Bogdan Syrotiuk in 2015: "Peace for the world! Down with war!"
When Truth Becomes Inconvenient
Politicians speak about the people when they want their votes. The media speak in the name of the public interest when they want the public's trust. But
when ordinary people begin asking uncomfortable questions, they are too
often labelled “naive,” “dangerous,” “pro-Russian,” “extremist,” or
simply people who “do not understand the complexity of politics.” Perhaps sometimes ordinary people understand more than they are given credit for. Perhaps they understand that when war begins, the rich do not send their own children to die on the battlefield. Perhaps they understand that when states increase military spending, somebody has to pay the bill. Perhaps they understand that replacing one form of propaganda with another does not mean that we have found the truth. And
above all, perhaps they understand that a worker in one country has no
natural interest in hating a worker in another country. This Is Why I Stand With Bogdan Syrotiuk
*****
To defend Ukrainian workers does not mean hating Russian workers. To defend Russian workers does not mean supporting Putin. To oppose NATO does not automatically mean supporting the Russian state. And to criticize the Ukrainian government does not mean wishing harm upon the Ukrainian people. We must be able to make this distinction. Because
if a person can be deprived of the right to express a political opinion
simply because it is inconvenient to those in power, then the problem
is no longer only about one person. The problem concerns the right of
all of us to think, to ask questions and to refuse to accept the
official version of events without criticism. Workers Are Not Enemies
I
believe that Ukrainian and Russian workers have far more in common with
one another than they have with the billionaires, oligarchs and
political elites who govern them. One worker worries about their wages. Another worries about whether they can pay the rent. Another fears losing their job. Another sends their child to school and prays that they will return alive from the war. These are the real problems of ordinary people. Not the national slogans of those in power. Not the profits of arms companies. Not the geopolitical games of the great powers. Human life must not be treated as a bargaining chip.
And
when a young man like Bogdan Syrotiuk tries to say that workers on both
sides of the front should not be killing one another for the interests
of ruling elites, I cannot remain indifferent. Quite the opposite. I stand with him. Truth Must Be Stronger Than Fear We may not agree with one another on everything. We may have different political beliefs. We may believe in different economic systems, religions and philosophies. But we should have at least one principle in common: No person should be punished simply for expressing a political opinion that those in power dislike. Freedom of speech is not genuine freedom if you are allowed to speak only when those in power agree with you.
Truth does not need questions to be forbidden. Truth does not fear criticism. Truth does not need censorship. That is why the case of Bogdan Syrotiuk matters—not only to him. It matters to every person who believes that human life has value. To every worker who does not want to be sent to die for the interests of the elites. To every journalist who wants to ask uncomfortable questions. To every person who believes that politics should serve society, rather than society being sacrificed for politics. There Is No Time for Silence
I do not know whether one person can change the world. But I know that every person can make a choice. To remain silent. Or to speak. To be afraid. Or to defend someone who has been left without a voice. To accept the convenient version of events. Or to search for the truth. I choose the latter.
That is why I support Bogdan Syrotiuk. That is why I believe that Ukrainian and Russian workers should not be enemies. That is why I believe that people must have the right to oppose war, regardless of who is justifying it. That is why I believe that the truth must be spoken—even when it is inconvenient.
There is no time for more lies. There is no time for more silence. Every person matters. Every life is precious. And when truth is put to the test, each of us must decide which side we will stand on.
The World Socialist Web Site publishes the report delivered by Eric London to the Ninth
National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held August 2–7,
2026, introducing the third resolution, “For the defense of immigrants
and the abolition of the immigration Gestapo.”
*****
Here is a bulleted outline of Eric London's presentation, generated with the assistance of Socialism AI:
Eric London's lecture, "The attack on immigrants and Trump's Operation Dictatorship," was delivered as a report to the Ninth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (August 24, 2026):
I. The Attack on Immigrants as the Spearhead of Dictatorship
The Trump administration is using immigration enforcement as the central mechanism for establishing a dictatorship, with each element directed not only against non-citizens but against the population as a whole and specifically against socialism.
II. Specific Measures of the Trump Administration
A. Invocation of Dormant Alien Registration Act Provisions
Requiring every non-citizen aged 14+ to register, be fingerprinted, disclose organizational membership, and report address changes
Failure to register or carry proof of registration made federal crimes punishable by imprisonment
The Act is part of the Smith Act — passed by a Democratic Congress, signed by FDR — the first peacetime federal sedition law since 1798, first used against the Socialist Workers Party
The registry was the operational foundation for Japanese internment during WWII
B. Expansion of Internment Camps
ICE detention population rose from ~39,000 (January 2025) to over 65,000 (January 2026) — a 70% increase in one year
Congress appropriated $45 billion for detention, funding eventual capacity of up to 135,000 beds
ICE operating across 456 facilities while publicly disclosing only 220
Everglades Detention Facility ("Alligator Alcatraz"): Torture-level conditions documented by Amnesty International — sewage flooding sleeping areas, cameras above toilets, 24-hour lights, denial of medical care, extreme heat and insect exposure; closed June 2026 after public outcry
Camp East Montana (Fort Bliss, El Paso): Largest immigration detention facility in the country (~5,000 capacity); three deaths in under a year; guards documented beating detainees in retaliation for hunger strikes and medical requests, imposing collective punishment
2025 was the deadliest year on record for immigration detention — more deaths than the preceding four years combined
Family detention centers at Dilley and Karnes (reopened by Trump in 2025) were originally built under Obama-Biden in 2014
C. Deployment of Soldiers to American Cities
Federalized California's National Guard over the governor's objection; deployed Marines to Los Angeles
Troops deployed to Chicago, Portland, Memphis, New Orleans
Operation Metro Surge (January 2026): ~3,000 federal agents descended on Minneapolis; agents opened fire on civilian protesters, killing two US citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — characterized as extrajudicial state assassinations
DOJ charged 15 anti-ICE activists as part of an alleged "Antifa" conspiracy
Tied to Trump's plans to contest the 2028 election by force; figures around the president have mused about stationing immigration agents at polling places
D. Evisceration of Due Process
Executive memo reinterpreted immigration law to treat anyone who ever entered without inspection as an "applicant for admission," subject to indefinite detention with no bond hearing — affecting tens of thousands
No right to counsel (no Sixth Amendment right for non-citizens); no hearing at all for those in the country less than two years
Deportations to third countries (e.g., South Sudan on 16 hours' notice)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia "essentially disappeared" under the Alien Enemies Act and sent to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador
Immigration "courts" are an office inside the DOJ; Trump has purged judges who do not deny all asylum claims
The Fifth Amendment protects any "person" — the attack on non-citizens' due process is an attack on everyone's due process rights
E. Breakdown of Separation of Powers
Systematic, open noncompliance with federal court orders; planes carrying deportees allowed to land despite judicial order to turn back
96 separate court orders violated in one Minnesota district in January 2026 alone; ICE acting director ordered to show cause for contempt
A Reagan-appointed appellate judge warned: if the executive may deport without due process today, "what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens?"
