Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Fifty Years since the Canberra Coup: A Marxist assessment
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the November 11, 1975 dismissal of the Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, carried out by Governor-General John Kerr, the official representative of the British monarchy.
Working in close collaboration with the UK and US political and intelligence establishments, Kerr utilized the “reserve powers” of the British royalty, deliberately preserved in the colonial-era 1901 Australian Constitution, to remove an elected government.
Under this constitution, the governor-general has the power to appoint and dismiss ministers at his or her “pleasure,” prorogue (suspend) or dissolve parliaments and is the “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces. Yet he or she supposedly acts, by unwritten convention, on the advice of the government of the day.
Exercising these powers on November 11, 1975, Kerr conducted two dismissals. The first, at 1 p.m., was to remove Whitlam as prime minister. The second, at 4:30 p.m., was to dissolve both houses of parliament just after the newly installed Liberal-Country Party government of Malcolm Fraser had lost a no-confidence vote in the House of Representatives by 64 votes to 54.
In Australia, a country with a purportedly stable capitalist parliamentary democracy, this entire facade was thrust aside in 1975 in response to what was—as this article reviews—a potentially revolutionary upsurge of working-class struggles amid a period of acute crisis of capitalism internationally.
Widespread strikes and protests erupted in the lead-up to the Canberra Coup and in subsequent days. Kerr could not have succeeded in ousting the government without the assistance of Whitlam himself, as well as Labor and trade union leaders, headed by then Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and Labor Party president Bob Hawke. Aided and abetted by the Stalinist leaders of the major trade unions, they all accepted the dismissal and directed workers to go back to work and “maintain their rage” until a new election.
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Far from being a peculiarly Australian affair, or a personal aberration of Kerr himself, as it is ludicrously depicted in the corporate media, the Canberra Coup can only be understood within the context of the intense class struggles taking place internationally.
Its political lessons are more critical than ever today as the ruling classes turn increasingly to authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule, above all at the very center of imperialism in the United States, as they confront a new period of revolutionary upheaval.
2. Australia: NSW Police permitted Nazis to rally outside state parliament in Sydney
The avowedly neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) held a demonstration outside the New South Wales (NSW) state parliament in the center of Sydney on Saturday. Several dozen black-clad thugs held an antisemitic banner calling for the “abolition of the Jewish lobby” and chanted fascist slogans demanding mass deportations and the return of a “white Australia.”
As with other stunts by the NSN, the protest pointed to the emboldening of the Nazis. Amid a growth of the far-right internationally, promoted by sections of the political establishment, including in Australia, they are completely open in their worship of Hitler and are conducting increasingly provocative public interventions.
The most striking aspect of the rally, though, was that it was effectively authorized by the NSW Police. The NSN, using the name of their front organization, “White Australia,” submitted a notice of intention to hold a public assembly. The police did not object, allowing it to go ahead.
Since the protest and the shock it has generated, NSW Police command have claimed that a low level officer was responsible. The whole thing was a mistake, they had no knowledge that this would occur, etc.
That is simply not credible. The NSN, whose members venerate not only Hitler but multiple fascist terrorists, would be on every high-level policing watch-list conceivable. Last week, just days before the protest, Mike Burgess, the head of the domestic spy agency ASIO, explicitly named the NSN in a speech on threats to “national security.”
The obvious reality is that a high-level political decision was made for the Nazis to be allowed to rally. That is part of the increasing normalization of the far-right forces, whose anti-immigrant demagogy mirrors that of governments and the major parties themselves.
And it was aimed at creating a new pretext for attacks on democratic rights, targeting left-wing and anti-war opposition, with the NSW Police and the NSW Labor government immediately insisting after the rally that even more stringent laws limiting the right to protest and to engage in political speech are required.
NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, for instance, has told the media that he was unaware the protest would be held due to a “communication error,” but that even if he had known, there would have been no means of preventing it.
Those claims display a staggering double standard. For more than two years, the NSW Police, acting with the state Labor government, have repeatedly sought to ban protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and have used brutal violence against a number of them.
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The NSN rally, having been approved, was not met by any great police presence. In their frenzied attacks on pro-Palestinian protests, which are explicitly anti-racist and have involved many anti-Zionist Jews, police and NSW government officials have slanderously claimed that the demonstrations may intimidate Jewish people.
But those concerns, false in the case of the pro-Palestinian protests, were apparently non-existent when they would have been justified in the case of a Nazi mobilization.
