions in which their own right to exist is under threat, the Democrats are doing everything they can to block any popular mobilization. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will visit the White House for talks on a budget deal with their Republican counterparts and Trump. The meeting comes after Trump previously denounced the two as “radical left lunatics” and said there was no reason to talk to the Democrats.
In appearances on Sunday television interview programs, Schumer and Jeffries hailed Trump’s decision to convene the talks as a “good first step,” while raising concerns of a purely fiscal character over Trump’s cancellation of premium subsidies for middle income families eligible to enroll under the Affordable Care Act. They did not suggest that the budget talks—supposedly the Democrats’ only point of leverage against the Trump administration—should be premised on political demands that Trump halt his military coup, withdraw troops from targeted cities and remove aides like Miller, who have declared the Democrats “terrorists.”
The overriding concern of the Democratic leadership is not how to stop Trump’s drive to dictatorship but how to secure bipartisan agreement on a budget that assures the continuation of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which was instigated by the Democratic administration of Biden and Harris, and remains the central priority of the Democratic Party.
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Neither the corporate media nor the Democrats suggested any link between Trump’s dispatch of federal troops into American cities and his summoning of the entire general staff of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines for an unprecedented meeting just outside Washington on Tuesday, even after Trump announced that he and not just Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would address the assembled officers.
There is every reason to believe that the purpose of this meeting is to ensure the loyalty of the general staff as the “commander-in-chief” presses ahead with his plans for dictatorship. Any reservations or objections will be met with a swift purge by Hegseth, who has already fired dozens of top officers promoted or appointed under the Biden administration.
Nor do the media or the Democrats suggest that the military deployments in cities throughout the US have any connection with the massive and escalating assault on the working class and social programs being carried out by the Trump government, acting on behalf of the oligarchy.
The working class must draw the necessary political conclusions. No section of the existing political establishment, Democrat or Republican, will defend the democratic rights of working people. They will either directly participate in the imposition of authoritarian rule or work as collaborators, peddling illusions in the courts and seeking at all costs to block any open resistance by the American population.
3. Former Amazon worker dead after shooting at Georgia warehouse
Shortly before 4:30 am on September 22, local police responded to 911 calls about an individual firing at the Amazon warehouse on Osceola Court. While standing outside the building, Belyue reportedly fired several rounds into the front of the building while workers were inside. Reporters later observed almost a dozen bullet holes in the warehouse’s front windows.
Belyue allegedly walked away from the building and was confronted by police. He brandished his gun and engaged in a brief standoff with the officers before fatally shooting himself, according to the police. Belyue was later pronounced dead by suicide at the scene.
No other deaths or injuries were reported. The Columbus Police Department is investigating the incident. Amazon is cooperating with the investigation and claims to be “supporting those who were on site during this incident.”
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Belyue had been working at Amazon since June but left about a week before the incident. He had been bullied at work and even sought mental health treatment. “Back to back to back, every day, like I said, he sat in the driveway when he got off work, sobbing,” his father Miren Belyue told WTVM. “I begged him to stop working that job, and management wouldn’t do anything.”
This tragedy cannot be understood apart from the social conditions in which it occurred. After Atlanta, which is 100 miles to the northeast, Columbus is the second most populous city in Georgia. Its poverty rate is 21.5 percent, which is twice the national rate of 10.6 percent, according to US Census Bureau data. The crime rate in Columbus is above the national average, and the city witnessed a record 70 homicides in 2021.
The shooting at the 90,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse was the second workplace shooting this month in Columbus. A man was fatally shot outside Aludyne-Columbus Foundry on September 3.
The needless death of Belyue also reflects Amazon’s documented indifference to workers’ physical and mental health. In July, an Amazon worker in Ohio described a pattern of physical abuse, sexual harassment and management retaliation in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site. The worker filed multiple complaints against an assistant manager who had touched her inappropriately. Not only did the complaints go uninvestigated, but also other managers began retaliating against the worker by giving her punitive, physically demanding assignments. An assistant manager even threatened her with violence, yet no one faced consequences for this harassment, which resulted in physical injuries and acute anxiety.
