Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. US ICE agents seize British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi
The Trump administration has detained and revoked the visa of prominent British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi, threatening him with deportation. Hamdi, a vocal critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, was arrested on Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at San Francisco International Airport.
London-based Hamdi is managing director of global risk and intelligence company International Interest, which “advises on political environments across the globe”. He appears regularly as an expert Middle East analyst and commentator on British TV networks including the BBC, Sky News and Channel 4. Hamdi is a frequent guest on Al Jazeera English, a channel available in over 150 countries. As do millions internationally, Hamdi describes Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians as a genocide.
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Hamdi was detained as he began a speaking tour, having already made several appearances at events sponsored by the Council on American‑Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation. The day prior to his detention he spoke at the annual gala for the CAIR chapter in Sacramento. He was seized as he prepared to board a domestic flight to Florida where he was to address the gala for CAIR’s chapter in Tampa the next day.
Hamdi was denounced as a terrorist by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin who posted on X, “Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country”. She added, “This individual’s visa was revoked and he is in ICE custody pending removal.”
Hamdi has previously made multiple past entries into the United States, holding lawful immigration status through a valid visa. The BBC noted in its report on his arrest that “DHS, ICE, and the State Department did not answer the BBC’s request for evidence of Hamdi’s alleged support of terrorism.”
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In a statement issued Sunday CAIR explained that Hamdi was seized earlier that day “apparently in response to his vocal criticism of the Israeli apartheid government during his ongoing speaking tour… everyone should recognize that arresting a British citizen legally visiting the United States because he dared to criticize a foreign nation’s genocide is our government’s latest blatant affront to free speech.”
On Tuesday CAIR-CA CEO Hussam Ayloush issued an update on Hamdi’s case, stating, “CAIR-CA’s legal team, which includes CAIR-SFBA Executive Director Zahra Billoo and CAIR-LA Immigrants’ Rights Senior Managing Attorney Amina Fields, was finally able to meet with Sami and spend a few hours with him at the ICE Golden State Annex detention center in Central California.”
CAIR noted that far-right Trump adviser Laura Loomer “has since taken public credit for Hamdi’s detention, boasting that ICE acted on her demands after she smeared him with anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.
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Hamdi’s arrest came in the week that the Trump administration escalated ICE raids, as the immediate response to 7 million people protesting nationwide in the “No Kings” protests against his attacks on democratic rights and the threat of dictatorship. The WSWS noted October 22 that in the days since the mass protests ICE gestapo squads using military-style force against immigrant communities, “launched new raids and major kidnapping operations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and in Wilder, Idaho”.
As of this month well over 100,000 people (119,500) had been arrested and booked into detention centres by ICE since Trump’s inauguration in January. On October 8, WIRED reported that “nearly 60,000 migrants were currently in detention”.
Central to the ICE raids is a sweeping clampdown on all opposition to the foreign policy of US imperialism, including its backing for Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. In March, Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and remains under threat of deportation in his ongoing case. In September, a Louisiana immigration judge ordered that Khalil be deported to Syria or Algeria.
The same month, British-Gambian citizen Momodou Taal, a graduate student at Cornell University, was forced to leave the US to escape arrest and detention by ICE agents following his lawsuit—Momodou Taal v. Donald Trump—challenging the legality of Trump’s decrees banning campus protests against the Gaza genocide.
Hamdi is the latest journalist to be snatched and threatened with deportation by ICE over their pro-Palestinian views.
During the first “No Kings” day of protest in June 14, Spanish-language independent journalist Mario Guevara was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia, while live-streaming the peaceful demonstration to his audience. Guevara had lived in the US for over two decades and was in the process of obtaining a green card for permanent residency. On October 3, Guevara was deported to El Salvador.
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Despite reportage of Hamdi’s arrest by the BBC, The Guardian, Sky News and several major US media groups, including the New York Times and CNN, the British government—which has defended Israel’s genocide to the hilt—has made no statement in defence of its citizen, let alone demanded his release to continue his speaking tour. CNN reported, “When asked if Hamdi has had consular assistance or legal representation, a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was ‘in contact with the family of a British man detained in the USA’ and ‘in touch with the local authorities.”
The African National Congress (ANC), allied with the Democratic Alliance (DA) and a cluster of right-wing parties in South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU) is planning to terminate the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) in March 2026. The decision to withdraw a lifeline on which millions depend is a declaration of war on the working class.
The grant currently keeps 8.4 million people from starvation. An estimated 45 percent of the country’s population depends on social grants or the SRD grant as a primary source of income. This includes approximately 13.2 million child support grant beneficiaries and 4.3 million recipients of the old age grant.
The SRD was first introduced in May 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a concession extracted from a terrified ruling class facing the threat of social upheaval. Prior to the pandemic, unemployment exceeded 12 million and inequality had reached record levels. Working-class communities were living in squalor, without secure access to electricity or running water, plagued by rampant crime, corruption, poverty, particularly among the predominantly young population.
When the ANC government imposed one of the world’s harshest lockdowns, enforced with troops and rubber bullets, millions were deprived of all means of survival. Within weeks, nearly half of all households had run out of money for food, while soldiers patrolled the townships.
The World Socialist Web Site consistently defended lockdowns as necessary public health measures to eliminate the virus. However, such measures had to be combined with mass testing, contact tracing, isolation facilities, and full income protection for workers.
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Now, nearly five years later, the same state that spends billions of dollars to service its debts claims that it cannot afford to maintain this meager lifeline for millions due to “fiscal responsibility”. South Africa’s national debt has ballooned to over R5.2 trillion (US$290 billion) and is projected to exceed R6 trillion ($330 billion) by 2026. In the 2025/26 budget, just R35.2 billion ($1.95 billion) is allocated to sustain the SRD grant, less than one-twelfth of the amount devoted to debt service which stands at an astronomical R426.3 billion ($23.7 billion). For every rand spent to keep a human being alive, twelve are paid to the financial oligarchy and international creditors in interest.
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Once hailed as the liberation movement that overthrew apartheid, the ANC has spent the past three decades functioning as the principal party of capitalist rule in South Africa. Upon taking power, it adopted the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) program in 1996, a policy framework that embraced free-market principles, fiscal restraint, and privatizations. GEAR marked a decisive break from the ANC’s earlier promises of redistribution and laid the foundation for the deepening austerity of today.