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The legitimization of the NSN and the assault on civil liberties are two sides of the same coin: a growing turn to authoritarianism, directed against the working class. This process finds its sharpest expression in the attempts of US President Donald Trump to establish a fascistic dictatorship.
But the assault on democratic rights and the creation of a reactionary, nationalist environment in which forces such as the NSN can grow, by a Labor government in Australia, shows this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Amid a breakdown of capitalism, the ruling elite and all its political representatives are again turning to the barbarism of the 1930s and 40s, from support for genocide, to militarist policies threatening world war and the promotion of fascism and dictatorship.
3. United States: Search for coal miner trapped in flooded West Virginia mine continues for third day
A coal miner remains missing and trapped after catastrophic flooding struck the Rolling Thunder Mine in Drennen, Nicholas County, in central West Virginia, over the weekend. The miner—a crew foreman whose name has not yet been released—was assisting his team to safety when he was caught by rising waters.
The torrent was unleashed deep inside the mine when an unknown pocket was struck. The incident occurred about three-quarters of a mile into the Rolling Thunder Mine, which is owned by Alpha Metallurgical Resources (AMR). Other crew members managed to escape, but the foreman was overtaken by the flood.
The accident was reported at around 1:30 p.m. Saturday to the county emergency management office; all other miners on the team have been accounted for. The area remains flooded and the extent of the devastation below ground is still unclear.
Rescue operations began promptly and have been complicated by challenging conditions such as murky water, unstable underground air pockets, and the sheer depth of the site. For three days, crews have coordinated with county officials, state agencies, and national cave rescue experts.
Divers are working to locate any air pockets that may have provided a temporary refuge for the missing miner. Teams have employed underwater drones to try and pinpoint his location while simultaneously pumping water from the flooded section and drilling boreholes to lower water levels more rapidly.
The complexity of the effort reflects both the seriousness of the situation and the persistent danger in the coal mining industry.
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Once again, like every workplace disaster, the events at Rolling Thunder Mine show how the capitalism subordinates life-threatening risks faced by miners to the drive for profit.
Just days before the Rolling Thunder flood, on Thursday, November 6, 25-year-old Joey Mitchell Jr. was killed at Mettiki Coal’s Mountain View Mine in Mount Storm, Tucker County. Mitchell died before dawn while working underground; another individual was seriously injured and airlifted to the hospital.
While Governor Morrisey was quick to mourn Mitchell’s death and call for West Virginians to keep his family, friends, and fellow miners “in our thoughts and prayers,” details about the cause of the accident remain undisclosed, continuing the stonewalling policy among coal industry operators and local authorities.
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There have been at least three other mining fatalities in 2025 in West Virginia. These include:
- On January 29, Steven Fields, a 55-year-old drill operator, was killed at the Twilight Surface Mine in Boone County.
- In February, Billy Stalker, 46, a contractor with Wright Concrete Underground LLC, died in an underground incident.
- On August 26, Eric Bartram, 41, a preparation plant electrician, was fatally injured at the Marfork Preparation Plant in Raleigh County.
The number of fatal mine accidents in 2025 has been rising at an alarming rate despite the sharp reduction in mining employment. According to MSHA, fatalities reached 18 by early August, outpacing 2024, which had 12 by the same point. The industry is on pace for about 30 fatalities for 2025, matching 2022’s year-end total. The increase in death rates comes amid ongoing attacks on safety enforcement, including funding cuts, elimination of federal programs, and a drive to lower standards and oversight by MSHA and OSHA.
Wayne Palmer, Trump’s nominee who was approved for Assistant Secretary of Labor for MSHA previously held executive posts in mining and mineral industry business associations.
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Seven months ago, Ronald Adams Sr. was crushed to death at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant in Michigan when a automatic hoist cycled unexpectedly during maintenance. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) says the case is “still open” and Adams’s family and co-workers remain without answers from the company or the United Auto Workers, although full production has resumed.
The rise in workplace deaths is taking place globally. As enormous wealth concentrates in fewer hands—with the billionaire elite soon growing into the trillionaire elite—workers are being killed and injured at alarming rates.
With the approval of both the Democrats and Republicans and the backing of the union officialdom, owners are being shielded while workers die, are maimed, or denied compensation and their families left with no answers.
This situation will not be reversed by either capitalist party or the union apparatus. Workers themselves must act—organizing independent rank-and-file committees to enforce safety, demand accountability and safeguard lives through direct intervention in the workplace.
4. Democrats move to end shutdown, bail out Trump
The Democratic reversal is not due to fear of the strength or popularity of Trump. On the contrary, it follows a series of events which demonstrate the vast popular hostility to this government and particularly to Trump’s increasingly dictatorial methods.