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Amazon workers’ fight for adequate pay, health benefits and safe workplaces is inextricable from a fight against war and dictatorship. Workers can appeal neither to the Democrats, who support this agenda, nor to the trade unions, who function as labor police for the companies and for the state. Instead, they must form rank-and-file committees under their own democratic control to organize and wage their struggle.
The week-long rolling strike earlier this month by more than 11,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union on both the London Underground (Tube) and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) was a powerful demonstration of resistance to yet another round of below-inflation wage deals, punishing work rosters and chronic understaffing.
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The fact that London was brought to a standstill underscored a basic truth: without workers nothing runs, and no profits are made. An estimated £230 million was lost to the capital’s economy.
As the World Socialist Web Site reported, Tube workers on the picket lines refuted the smears of the right-wing media that they enjoy a privileged status. Workers described exhaustion after working seven days straight, or enduring “compressed” four-day shifts of nine-and-a-half hours, and respiratory illnesses from prolonged exposure to dust. Plans to slash 2,000 station jobs, leaving vast parts of the network unmanned, places passenger safety at risk.
Strikers denounced the pro-market model of the London Underground upheld by Khan and the Starmer government, based on “self-financing” through passenger revenue and commercial ventures. London has the most expensive fares of any metro system in the world—double the global average. Tube workers insist the network should be fully funded by the central government to guarantee affordable public transport as a right and improvement to their pay and conditions.
Tube workers are also opposing recent visa changes that threaten deportation for hundreds of colleagues who no longer meet the increased salary threshold for skilled workers.
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Workers must reject claims there is “no money” to fund their demands. Billions must be allocated to upgrade and expand the Tube, DLR and national rail, improving pay, conditions and pensions while making transport affordable. This requires a political struggle against the Starmer government, which is funnelling billions into military rearmament and war, with workers footing the bill through austerity.
5. Kenyan ruling class whips up nationalism over Somalis accused of desecrating national flag
Viral clips from a CAF Champions League match at Nairobi’s Nyayo Stadium, the continent’s top club competition organized by the Confederation of African Football, have been seized on by the Kenyan ruling class to whip up nationalist hysteria.
In footage circulated on social media, a small group of Mogadishu City Club supporters, who had traveled from Somalia to back their team, are seen mishandling a Kenyan flag. Two of them, minors aged just 14 and 17, stomp on it, kick it in the air, and rub it against their crotch.
A petty act by a couple of teenagers has been inflated into a national scandal. For more than a week, The Standard, The Star, and The Daily Nation have splashed the story across their pages, with sensational headlines and endless commentary while the main television and radio channels have echoed the same drumbeat.The unpopular government of William Ruto seized an opportunity to promote “national unity”. On Wednesday, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen ordered immediate arrests and prosecutions, threatening deportations.
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On Thursday, the Directorate of Criminal Investigation DCI head announced on X the arrest of a 17-year-old, adding “Efforts to apprehend the other suspect, who is believed to be within the country, are ongoing”. Hours later, the DCI confirmed the arrest of a 14-year-old. Both were denied release to relatives, detained at the Children’s Protection Unit, and now face charges ranging from illegal entry to “damaging a national symbol.”
The prosecution is demanding the minors be sent to the notorious Kamiti Maximum Prison, where Kenya’s most hardened criminals are detained behind high concrete walls.
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That the ruling class can deploy the full weight of the police, the DCI, the immigration department and the courts against teenagers over such a matter reveals the real function of nationalism as an ideological weapon to confuse and divide the working class. It serves to obscure the obscene levels of inequality and mass opposition which exist against the Ruto regime and the bourgeois opposition.
The real concerns of the masses are not the petty mischiefs of two teenagers but inequality, the soaring cost of living, mass unemployment, and the collapse of public services. According to Oxfam, Kenya is among the most unequal countries in the world, with less than 0.1 percent of the population—about 8,300 people—owning more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent, more than 44 million people. Around 40 percent of Kenyans live in poverty and 32 percent in food poverty, unable to meet even basic needs. Three quarters of young people under 35 are locked out of secure jobs and pushed into low paid informal work.