As it continued imposing attacks on the working class and overseeing record levels of inequality, the ANC’s electoral support collapsed. From winning 62.7 percent of the vote in the historic 1994 election, it fell to 57.5 percent in 2019 and plunged to just 40.2 percent in 2024, its first loss of a parliamentary majority since the end of apartheid.
The ANC-DA alliance is a coming together of factions of the ruling class to enforce austerity and police state attacks on the working class. The DA descends from apartheid-era formations, including the National Party that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The Government of National Unity were soon joined by other right-wing forces, including the Zulu ethno-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the anti-immigrant Patriotic Alliance (PA), and the white-Afrikaner Freedom Front Plus (FF+). This coalition marks the fusion of the black bourgeois layer cultivated through the ANC’s Black Economic Empowerment policies with the white capitalist elite in a united offensive against the working class.
3. Beijing-Brussels chip war becomes a new frontline of US-China rivalry
On 30 September 2025, the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands invoked the Goods Availability Act of 1952 to seize control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Nijmegen, claiming that the company constituted a threat to Dutch and European “economic security.”
Dutch authorities then ousted Nexperia CEO Zhang Xuezheng, also the founder of Wingtech Technology, which acquired Nexperia in 2019.
This Chinese enterprise is a key supplier of legacy chips that are widely utilized in the automotive industry and consumer devices. It operates fabrication sites in Britain and Germany, as well as assembly and packaging facilities in China, Malaysia and the Philippines, shipping “more than 110 billion products annually” according to the company’s website.
In December 2024, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) added Wingtech to its Entity List, a blacklist which subjects foreign corporations’ access to US technology to complicated licensing requirements.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security, an agency under the DOC, recently extended export control restrictions to corporations 50 percent or above owned by listed entities. Consequently, Nexperia has been caught up in the trade war between the US and China.
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Following Nexperia’s seizure, on 4 October, China’s Commerce Ministry prohibited the company’s Chinese branch and its subcontractors from exporting completed components packaged and tested in the country.
Beijing’s export bans immediately sparked concern in European countries. According to data from the European Commission, the automotive sector is a pillar of the European economy, employing 13 million workers and accounting for 7 percent of the European Union’s GDP.
In response to heightening tensions, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association urged a prompt solution to the dispute on 16 October, warning disruptions in chip supplies could “threaten production stoppages” because “the homologating [approval] of new suppliers for specific components [including testing overall electromagnetic compatibility] and the build-up of production would take several months.”
Car manufacturers which have adopted a just-in-time approach to production had stockpiles of Nexperia chips on hand for only a few weeks, including Tesla. This also applies to Apple and Samsung, which are Nexperia’s clients.
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China is prepared to meet any escalation made by the United States and/or Europe. Nexperia China has instructed its workers in a letter dated 18 October to follow orders from the local leadership and ignore instructions from the Dutch headquarters.
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EU-China rivalry will continue to escalate. Far from the illusion that “an equal and orderly multipolar world” had become “a historical inevitability” and “a reality” in which China works to advance “equality among all countries” and avert “the strong bullying the weak,” as proclaimed by Minster of Foreign Affairs of China Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference early this year, Washington’s global trade war against both China and the EU will only fuel economic tensions between Beijing and Brussels.
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Europe, similar to the United States, has lagged significantly behind China in innovation and manufacturing. Both the US and the EU see China as an existential threat to their global and regional dominance. Being bullied by Trump’s gangster regime simply cannot convert the continent’s ruling elites into proponents of multipolarity.
Increased geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, on the contrary, will exacerbate the long-existing rift between Brussels and Beijing.
Europe may not want to engage in a trade war with both the US and China but, driven by the requirements of the expansion of European capital, Brussels may have no choice, according to the Post.
The Global Times in its editorial wrote that the intervention made by the Dutch government “violates the principles of a market economy and fair competition” and “runs counter to the international trade rules that the EU has consistently advocated.”
Without naming the confiscation of Russian central bank funds by the EU, the news outlet indicated that the Dutch government’s intervention “not only harms the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies but also undermines international investors’ confidence in the EU market.”
Put plainly, if European governments could unilaterally grab Russian and Chinese assets under the pretense of “national security” with impunity, what they will do to China next? Which Chinese sector is Brussels’ next target?
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The promotion of multipolarity functions to disarm and chloroform the international proletariat to the looming danger of direct military showdowns between the US and China.
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China, which dominates the production of rare earth elements (REEs), has implemented export bans on REEs for military uses. But Beijing has not used its trump card: imposing export restrictions on REEs used in civilian applications such as automotive chips, wind turbines, alloys and electrical components. It is calling on Amsterdam and Brussels to de-escalate.
The chip war between Beijing-Brussels can only be understood as a component part of a broader tech war between the US and China, which is bound to escalate, however.
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The depletion of rare earth minerals needed for military purposes by US imperialism will only strengthen Washington’s determination to wage war and then “win” it in the most barbaric way. US War Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a fascistic rant to general and flag officers at Quantico, Virginia in late September, asserting that US imperialism would refuse to follow “stupid rules of engagement,” and would fight to inflict “maximum lethality.” We “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.”
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What is evident is that, similar to the Smoot-Hawley tariff measures adopted by Washington in 1930 and the German Reich’s autarky policy, the global economic warfare launched by Trump’s fascist gang is a prelude to all-out wars on all fronts between nuclear-armed powers.
The only way to end the international trade war and halt the descent into actual wars is through the international unity of workers in China, Europe and the United States in a socialist anti-war movement against capitalism.
4. Hurricane Melissa strikes Jamaica, the most powerful storm in the island’s recorded history
The destructive force of Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm to ever strike Jamaica, hit the Caribbean island on Tuesday with winds and rainfall unseen in the country’s recorded history.
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Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph (295 kph) and maintaining its status as the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide in 2025 so far.
According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the hurricane’s slow pace has exacerbated the potential for catastrophic flooding and landslides both in Jamaica and on its projected path over Cuba.
Melissa made landfall in Western Jamaica early Tuesday afternoon, striking near the rural town of New Hope, approximately 62 kilometers (38 miles) south of Montego Bay, at the peak of its strength as a Category 5 hurricane.