On October 18, the mass “No Kings” protests brought millions into the streets in more than 2,500 locations throughout the country. While the Democrats controlled the speakers’ platforms and sought to block any calls to mass action, both corporate-controlled parties were clearly staggered by the scale of the protest and the outrage over Trump’s attacks on democratic rights and immigrant workers.
On November 4, Democrats swept the off-year election, winning the two open governorships in Virginia and New Jersey and most other contested races. The victory of self-styled “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City—defeating Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the former state governor, who had the support of both Trump and the Democratic Party leadership—touched off an anti-communist hysteria in the White House and on Wall Street.
The extent of the mass hostility to Trump has been shown as well in the increasingly militant resistance to his jackbooted immigration thugs as they raid immigrant neighborhoods, particularly in Chicago. Polls showed that the public blamed Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown-caused air traffic delays and the cutoff of food stamps in many states.
On Sunday, Trump was heavily booed while conducting a ceremony to swear in new members of the military during a professional football game just outside Washington D.C.
Just at the point of Trump’s maximum vulnerability, the Democrats intervened to prop him up. Within three days of the electoral rout of the Republicans in the off-year voting, Senate Democrats had begun to signal they would shift their position on the budget resolution.
5. Trump threatens unpaid air traffic controllers: “Get back to work, now!”
Trump’s concern is not the Democrats, who are preparing to strike a deal to fund his fascistic government, nor the trade union bureaucracy, which is working tirelessly to prevent any organized resistance by workers. What he fears is the growing radicalization of workers and young people and the danger of collective resistance by the working class to his fascist regime.
6. Philippines struck by 2 major typhoons in a week
One of the most powerful typhoons of the year made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday evening, the second major storm to strike the country in the past week. The two typhoons combined have caused hundreds of deaths as well as widespread evacuations and destruction.
The most recent storm, named Typhoon Fung-wong (or Uwan in the Philippines) was the 21st for the year. It passed over the northern island of Luzon, the country’s most populous. Winds reached speeds of 185 kilometers per hour with gusts of up to 230 kilometers per hour. The Philippine government expected 30 million people to be affected by the storm.
Typhoon Fung-wong has been described as a super typhoon. Approximately 1.4 million have been displaced and floods and landslides have left at least three million residents without power. At least one thousand homes have been damaged and eight people killed. After passing over the island, the storm turned north and is now heading towards Taiwan.
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Only a few days earlier on November 4, another major storm, Typhoon Kalmaegi (or Tino locally), struck central Philippines around Cebu Island. Sustained winds reached 183 kilometers per hour while gusts hit as high as 220 kilometers per hour. At least 224 people were killed during that storm, many drowning in floods. Another 109 people remain missing. More than 500 have also been injured. The storm came after the region was already devastated by a September 30 earthquake that killed 79 people and displaced thousands more.
The powerful storm then struck central Vietnam, killing five more people, as well as impacting Laos, Cambodia, and Northeastern Thailand. Even before Kalmaegi hit Vietnam, the country’s central region had experienced record rainfall, resulting in the deaths of 50 people last week. In Bach Ma in Hue, 1,739 millimeters of rain fell in a 24-hour period on October 26–27, the second-highest amount on record globally and equal to the average rainfall that tropical Vietnam receives in an entire year.
The intensity of such storms is increasing and come at an unusual time of the year, with typhoon season running from July through October. In the Philippines, Kalmaegi brought about a month’s worth of rain in the span of 24 hours. Mely Saberon, a resident of Talisay City on Cebu, told the BBC, “We don’t have any home anymore. We weren’t able to salvage anything from our house.” She continued, “We didn’t expect the surge of rain and wind. We’ve experienced many typhoons before, but this one was different.”
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The devastation caused by these typhoons and heavy rains is being compounded by climate change, which itself is a product of capitalism and leads to more intense storms and other weather-related disasters.
As global temperatures increase, this leads to warmer oceans and atmosphere. This warming causes greater rainfall and faster wind speeds during storms, which also increases the risks of flooding and landslides. For every one degree Celsius that the temperature rises, the atmosphere is able to retain 7 percent more water vapor.
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The UN World Meteorological Organization has stated that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with average global surface temperatures rising to 1.55 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Governments have done nothing to address this, as the major capitalist powers responsible for climate change base their policies on the profit interests of big business, not science and human need.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts with “high confidence” that the chances of typhoons strengthening to category four or five increases by 10 percent if the temperature increase is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This rises to 13 percent if temperatures increase two degrees and 20 percent if temperatures reach four degrees.