Rising food prices, recurring droughts, and environmental disasters leave nearly a quarter of the population chronically hungry. Schools are overcrowded, health care is collapsing after the dismantling of the National Health Insurance Fund and its replacement with the Social Health Authority, and millions in slums like Kibera and Mathare survive without clean water or sanitation. Meanwhile billions vanish every year in corruption scandals, from COVID-19 funds to the Housing Levy.
The scapegoating of Somalis has long been a weapon of the Kenyan ruling class. After Somalia’s independence in 1960, Somali nationalists demanded the Northern Frontier District be allowed to join Somalia. Britain rejected this, and upon granting independence to Kenya in 1963, Jomo Kenyatta’s government, backed by London, waged the bloody Shifta War (1963–1967) to crush Somali secessionists and whip up national unity behind the new Kenyan bourgeoisie.
The government killed more than 10,000 people through scorched earth tactics, mass detentions, forced relocations, livestock seizures, and concentration camp style resettlements. Survivors recounted horrific ordeals: men forced to lie in the sun without food or water, brutal beatings, sexual violence, and torture aimed at extracting the addresses of “rebels.” These were the same methods Britain used less than a decade earlier to suppress the Mau Mau uprising, when hundreds of thousands of peasants were herded into detention camps under conditions of starvation, torture, and forced labour.
Under Daniel arap Moi (1978–2002), state repression continued leading to the 1984 Wajir massacre, when 5,000 Somali men were herded onto the Wagalla airstrip, denied food and water for days, subjected to torture and beatings, and executed, with at least 1,000 killed.
In the 2000s, the US-led “war on terror” provided a fresh pretext for persecution. In 2011, Kenya invaded Somalia under “Operation Linda Nchi,” with direct backing from Washington. Al Shabaab, a product of the 2006 US-sponsored Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, responded with a series of atrocities, including the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi and the 2015 Garissa University massacre, which together claimed hundreds of civilian lives.
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Workers and youth in Kenya and Somalia must reject every appeal to nationalism and patriotism, whether it comes from the Ruto government, the capitalist opposition, or Islamist militias or the Somali government. The way forward lies in internationalism and socialism, linking the fight of Kenyan and Somali workers with their class brothers and sisters across Africa and the world against capitalism and imperialism.
6. Australian PM in the UK: Militarism and reaction cloaked with paeans to “democracy”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed a visit to the UK over recent days as a defence of “democracy” and social progress, supposedly the cornerstones of his Labor government and its British counterpart.
Together with his “good mate,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Albanese vowed to stare down the forces of “division” and “resentment” and take forward the values of “fairness and justice.” That was the message he delivered to the annual conference of the British Labour Party in Liverpool on Sunday and to a gathering of social-democratic leaders billed as the “Global Progress Action Summit” days earlier.
The references, largely veiled, were to the growth of far-right and fascistic forces. The proximate cause of the preoccupation was the fact that the far right, anti-immigrant Reform Party and its leader Nigel Farage are surging in the British polls, becoming the chief opposition to Starmer’s Labour government. Albanese refused to meet with Farage, and ostentatiously praised Starmer throughout the visit.
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Albanese’s presentation of his and Starmer’s governments as bulwarks against the right had about as much sincerity as is to be found in the wares of corporate advertisers. Indeed, there are almost too many examples of hypocrisy exposing the fraud of his claims to enumerate.
In the first instance was the purpose of the trip itself. Albanese’s meeting with Starmer, the central engagement of the visit, was almost exclusively dedicated to advancing militarism and war.
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Then there was Albanese’s private discussion with former British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. Afterwards, Albanese was asked by the media whether he and Blair had discussed plans to establish an entity known as the Gaza International Transitional Authority that he would head. Albanese indicated that they had, but said little more about the contents of the discussion.
The plan has been worked out by the US administration of President Donald Trump, together with Blair. It is explicitly premised on the program Trump outlined earlier this year, of expelling Gaza’s Palestinians and transforming the Strip into a US-controlled “Riviera.” That is, the authority is to be the culmination of the massive ethnic-cleansing operation that is well underway in Israel’s genocidal onslaught.
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The references to Trump in Albanese’s media conferences raised the elephant in the room, which he avoided in all of his prepared remarks. While vaguely gesturing about the dangers posed by the far right, Albanese and Starmer have ostentatiously fawned over its chief international representative.