DOJ Deputy AG Todd Blanche declared the DOJ "at war" with federal district courts
Stephen Miller called judges part of a "judicial insurrection"; Trump called judges "monsters," "lunatics," "communist radical left judges," and demanded a judge's impeachment
Congressional Republicans filed impeachment resolutions against at least eight sitting district judges based solely on disagreement with rulings
564 threats against federal judges in FY 2025; 324 threats against 253 judges by early June FY 2026
Chief Justice John Roberts twice warned publicly that attacks on judges are "dangerous"
F. Invocation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court
First-ever invocation of a secret immigration court created by the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (signed by Clinton)
Attorney General may expel non-citizens on secret, classified evidence the accused is never permitted to see
No right to confront witnesses, no right to hear classified argument, no right to apply for asylum, no right to challenge the constitutionality of how evidence was obtained (including through torture)
Represents "the machinery of Guantanamo Bay brought onto American soil" — the classic organ of dictatorship
Built by a bipartisan Congress and "left ready in the drawer"
G. Attack on Birthright Citizenship
Described as "the single most important element of Trump's attack on democratic rights"
Day-one executive order decreeing children born on US soil to undocumented parents or parents on temporary visas are not citizens
Jus soli (right of the soil) is the democratic principle of the New World, written into the 14th Amendment to destroy Dred Scott
Trump attended Supreme Court oral argument in person — the first president in US history to do so
The Supreme Court came one vote away from upholding abolition of birthright citizenship by executive fiat
Four justices (Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas) adopted a fascistic rationale: non-citizens lack "complete and exclusive allegiance," reviving the logic of Dred Scott — a hereditary caste of the stateless, passed from parent to child
Parallel campaign of denaturalization: DOJ made stripping citizenship from naturalized Americans a top enforcement priority (June 2025 memo), targeting 100–200 cases
III. The Reactionary Crescendo: Four Decades of Bipartisan Construction
Every legal instrument Trump is using was designed, built, and defended over 30 years by both parties
Clinton: Operation Gatekeeper (1994) militarized the border; the two 1996 laws created mandatory detention, expedited removal, gutted judicial review, the 100-mile enforcement zone, and the secret court now being used
Post-9/11: Bipartisan expansion of "anti-terrorism" apparatus; Bush built indefinite detention and secret evidence as permanent features
Obama: "Deporter-in-chief"; opened Dilley and Karnes family-detention centers; industrialized the detention system
Biden: Dismantled asylum rights; kept Trump-era pandemic expulsions for two+ years; deployed CBP agents to whip Haitian immigrants; shut the border to asylum seekers (June 2024); expanded expedited removal; continued building the border wall; carried out more removals in a single year than any administration in a decade
Kamala Harris (2024): Ran to the right on immigration, campaigned on border-security bill raising asylum standards; promoted by DSA and AOC
Bernie Sanders: Praised Trump's border policies, denounced immigration for taking American wages, called open borders "a Koch brothers proposal"
During protests after the murders of Good and Pretti, Democrats and the union apparatus worked to prevent a movement toward a general strike
IV. Political Conclusions
Trump is using immigration as the basis of a strategy to establish dictatorship — not from strength but from weakness, as workers come into conflict with the oligarchic character of his rule
Immigration is the issue on which Trump seeks to build a mass base, exploiting decades of national chauvinism promoted by both parties and the trade unions
Quoting Marx's 1870 letter to Meyer and Vogt on the English-Irish antagonism: "This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class… It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power"
The American ruling class has always used the attack on immigrants as the keystone mechanism for suppressing communism, socialism, and revolution — from the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) through the Palmer Raids, the Smith Act, and today's crackdown
The objective process of international migration contains a revolutionary kernel; the ruling class knows that blocking working-class unity through racial and national division is necessary for its self-preservation
The decisive question is subjective: whether Trump's strategy succeeds depends on the intervention of the party
V. The Party's Orientation
The defense of immigrants is a strategic question for the revolutionary movement — a necessary prerequisite for reviving socialist internationalism
The resolution calls for:
Full rights for all workers regardless of origin to travel the world freely
Abolition of ICE and CBP
These demands will not be realized through the courts or the Democratic Party, but through the independent mass mobilization of the working class
Defense of immigrant workers by coworkers and neighbors, organized through rank-and-file committees in every workplace and neighborhood
Mobilization of the full industrial and social power of the working class against the police-state buildup
The defense of immigrants is the defense of the working class as a whole — a component of the fight for the unity of the workers of the Americas in the world socialist revolution
No genuine defense of immigrants is possible without opposition to imperialist war and to the reactionary nationalist climate that war inevitably fosters
Zelensky has stated openly what the governments and media of the
United States and Europe have spent four-and-a-half years denying. His
argument is that the political system he heads can be maintained only so
long as the population is prevented from voting and political
opposition remains suppressed under martial law.
Zelensky does not
say what division he fears, but it is that between the government and
the population it is sending to the front. An election would become a
referendum on the war itself. Gallup found on June 30 that 66 percent of
Ukrainians want a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible,
against 24 percent who favor fighting on until victory.
The
question of whether Ukrainians may vote is posed in a country where most
of the parties they might vote for have already been outlawed. In March
2022, Zelensky suspended 11 opposition parties. A dozen were
subsequently banned by court order, including Opposition Platform—For
Life, then the largest opposition party in parliament. Virtually every
established left-wing party has been outlawed. The Communist Party had
already been banned in 2015. The parties prohibited after the invasion
include the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party,
Socialists, Left Opposition and the Union of Left Forces.
The
standard applied to Russia makes the silence over Ukraine unmistakable.
On August 10, Russia’s Supreme Court struck Yabloko, the only registered
party opposing the war, from next month’s Duma elections. On August 17
the court rejected the party’s appeal, and the same day Yabloko deputy
leader Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years in a penal colony for his
opposition to the war. The New York Times and the American
press covered these measures at length and characterized them as the
acts of a dictatorship. Not one of them has applied that standard to
Ukraine, where a dozen parties are banned and a socialist was sentenced
to 15 years on the same day Yabloko was struck from the ballot.
What is exposed is the fraudulence of the entire narrative through
which this war has been presented to the populations of the world.
The
claim that elections are impossible in wartime is refuted by the
history of the imperialist powers now arming Ukraine. The United States
held a presidential election in November 1864, in the fourth year of the
Civil War, in which Abraham Lincoln faced a Democratic Party platform
demanding an immediate armistice, and Britain removed Herbert Asquith in
1916 and Neville Chamberlain in 1940 in the midst of two world wars.
*****
The five-year term for which Zelensky was elected ended in May 2024.
Parliamentary elections due in October 2023 and the presidential
election due in 2024 were not held. Martial law, introduced after the
Russian invasion in February 2022, has been repeatedly extended and
legally bars elections.
The press has also been sharply
restricted. At the outset of the invasion, the main television channels
were consolidated into a single round-the-clock state news broadcast,
the “United News” telethon, carried simultaneously on every national
channel. Freedom House reports that under a 2022 presidential decree,
Ukraine’s main news channels broadcast only government-approved content.