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The Philippine government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has expressed phony concern for public welfare while declaring a state of emergency. According to presidential press officer Claire Castro, Marcos ordered the government to “ensure medical teams are present in all evacuation centers to monitor the evacuees’ health.” She added, “The president immediately ordered road repairs to prevent delays in aid delivery.” At least 71 roads, mostly in central Luzon, remained impassable as of Monday afternoon.
These are empty words, meant to distract from the complete lack of planning and widespread corruption involving disaster management projects that exists in the Philippines. Over the past 15 years, Manila has allocated some 1.47 trillion pesos ($US24.9 billion) for flood control projects in a country that routinely sees typhoons. Much of this money has been diverted into so-called “ghost projects,” in which infrastructure projects are supposedly carried out but no work is actually completed.
This widespread corruption, involving kickbacks to government officials in addition to the theft of billions, combined with increasing social misery, led to large protests on September 21. The Marcos government is conscious of this growing anger and opposition and is attempting to deflect it. However, nothing will be done to address these attacks on workers and the poor. As with climate change, the lack of any significant planning is ultimately not simply the result of corruption, but the capitalist system itself.
7. Sri Lankan government begins electricity board restructuring backed by unions
From the last week of October, the Sri Lankan government has begun the process of splitting the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) into four state-owned companies.
In response, the trade unions at the CEB halted all action in opposition to the restructuring, forcing workers to submit applications to the management expressing their willingness to join the new companies. By October 27, most workers had sent their applications.
The treachery of CEB unions is not a surprise. Like their counterparts elsewhere in the public sector, the union leaders support the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-dictated austerity program being implemented by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government.
The government has not explained when the break-up of the CEB will be completed or what the position of employees in the new companies will be. More than 2,000 employees have opted for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) but do not know when they will receive their compensation. As a result, the workforce of more than 22,000 employees in this key state-owned enterprise (SOE) is now in a state of confusion about their future.
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Now the government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is dismantling the CEB—a task that his Ranil Wickremesinghe was unable to complete—and opening the door to further restructuring and privatization.
The CEB’s break-up is part of the broader IMF program negotiated by Wickremesinghe in March 2023 to be implemented as part of its $US3 billion bailout loan.
The loan was obtained after the unprecedented 2022 economic collapse triggered by Colombo’s default on foreign debt that resulted in four months of mass protests and strikes against soaring inflation and the collapse of social services and infrastructure.
The IMF dictated that there should be no retreat from its austerity program that is geared to the repayment of foreign debts and boosting investor profits. A key demand has been the restructuring of more than 400 SOEs—closing dozens, and commercializing or privatizing others.
The lessons of the CEB workers’ struggle against restructuring are essential not only for around the 500,000 workers in state-owned entities but also for all other workers seeking to defend their jobs, wages, and working conditions.
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The cancellation of the previous Electricity Act and halting privatization was one of the bogus promises made by President Dissanayake during his election campaign. However, his regime dropped all those promises after coming to power and committed implement the IMF agenda in full.
His administration has amended some clauses of the Electricity Act and begun the process of dismantling the CEB. The amended Act says the CEB will be split into four companies, which will remain as state entities.
However, employees correctly view these changes as cosmetic and believe that, in the future, they will face the threat of privatization and attacks on their job security.
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All opposition parties, including the SJB, SLPP, SLFP, and Tamil and Muslim capitalist parties, are supporting the IMF policies. If they criticize the government for burdening the masses, that is only to exploit the growing opposition.
Workers cannot fight against the JVP/NPP government’s IMF austerity under a trade union bureaucracy that supports its agenda. The CEB trade union leaders’ betrayals are a stark warning to all workers.
To fight against IMF austerity and government repression, it is essential to mobilize workers independently in a united struggle, breaking from all capitalist parties and trade union bureaucracies.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the Collective of Workers’ Action Committees in Sri Lanka were with the CEB struggle from the outset. We urged workers to form their own action committees, independent of pro-capitalist unions and capitalist parties, in order to organize a fight for their class interests.
8. Trump pardons January 6 coup architects and fake electors
Trump, the coup plotter-in-chief, spent zero time behind bars for his role in perpetrating the attack that resulted in hundreds of injuries and multiple deaths.