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Albanese himself arrived in the UK directly from the US. There, he had desperately sought and failed to receive a one-on-one audience with Trump. In the US, and generally, Albanese has refused to criticise a single one of Trump’s policies, whether that be his climate change denial, brutal assaults on immigrants or his frothing militarist declarations.
Albanese says nothing about the fact that Trump is seeking to overturn the US Constitution. He did not mention Trump’s deployment of the military to Portland, in the latest stage of this coup against democracy.
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While speaking of “fairness and justice,” Albanese could not point to a single progressive social policy carried out by either his or Starmer’s governments.
Starmer is widely reviled as a representative of the rich, whose government’s attitude to the poor was summed up by a major cut to the winter fuel allowance, literally condemning impoverished pensioners to freeze. Albanese spoke about the importance of jobs and wage rises, but amid the global inflation crisis his government has presided over the greatest fall in workers’ average purchasing power of an advanced OECD country.
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In a speech nominally directed against the right, Albanese did not mention their central pitch, demagogy against immigrants. That was hardly an accident, given that Starmer has declared combatting immigration to be his number one priority, and Albanese is continuing the record of Australia setting a precedent for the global assault on immigrants, including by confining them to concentration camp-style prisons on impoverished Pacific Islands.
Albanese did, however, declare that “to build cohesion, respect and harmony at home … We do that by embracing patriotism as a truly progressive cause.”
The “progressive patriotism” of which Albanese has repeatedly spoken this year is rank nationalism dressed up with the meaningless word “progressive.” It is a promotion of Australian nationalism, to justify militarism abroad, to suppress anti-war opposition and to cover over the class gulf in society.
7. Trump tariffs underscore threat to Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
Despite anxious denials by the Albanese Labor government, the Trump administration’s announcement of a 100 percent tariff on pharmaceutical imports from October 1 makes more likely a demand from the White House for the dismantling of Australia’s post-World War II Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
Any scrapping or even undercutting of the PBS, on which the Australian government spent nearly $18 billion last year to subsidise retail medicine prices, would have a devastating effect on millions of people, especially working-class households and the most medically vulnerable.
Already, a 2023 study reported that more than 20 percent of older people in Australia who were prescribed medications had not taken, or had delayed taking them due to cost.
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Trump and the US pharmaceutical conglomerates have publicly branded the PBS as a punitive measure against the American industry by requiring the US companies to obtain medical approvals and agree to lower prices to secure access to the PBS, which subsidises approved medications.
If not the complete abolition of the PBS, the corporate giants such as Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, are demanding much faster approval times by the PBS and the power to set their own exorbitant retail prices, instead of having to negotiate them with the health authorities.
In response to Trump’s tariff announcement, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler insisted that the PBS would be protected at all costs. “None of these latest announcements from the US administration make a jot of difference to our determination to protect the PBS,” he told reporters.
But the very fact that Butler felt compelled to make such a statement indicates that the Trump administration has placed the PBS on the trade war agenda.
he PBS was a centrepiece of the Albanese government’s May 3 election campaign, in which it falsely portrayed itself as a defender of the public health system, and as delivering relief from the ongoing cost-of-living crisis hitting working-class households. Labor pledged to reduce the maximum price of all PBS-listed medications from $31.60 to $25 by the end of the year.
The PBS was established in 1948 as part of the post-war concessions made by governments in all the major capitalist countries, fearing an upsurge of potentially revolutionary working class struggles unless steps were taken to prevent a return to the impoverished conditions that had prevailed in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
8. Australian study reveals extent of PFAS contamination in Sydney drinking water
A recent study of drinking water across Greater Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, by scientists at the University of NSW (UNSW) detected widespread contamination with toxic PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances).
The scientists looked for 50 known PFAS compounds and found 31 in the drinking water samples, 21 of which were previously undocumented in Australia.
PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment and accumulate in biological organisms. They are used in many everyday household items including non-stick cooking implements, make-up, greaseproof paper and waterproofing.