The World Socialist Web Site has been banned in Ukraine since
June 6, 2024, six weeks after the arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a
27-year-old socialist and leading member of the Young Guard of
Bolshevik-Leninists, a Trotskyist organization affiliated with the
International Committee of the Fourth International. The Security
Service of Ukraine (SBU) seized him on April 25, 2024 on a charge of
high treason under martial law.
By November 2024, authorities had
opened 8,894 criminal proceedings for “collaboration activities” and
another 1,388 for assisting an aggressor state. Human Rights Watch
examined nearly 2,000 collaboration verdicts and found a conviction rate
above 99 percent.
The sentencing of Bogdan Syrotiuk on August 10
exposes the political purpose to which these laws can be put. He was
convicted of high treason for his opposition to the war and sentenced to
15 years in prison. No evidence of espionage, sabotage or collaboration
with Russian agencies was produced. The case was built around his
political writings for the World Socialist Web Site.
The verdict attacked his “non-recognition of Ukraine’s legitimately
elected political leadership and democratic processes,” “negative
assessments of Ukraine’s Armed Forces,” “comparisons with fascists and
Nazis” and “reinterpretation of national heroes and historical figures.”
It explicitly identified his “Trotskyism” and communist views as part
of the alleged threat.
A socialist has thus been sentenced to 15
years for rejecting Ukraine’s supposed “democratic processes,” while the
president declares that subjecting the government to an election could
destroy the state.
Auto-translation from the German language is easily available at the YouTube web address
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei chairman Christoph Vandreier warns that Germany is
being prepared for war against the nuclear power Russia, and calls for
an international movement of the working class against capitalism, the
root of war and fascism.
*****
Following is a bulleted outline of Christophe Vandreier''s presentation, generated with the assistance of Socialism AI:
I. Introduction: The Election Campaign Context
The SGP is running a video series for the Berlin state election on September 20
Central campaign themes: war, brutal social cuts, the rise of the extreme right, and the socialist alternative
Vandreier reports speaking with thousands of workers, neighbors, and young people
The mood: unprecedented hatred of the government and all establishment parties; deep concern about the drift toward war
II. The Danger of Nuclear War
The risk of nuclear annihilation is greater than ever
Russian territory is being attacked almost daily with German and American drones and missiles
Merz and Pistorius openly state Germany must be capable of defeating Russia militarily within three years
Pistorius has named 2029 as the year Germany must be "fit for war"
Merz: "We are not at war, but we are also no longer at peace"
The last German invasion of Russia produced 27 million dead and the Holocaust; now they risk nuclear annihilation of the entire world
III. The Social Costs of Rearmament
Budget figures: The health budget has been slashed from €65 billion (2022) to €14.3 billion (2027 draft); the military budget has risen from €64.4 billion to €151.3 billion over the same period — the largest since Hitler
Pensions after 45 years of contributions, Bürgergeld, health, and education are all being cut
Conscription is being reintroduced; "comprehensive defense" turns schools, hospitals, and public authorities into cogs in the war machine
The Bundeswehr is openly recruiting in Berlin schools via a cooperation agreement with the education senator
IV. The Assault on Industry and Jobs
A quarter of a million industrial jobs destroyed since 2019, including 100,000+ in auto and suppliers
VW alone plans to cut 100,000 more jobs and close four plants (~40,000 workers)
The former flagship of "social partnership" has become the trailblazer of the jobs massacre
IG Metall agreed in December 2024 to 35,000 job cuts and wage reductions of up to 20 percent
The layoffs are the direct result of war policy: rising energy costs and corporations positioning for trade war — they are not posting losses, just pushing profit margins higher
Factories are being converted to arms production; Rheinmetall is producing artillery shells in Berlin-Wedding, the first arms production in a densely populated Berlin working-class district since WWII
Tech firms are switching to military drone technology
V. The SGP's Program Against War
Demands: Immediate withdrawal of all German troops from Eastern Europe and all foreign deployments; end military aid to Ukraine and Israel; dissolve NATO; abolish conscription
Redirect industrial and technological capabilities to building homes, hospitals, and schools — not weapons
The SGP is building a worldwide movement against war together with ICFI sister parties
VI. The Driving Forces of War
It is not about freedom and international law: Germany backed the criminal war of aggression against Iran; it supports the genocide in Gaza (now extending to Lebanon)
Ukraine: NATO systematically provoked the reactionary Russian invasion and escalates the war to plunder Ukraine, subjugate Russia, and access its raw materials
The Zelensky regime persecutes war opponents even more brutally than Putin
Bogdan Syrotiuk has been sentenced to 15 years for high treason — a de facto death sentence — for opposing the war and campaigning for Russian-Ukrainian worker unity; the SGP is running a worldwide campaign for his freedom
The central socialist task: unification of workers in Ukraine, Russia, and internationally against nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism
VII. The Global Character of the Crisis
The wars in Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, and Pacific preparations are not isolated — they form a global conflict over the redivision of the world
A third world war is unfolding before our eyes
As in 1914 and 1939, the deep crisis of capitalism leads to war
Lenin's analysis: imperialist wars are "absolutely inevitable" as long as private property in the means of production exists
VIII. Social Inequality and the Rottenness of Capitalism
Global inequality: The richest 1 percent own ~44 percent of all wealth; the poorer half of humanity (4 billion people) own just 0.5 percent; the 12 richest men own more than 4 billion people combined
Billionaire wealth grew by $2.5 trillion in the past year alone
Germany: The wealth of the 500 richest has nearly tripled in 15 years to €1.16 trillion; centi-millionaires rose from 3,700 to 5,000 in Merz's first year
Merz says: "We can no longer afford the welfare state." The SGP says: "We can no longer afford the rich, and we can no longer afford rearmament!"