This landfall is the first time in recorded history that Jamaica has taken a direct strike from a hurricane of this strength. The National Hurricane Center’s advisory warned that “total structural failure” was likely in the storm’s path, a prediction that has since been realized in the worst-hit parishes. Power outages erupted across the country with over a third of customers losing electricity.
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Hurricane Melissa has already surpassed every hurricane in Jamaica’s meteorological archives in terms of wind strength and destructive potential. The two closest cited by meteorological historians are Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Gilbert struck Jamaica directly but as a slightly weaker system.
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As Melissa departs Jamaica, Cuban authorities are rushing to prepare Santiago de Cuba and the broader southeastern coast for another direct strike. Authorities in Cuba have moved to suspend all business and educational activities, called for the mass evacuation of coastal zones and opened public shelters stocked with emergency supplies.
The United Nations, International Red Cross and various national militaries—including the UK Royal Navy—have positioned resources for immediate deployment once the hurricane’s eye passes. Jamaica, like Canada and Australia and 19 other countries, is part of the British Commonwealth.
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Weather experts have emphasized the extraordinary nature of Hurricane Melissa. The World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan labeled it “the storm of the century for Jamaica.” The hurricane’s transformation “from a disorganized tropical storm to a Category 5” within 48 hours was described as unprecedented, raising troubling questions about the effects of global climate change and regional preparedness.
Brian Trascher of the United Cajun Navy warned, “Trillions of gallons of water are expected to fall on the country,” noting that this level of precipitation over already saturated ground represents a mortal danger for both rural and urban communities.
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The Jamaican government has declared a maximum alert state, but the response infrastructure—eroded by years of imperialist-imposed austerity and underinvestment—is vastly insufficient to meet the scale of devastation.
Researchers highlight the rapid intensification of the hurricane as a hallmark of climate change, enabled by exceptionally warm Caribbean waters and altered atmospheric patterns. A comprehensive meteorological analysis noted that the “accelerated development likely created a significant preparedness deficit in the affected regions,” and that the storm’s size and ferocity represented a “worst-case” scenario forecast for the island of Jamaica.
Climate change experts reiterate longstanding warnings that Caribbean nations remain woefully underprepared for storms of this magnitude. Repeated calls for the expansion of disaster-mitigation infrastructure, early warning networks and robust emergency housing programs have been sidelined or underfunded under pressure from international creditors and a global system that prioritizes financial interests over human security. The present catastrophe is, therefore, not merely a natural disaster but a social and political one as well.
In the aftermath of the landfall, the Trump administration has issued limited statements expressing “deep concern” for the welfare of US citizens remaining in Jamaica and a readiness to “provide necessary humanitarian assistance.”
However, the administration’s current response to the disaster in Jamaica is little changed from that of Trump’s previous presidential term. This is a mix of handwringing phrases combined with a refusal to address the long-term consequences of climate policy neglect and economic austerity that have left Caribbean societies deeply exposed.
Neither the warnings of climate scientists, nor the lessons of prior disasters—including Hurricane Katrina that killed 1,833 people in August 2005—have been acted upon. The consequence is a humanitarian crisis that exposes the bankrupt priorities of the world capitalist system that prioritizes profit over human life on every front.
The Voice of Hind Rajab, a docudrama written and directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, has finally obtained a distributor in the US. The film focuses on the Palestinian Red Crescent response to the desperate cellphone calls of Hind, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl, trapped by Israeli fire in Gaza in January 2024. The girl, along with six members of her family and two Red Crescent paramedics, eventually died in a hail of lethal IDF fire.
Ben Hania’s film will open in December at New York’s Film Forum and the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles before expanding nationwide.
Why is this significant? Like No Other Land–the documentary about violent oppression of the Palestinians on the West Bank–before it, The Voice of Hind Rajab had until recently been the target of pro-Zionist political censorship in the US and in Hollywood’s upper echelons in particular. This is the only explanation for the fact that no distributor had come forward until this week.
The film has been screened at dozens of film festivals and other events worldwide and has been greeted with widespread acclaim. According to Deadline, at the Venice Film Festival in September, Ben Hania’s drama “received what might be a film festival record 23-minute and 50-second ovation after its world premiere.”
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The subject matter of The Voice of Hind Rajab is a horrifying episode in Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. The young girl was trapped in a car after Israel tank fire killed her relatives. She was apparently the last person left alive in the vehicle. As the Hollywood Reporter describes it:
The Palestine Red Crescent Society stayed on the line with the child for more than an hour as she pleaded for rescue. An ambulance sent to reach her was itself destroyed, killing the two medics on board. Hind’s voice — fragments of which spread online and were later verified and analyzed by outlets including The Washington Post, Sky News and Forensic Architecture — became one of the most haunting and emblematic testaments of the war in Gaza.
The actual heart-wrenching phone call figures prominently in the film.
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The Forensic Architecture probe, as reported by Middle East Eye, used “a mix of kinetic analysis, satellite imagery and footage sourced from the site of the incident” and “also found that the Israeli tank that fired upon the vehicle Rajab was sitting inside must have been positioned within 13 to 23 meters when it killed Layan, Rajab’s 15-year-old cousin.” FA concluded: “It’s not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children.” The bodies of the 6-year-old and the two paramedics were not discovered for 12 days.
On Tuesday, Amazon, UPS and Paramount Global announced plans to eliminate at least 50,000 jobs, part of a continuing wave of mass layoffs that has already wiped out nearly a million positions this year. The corporations justify the cuts as “efficiency gains” and “AI transformation,” even as they post record profits and soaring stock prices.
The Seattle Times reported that Amazon will cut 14,000 corporate positions this year with more cuts coming in 2026. Despite “strong business results,” Senior Vice President Beth Galetti said in a blogpost, the company must be “organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership.” In short, even huge profits are being used to rationalize a global purge of jobs.
According to Business Insider, the cuts span Amazon’s retail, human-resources, logistics, advertising, Audible, Devices and Fire TV divisions, with remaining workers told to “lean in on AI.” Internal documents obtained by the New York Times and analyzed by the World Socialist Web Site show that Amazon plans to automate as much as 75 percent of its operations, eliminating between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs over the next several years. By 2033, the company expects to double sales while avoiding hundreds of thousands of new hires.