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The UNSW research follows the discovery of high levels of PFAS in Blue Mountains drinking water last year. The likely source of PFAS contamination in the Medlow and Greaves Creek Dams was the use of AFFF to extinguish a petrol tanker fire in 1992. Independent testing conducted by Ian Wright from Western Sydney University exposed a decades-long cover-up by water utilities and state and federal governments of the ubiquity of PFAS contamination.
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Pleas from Blue Mountains residents for free PFAS blood tests, which are not covered under Medicare and cost $500 a test, have been rejected by the NSW Labor government. At least 27 Blue Mountains residents who have paid for the blood tests themselves have recorded the “highest levels of PFAS of any civilian population in Australia,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The official indifference to the poisoning of the water supply and the health implications of high PFAS readings in residents’ blood, is in stark contrast to the recommendations of scientists.
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To eliminate the increasingly ubiquitous toxic “forever chemicals” and provide a clean, safe water supply for all will require the coordination of vast resources, science and technology. This is incompatible with a political and economic system in which human health, lives and the environment are subordinated to the demands of the wealthy elite for ever-growing profits.
The health of humanity will be decided by the working class in the struggle for socialism and the permanent overthrow of capitalism.
On the whole, as human beings, the spies are unpleasant, nasty and chilly.
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Black Bag takes the characters’ spy operations, and everything else, entirely for granted. The film and design work is intelligent, restless, assertive, but thematically, the watchword here is intense passivity and accommodation to the status quo.
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... Soderbergh is a talented and fluid technician-artist, with genuine precision and taste, but he has ended up, for various social and historical reasons, with almost nothing to say.
10. Bosch to destroy 22,000 jobs in Germany
After announcing the elimination of 9,000 jobs last year, Bosch has now increased this figure by a further 13,000. It is the largest round of cuts in the company’s history. The works council and IG Metall union are not even dreaming of preventing this jobs massacre. The creation of independent rank-and-file action committees that declare war on the union apparatus and its workplace bureaucrats is now more urgent than ever.
By the end of 2024, Robert Bosch GmbH employed almost 418,000 people worldwide—around 11,600 fewer than a year earlier. In Germany, the group’s headcount fell by just over 4,500 to around 129,600 (down 3.4 percent). The Automotive, or Mobility, division is Bosch’s largest area, and is the world’s largest supplier to the automotive industry, employing 230,000, with more than 70,000 in Germany. With the newly announced increase in job cuts, 22,000 posts will disappear at Bosch in Germany, most of them in the automotive division, which accounts for more than 60 percent of total revenue of just over €90 billion. Last year, the supplier division’s revenue fell by 0.7 percent to €55.8 billion. For the current financial year, Bosch most recently expected slight growth.
Nevertheless, costs are to be further reduced to safeguard and increase profits. In 2024 the group achieved a margin of 3.5 percent, compared with 5 percent the year before. At the start of the year, Bosch chief executive Stefan Hartung announced “painful decisions” for the workforce in order to double last year’s €3.5 billion profit for the company’s owners to at least €7 billion within two years.
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The IG Metall (IGM) and works council view the situation from the same standpoint as the top managers with whom they sit on the supervisory board, and their reaction is one of “understanding”. There was “no question that the situation in the German and European automotive and supplier industry is very tense,” said Frank Sell, chair of the group works council for the Mobility business sector. In the same breath, he hinted at how IGM and the works council intend to push through the jobs massacre. A “reduction in headcount of this historic magnitude—without simultaneous assurances to safeguard our sites in Germany—we reject categorically!”
In other words: the job cuts have Sell’s and the works council’s support if promises to “safeguard” sites are made. Not once in past decades has such an agreement prevented a site closure. Promises of safeguarding sites are always valid only for as long as they are not needed—so long as business is booming. But as soon as the order situation and thus production weakens, then a “review clause” takes effect that then allows the closure of plants and sites after all. As now planned at Bosch, the supposed site-safeguarding agreements are merely the means and the pretext with which IG Metall and its works council reps give their blessing to the demanded cuts and enforce them against the workforce.
The main concern of the IG Metall and works council at Bosch is that this time, they may no longer be able to keep the workforce—who in the past have proved through strikes and protests that they want to fight for their jobs—under control. More so if they are no longer allowed to sell the job cuts as being organized in a “socially acceptable” manner.