IX. Technology, Production, and the Nation-State
Robotics and AI could give everyone a fulfilling life — but under capitalism they lead to mass unemployment, misery, and war
Marx's analysis: mechanization concentrates capital in ever fewer hands and intensifies exploitation
The productive forces have outgrown national frameworks — no car, smartphone, or medicine is made within a single country
Yet capitalism is organized into nation-states, so the unification of global production leads not to a peaceful world community but to world war
Trotsky (1915): The war is "a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state" — the governments' solution is not organized cooperation but exploitation by the victorious country
This was true in 1914, 1939, and today
X. The Bankruptcy of All Established Parties
CDU/SPD: Implement rearmament with bureaucratic cold-bloodedness and destroy the welfare state
Greens: Once pacifists, now the vilest warmongers — criticize the government from the right
Left Party and BSW (Wagenknecht): Talk of peace is a cloak for supporting the war policy; the Left Party voted for trillion-euro war credits in the upper house, enabled Merz's chancellorship, applauded the assassination of Iranian officials; in Berlin it co-governed for 16 years — bailing out banks, selling 150,000 public flats, cutting wages, education, and health
Lead candidate Elif Eralp's role model is NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who owed his election to anti-Trump opposition and then held a "productive" meeting with Trump before taking office
XI. The AfD and the Danger of Fascism
The AfD is not anti-establishment — it pushes rearmament and social attacks to the extreme
It was the first to demand 5 percent of GDP on arms; now every party implements this
It is being deliberately built up to brutally suppress all resistance
Its incitement against refugees blames the weakest for the social catastrophe created by rearmament
The Trump parallel: presented as anti-establishment, now aggressively implements oligarch interests
XII. Historical Lessons: How Hitler Came to Power
Brüning ruled by emergency decree from March 1930; the SPD supported this to "prevent Hitler"
The SPD campaigned for Hindenburg's re-election in 1932 — the same Hindenburg who then appointed Hitler
Every bourgeois party voted for the Enabling Act in March 1933
The lesson: Fascism is not prevented by ever more right-wing regimes — precisely the opposite
Hitler was brought to power to suppress resistance to social attacks and prepare for world war; democratic rights were dismantled step by step
Today the same pattern: demonstrations against the Gaza genocide are banned, war opponents silenced, surveillance expanded; all parties adopt the AfD's program; the BSW offers itself as majority-maker for an AfD "government of experts"
XIII. The Objective Conditions for Struggle
Italy: Over 2 million in a general strike against the Gaza genocide, bringing 100+ cities to a standstill
France: Hundreds of thousands against austerity
United States: 8 million demonstrated against Trump in March — the largest protest in US history
Germany: Anger is growing at VW, ZF, Bosch, in the public sector, and in hospitals — but every time resistance stirs, the trade unions and "left" parties smother it
XIV. The Pseudo-Left and the Task of Political Independence
Arbeiterinnenmacht and Sozialistische Organisation Solidarität: Organizing within the "Left within the Left" to support the Left Party's campaign — fostering the illusion that this bourgeois party could stop cuts and war
RIO (Revolutionäre Internationale Organisation): Ran independently in the Bundestag elections, then crawled back into the Left Party's lap
These groups do everything to keep workers under bourgeois control
What is needed: Workers must intervene as an independent force; build rank-and-file action committees independent of the trade union apparatuses
The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) links committees across companies and borders — from VW Wolfsburg to Detroit autoworkers
XV. The Revolutionary Tradition and the Call to Action
The SGP builds on the traditions of Bebel, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Lenin, the October Revolution, and Trotsky — this is the accumulated strategic experience of 150 years of class struggle, not folklore
Call to action: Support the SGP campaign; share the video; organize meetings in workplaces, schools, universities, and neighborhoods; build independent rank-and-file committees; register as an active supporter; join the SGP
The fight against war will not be decided in the Berlin state assembly but in the workplaces, on the streets, in the schools and universities — and internationally
"Make the Berlin state election the starting point of an international socialist movement against brutal social cuts, fascism and war!"
Since October 2023, the Israeli military has murdered at least 260
journalists in Gaza—a toll the Committee to Protect Journalists has
described as unprecedented in the history of modern warfare. These are
not collateral casualties in a conflict zone. Israel has pursued a
deliberate, systematic policy of assassinating Palestinian journalists
and their families, targeting them in their homes, often in clearly
marked press vehicles and media tents.
The aim of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is to eliminate witnesses
and erase the documentation of its war crimes, as well as to demoralize
and terrify the Palestinian population with this message: “We will kill
anyone who defends you.”
By murdering those who record, analyze
and bring to a world audience its bombing of hospitals, schools and
refugee camps, its starvation sieges, its mass displacement of
civilians, its open and shameless genocide, the Israeli regime, armed
and bankrolled by the United States, seeks to carry out its monstrous
crimes in the dark.
Writers against the War in Gaza (WAWOG) and its publication the New York War Crimes (a parody of the New York Times) have published an online exhibition dedicated to the murdered Palestinian journalists, The Living Record: Gaza’s journalists remember their martyred colleagues, with photographs and memorials, many recorded and others written, by their colleagues.
WAWOG
notes in its introduction that “We gathered spoken testimonies from
fellow journalists, photographers, cameramen, journalism professors,
students, and workers across the media sector in Gaza. Each contributor
was asked to record a personal remembrance of one or more martyrs, to
tell a small part of the history.”
This archive is for
life; it will evolve. Between now and October 7, 2026, we will publish
the rest of the 50 testimonies collected so far. We plan to collect and
publish eulogies for more of the many journalists who have been martyred
in Israel’s wars of aggression throughout the region, and we will
continue, through the larger New York War Crimes project, to amplify the voices of Gaza. Israel kills the messengers, but they cannot kill the story.
What
do the memorials reveal? Not simply that these journalists lived and
died but that they fought against tremendous odds to bear witness to the
killings that went on night and day (and continue) and the destruction
of houses, universities, libraries; that they were hungry because of the
Israeli blockade; that they, along with the rest of the people of Gaza,
have endured suffering that will take many years to fully register.
*****
The Living Record is without question a profound and moving
memorial, and one whose significance goes beyond the killing fields of
Gaza. It speaks to the descent of world imperialism and its agents into
open barbarism. The ruling elite in Israel as everywhere else
understands that if it cannot suppress the truth, it must murder its
messengers. But even then the truth towers above. That is what this
exhibition expresses.
NHS FightBack is campaigning for the immediate release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the pediatrician and medical director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan
Hospital. He has been detained by Israeli forces since 27 December 2024
and held without charge or trial, let alone any evidence, as “an
illegal combatant.”
Dr. Abu Safiya was seized by Israeli forces
after they bombarded and forcibly evacuated Kamal Adwan Hospital. He had
become the public face of opposition to the destruction of Gaza’s
health care system, speaking publicly to the international media against
famine conditions and mass injuries to children.
On July 2 this
year, his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, following a visit to Abu Safiya at the
Rakefet interrogation center, reported that his client bore fresh,
severe injuries to his head, eyes, ears and neck, and was struggling to
breathe. Abu Safiya told him: “This is the last time you’ll see me… they
brought me here to kill me.”
Over 2,500 healthcare workers in
Britain have signed a petition demanding the release of Dr. Abu Safiya
and other detained medics. Ninety-five medical workers are currently
detained in Israeli prisons, held indefinitely without charge or trial,
according to Al Jazeera.
Campaign group “Save Dr. Abu Safiya”,
together with the “Words of Justice” site, have reported that over
600,000 emails and tweets demanding his release have been sent from
around the world. Healthcare workers have demonstrated in central
London, and outside the prime minister’s office in Downing Street in defense of Abu Safiya.
The protests defy the Labour government’s
efforts to silence those who oppose genocide. A recent report
commissioned by former Health Secretary Wes Streeting recommends banning
NHS staff from wearing or displaying symbols of solidarity with
Palestine. The report was produced by a commission headed by Lord Mann,
the former Labour MP who played a prominent role in the Labour Party’s
“left antisemitism” witch-hunt.
On August 11, a derecho swept across northern Illinois and northwest
Indiana, an industrial area known as the Calumet region. The storm
produced hurricane-strength winds and eight confirmed tornadoes. Downed
trees, utility poles and power lines caused widespread destruction
across Chicago’s southern suburbs and northwest Indiana, including Gary,
Hammond, Whiting and Merrillville.