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Forbes summarized the carnage: “It’s only Tuesday, and this week has already seen more than 50,000 corporate employees at some of the nation’s largest companies let go.”
The auto industry is also shedding jobs at a rapid pace. General Motors has laid off several hundred engineers and designers at its Warren Technical Center in Michigan just days after reporting sharply higher profits and a major stock-price jump. GM is also idling and “rebalancing” electric-vehicle production, with temporary and permanent layoffs at its Detroit “Factory Zero” and likely closure of its CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario.
Ford has announced up to 1,000 job cuts at its EV facility in Cologne, Germany, and further reductions across Europe after eliminating nearly 4,000 positions last year. Stellantis is cutting US engineering and software staff while demanding up to 40 percent labor-cost reductions to “stay competitive.” Across all three companies, management invokes automation and “realignment for EV demand” as pretexts for mass job destruction even as they hand billions to investors in dividends and stock buybacks.
Multinational corporations are carrying out similar cuts across industries. Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, is eliminating 4,000 positions by 2030, citing “digitalization and the increased use of artificial intelligence.” Salesforce cut 4,000 jobs worldwide in September; Microsoft and Meta are slashing thousands across Europe and Asia while expanding AI data centers. Around the world, employers are wielding the same justification—“efficiency” and “AI transformation”—to destroy jobs and boost profits.
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The mass firings coincide with the Trump administration’s purge of nearly 300,000 federal employees under its “reduction-in-force” program and the slashing of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps for up to 44 million people. A senior citizen living in public housing in Portland told the WSWS that pantries “can’t keep up with this administration’s theater of cruelty.” Food banks report empty shelves, while inflation—driven higher by Trump’s tariffs—erodes what remains of workers’ incomes.
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The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported October 2 that employers have announced 946,000 job cuts so far in 2025, the highest since the first pandemic year. Retail layoffs are up 203 percent over 2024, and holiday hiring plans are the weakest since 2009. More than 17,000 cuts were directly attributed to artificial intelligence and 20,000 more to “technological updates.”
What is unfolding is a coordinated class war, not a series of isolated restructurings. It spans logistics (Amazon, UPS), auto manufacturing, media (Paramount), tech (Microsoft, Salesforce, Meta), retail (Target), aviation (Lufthansa) and the public sector. Both corporate parties back it. Trump’s Project 2025 blueprint calls for mass federal layoffs, the dismantling of regulatory agencies, Social Security and other essential programs and the funneling of even more money into the hands of the corporate financial oligarchy and the build up for World War III.
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To defend jobs and living standards, workers must create new organizations that they control to wage the class struggle. Rank-and-file committees must be built in every workplace—linking Amazon workers in the United States and Germany with UPS, auto, airline, media and public-sector workers worldwide. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) insists that every worker has the social right to a secure, good-paying and safe job, along with the right to health care, housing, education, leisure and culture.
These basic rights require a massive transformation of the political and economic structure of society. The only way to stop the destruction of millions of jobs is to end private capitalist ownership of Amazon and mega-billion dollar corporations, establish public ownership and democratic control of these vast conglomerates, and organize and direct their operations in a manner that serves social needs, not the self-enriching interests of Bezos and his fellow money-mad oligarchs.
The central issue is not artificial intelligence and automation but who controls this technology and who it must benefit. Under capitalism, automation is used as a weapon to slash jobs, drive down wages and funnel wealth to the financial elite. In the hands of the working class, the same technologies could shorten the workweek, end drudgery and unsafe working conditions and sharply raise living standards. Freed from private profit, they would make possible the rational, planned organization of production to meet social need rather than shareholder return. The alternative is clear: mass unemployment and destitution under capitalism or the socialist reorganization of society.
7. At election rally, DSA candidate Mamdani embraces right-wing Democratic Party establishment
Mamdani’s primary victory was a rejection of the party establishment, which is increasingly seen as a tool of the financial elite and despised for its refusal to defend democratic rights. But it is precisely this party Mamdani and the DSA seek to bolster by posing as its “left-wing” face. Mamdani’s supporters who are looking for a way to fight must be warned that the candidate is laying a political trap.
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None of the urgent economic and political issues facing New York City, or the country as a whole, can be addressed by supporting Mamdani and the Democrats. These issues arise from the deep crisis of capitalism and require workers and young people to break from the Democrats and their pseudo-left satellites such as the DSA. The fight against inequality and fascism requires the independent mobilization of the working class in a conscious struggle for socialism.
8. United States: Why the poor die 9 years earlier than the rich: An interview with Dr. Marc Cohen
Dr. Cohen’s research gives empirical weight to this structural indictment. A longtime analyst of long-term care financing and co-founder of the risk management firm LifePlans, he has spent decades studying how aging, health and economics interact. As co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass Boston, his work bridges academia and policy, quantifying what ideology obscures: that the premature deaths of millions of older Americans are not accidents of lifestyle but outcomes of design. His findings expose the moral arithmetic of a system in which physical survival itself is stratified by wealth.
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Dr. Cohen:
One of NCOA’s core programs is the Benefits CheckUp, which helps older adults determine whether they qualify for public programs or benefits they aren’t yet using. As part of that effort, they asked us to conduct broader research on what aging in America looks like. About six years ago, we decided to look at the data differently. The problem with averages is that they hide enormous variability. Averages can make inequality invisible.
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We already knew from prior research that wealth and mortality are related. But what surprised us was how large that gap has become. Mortality rates were dramatically higher among those in the lower quintiles than among those at the top. What’s striking is that people in the lower wealth groups were, on average, younger, so you would expect their mortality to be lower—not higher—over a four-year period. You also would think they would be healthier. Yet we found the opposite.
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The second part of our analysis looked at people’s ability to “age in place,” meaning to remain independent and connected to their communities. My colleagues at UMass Boston developed a tool called the Elder Index, which is a much more accurate measure of what it costs to live independently. It accounts for geography, housing status and health, calculating local costs for food, transportation, healthcare and housing. When you compare those real costs with people’s incomes, the picture is grim.
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The Congressional Budget Office and others have recognized that the Elder Index provides a much more accurate picture of what it costs for an older person to live independently in their community. What you just described—people who are above the federal poverty level but below the Elder Index—we refer to as living in the gap.