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The creation of a new organizational form for workers’ struggles, capable of breaking the bureaucratic control of the union apparatus and the works councils, is therefore urgently necessary. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) proposes setting up rank-and-file action committees in every factory, at every administrative, research and development site, at all workplaces and also in the neighborhoods where workers’ families live. These committees must become centers of resistance to the social devastation being organized by the government and corporations—not only at Bosch—that unite all sections of the working class.
11. Chicago residents denounce public transit cuts at town hall event
Defiant commuters packed a town hall meeting at Malcolm X College on September 25 to oppose planned cuts by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). CTA officials presented residents with a grim set of choices: massive service cuts or a political miracle from Springfield, all while facing a “doomsday” budget shortfall of up to $1 billion.
The meeting, framed by the CTA as a “listening session,” placed the entire burden of the crisis on riders and workers, sparking anger and resolve among the more than 100 attendees, who were overwhelmingly young and working class.
The potential cuts, as presented by the CTA, are not merely inconvenient, they are catastrophic. The agency is considering suspending entire rail lines, drastically reducing service frequency and closing stations and bus routes. This would leave hundreds of thousands without reliable transit access.
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Notably absent from the town hall was any significant presence from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) or the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), whose members would undoubtedly be affected by service cuts of this magnitude. Approximately 90 percent of the CTA’s 11,000-strong workforce is unionized.
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World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with attendees who came to voice their opposition to any cuts.
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In all, the official presentations offered no concrete solutions, instead fostering a false hope that the Democratic Party in Springfield would deliver a last-minute rescue. This is the same hope that faded when the Illinois General Assembly’s spring session ended on May 31 with no new funding for transit.
In fact, the Democrats are directly responsible for the crisis. The Biden administration allowed federal pandemic relief money to dry up, creating a “fiscal cliff” for transit systems in Chicago and throughout the US, which used the money to temporarily patch up deficits caused by decades of bipartisan tax giveaways and cuts to public transit.
This situation has only been worsened by the Democrats’ role as enablers for Trump who is moving to slash more federal funding to transit systems. In a September 11 letter to the transit authority officials in Chicago and Boston, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy threatened to slash federal funding if the transit systems did not crack down on crime.
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When the floor opened for public comment, the room’s frustration turned into a powerful, unified voice. While safety concerns were raised, the dominant theme was a staunch refusal to accept any cuts. Every demand for full funding was met with thunderous applause.
One attendee pointed to the hypocrisy of Democratic politicians who supposedly champion Chicago in national political fights but abandon city residents when its infrastructure is at stake. The speaker specifically pointed to Governor J.B. Pritzker who has issued pro forma statements against Trump’s threats to deploy troops to Chicago. Far from encouraging mass opposition to the military occupation of the city, the Democratic governor has warned that troops would “inflame passions,” i.e., provoke mass opposition, which the Democrats could not contain.
Members of the Socialist Equality Party who spoke at the town hall meeting provided a perspective and program to fight the transit cuts, including expropriation of the corporate oligarchs to pay for the deepest funding crisis in Chicago’s history. They noted the absurdity of a major metropolitan region begging for funds when, in the last 10 months alone, the 10 wealthiest Americans saw their combined wealth soar by $703 billion. The solution, they argued, lies not in trusting the Democratic Party, but in building independent rank-and-file committees in neighborhoods, schools and workplaces to unite all those who rely on public transit.
The kidnapping of Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts by the immigration Gestapo on Friday has provoked mass outrage throughout the state of Iowa and beyond. Since the beloved leader of the largest school district in the state was taken, protests have been held every day in multiple cities throughout Iowa.
In Cedar Rapids on Sunday, students, teachers and community members gathered at Greene Square Park before marching to the Linn County Correctional Center demanding the release of Roberts. Protesters held signs that read “ICE is gestapo,” “Who’s next?!” and “ICE + KKK are two sides of the same coin.”