For nearly two weeks, thousands of residents were effectively thrown
back in time, deprived not only of electricity but of the basic
necessities of modern life. Families lost hundreds of dollars in spoiled
food and refrigerated medicine. Diabetics watched their insulin become
unusable, while residents dependent on electrically powered medical
devices scrambled to find generators, hotel rooms or some other place
with electricity. School openings were delayed, businesses remained dark
and residents traveled long distances simply to charge phones, obtain
food or buy gasoline. Yet, as the WSWS previously reported,
US Steel ordered employees at its Gary Works mill to continue reporting
for work, warning that absences caused by storm damage or the loss of
electricity could result in disciplinary action.
Over the
weekend, power was restored to parts of Gary, Portage and other
communities. On Monday, August 24, the Northern Indiana Public Service
Company (NIPSCO) said electricity would be restored to all remaining
areas by Tuesday.
Monday was the first day of school for many
children in Gary, though some schools remained closed and others opened
two hours late. World Central Kitchen began serving hot meals in Gary
late last week. Churches and community organizations continue to
distribute meals and water and organize activities for families.
Cleanup
remains underway throughout the Calumet region, with working class
families largely left to manage the devastation themselves. The
inadequate response from the state and federal governments and the giant
corporations that dominate the region has provoked bitter anger.
In a disaster reminiscent of Love Canal, systematic survey and
cleanup have begun of areas contaminated with materials containing the
radiologically active element thorium, located in Niagara County,
western New York state. These were initially identified by the U.S.
Department of Energy in 1978.
A 1981 state report warned about
radioactive slag and contamination in Niagara County. The report, titled
“The Federal Connection: A History of U.S. Military Involvement in the
Toxic Contamination of Love Canal and the Niagara Frontier Region,”
identified a number of industrial facilities involved in production of
materials for the atomic bomb program during World War II, known as the
Manhattan Project. After the end of the war, those companies continued
activities that generated radioactive waste, which was then disposed of
in various ways in the area, with little or no thought as to the
consequences.
The affected neighborhoods are now a mixture of
residential and commercial properties. Sporadic remediation efforts,
consisting of removal of contaminated sediments from a limited number of
properties, has been undertaken by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) over the last decade, but only now, following a 2024 aerial
survey that found a number of radioactive anomalies in Erie and Niagara
counties, is the affected zone being addressed in a more systematic
manner.
No reason has yet been revealed as to why nothing appears
to have been done following the 1978 survey, let alone the 1981
report.
*****
In these and many other cases, (and undoubtably many more yet
unknown) US government agencies collaborated with private contractors to
conceal the dangers, suppress the evidence and fight the lawsuits of
sick and dying workers and residents. The cleanup, where it happens at
all, proceeds at a pace measured in decades and at a cost measured in
billions—while the corporations that created the toxic disaster walk
away with their profits intact.
*****
Private corporations have long sought to minimize or eliminate the
effect of environmental protection measures enacted by government, as
limited as they have been, on the unrestrained quest to maximize profit.
Those efforts have reached new heights under the Trump administration,
which has undertaken to gut environmental protection regulations.
The
health and environmental impacts of industrial waste contamination are
incalculable. In a socialist society, in which the private profit motive
is no longer operative, every effort would be made to eliminate all
sources of such toxic contamination.
Within the span of two months the Philippines has been shaken by two
school shootings, events without real precedent in the country. On the
morning of June 22, two students opened fire inside San Jose National
High School in Tacloban City, killing three of their classmates and
wounding 20 others. Eight weeks later, on the morning of August 18, a
Grade 8 student walked into his junior high school at Ateneo de
Zamboanga University with two pistols, killed a schoolmate, and shot
himself while livestreaming the attack on Facebook.
Six children are dead. To divert widespread public shock and concern,
the government offered thoughts and prayers, denounced foreign online
cults and video games, and legislators demanded to lower the age at
which the state can imprison children.
However, the essential
question was not even posed, let alone answered: What social order
produced these boys and made these shootings possible?
*****
Bullying is the social crisis distilled through the behavior of
children—it is a learned social practice, the pedagogy of everyday life,
the violence of capitalist society, experienced but not understood,
insinuating itself into the schoolyard.
The authorities presiding
over the schools often compound this bullying with their own. The
“terror teacher” is a fixture of Philippine schooling, the instructor
whose authority is founded on humiliation, ridicule, and, until very
recently, corporal punishment. The Anti-Corporal Punishment Act has been
pending in one form or another since 2013; it is still not law.
The
Department of Education’s Child Protection Policy formally forbids
humiliating discipline, but a study by Ateneo de Manila psychologists,
drawing on UNICEF data, found that up to a third of Filipino students
had experienced harsh teacher discipline—pinching, cursing, ridicule,
objects thrown at them—within a six-month window.
*****
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has not ended the drug war. The University of
the Philippines’ Dahas Project recorded 362 drug-related killings in his
second year in office, higher than his first. An entire generation of
Filipino children has grown up in a society of unstinting, publicly
celebrated murder.
It is against this background that the state’s
explanation, the boys were radicalized by violent games and online
networks, if that is indeed the case, must be measured. No child is
instinctively drawn to the imagery of dismemberment and livestreamed
murder. Children are, on the contrary, averse to cruelty. That such
material could find a receptive audience in these boys speaks not to the
power of the networks, but to the prior psychological damage done by a
diseased social order.
The announcement last week that Australian government debt had passed
the $1 trillion mark has delivered further pressure from the
representatives of finance capital for deeper cuts in social spending,
making it clear that the savaging of the National Disability Insurance
Scheme (NDIS) is only the beginning.
Spending on the NDIS will be
slashed by $38 billion over the next four years—the biggest cut to a
government social program in Australian history—with estimates that some
240,000 existing participants in the scheme will be removed and a
further 110,000 denied access.
The escalation of Australian
government debt is in line with a global trend which has seen a debt
spiral in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the
increase in government spending in response to the COVID-19 global
pandemic, which is now being compounded by burgeoning military budgets.
Coincidentally, the announcement of the Australian debt came as it
was announced that US national debt had passed the $40 trillion dollar
mark. Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers sought to downplay the significance
of the debt figure saying that at around 33 percent of GDP it was much
lower than other major economies and most of the increase had been
incurred under previous Coalition government.
“Debt as a share of
the economy is less than half the US, less than half Canada, less than
half the UK… We have less debt that any major advanced economy,”
Chalmers said.
That may well be true, but one is immediately reminded of the old saying that there are “lies, damn lies and statistics.”
*****
“The idea of saying debt is low relative to GDP and other countries is a
bit silly because all governments have been pumping up their debt
levels. The US has stepped in to buy their own bonds to stabilize the
market, which is not a good sign,” he said.
*****
The voices of finance capital and their media mouthpieces are growing
louder in their warnings of the dangers to the stability of the
financial system and their demands for action, above all through cuts on
government outlays.
In a blatant violation of democratic rights, Sri Lankan police
interrogated, searched and forcibly took personal details from members
of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) who were engaged in a political
campaign near the entrance of the University of Jaffna on August 19.