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This is the second major blanket pardon Trump has issued to his January 6 co-conspirators since returning to the White House. In one of his first major acts as president, Trump pardoned over 1,500 foot soldiers charged and/or convicted for their role in the failed coup, including Elmer Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers and Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio, Florida Proud Boy and FBI informant.
The broad pardon is aimed at not only rewriting history and lending credence to Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen but also to serve as a signal to Trump’s most fanatical supporters that the fascist in the White House will protect you from prosecution as long as you carry out crimes on his behalf. The pardons come less than one year before the 2026 midterm elections are set to be held.
Notably, none of those pardoned by Trump are actually facing federal crimes, a testament to the complete inability and unwillingness of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to hold those accountable that tried to overturn the last vestiges of bourgeois democracy in the United States. The central concern after the failed coup, as President Joe Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said numerous times, was building a “strong Republican Party.”
To this end, the Democrats, through the January 6 Select Committee, led by Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney, daughter of war criminal Dick Cheney, presented a false “one man coup” theory which blamed Trump and a few of his “crazy” allies in the Republican Party, while exonerating the role of Trump’s allies in the Pentagon, in Congress and on the Supreme Court in the attack. The bipartisan cover-up of the coup has prepared the conditions for its continuation and normalization under Trump’s second administration.
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The latest pardons underscore that the defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to the capitalist state or its political parties. The working class must intervene as an independent political force, uniting its struggles against dictatorship, war and social inequality in a mass movement for socialism.
9. David Neita: January 5, 1948 – October 30, 2025
David Neita, who played a leading role in the Workers League (predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party) during the 1970s, died on October 30 in Los Angeles at the age of 77. Diagnosed in the 1980s with multiple sclerosis, Dave’s health deteriorated significantly in recent years.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in January 1948, Dave was a remarkable representative of a generation of black youth whose political development occurred amidst the explosive civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. The conclusions he drew from both events led him to join the Trotskyist movement in the autumn of 1970.
While Dave respected the integrity of Martin Luther King, he did not believe that the reformist program of the civil rights leader represented a realistic, let alone adequate, response to the crisis of American society. And though Dave attended rallies addressed by Malcolm X in Harlem and Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant district, and respected the speaker’s eloquence, he did not agree with the nationalist program and perspective of the Black Muslim movement.
In 1967 Dave was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam. The searing experiences of the war profoundly affected him physically, emotionally and politically.
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In January 1968, Dave’s battalion was deployed to the city of Hue, which witnessed the fiercest fighting of the Tet Offensive launched by the North Vietnamese army. Initially, Dave’s battalion remained on the outskirts of the city while the Marines were chosen to spearhead the US efforts to regain control of Hue.
Dave would later recall watching with horror as the bodies of hundreds of dead and wounded Marines were evacuated from the battle zone. Dave’s battalion was then ordered into the city. Half way across the bridge, Dave’s closest friend, who was only a few feet in front of him, was hit by machine gun fire. Dave managed to pick his comrade up, and he carried him back to a helicopter for evacuation. In later years, when Dave recounted the event, he assumed that his friend had been killed. But in 1977, he was astonished to receive a letter from the soldier, who had been successfully operated on and survived. It had taken him years to locate Dave, to whom he owed his life.
Though not wounded in battle, Dave’s health was undermined by the war. Like so many US soldiers, he was exposed to Agent Orange, and this may have damaged his immune system and led to his subsequent development of multiple sclerosis.
An anonymous call for a statewide “teacher call-out” circulated across North Carolina social media groups in late October, urging educators to take November 7 and 10 as days of protest against stagnant pay, rising insurance costs and the legislature’s failure to pass a state budget.
The call has resonated deeply with teachers who have watched their real incomes shrink for years. Nearly 3,000 educators responded to a survey launched by Jennilee Lloyd, a third-grade teacher in Wake County, showing widespread support for coordinated absences.
Since July 1, the Republican-controlled General Assembly has failed to pass the 2025–26 budget, leaving school employees under last year’s pay scale while the State Health Plan raises premiums.
Speaking to local news outlets, Lloyd said, “We’re very, very tired. We’re not getting raises, and in addition to that, we’re paying additional money in our insurance premiums. Most of us are taking a pay cut.”
The crisis in North Carolina’s schools reflects a broader national assault on public education under the Trump administration, which has cut federal funding while diverting billions toward vouchers and charter programs. Combined with the state’s budget deadlock, these policies have deepened the underfunding of public schools, forcing educators to bear the cost of austerity.