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In an interview with the local CBS affiliate, a protester at the Friday rally said Roberts was targeted “because he won’t give ICE access to arrest our kids.” After President Donald Trump removed “sensitive location” restrictions on ICE agents, allowing them to conduct raids in public schools, churches and hospitals, Roberts sent a letter to parents saying the district would do “everything we can within our legal and moral authority to support students, which is always our top priority.”
Roberts said the district would comply with a “proper subpoena or warrant” if presented, but that the schools would not disclose personal information to ICE/DHS without “appropriate consent.”
Roberts became superintendent of the Des Moines school district in 2023. ICE is accusing him of overstaying a student visa issued in 1999. In a statement issued after the kidnapping, Sam Olson, ICE enforcement and removal operations St. Paul field office director, said, “This should be a wake-up call for our communities to the great work that our officers are doing every day to remove public safety threats.”
As the outpouring of anger over Roberts’ detention underscores, far from a “public safety threat,” he is a highly valued member of the community. The public response demonstrates the real, organic class anger Trump’s mass deportation operation is fueling across the country.
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Roberts, 51, a former Olympic athlete and immigrant from Guyana in South America, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Coppin State University in Maryland in 1998, and he obtained Master’s degrees from St. John’s University and Georgetown University. He earned his Doctorate in Urban Educational Leadership from Trident University.
Prior to taking the position as Des Moines Public Schools superintendent in July 2023, Roberts held the same position in the Millcreek Township School District in Erie County, Pennsylvania from August 2020 to June 2023. Before that he was a principal at Anacostia High School in Washington D.C. and a teacher.
In statements after the kidnapping, Department of Homeland Security agents claimed Roberts was in the country “illegally” and had a deportation order from July 2024. As of this writing, the exact circumstances around his case are unclear, although there is no dispute that Roberts has been living and working in the US for over three decades.
13. ICE agents brutalize protesters, retaliate against Broadview, Illinois
Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the direction of the Trump administration launched an incursion into the Chicago area it called Operation Midway Blitz, concentrating on the southwest side of the city near Midway airport. The many working class neighborhoods there are home to large, mainly Spanish-speaking immigrant populations. According to ICE, at least 500 have been detained.
The arrival of ICE was met with protest and anger that is growing, at both the Trump administration’s violations of the most basic democratic and social rights and the inaction of the Democratic Party.
Protests at the suburban Broadview, Illinois ICE facility outside of Chicago are now in their third week. There immigrants are being detained as part of the Trump administration’s illegal kidnappings and deportations.
On Thursday, Daniel Shouse was hospitalized after being hit by a truck driven by ICE agents at 25-30 miles per hour. Shouse told WGN about the near-fatal assault:
He had hopped up over the curb, ran right into me and that’s where you see I was thrown right on the side of the road. And he took off back there, which leads back to the ICE facility. How is this allowed, and is there nothing we can do about it? There’s no accountability. The officers came up to me at the hospital and asked if I’d be able to point the person out in a lineup. How can I do that when they all wear masks?
I just want to show them that you can’t silence us. It doesn’t matter what you do to us. It doesn’t matter how many times you shoot at us, or what pain you want to put on to us, we’ll be here and we’re going to keep fighting for accountability.
Broadview police said ICE denied any knowledge of an agent hitting a protester with a vehicle and reported that their officers had to leave the scene after ICE agents began firing more pepper balls.
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Last Friday saw a marked escalation, as federal agents assaulted protesters with flash-bang grenades, chemical baton rounds, pepper balls and an extraordinary volume of tear gas. Customs and Border Patrol agents emerged from behind the fence to tackle protesters, making numerous arrests, including two journalists.
The mayor of Broadview, Katrina Thompson, sent a letter to the field office director for the Department of Homeland Security, Patrick Holt, writing:
In effect, you are making war on my community. And it has to stop.
The relentless deployment of tear gas, pepper spray, mace, and rubber bullets in the vicinity of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in the Village of Broadview is endangering nearby village residents and harming Broadview police officers, Broadview firefighters, and American citizens exercising their 1st Amendment constitutional rights.
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Throughout the week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander of Operations At Large Gregory Bovino, with the backing of Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi, has made himself a conspicuous presence in Broadview and in downtown Chicago. On the weekend, Border Patrol boats conspicuously motored through a downtown stretch of the Chicago River, prompting jeers from pedestrians and protesters. On Sunday, crowds shouted, “ICE go home!” at the boats from the popular river walk area.