The
party members had been speaking to students and lecturers and seeking
their support for the international campaign to release of Bogdan
Syrotiuk, the 27-year-old Ukrainian Trotskyist and leading member of the
Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists who was sentenced on August 10 to 15
years in prison on fraudulent charges of “treason.”
The SEP campaign has drawn widespread backing from students at Jaffna
University, with many signing the petition for Bogdan’s release. The
WSWS published statements from Jaffna students on August 22 denouncing
the frame-up verdict. The SEP and International Youth and Students for
Social Equality have frequently engaged in political campaigns and
discussions with the university community.
At approximately 1:00
p.m., as the SEP campaign team was preparing to leave the area outside
the university premises, a police emergency vehicle appeared. Three
officers emerged, blocked the comrades, and demanded: “Who are you, why
are you here, where are you from?”
*****
The incident is the latest in a series of violations of democratic
rights involving the police and security forces under the Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government.
It
is significant that SEP members were targeted while they were
campaigning for the freedom of Bogdan, a socialist and anti-war
activist. Despite written requests, none of the major newspapers in Sri
Lanka reported on Bogdan’s imprisonment. Like other corporate media
outlets around the world, their silence indicates support for the
fascistic actions of the Zelensky regime in Ukraine.
There is a long history of military and police intimidation against the SEP in northern Sri Lanka.
*****
The SEP urges all workers, students, and everyone who defends basic
democratic rights to oppose the police harassment of the SEP.
The dangerous Hawk Fire continued to burn Monday outside Reno, the
center of Nevada’s second-largest metropolitan area, after forcing tens
of thousands of people from their homes and covering large sections of
the city in smoke.
By Monday afternoon, the fire had consumed 15,051 acres of grass and
brush in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Officials reported that it was 27
percent contained, up from zero containment earlier in the day. The fire
began Saturday near Hawk Meadow Trail, approximately one mile north of
Cold Creek Trail in the Somersett area of northwest Reno.
Officials
have determined that the fire was caused by human activity but have not
said how it started or whether it was accidental or deliberate.
At
the height of the emergency Sunday, approximately 90,000 people were
living within mandatory evacuation or “Get Set” warning zones. Around
42,000 were ordered to leave their homes, while another 45,000 were
warned to prepare to evacuate.
By Monday afternoon, the mandatory
evacuation zone had been reduced to approximately 23,000 residents, with
another 40,000 remaining under evacuation warnings. Officials cautioned
that the situation remained volatile and that shifting winds could
rapidly alter the fire’s direction.
The city of Reno has a
population of approximately 283,000, while the larger Reno-Sparks
metropolitan area is home to more than half a million people.
*****
The international mobilization of firefighters underscores both the
immense courage of the crews confronting the flames and the increasingly
widespread character of the wildfire crisis. Firefighters are being
moved across states and continents as simultaneous fires strain local
emergency resources.
*****
The Hawk Fire is part of a summer of intensifying wildfires
stretching from Canada to Washington and Oregon, and across Western
Europe. Earlier this month, more than 65,000 people were evacuated from
Spokane, Washington, as fires tore through working class neighborhoods.
Fires have also burned across Ontario, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy
and Greece.
The fact that officials believe the Hawk Fire was
started by a person does not diminish the role of climate change. Human
activity may have supplied the initial spark, but record heat, prolonged
drought, low humidity and dry vegetation created the conditions for the
fire to spread rapidly toward a major urban center.
More than
50,000 wildfires have been recorded across the United States this year,
the highest number in a decade. Scientists have long warned that rising
global temperatures are producing longer fire seasons and conditions in
which fires spread more rapidly and burn with greater intensity.
At
the same time, a powerful high-pressure system has subjected much of
the Southwest and southern Plains to dangerous temperatures. The
National Weather Service forecast daytime highs of between 100 and 110
degrees across the southern Plains and temperatures reaching 115 degrees
in parts of the Southwest. Large sections of Nevada, Arizona,
California, New Mexico and Texas are experiencing triple-digit heat.
Workers
in construction, agriculture, delivery, warehouses and other industries
are being compelled to labor under conditions that can rapidly produce
dehydration, heat exhaustion and fatal heat stroke.
These
disasters are the consequences of a social order that subordinates the
environment and human life to private profit. For decades, the fossil
fuel corporations and the governments that serve them have blocked even
limited measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time,
firefighting services, electrical infrastructure, public health systems
and emergency planning have been starved of the resources required to
protect the population.
The scientific knowledge, technology and
productive capacity exist to combat climate change, modernize
infrastructure and protect every worker and family threatened by fires
and extreme heat. What prevents their use is the capitalist profit
system and the division of the world into rival nation-states.
In its Security Threat Environment report, released on August 13, New
Zealand’s domestic spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service
(NZSIS) baldly claimed that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the
sole country engaged in espionage in New Zealand “at scale.” The report
also declared that China is the “most active” nation involved in
“foreign interference.”
Annual NZSIS reports
have become increasingly bellicose in their anti-China denunciations.
Director-General Andrew Hampton declared in the foreword to the 2026
report that “malign behaviors and activities” over the past year “are
proving even more threatening” than in the past.
The report states
that the NZSIS is monitoring “state actors with a voracious appetite
for any information they can leverage to gain an advantage over New
Zealand or our partners.”
These unsubstantiated claims are bound
up with the ruling elite’s escalating involvement with US-led war
preparations, which have reached an advanced stage. Despite the fact
that China is New Zealand’s most important trading partner, successive
governments have identified China and Russia as strategic “threats,”
backing the militarization of the Indo-Pacific and joining provocative
anti-China exercises.
*****
Everything in the NZSIS report is hypocritical in the extreme. As
part of the Five Eyes—the intelligence-sharing network that includes the
US, UK, Australia and Canada—New Zealand’s spy agencies routinely share
information with the US National Security Agency, including private
communications intercepted by the Waihopai spy base in the South Island.
In
2014–2015 whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the external
intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau
(GCSB), engaged in wholesale spying on the country’s Pacific neighbours, Asian countries including China and people within NewZealand.
China’s
Wellington embassy said the allegations in the NZSIS report “either
smear normal exchanges and cooperation as so-called espionage or
interference, or are entirely groundless and fabricated out of thin
air.” It noted that the escalating vilification of China “may well
itself be a product of foreign interference,” inferring direct
involvement by Washington.
*****
The working class must respond by rejecting the xenophobia and
militarism being promoted by all the capitalist parties, and join the
campaign to build a unified international and socialist anti-war
movement.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) urges all Victorian public
school teachers and education support (ES) staff—union and non-union
members alike—to vote No in the all-staff ballot on the latest third
version of the sellout agreement struck between the state Labor
government and the Australian Education Union (AEU).
The 79
percent Yes vote in the AEU’s ballot of its members is not an
endorsement but the product of a calculated operation by the union
apparatus to wear down, isolate and intimidate teachers. Educators
opposed the first two versions of this same deal through two mass
strikes—the first in decades, winning widespread public support—and two
unprecedented votes against the AEU sellout.