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On Friday, November 7, schools across the state reported elevated absences. Wake County, the largest district, said several schools experienced “higher-than-normal” call-outs, though overall disruption was limited. Other districts declined to release figures. Wake County officials were bracing for staffing shortages on Monday, November 10, and some educators are talking about adding a call-out on November 17 that could involve larger numbers due to more time to plan.
These protests were preceded by an October 22 sick-out in Union County, where hundreds of teachers demanded a $2,000 local pay supplement long promised by county commissioners. The board ultimately approved only half that amount on November 6, preventing a second planned walkout for November 7.
Together, these actions reveal educators’ growing determination to resist eroding pay and conditions and an administration committed to defunding public education and dismantling social programs.
Predictably, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators (CMAE) issued a statement on November 4 disavowing the call-out. “Our power as educators comes from unity, strategy, and collective action, not isolated walkouts,” declared CMAE President Amanda Thompson. The group urged members to focus on “before-school walk-ins,” letter-writing campaigns, and spring lobbying when the legislature reconvenes.
This appeal for “strategic effort” comes four months after the budget deadline passed, during which time CMAE officials did nothing to organize statewide action while teachers worked without raises. Only when rank-and-file educators began circulating the anonymous call-out did it break its silence to warn teachers not to act.
Instead of mobilizing educators in a sustained fight, the CMAE promotes token “walk-ins” and appeals to legislators. In practice, this means telling teachers to wait while their conditions continue to deteriorate. The same union bureaucracies have presided over a decade of wage stagnation, growing workloads, and the steady privatization of public education. Their refusal to act exposes not caution but political alignment with both big-business parties and their bipartisan program of austerity.
The events in North Carolina this week recall the 2018 wildcat teacher strikes that erupted in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina and other states in opposition to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) bureaucracies. The AFT and NEA officials opposed these strikes from the beginning, sought to delay and limit them, and with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other pseudo-left supporters of the union apparatus and Democratic Party, finally shut them down. Teachers were told to “remember in November” and vote for Democrats while their demands for funding and raises went unmet.
The same logic operates today. The CMAE and NCAE—and their parent organizations in the AFT and NEA—preach “unity” but define it as compliance. They act not as instruments of workers’ struggle but as mechanisms for defusing opposition and channeling it into safe political forms.
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Only the independent, democratic mobilization of the working class can end the subordination of every social right, education, healthcare and housing, to the profit demands of capitalism, and build a society organized on the basis of human need rather than private wealth.
11. United States: University Medical Center New Orleans to launch 3-day strike over staffing
Nurses at the University Medical Center New Orleans (UMCNO) are set to walk out for three days November 11-13 over staffing and other issues. The 600 nurses are still seeking their first contract since voting to unionize in December 2023.
This is the fifth strike at the medical center in little over a year. A previous strike in July 2025 lasted two days. In a statement posted on the National Nurses United [NNU] website, Kisha Montes, a member of the bargaining team, said, “It’s not hard to recruit highly talented nurses to a Level 1 Trauma Center in a city like New Orleans, but we’re tired of seeing those nurses leave for other jobs. LCMC [Louisiana Children’s Medical Center] needs to work with us to retain the necessary staff to take care of our patients.”
Jackie Gamble, a nurse quoted on the NNU website said, “Nurse retention isn’t complicated. It’s as simple as competitive wages, decent benefits, and good working conditions where we can take care of our patients.”
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The hospital says it will remain fully operational during the walkout by employing strikebreakers, noting, “We have proactively partnered with an experienced outside agency to ensure qualified replacement nurses are available to support patient care and uphold our standards of excellence.”
This is the latest in a continuing series of strikes by healthcare workers around the United States over the question of short staffing, including the recent walkout by 46,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente hospitals on the West Coast, a one-day strike October 31 by 3,100 nurses at Tenet hospitals in California and a walkout by 1,400 registered nurses at Keck Medicine (University of Southern California) facilities.
There is an acute shortage of nurses in hospitals and healthcare facilities nationwide. This follows the mass exodus of nurses during the pandemic and nurse burnout due to chronic overwork. The crisis is compounded by the predatory, for profit healthcare system subordinating social need to parasitic financial institutions.
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New Orleans is one of the poorest big cities in the United States, conditions highlighted by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. The “recovery” from Katrina left residents, if anything, more impoverished than before.
The city has an overall poverty rate of 21 percent and a child poverty rate of 43 percent among African American children. Median income in the city and life expectancy are well below the national averages, with the poorest neighborhoods seeing a 25 percent gap in life expectancy. In a “healthiest cities” ranking by SmartAsset (2025), the city of New Orleans was identified as the unhealthiest among the 100 cities it ranked. This included indices such as drug-overdose deaths, poor mental health, obesity, air pollution and prevalence of diabetes.