In a further escalation, a number of masked and heavily armed ICE agents led by Bovino marched north across the Michigan Avenue bridge on Sunday afternoon, mixing shoulder to shoulder with residents on the walkway in an intensely provocative move. An ICE-produced video of this action was picked up and broadcast without comment or criticism by news station WGN.
In carrying out its coup, the Trump administration daily counts on the cowardice and complicity of the Democratic Party. It has made no call for mass protests, nor has it issued a warning to the military that it is legally bound to refuse unconstitutional orders.
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No illusions can remain in the Democratic Party or in protest politics when it comes to defending against fascistic attacks on the working class. Warning of the unfolding conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, the Socialist Equality Party wrote one week ago, calling for “The building of a new form of organization that can unify the working class and mobilize its vast industrial and economic power against the Trump regime.”
The SEP stated:
This new form of organization proposed by the Socialist Equality Party consists of rank-and-file committees. They must be established in every factory, workplace, school and neighborhood to organize resistance to Trump’s dictatorship. These committees must become centers of resistance, uniting all sections of the working class (in industry, logistics, transport, restaurants and fast food, social services, legal defense, education, arts and culture, entertainment, medicine, health care, sciences, computer technology, programming and other highly specialized professions) and student youth against Trump’s fascist government, the complicity of the Democrats, and the broader assault on democratic rights and living standards.
14. Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway detained in London under counter-terror legislation
George Galloway and his wife Putri Gayatri Pertiwi were detained by Counter Terrorism Command officers at London Gatwick Airport on Saturday morning. Galloway, 71, is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, and his wife is deputy chair of the party. Active in politics for over 50 years, former Labour Party MP Galloway has been elected to parliament seven times in five different constituencies.
The pair were apprehended after visiting Russia, returning to the UK via a flight from Abu Dhabi.
Galloway and his wife were detained for several hours before being released without charge. Speaking about the event on his online talk show on Sunday evening Galloway said he was told by the police, “You are not under arrest” but “you are not free to leave” and “you do not have the right to remain silent”. Galloway said they were questioned “far and wide” including about “your attitude to the conflict in Gaza; who persuaded you of this point of view; why do you admire Mr. Lavrov? [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov]; why are you so friendly to China?” Gayatri was asked why a fingernail was painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
Galloway declared that none of this had “anything to do with terrorism” and “there is only one reason they detained us there, under that legislation, it was to gain access to our communications.”
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As a result of his detention Galloway said, “I missed the speech I was due to give in a meeting in central London in the presence of, amongst others, the ambassador of the… People’s Republic of China.”
Galloway and Gayatri were detained under Schedule 3 of the Counter Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, which allows police officers to stop, question, search and detain a person at a border area to determine if they have engaged in “hostile activity” against the UK.
The legislation—in an all-embracing catch-all—defines “hostile activity” as anything that “threatens national security, threatens the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in a way relevant to the interests of national security, or is an act of serious crime.”
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The attack on Galloway and his wife represents a ratcheting up of the massive onslaught against democratic rights in Britain being carried out by Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Anti-terrorist acts and other draconian legislation have been utilised against other political figures and journalists, including human rights activist and former UK diplomat Craig Murray and journalists Kit Klarenburg and Richard Medhurst. However, Galloway is by far the most well-known anti-war figure in Britain. Expelled from the Labour Party by Tony Blair in 2003 for his opopostion to the invasion of Iraq, Galloway has one million followers on Facebook, over 800,000 followers on X, and an online weekly talk show viewed by hundreds of thousands.
Galloway is an advocate of populist nationalism, who previously sought nomination as a candidate for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Beginning his political career as a Stalinist, he advocates for a “left-right” alliance based on urging a defence of the interests of British imperialism through the pursuit of multi-polar alliances with Russia and China to counter US imperialism.
But he has won support over several decades as an opponent of imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a vocal opponent of NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. This places him in the crosshairs of Britain’s state forces, amid a hysterical campaign of warmongering by Britain and other European powers targeting Russia above all but also directed against China.
15. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
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.