As part of our call, we urge teachers and ES staff who
unenthusiastically voted Yes in the AEU ballot, seeing no way forward in
the AEU regime, to vote No in the all-staff ballot as the nature of the
betrayal becomes clearer. To all educators, we say contact the CFPE and
the newly-established Victorian Educators Rank-and-File Committee to
discuss how to fight the sellout.
This Mark 3 version of the
four-year AEU-government deal is the same as the first two, with only
cosmetic changes. It will do nothing to relieve the intolerable working
conditions: crushing workloads, ballooning class sizes, excessive
face-to-face teaching hours and chronic understaffing.
*****
The response by two pseudo-left groups to the AEU ballot results is
politically revealing. Both falsely claim that educators have won gains
in the latest deal and even democratised the AEU in the process! They
function as the last line of defence for the Labor and union
bureaucracy.
Socialists in Schools—Socialist Alternative’s front
group—even posted a statement urging teachers to celebrate, claiming “we
won a better deal” and “a more active and democratic union.” The truth
is that the AEU repeatedly resorted to anti-democratic methods,
as it has for decades—rushed ballots, suppressed debate, misinformation
and censorship—to wear down opposition to this latest deal.
Aware
of widespread disaffection, which led to wholesale resignations from
the AEU after the last betrayal in 2002, Socialists in Schools urged
teachers to “convince people to stay in the union and build it.” Its
central concern is that educators remain trapped inside the same
bureaucratic apparatus that just sold them out.
On Friday, the media conglomerate Paramount Skydance launched a
political witch-hunting campaign charging the actor Mark Ruffalo with
antisemitism for criticizing Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his family’s
ties to Israel and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A spokesperson
for the corporation, which is run by Larry’s son David Ellison, said the
company is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported
service of a business dispute.”
Paramount’s statement was in
response to a video clip Ruffalo had reposted to his Instagram account
from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement featuring the
statements of Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra Catz. In the video, Catz
spoke of technological assistance Oracle had supplied Israel after
October 7, 2023, including what she called “really profoundly scary
technology,” as well as other support she said could not be publicly
discussed.
Ruffalo connected this admission to the proposed $111
billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance,
headed by David Ellison and financed with the backing of his father.
Ruffalo wrote that Oracle was the company Larry Ellison was “using to
fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition,” and warned that Oracle’s
technologies could be incorporated into “one of the largest media
conglomerates in the world” and ultimately deployed “on you.”
The
actor also denounced the Gaza slaughter as genocide, describing it as
the outcome of an “apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
His statement was direct in charging that the technology corporations
that provide data, cloud and military-linked capabilities to the Israeli
state bear political responsibility for the purposes to which their
systems are put.
Ruffalo urged opposition to the merger because
its consequences would be catastrophic for entertainment workers and the
public: fewer competing studios, intensified layoffs, more centralized
control over distribution and journalism, and vastly greater corporate
power over what can be produced and seen.
Warner Bros. Discovery
shareholders approved the combination in April, while the Trump Justice
Department subsequently approved the $111 billion deal despite
challenges and concerns over its impact on competition from an array of
forces including entertainment workers, actors, media experts and
critics.
Paramount could not reply to the factual content of
Ruffalo’s warnings. Instead, the company spokesperson used the methods
of witch-hunt, accusing the actor of antisemitism without
substantiation.
*****
Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle, served as its chief executive from
1977 to 2014, and remains its chairman and chief technology officer. He
retains an enormous stake in Oracle and has used the company’s wealth to
build a broader political and media empire through his son’s Skydance
operation.
David Ellison founded Skydance and is now chairman and
chief executive of Paramount Skydance. The Ellison family already
exercises decisive influence over Paramount assets, including CBS, MTV
and Nickelodeon; the WBD takeover would add CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. and a
major cable and streaming portfolio.
Larry Ellison is not merely a
businessman with private views. He is a longtime ally of Donald Trump,
hosted a high-dollar Trump fundraiser in 2020, and participated after
the 2020 election in discussions among Trump supporters on how to
overturn the result. His relationship with Trump was a major factor in
the reelection of the would-be dictator and has helped create favorable
conditions for Oracle’s technology interests and the Ellison family’s
media ambitions.
The family’s Israel connections are just as
substantial. Ellison has been reported to have contributed millions to
Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, supported the settlement project
and maintained a close relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. Vice Chair
Catz has previously declared Oracle’s commitment to the Israeli state
“second to none.”
The Trump administration named Ellison and Catz
to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in
2026, giving the two leading Oracle figures direct access to the
administration while Oracle pursues major technology and media
interests. This is part of the quid pro quo that the White House has
with the financial oligarchy.
Mark Ruffalo has been a prominent
public defender of Palestinian rights for years. He has criticized
Israel’s system of oppression, opposed the Gaza war and joined broader
efforts within the film industry to resist the merger and defend the
livelihoods of creative workers. In April, he joined an anti-merger
initiative that gathered more than 5,000 signatures and warned that the
transaction threatened “the sustainability of the entire creative
community.”
Ruffalo’s enemies seized on this record precisely
because it is visible and influential. The effort to stigmatize him as
an antisemite is intended to establish that a celebrity who speaks
plainly about Israel’s crimes, US corporate complicity and media
monopoly risks professional punishment.
At least a dozen left-wing political organizations in 11 countries
have publicly backed the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk, the
27-year-old Ukrainian socialist sentenced to 15 years in prison on
August 10 for opposing the war. The petition demanding his release has
drawn 1,249 signers from 65 countries since the sentencing and 6,734 in
all as of Monday afternoon.
Groups in Britain, Canada, France,
Italy and Russia came forward last week; organizations in Argentina,
Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have followed, along with
Left Voice in the United States and two German groups.
The Young
Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, which Bogdan leads, is a youth
organization in Ukraine, Russia and other former Soviet republics that
stands with the International Committee of the Fourth International
(ICFI). The World Socialist Web Site, the ICFI’s publication, published the six articles the prosecution entered as its evidence.
*****
No major Western newspaper or wire service has reported the case. A
poll of the Google News index for “Syrotiuk” on Monday returned roughly
80 items: the WSWS’s own, a few small outlets and unrelated people who
share the surname.
The deadline for Bogdan’s appeal is September
9. Supporters can write to the Pervomaisk City District Court
(inbox@pm.mk.court.gov.ua) and the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal
(inbox@mka.court.gov.ua), copying freebogdan@wsws.org, and sign the
petition and donate to the campaign at wsws.org/freebogdan.
On Sunday, some 10,000 John Deere workers across Iowa, Illinois and
Kansas rejected the company’s two-year contract extension. The vote
preserves the current agreement’s expiration date of October 31, 2027,
setting the stage for another contract battle six years after the 34-day
Deere strike of 2021, which was betrayed and shut down by the United
Auto Workers. Neither the UAW nor Deere has released the vote totals.
Deere
had proposed extending the contract through October 2029. It offered 4
percent wage increases in 2026 and 2027 and a one-time $3,000 bonus. An
existing 3 percent qualified earnings lump-sum payment scheduled for
fall 2026 would have been moved to fall 2028.