Post-Katrina, New Orleans became a test case for “free market” reforms aimed at the total subordination of all aspects of social life to the dictates of the capitalist market. This has included the 100 percent charterization of the school system.
As part of this, all of the facilities in the city’s Charity Hospital, founded in 1736, which had operated as a state-owned teaching hospital and free clinic for the poor, were closed. It was one of the last remaining reformist measures instituted during the era of Louisiana Governor Huey Long.
All the other facilities statewide in the Charity Hospital system were sold off to private operators in a drastic cost-saving move that included the layoff of 3,500 state workers. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal sold them so quickly that winning bidders were picked that didn’t even fill out the application correctly.
Its replacement, UMCNO, was not opened until 2015 and is privately operated. As a result, the poor have been increasingly shut off from receiving healthcare while the private hospital operators have prospered.
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The struggle by UMCNO nurses for safe staffing is part of a broader fight. The defense of high quality healthcare as an essential social right involves a battle against the whole system of private, for-profit healthcare, not just one or another hospital or provider. Despite the amazing advances in science-based medicine, basic indices such as life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality are stagnating or declining in the US. This is taking place as vast amounts of wealth are squandered each year on the military and handouts to corporate billionaires.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents executed a violent traffic stop in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on the morning of November 6, 2025, resulting in the arrest of asylum seeker Juliana Milena Ojeda-Montoya, and causing her husband to have convulsions and a seizure while he held their terrified and traumatized 18-month-old daughter.
The incident began around 7:00 a.m. when the family—Ojeda-Montoya, her husband Carlos Sebastian Zapata and their daughter Alaia—were surrounded by several federal vehicles as Zapata drove his wife to her job at a Burger King restaurant. Agents quickly began banging on their car windows and screaming at the couple.
Zapata told the Boston Globe, “I wasn’t letting go of my wife because they wanted to take her away.” As Zapata attempted to prevent agents from pulling his wife from the car, one officer “pressed on his neck” and hit him around his ribs. Zapata lost consciousness while holding his daughter in his arms.
Eyewitness video shows the 24-year-old father shaking in the driver’s seat while the toddler cries, causing horrified onlookers to yell at the immigration agents, with one crying out, “He’s having a seizure and they’re trying to rip the baby out of his hands,” while a Fitchburg police officer repeatedly shouts at the crowd “Back up!”
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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials publicly accused Zapata of “faking a seizure” to help his wife escape. McLaughlin claimed that emergency medical personnel who arrived at the scene “found no legitimate medical episode.” Zapata later stated he went to the hospital after the arrest and was found to have bruises on his body.
Zapata said agents threatened they would arrest both parents and turn their daughter over to state custody if Zapata did not agree to leave with the child. Zapata told the Globe that since the detention of his wife, his daughter is “traumatized,” missing her mother and asking for her constantly.
The couple, who are from Ecuador, entered the country without papers in February 2023 and have a pending asylum case and valid work authorization. Ojeda-Montoya was arrested based on a warrant related to a local charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Zapata insisted the situation had been “blown out of proportion” and that his wife was attending all her mandated court dates.
A vigil was held on Saturday, November 8, at Fitchburg City Hall in response to the ICE attack. Dozens of local residents attended, holding candles and signs with messages such as “Protect Our Neighbors! NO ICE in Fitchburg” and “Due Process is for Everyone, STOP violating Human Rights.” Attendees expressed outrage at the actions of ICE and the Fitchburg police.
Johannes Stern describes events in Berlin and London at which the National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), David North, will speak:
“To say what is, remains the most revolutionary act,” the great Marxist and revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg once said.
And that is exactly what the American Marxist and Trotskyist David North will do on November 18 here in Berlin at Humboldt University.
At the event “Where is America Going? Socialism or Barbarism,” North will provide an unsparing analysis and speak clearly about what is currently happening in the United States.
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Workers and young people here are confronted with the same political questions and tasks. The developments in the United States are the sharpest expression of a global crisis. Here in Germany, too, the government is resorting to authoritarian measures against left-wing opposition, cutting education and social spending, whipping up agitation against refugees, and carrying out the largest military rearmament since Hitler.
So, the same applies here: to stop the development toward fascism, dictatorship and world war, workers, students and young people must build a socialist party that fights for the expropriation of the oligarchy and for a revolutionary program. We stand before the alternative: Socialism or barbarism!