Eligibility for most federal programs is based on the poverty line, so if you’re “in the gap,” you’re technically not poor enough to qualify for assistance, yet you can’t afford basic needs. You’re living on the edge—one crisis away from falling into poverty. A serious illness, long-term care expense, job loss or even the death of a spouse can easily push you from that gap into true poverty.
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When you know that your fellow citizens, people who have worked their entire lives, are likely to live almost a decade less simply because of their economic position, that should trouble all of us. And this isn’t about people refusing to work. Many of those in the lower wealth brackets are working class Americans doing essential jobs: the person pumping gas, the grocery clerk, the home care aide. They keep society running, but their work doesn’t produce the kind of wealth that insulates against hardship. In a society like ours, where value is measured in capital accumulation, that kind of labor is invisible, even though it’s indispensable. And it is worth mentioning, that many of these jobs were deemed to be “essential” and these workers considered to be “essential workers” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Do we want people whom we deem as “essential” to have to give up on so many years of life?
What we wanted to do with this research was call attention to that contradiction. We talk about how much we value older Americans, how they built the country, yet we allow conditions that strip nearly 10 years from the lives of those without wealth. Regardless of political perspective, it’s hard to argue that such an outcome is acceptable.
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So, access to care matters, but it’s only one piece of a much larger puzzle. The social determinants of health—nutrition, housing, environment and the dignity with which people are treated—are all part of the same story. Together they reveal the real meaning of inequality; not just fewer years of life, but lives lived with far fewer options often accompanied by feelings of disrespect.
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The pandemic disproportionately affected older adults, especially those in institutional settings like nursing homes. At the same time, it hit the workforce that provides care for those elderly people, which further destabilized the system. So COVID introduced a whole layer of distortion and vulnerability that’s hard to untangle.
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Medicaid is the primary public payer for long-term services and supports—nursing homes, home care, community-based care—but it’s a means-tested program funded through general tax revenues and subject to the ups and downs of the budget process. If you’re poor, Medicaid will often guarantee you institutional care, and while 47 states and the District of Columbia have programs that cover home- and community-based services, these programs are optional and are often underfunded, which results in long waiting lists for services. If you’re wealthy, you can afford private insurance or pay directly. But if you’re part of the broad, overlooked middle class, you’re out of luck.
I’ve argued for years that we need a true social-insurance model for long-term services and supports, where everyone pays in and receives a basic level of coverage when care is needed. What we have now barely qualifies as a “system.” In fact, I’ve been told that even calling it a system gives it too much credit.
During the pandemic, the cracks were impossible to ignore. We didn’t have enough resources to attract and retain a stable workforce. We couldn’t pay caregivers a living wage. States tried to patch the problem by passing emergency legislation to temporarily raise wages, and that helped for a time. But you also had a situation where labor-market competition for employees in nursing homes came from places like McDonald’s or Burger King that sometimes paid more for work that was clearly less challenging.
Another issue on this topic frequently overlooked is immigration. Roughly one-third of the long-term care workforce in the United States is made up of immigrants. When immigration is restricted, it directly worsens the shortage of caregivers. That’s an unintended consequence few policymakers consider.
So, we say we value our elders, the people who built this country, but we entrust their care to a workforce that’s largely underpaid, undervalued and increasingly unstable. The people providing that care, many of them immigrants and women of color, are essential workers doing some of the hardest labor imaginable. They’re the backbone of the system, and yet the system doesn’t work for them either. That’s what the pandemic revealed most clearly: a structure that depends on underpaid workers to care for our most vulnerable and purportedly valued citizens. Something is wrong with this picture.
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... My sense is that policy change rarely happens unless there’s local, constituent demand for it—from the bottom up. It’s very unusual for a purely moral argument, on its own, to move policy across the finish line. The moral case is essential, but it’s often not sufficient.
What makes it powerful is when it’s paired with the voices of people who have lived these experiences. Their stories give life to the data. The kind of empirical work I do—statistics, mortality rates, percentages—can only go so far. Without the human dimension, it’s too easy to forget that we’re talking about real people, not just numbers.
In my experience, you also need an economic argument alongside the moral one. Policymakers need to see that inequality and underinvestment harm the economy. When workers must reduce their hours, turn down promotions, or leave the labor force to care for aging relatives, that affects employers, productivity and state revenues. There’s a direct cost to doing nothing.
That said, I remain somewhat optimistic about long-term care because it’s not strictly a partisan issue. Everyone has an elder in their life, parents, grandparents, someone they love. That personal connection can bridge divides and bring people together in ways that other issues can’t.
Still, if you rely solely on the moral argument, it won’t be enough. We have 200 years of social policy history showing that change only occurs when moral conviction combines with economic pressure and grassroots demand. The real obstacle isn’t one ideology versus another but inertia. Doing nothing is the default.
*****
What concerns me most right now are the ongoing attacks on the social safety net. That’s what really keeps me up at night. These cuts target people who don’t have access to private alternatives—the ones who can’t simply buy long-term care insurance or pay out of pocket. For them, programs like Medicaid or Medicare aren’t luxuries; they are their lifelines.
Still, the reason I remain somewhat optimistic is because this issue truly cuts across party lines. I’m a baby boomer—part of that “snake that swallowed the cow” coming through the demographic curve. My generation is very large and, frankly, very demanding. As more of us age and the need for care grows, the political pressure to act will only intensify. In my experience, policymakers often need proof points, examples that show reform can work. Take Massachusetts, where I live. What became known as “Romney Care” was our state’s attempt to provide near-universal coverage. It wasn’t perfect, but it demonstrated that you could insure everyone without bankrupting the system. The Affordable Care Act was modeled on that experiment.
9. Gangster Trump unleashes Murder Inc. against Latin America
Not a single shred of evidence has been presented by the White House to prove that any of the targeted vessels or their crew members were connected to drug-trafficking—which, in any case, would not legalize the blatantly criminal murder of unarmed civilians in international waters. But the US administration is no more concerned about justifying its claims than Al Capone was interested in making a moral case for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It is employing the immense power of the US military and intelligence apparatus as a giant Murder Inc. in pursuit of blatantly criminal and predatory aims.
