12/2-3 LA Binational Conference To Cancel NAFTA and Unite Workers Of Mexico and the US (tags)
A binational conference of US and Mexican workers will be held on Dec 2&3 on the fight to cancel NAFTA and for unity between US and Mexican workers
L.A Supports August 2nd International Gaza Protest Photoset 4 (tags)
Los Angeles Families Join The Chorus of the Outraged Over the latest Gazan Massacres. Photoset 4 of 4
L.A Supports August 2nd International Gaza Protest Photoset 3 (tags)
Los Angeles Families Join The Chorus of the Outraged Over the latest Gazan Massacres. Photoset 3 of 4
L.A Supports August 2nd International Gaza Protest Photoset 2 (tags)
Los Angeles Families Join The Chorus of the Outraged Over the latest Gazan Massacres. Photoset 2 of 4
L.A Supports August 2nd International Gaza Protest Photoset 1 (tags)
Los Angeles Families Join The Chorus of the Outraged Over the latest Gazan Massacres. 4 photosets. one of Four.
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now! (tags)
The threat to Mumia Abu-Jamal's life is increasingly ominous. His lead attorney, Robert Bryan, warns: "There is an escalated effort by the authorities to see him die at the hands of the executioner. This is the most dangerous time for Mumia since his 1981 arrest." The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Jamal's two appeals. If it were to rule in favor of the prosecution's appeal, this would open the way for Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to issue a third warrant of execution, which he has vowed to do. Contrary to the misplaced expectations of many, the Obama administration is not about to save Mumia. Around the world, hundreds of thousands have marched for this courageous champion of oppressed. Trade unions representing millions of members have rallied to the defense of Mumia. It is urgent to expand this support into powerful labor/black action, appealing to the integrated union movement to join with the black, Latino and immigrant poor to demand that he be liberated.
What Will It Take to Defeat the War? (tags)
On June 28-29, an “Open National Antiwar Conference” was held in Cleveland, called by a newly minted National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. Over objections from the conference organizers, centrally Socialist Action, the assembly voted to change the name to include reference to the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize the connection with U.S. backing for the Zionist occupation of Palestine. (The sponsors of the confab were so right-wing that they feared losing “unity” with Democratic Party supporters of Israel and the Afghanistan war!) What did not change at all was the popular-front character of the new outfit, tying it to the bourgeois parties despite the fig leaf of electoral “independence.” Making this utterly clear, it was decided not to call a national antiwar mobilization prior to the November elections explicitly in order to court those forces who wish to aid the Democrats (and therefore want to avoid making problems for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama). Here is the leaflet issued by the Internationalist Group at the conference.
Open Letter to Fighters for Mumia’s Freedom (tags)
Open Letter to Fighters for Mumia’s Freedom: For Mass Labor Mobilizations to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! For United-Front Action!
Ruling Against Mumia Shows: No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (tags)
On March 27, the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia reaffirmed the frame-up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther Party spokesman and world-renowned radical journalist who has been locked up on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than a quarter century. After previously rejecting Mumia’s request to present evidence of his innocence, as well as a host of issues showing that he was railroaded by a racist court, the Court turned down Mumia’s request for a new trial. It upheld the 2001 ruling by a federal district judge that ordered a new hearing on the sentence, but limited the “choice” to the living hell of life imprisonment without parole ... or execution. Mumia is innocent. He was declared guilty and sentenced to die because of his revolutionary politics and because for years he had been a thorn in the side of the racist rulers of the misnamed “city of brotherly love.” Around the world, millions have come out in defense of Jamal. This latest ruling, like all those that preceded it, shows that the exploited and oppressed must have no faith in the racist injustice system. We call on the workers movement to mobilize its power to free Mumia now!
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It (tags)
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry. “CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the final outcome ‘a horrific tragedy that demonstrates what is so fundamentally wrong with our health care system today. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on our health. Their first priority is to make profits for their shareholders – and the way they do that is by denying care." "It is simply not possible to organize major protests every time a multi-billion corporation like CIGNA denies care that has been recommended by a physician," DeMoro said. “Having insurance is not the same as receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our healthcare system that takes control away from the insurance giants and places it where it belongs – in the hands of the medical professionals, the patients, and their families."
Labor must take the road of class struggle! (tags)
A Working Class Emancipation labor bulletin
Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives? (tags)
Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery she voted for in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors.
Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives? (tags)
Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery she voted for in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors.
National Task Force Established to Free Mumia (tags)
report on a national meeting of Mumia Abu-Jamal activists