Therefore, on November 18, come to the event with the American Trotskyist and chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, David North, and discuss these questions with us.
North will also be speaking in Britain on November 22 in London. Click here for information.
15. James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix structure, dies at 97
In the 1990s, Watson became a proponent of The Bell Curve, the 1994 book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray that argued for a supposedly genetics-based theory of intelligence, claiming African Americans had less of it. Watson spoke often with co-author Charles Murray and embraced the book’s arguments despite their being largely discredited by the scientific community. Watson attempted to justify these views through appeals to genetics, claiming that differences in DNA encoded certain deficiencies into specific races of human beings. He regarded DNA as the ultimate determinant of human capabilities, immeasurably more powerful than social and environmental forces.
It is thus all the more ironic that Watson’s own work provided the scientific basis for undermining his own views. Numerous geneticists, including renowned figures like Richard Lewontin, have shown that there is very little genetic difference between races and that humans are one of the most homogeneous species in existence.
In other words, the development of the ability to think and understand the world is not bound up in the pseudo-scientific conception of “race“ but is a social question, determined by how much a given society has advanced and developed. The contradiction that existed within Watson is representative of capitalism as a whole. Great scientific discoveries can be made and have been made in the 20th and 21st centuries, of which the discovery of the double helix structure stands at the height.
But purging human civilization of racism, sexism and all forms of chauvinism and nationalism is not a question that will be solved by science alone. It is a social and political question. The only solution is a political struggle against these reactionary ideologies, which means a turn by the working class to an understanding of its own history and objective laws of development and an uncompromising struggle against capitalism and for socialism.
16. Right-wing operation forces resignation of BBC head Tim Davie
Following a political operation led by the Conservative Party and backed by the Trump administration, Tim Davie, the director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), resigned on Sunday. BBC News CEO Deborah Turness also stood down.
This followed days of criticism of the BBC’s news coverage, after the Telegraph published a leaked internal dossier containing the findings of a former external adviser to its Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC), Michael Prescott.
The criticisms of Prescott—who left his role in the summer—centred on a documentary about Trump which aired in October 2024. Prescott accused the BBC’s Panorama programme of splicing together clips from separate parts of the infamous speech Trump made in Washington on January 6, 2021, prior to a mob of his supporters invading the Capitol building and attempting to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Prescott wrote that the spliced-together version of Trump’s comments aired in “Trump: A Second Chance?” had him saying,“We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In his actual speech, Trump said 15 minutes in,“We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you.” The second half of the sentence that was aired by Panorama, “and we fight. We fight like hell...”, came 54 minutes later.
In an extraordinary response to this spurious complaint, accompanied by claims that Trump, “the President of the United States”, had supposedly been misrepresented, the head of the BBC capitulated, lending credence to the false narrative that Trump did not support the violent attempt to overthrow the constitution and prevent the election of Biden.
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After Davie resigned, Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform UK and a friend of Trump’s, stated that the resignation of Davie and Turness “must be the start of wholesale change. The Government needs to appoint somebody with a record of coming in and turning companies and their cultures around” and “Preferably, it would be someone coming in from the private sector who has run a forward-facing business”.
This is a UK version of Gleichschaltung: the Nazi regime’s effort to “bring into line” all aspects of political and cultural life and subordinate them to the state’s ideology. Trump, a known admirer of Hitler and his regime, is seeking to emulate the Nazis in the US with his attack on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which is shutting down following his move in July to halt all its funding. This campaign is now being extended to Britain’s state broadcaster and, by extension, the rest of the world’s media.
On Friday, Sarah Cotte, a student from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) appeared at London’s Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) charged with terrorism offenses for speaking out on campus against the Gaza genocide.
Sarah is 21 years old and completing a master’s degree in international development. She was charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act (2000) on March 4 this year, for a speech she gave at SOAS in October 2023 as a member of the Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! student society, condemning the Gaza genocide and defending the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israel’s illegal occupation.
Police allege Sarah was “inviting support for a proscribed organization”, i.e., Hamas. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment.
A guilty verdict would criminalize free speech and assembly in defense of the Palestinians on university campuses across Britain.
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Readers of the World Socialist Web Site are urged to sign the petition in defense of the SOAS 2, demanding the dropping of all charges.
Organizations and individuals can add their name to the following open letter to the Crown Prosecution Service.
18. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Buenos Aires bus drivers strike
Canada:
Mexico:
Durango teachers, parents and students protest firings
United States:
Nurses at Ironwood, Michigan hospital authorize strike
19. 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.