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While the initial attacks struck boats in the southern Caribbean, near Venezuela, Monday’s and other recent attacks have occurred in the Eastern Pacific, off Colombia’s coast. This shift coincides with Trump’s launching of a vicious political offensive against the Colombian government.
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Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and declaration of “non-international armed conflict” serve to justify both overseas killings and domestic repression, revealing the inseparable connection between imperialist war abroad and the drive toward dictatorship at home. Just as the gangster Trump is murdering fishermen and migrants in South American waters, so too will his administration assert its power to carry out extrajudicial executions in the US itself.
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The only force capable of preventing imperialist war and defending democratic rights is the international working class, organized independently of all capitalist parties and nationalist movements, fighting for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.
Seeking to accelerate the mass deportation operation and attacks on the democratic rights of the working class, the Trump administration is replacing several top directors at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials.
The replacements are reportedly being vetted by Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the El Centro Sector, and special government employee Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Trump campaign aide who is close to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem.
NBC News reported that at least a dozen ICE field office directors were being “reassigned” and that “at least half of them” would be replaced with CBP officials. The right-wing Washington Examiner, citing “five sources familiar with the plans,” reported that ICE directors in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Diego were replaced last Friday.
Fox News correspondent and Trump administration propagandist Bill Melugin reported that in addition to the above cities, directors were being replaced in El Paso, Seattle/Portland and New Orleans. There are currently 24 ICE field offices spread throughout the country in major US cities.
The purge at the top of ICE comes as would-be dictator Donald Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act and militarily occupy major cities with active-duty troops a year before the 2026 midterm elections.
Speaking on October 28 in front of thousands of soldiers and sailors on the USS George Washington, currently at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, Trump declared that he would be deploying more than the National Guard to US cities. “People don’t care if we send in our military, if we send in our National Guard, if we send in Space Command. They don’t care who the hell it is,” he said.
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Trump is using the National Guard and federal forces to provoke a confrontation ahead of the elections to be used either as a pretext to cancel the elections outright or conduct them under military occupation.
Obergruppenführer Bovino, who is currently overseeing the Nazi-like occupation of Chicago dubbed “Midway Blitz,” has impressed the Trump administration and Republican Party with his thuggish, partisan and illegal tactics.
Bovino has spent over 30 years in CBP, rising through the ranks under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Following the certification of Trump’s electoral victory on January 7, 2025, Bovino personally led a fascistic immigration kidnapping operation, dubbed “Return to Sender,” in Kern County, California, that led to at least 78 workers being arrested. Residents said the immigration police profiled farmworkers and those who looked like they worked in the fields.
Throughout the spring and summer, Bovino’s forces carried out “roving patrols” and mass raids throughout California, targeting workers based on nothing but their skin color, language and occupation. In July, he helped lead a military-style occupation of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. With Bovino on horseback, heavily militarized CBP agents raided the park alongside National Guard soldiers and Black Hawk helicopters, sending children and nearby residents fleeing.
The following month, Bovino and his heavily armed immigration thugs menaced a political event held by California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo district. According to the Los Angeles Times, CBP police, masked and wielding semi-automatic rifles, arrested at least one person who was delivering strawberries outside the venue.
In September, Bovino was put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Midway Blitz,” targeting Chicago workers. On September 30, Border Patrol, FBI and ICE agents swarmed a Southside apartment complex in Chicago, using chainsaws to break fences and a Black Hawk helicopter to rappel onto the roof of the building. Once inside the residential complex, the armed agents busted down doors and detained virtually all of the residents for hours, regardless of citizenship status, separating them by race.
*****
It would be a fatal mistake for workers and youth to leave it up to the capitalist courts to protect democratic rights. Already this year the Supreme Court has greenlit so-called “Kavanaugh stops,” named after far-right Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which allow immigration agents to detain and question without cause anyone they suspect of being “illegal,” a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In violation of the First Amendment, the Trump administration, under the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has canceled the visas of thousands of students and workers for exercising their right to free speech. These fascistic measures are being coordinated with the immigration Gestapo, who have targeted students such as Momodou Taal, Rumeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.
Joining the list of people who have been kidnapped for the crime of speaking out against genocide is photojournalist Yaa’kub Ira Vijandre, 38. On October 7, one day after speaking in support of a community member taken by ICE at a City Council meeting in Richardson, Texas, Vijandre himself was kidnapped by ICE agents, despite being “protected” under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Vijandre has lived in the US since he was brought to the country from the Philippines as a 14-year-old boy. Neither ICE nor any other government agency has accused Vijandre of committing a crime. It appears the sole reason for his detention is his speech denouncing the genocide in Gaza and the US government’s prosecution of alleged “terrorists.”
In a statement, immigration attorney Eric Lee, one of Vijandre’s lawyers, revealed that in November 2023, over a month into the US-backed genocide in Gaza, Vijandre was approached by FBI agents and asked to become a confidential informant, which he declined to do.
In a statement by Vijandre’s legal team, his lawyers noted that the government’s attempt to deport him was part of the ongoing effort by the Trump administration to expand the definition of “domestic terrorism” to any and all speech in opposition to the administration.
11. New Zealand union bureaucrats peddle the lie: Australia—a land of “milk and honey”
The “mega strike” by more than 100,000 public sector workers in New Zealand last Thursday was the largest industrial action in that country in 40 years. The stoppage, directed against the National-led government’s attempt to inflict real pay cuts and entrench intolerable working conditions, testifies to a growing militancy and social anger.
The New Zealand strike was part of the growth of the class struggle globally. Whatever their particularities, all of these struggles are fueled by the austerity agenda of governments that are imposing the burden of a capitalist crisis onto the backs of working people, as they defend the interests of billionaires and divert vast resources to the military in preparation for war.As in all the struggles that are developing internationally, New Zealand workers are posed with the necessity of a fight against the National-led government, the opposition Labour Party, which is no less a representative of big business, and the entire political establishment. What is needed is a political movement of the working class, based on a new perspective that rejects the entire austerity framework and the capitalist profit system that underpins it.
The New Zealand public sector union bureaucracies, having only called the strike for fear that opposition would escape their control, are desperately trying to prevent such a political development. They have called no further action, have signalled their willingness to return to backroom bargaining with the government and have indicated they will accept paltry wage increases that do not keep up with the real growth in the cost-of-living.