A 4 percent wage
increase sits just above the official July 2026 CPI inflation rate of
3.4 percent. The extension largely preserved the existing contract
structure, including the tier system, the Continuous Improvement Pay
Plan (CIPP) and the failure to restore retiree healthcare for post-1997
hires.
The UAW recommended the proposal be rejected, but the
apparatus’s decision to put Deere’s extension proposal to a vote at all
is a betrayal. There was nothing to vote on. Deere came to the union
seeking two additional years of labor peace while 1,600 workers remain
laid off, the company sits on $10.28 billion in cash and marketable
securities, and every rotten feature of the 2021 sellout—the tier
system, the CIPP, the absence of retiree healthcare—stays locked in
place.
That the apparatus even entertained the proposal is a
warning for 2027. The same bureaucracy that shut down the 2021 strike,
forced three votes until exhaustion produced a “yes,” and just awarded
itself raises of up to $30,000 at the constitutional convention while
blocking a promised dues reduction for members. Workers must draw the
conclusion now: The fight against Deere cannot be separated from the
fight against the UAW apparatus. A rebellion against the apparatus and
the development of new organizational structures independent of the
union bureaucracy, management and both corporate parties, is the only
path to victory. This is what the Deere Workers Rank-and-File Committee
was founded to fight for in 2021.
The rejection is part of a mounting wave of working-class opposition spreading across industries. The World Socialist Web Site
has counted at least 16 union-endorsed tentative agreements rejected by
workers in 2026. At Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw, Michigan, workers
rejected three successive contracts—by 96 percent, 73 percent and 55
percent—and voted by 86 percent to authorize a strike. The UAW brought
back a fourth deal and held the ratification vote on company property.
It was declared ratified 57–43 percent. Antwiane Sanders, a worker who
was an outspoken opponent of the agreement, was also fired before the
vote.
*****
Meanwhile, Deere’s demand for concessions comes as the company posts
enormous profits. It earned $5.03 billion in Fiscal Year 2025. Days
before the vote, it raised its Fiscal Year 2026 net-income outlook to
$4.75–$5 billion. As of its most recent filing, it held $9.3 billion in
cash and short-term investments.
In 2025, it spent $1.1 billion
on stock buybacks and paid shareholders $1.7 billion in dividends.
Another $7.4 billion remained authorized for future stock buybacks as of
May 2026. CEO John May received $27.9 million in total compensation.
Blaming
a downturn in the agricultural sector, lower commodity prices, higher
interest rates and tariff-related costs, in August 2025, it laid off 238
workers, including 71 at its Waterloo Foundry. Since 2015, Deere has
cut thousands of jobs across the Midwest while its share price soared
and dividends flowed.
At the UAW’s 39th Constitutional Convention
in Detroit, held June 15–18, delegates voted for raises of $10,000 to
$30,000 for top officers. Fain’s 2025 gross salary was $245,390; his
total compensation reached $276,378.
The UAW spent $107.1 million
on salaries for approximately 950 staff members in 2025. The union
holds $1.25 billion in assets, with $857 million in investments and
roughly $140 million in Treasury securities. The convention also blocked
a dues reduction that members had been promised. Former UAW President
Ray Curry, who presided over the 2021 Deere contract, was welcomed back
as a guest of honor.
*****
Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and rank-and-file candidate for
UAW president, called the extension “a preemptive strike against the
membership” in a statement issued in July. He called on Deere workers to
reject the vote outright. There was, he argued, nothing to vote on.
Lehman
drew a direct line from Deere to Nexteer. “That is your future if you
let the apparatus handle this,” he warned. “An ‘unexpected’ extension, a
below-inflation raise [inflation was 4.2 percent at the time the
statement was published], a one-time bonus, a deadline designed to stop a
fight—It’s the Nexteer playbook in a different suit.”
His
statement closed with the internationalist perspective that separates a
rank-and-file movement from the nationalism of the apparatus: “Mexican
and German workers are not your enemies. The enemy is in the boardrooms
in Moline and at Solidarity House in Detroit.”
On August 13,
28-year-old worker Jonathan Stepp was killed while operating a pot
hauler at the Cleveland-Cliffs Burns Harbor Works in northwest Indiana.
Stepp, of Merrillville, Indiana, was a young father and a
second-generation member of International Union of Operating Engineers
(IUOE) Local 150.
Stepp was the second worker killed in a US
steel mill in little more than a month; on July 11, 62-year-old
electrician Mitcheal Nelson was electrocuted at US Steel’s Granite City
Works in Illinois while trying to shut off a malfunctioning transformer.
Few
details of the accident have been made public. What is known is that
Stepp was operating a pot hauler—a massive industrial vehicle used to
move pots of molten or extremely hot slag—when he was killed.
Stepp
was a contractor from Phoenix Services, which performs slag handling
and other mill services at Burns Harbor, on the southern end of Lake
Michigan roughly 50 miles east of Chicago. Phoenix is owned by SunCoke
Energy, which purchased the company for $325 million last year and
operates at 19 steel and stainless-steel mills internationally.
Announcing the acquisition, SunCoke described Phoenix’s work as
“mission-critical” and said the deal would produce $5 million to $10
million in annual corporate “synergies.”
Neither Cleveland-Cliffs
nor SunCoke has explained what caused Stepp’s death. SunCoke issued the
standard corporate declaration that safety is its “highest priority” and
said it was cooperating with the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) and local authorities.
*****
Stepp’s death at Burns Harbor and Nelson’s death at Granite City are
not isolated tragedies. They take place amid decades of corporate
restructuring with the complicity of the USW bureaucracy during which
time tens of thousands of steel jobs have disappeared, remaining work
has been consolidated and contracted out, and aging facilities subjected
to relentless pressure for productivity.
The latest deaths come
as the USW bureaucracy conducts simultaneous contract negotiations
covering roughly 23,000 workers at US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs. The
current agreements expire September 1. Burns Harbor is covered by the
Cleveland-Cliffs master agreement, with its production workforce
represented by USW Local 6787.
The USW’s own bargaining updates
reveal the framework within which it approaches safety. On August 7, the
union said it and management were jointly reviewing capital and
maintenance projects aimed at keeping the mills operating “safely,
efficiently, and reliably,” praising $4 billion in previous capital
spending as supporting the company’s “long-term competitiveness.” An
August 21 update, issued just eight days after Stepp’s death, said
safety remained a “top priority” and pointed to quarterly joint
union-management Safety and Health Meetings established under the
existing contract.
But neither the USW nor IUOE Local 150 has
publicly demanded immediate disclosure of everything known about Stepp’s
death, including the pot hauling equipment’s maintenance history, his
work assignment, training records, eyewitness accounts or whether
hazards had previously been reported.
The union bureaucracy
accepts the premise that workers’ interests depend upon maintaining the
profitability and competitiveness of the steel corporations. For decades
it has subordinated wages, staffing and working conditions to lowering
costs while promoting tariffs and economic nationalism against workers
abroad. This program identifies workers with the corporations that
employ them.
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.