One of the ways the union bureaucrats are seeking to confuse workers and to divert from the struggle against the government that is required, is by presenting Australia as a beacon of high pay for public sector workers, quality working conditions and vast opportunities. That feeds into a broader narrative, promoted by much of the New Zealand corporate media and elements of the political establishment.
The substantial outflow of New Zealanders testifies to the depth of the social crisis, in a country where around 1 in 5 people live in poverty and where wage levels have always been among the lowest of an advanced “western” capitalist country. In the year to August, a record 47,900 New Zealanders migrated abroad, more than half of them to Australia.
But the depiction of Australia as a land of “milk and honey” is an utter fraud. That was demonstrated at the strike rallies themselves, where union bureaucrats simply lied about the situation across the Tasman Sea.
*****The unions, in New Zealand, Australia and globally, are all based on nationalism, which serves to divide workers and to subordinate them to the national political establishment. Above all they seek to prevent a unified struggle of workers across industries, regions and countries against the capitalist system which is the root cause of deteriorating living conditions.
The claim that the situation is so much better for workers in Australia than New Zealand is itself a peculiar, almost inverted form of nationalism. It presents the situation in New Zealand as an aberration. The implication is that if placed under sufficient pressure, the National-led government will improve pay and conditions. Or failing that, that the election of Labour, with which the unions are allied, will remedy the situation.
In fact, in Australia, it is a federal Labor government that is presiding over an onslaught on social spending, wage suppression and a vast military build-up, and the majority of the state administrations are also led by Labor.
The reality is that the conditions of workers across the Tasman and globally are marked by their commonality, not their difference. Everywhere, workers are facing an assault dictated by the major banks and corporations, which themselves operate at a global level.
Everywhere, it is the corporatized trade union bureaucracies that isolate, divide and sell out workers. Just as the New Zealand unions are seeking to wind down the dispute that led to the mega-strike and to strike a dirty deal with the government, so too in Australia have repeated struggles by health, education and other workers been isolated from one another before being betrayed by the unions.
The alternative is a fight to unite workers in Australia, New Zealand and globally, in a common struggle for decent wages, conditions and services. That requires a rebellion against the union leaderships and the formation of new organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees, controlled by workers themselves not privileged and government-aligned bureaucrats.
12. A working class fighter for socialism: Joe Parnarauskis, 1954–2025
Parnarauskis will be best known to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site for his run for Illinois State Senate in 2006. Parnarauskis and supporters of the SEP fought off efforts to keep him off the ballot by the Illinois Democratic Party—whose most prominent member was then-US Senator Barack Obama.
Parnarauskis and the SEP won that fight, and, with almost no budget, received 1,894 votes, or about 3.4 percent of the total votes cast in Illinois state district 52, which comprised Champaign, Urbana and the University of Illinois campus, as well as Danville—the location of an abandoned General Motors foundry—rural areas, and a strip of old coal mining towns that included his own hometown of Westville.
To achieve ballot status, Parnarauskis and his supporters gathered nearly 5,000 signatures. Democratic Party operatives attempted to falsely invalidate more than half of these.
That election campaign, and the campaign of the author of these lines for the Illinois State House in 2004, were important experiences for the SEP and the working class. They demonstrated that ferocious opposition in the ruling class to democratic rights was not monopolized by the Republican Party, whose victory in the 2000 Bush-Gore election had been based on the stopping of vote-counting in Florida. The campaigns demonstrated that the Democratic Party, as well, was prepared to trample over the democratic rights of thousands of petition signers in order to block socialist candidates from appearing on the ballot.
Parnarauskis was pivotal in both Illinois campaigns. As he put it in an address to his supporters after beating back the Democratic Party efforts to keep him off the ballot:
This fight involved crucial democratic principles. Does an ordinary citizen have the right to run for office to defend the interests of working people, or are only those who are personally wealthy or backed by large amounts of corporate cash eligible? Do the people have the right to vote for a candidate of their choice?
On the surface, the confrontation between the Democratic Party and the SEP might have appeared to be a mismatch. The Democrats have a powerful political machine at their disposal, millions upon millions of dollars, and high-priced lawyers.
[But] in conducting our fight we based ourselves on the interests of the vast majority of the population—working people and youth in Illinois, the US and around the world, who are politically disenfranchised by parties that speak for big business. We understood that despite their resources, these parties rest on an increasingly narrow social base, and their remaining support within the general population is being eroded by their pro-war and pro-corporate policies.
Our victory shows in microcosm the strength that the working class can wield when it bases itself upon a socialist and internationalist program. In the course of this fight, scores of protest letters were sent from Illinois, more than a dozen other states and countries, such as Britain, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, Germany and Sri Lanka.
13. Structural collapse at power plant in Indian Special Economic Zone kills 9 construction workers
Nine migrant workers from the northeastern Indian state of Assam were killed and one worker injured September 30, when an arch structure collapsed at the construction site of a thermal power plant inside the Ennore Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Minjur, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The victims fell along with a large steel framework that crashed down upon them from a height of nearly 45 metres. Most were crushed to death instantly. The only surviving worker had managed to clutch on to a steel structure.
The deceased workers were Munna Khemprai, Sorbojit Thausen, Phaibit Fanglu, Bidayum Porbosa, Paban Sorong, Prayanto Sorong, Suman Kharikap, Dipak Raijung, and Dimaraj Thausen.
None of the workers killed in the accident were permanent employees. They were hired on piece-rate contracts, denied provident fund and insurance coverage, and lived in overcrowded dormitories near the site.
These migrant workers, who were subjected to slave-labor exploitation and deprived of even minimum rights, have been sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits, as is the case of thousands of such workers annually in India, South Asia and globally. On October 14, a fire at the Anwar Fashion garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killed at least 16 workers, mostly teenagers. On October 10, a massive explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) munitions factory in Tennessee in the US, also killed 16 workers. Those are just two recent examples of how human lives are destroyed in the drive for corporate profit.
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Efforts are clearly underway to scapegoat the lowest-level subcontractor in the contracting chain so as to let the responsible corporate and government officials off the hook. This is aimed not just at avoiding legal responsibility and the potential financial and other costs associated with it. It serves to protect the entire subcontracting/privatization framework through which both public and private companies reduce costs and swell profits by resorting to subcontractors and poorly trained, low-paid contract workers.
*****
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cynically announced a token compensation of 200,000 Indian rupees ($US2,400) for the family of each of the deceased workers and 50,000 rupees for the lone survivor. Not to be outdone, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin offered 1 million rupees ($12,000) to each of the dead workers’ families.
These gestures, repeated after every such preventable disaster, are a cruel substitute for genuine safety measures, which are seen as an obstacle to attracting investors because they will add additional costs thereby reducing profits.
The introduction of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (OSHWC) in 2020 gutted older labor protections by allowing enterprises to self-certify safety compliance in lieu of inspections by independent state authorities.*****
Tens of thousands of young men and women from Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh are drawn to Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, and other industrial zones in southern India each year. They flee agrarian distress, crushing debt and the collapse of small-scale farming in their home states—direct consequences of decades of pro-market policies implemented by successive central and state governments.
Increasingly, workers from Assam have joined this internal migration stream, driven by the same miserable conditions created by the ruling class. The tea plantation economy that once absorbed much of Assam’s rural labour has been gutted by privatization, stagnant wages, and chronic neglect, forcing the workers to leave for precarious construction and factory jobs in southern India and other industrially developed areas. There they face linguistic isolation, discrimination, and the absence of any social protection. Their migration is not voluntary in any meaningful sense; it is a desperate search for survival in a system that offers them no alternative.
The Ennore deaths are not an isolated tragedy but part of a global pattern of industrial homicide driven by the subordination of human life to corporate profit. No confidence can be placed in the capitalist parties, the state apparatus, or the Stalinist trade unions to end these types of industrial deaths. The defense of the lives, jobs and working and living conditions of workers—migrant and local alike—requires the building of independent rank-and-file committees at every workplace, democratically controlled by workers themselves.The corporate media pays attention on occasion to one or another industrial accident due to the sheer number of worker fatalities, the prominence of the accident site, or its association with a major fire or explosion. But factories, construction sites, mines, and special economic zones are plagued on a daily basis with fatal and life-changing accidents in Tamil Nadu and across India. Most of the time this news is suppressed at the level of the workplace, with management and government officials placing the blame on workers themselves for supposed carelessness and the disregard of safety measures—no matter that in pursuit of profit employers fail to provide proper training and safety equipment and constantly press workers to cut corners to increase output.
14. Houston 28-year veteran postal worker dies in fatal road accident
On Saturday morning, October 18, in Northwest Houston, Texas, Steven Marks, a 58-year-old letter carrier for the United States Postal Service (USPS), was killed while working his route. Police said he was struck by an alleged drunk driver, who was fleeing from a previous minor accident.
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While the Postal Service expressed its condolences, letter carriers across the country have long criticized the USPS for failing to improve working conditions despite mounting hazards. Routes have grown longer and more demanding as staffing levels shrink, leaving carriers to cover vast areas under increasingly tight deadlines. In cities like Houston, they contend with extreme heat, aging vehicles without air conditioning and limited safety protections when operating on busy streets.
Rank-and-file workers have repeatedly urged management to invest in safer vehicles, better scheduling and more realistic workloads, arguing that the agency’s obsession with productivity often comes at the expense of worker safety. For many carriers, Steven Marks’ death is not just a tragedy but also a grim reflection of how dangerous and undervalued their work has become.
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In neighborhoods across Houston, letter carriers have attached small ribbons and pins to their uniforms in Marks’ honor. At the same time, the incident has sparked broader conversations about the safety of postal workers, who spend their days navigating unpredictable environments—from heavy traffic to extreme weather—while performing a service whose challenges many are not fully aware of.
Traffic safety advocates and local residents have voiced renewed frustration over Houston’s persistent struggles with poorly designed roads and impaired driving. In 2024, Harris County recorded one of the highest rates of alcohol-related crashes in Texas.
Houston’s notoriously poor road infrastructure has only compounded the city’s epidemic of traffic fatalities. Cracked pavement, fading lane markings and a chronic lack of street lighting in many neighborhoods create conditions ripe for collisions, even under normal circumstances. On major thoroughfares like Antoine Drive, where Steven Marks was killed, narrow lanes and uneven shoulders leave little margin for error when drivers lose control or swerve to avoid obstacles.
The city’s rapid sprawl has long outpaced its investment in maintenance, and residents often complain that basic repairs take months or years. Transportation experts have warned that Houston’s combination of aging roads, heavy traffic and lax enforcement makes it one of the most dangerous metro areas in the country for drivers and pedestrians alike—a reality that transforms every reckless decision behind the wheel into a potential tragedy.
But for those who knew Steven Marks personally, these policy debates feel far removed from the human loss at the center of it all. He was, they say, someone who gave freely of himself. A neighbor told ABC7 that Marks would often check on elderly residents during his rounds and even made small holiday gestures, once delivering a favorite drink as a lighthearted Christmas gift. “He cared about people,” she said simply.
Steven Marks spent his last moments doing what he had always done: serving others. In a world that often overlooks everyday dedication, his death is a painful reminder of the people who hold our communities together, one letter, one stop, one smile at a time. May he be remembered not for the violence that ended his life but for the years of kindness, loyalty and humanity that defined it.
Tom Hall regularly contributes intelligent analysis of events, especially on labor issues, at the World Socialist Web Site and is critically involved in assisting workers in the formation of rank and file committees to break the chains of corrupt and nationalistic unions which predictably betray workers. In this video he delivers the concluding part of a two-part lecture on the topic, “How the GPU Murdered Trotsky”. Text of the lecture is found within the article. The first part was delivered by Andre Damon.
In this lecture, Hall describes how Joseph Hansen, a leader in the Socialist Workers Party, a precursor to the Socialist Equality Party, betrayed the Fourth International, initiated by Leon Trotsky. Hansen was deeply involved in a coverup of facts about Trotsky's assassination, and in Trotsky's assassination. The purpose is to remind genuine socialists, small in number, how afraid their enemies are of them and how committed their enemies are to destroying them because of the consequential truths they defend. This is a history that is currently whitewashed out of the Wikipedia.
Here is a topic article for further study.
16. 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.
