Denver, CO – On the evening of October 30, a dozen people rallied in front of Senator Michael Bennet’s office building to protest the worsening blockade against Cuba.

The rally was organized by Cuba Sí Colorado and others, including the National Lawyers Guild and Denver Labor Against ICE. The protest was the fourth event for a week of action in solidarity with Cuba.

People chanted, “From Cuba to the Philippines, stop the U.S. war machine!” and “Not another nickel, not another dime for the Department of War crimes!” while holding handmade signs demanding “Hands off Cuba!”

Since Cuba’s successful socialist revolution in the 1960s, the United States government has tried to crush its government, with attempted coups, political intervention, assassination attempts, and an intense economic embargo. All have failed, though they do not come without harm to the average Cuban citizen.

In late January, President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut off Cuba’s fuel supply from Venezuela after illegally kidnapping Venezuelan President Maduro and further intensifying sanctions. Trump also signed an executive order threatening any country selling oil and fuel to Cuba, strangling its energy supply. Since then, there have been at least eight blackouts in Cuba involving internet and phone service outages. Frequent power outages, changes in living conditions, and a worsening economy and hyperinflation are the result of these sanctions.

“The lack of oil and electricity has been devastating for the island,” said Kacey Hicks, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. “Despite having world-class doctors, Cuba is not able to give basic medical care to its people. This has increased the rates of death for child cancer patients and infant mortality rates in their nation compared to life before Trump’s executive order.”

Despite the United States’ energy blockade, Cubans are standing strong and refusing to let their nation fall.

“In pre-revolutionary Cuba, the people were oppressed and they threw out their oppressors, and they said we’re going to organize ourselves. That’s what the U.S., and especially Trump, is scared of,” said Khalid Hamu, another member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

#DenverCO #CO #International #Cuba

Amherst, MA – On Thursday, October 29, the River Valley Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) hosted FRSO Central Committee Member Chrisley Carpio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for a reportback discussing her recent visit to South Korea as part of the Jaju Solidarity Delegation in August.

The delegation was organized by Nodutdol, with activists traveling from the U.S., Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines. They represented groups including FRSO, the Anti-War Action Network (AWAN) and many others.

Carpio presented to nearly a dozen attendees, telling the crowd, “In the United States, people often refer to the Korean War as the ‘forgotten war’, But in Korea, they call it ‘the war that never ended’.”

Carpio and others on the delegation visited multiple sites of U.S. military atrocities, including Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. military base in the world, as well as the mass grave of Sannae Gollyeongol – the “longest grave in the world” and Camp Casey, a military base known for its camp town where women were sex trafficked for American soldiers. Carpio explained to the room that the camp town sex trade is still operational, but now employs Filipino women instead of Koreans.

During her time in the country, Carpio met with organizers from the student movement, women’s movement, and other civic society organizations, like local anti-war groups as well as farmers and trade unions. She explained to the attendees the culture of anti-imperialist organizing in the southern part of the peninsula and how activists are fighting for justice for those killed by U.S. soldiers and displaced by the occupation while they organize against the military presence altogether. She also discussed the current organizing Korean by activists protesting the possibility of South Korean troops being asked to assist the U.S. in aggression against Iran and in the Strait of Hormuz.

The event ended with a question and answer session. One attendee asked if the delegates faced political repression during their visit, Carpio responded, “What we were doing was high profile enough that they didn’t enforce those rules, but if you are an author locally who writes something sympathetic to North Korea, you are likely to do prison time.”

Carpio continued, “But we did a lot of our organizing in private churches and in restaurants that were reserved for the day. We were followed by spies and policemen and they knew we were coming and knew about the protests, but I think it was a calculated decision to not make a big incident by arresting us.”

When asked what reunification would look like, after explaining the desire for reunification across the peninsula from Korean activists, Carpio said, “There is not reunification without socialism, even if there is a debate about what reunification will mean.”

#AmherstMA #MA #International #Korea #AntiWarMovement #AWAN #Nodutdol

The National Democratic Front (NDF) condemns the US-Marcos regime and the Armed Forces of the Philippines for conducting a series of expanding live-fire exercises and war games, which endanger civilians, disrupt livelihoods and divert public resources from the people’s urgent needs.

Under “Bantay Kalayaan,” the AFP’s so-called “unilateral defense plan,” military drills are presented as preparations for external defense. But peasant and fishing communities bear the costs: disrupted fishing and farming, restricted access to land and sea, canceled classes and exposure to the dangers of live fire. Public funds should meet people’s needs, not bankroll military spectacles that serve foreign power projection.

Exercise Surigao Sentinel 2026 was held Oct. 22-25 across Surigao City and the Dinagat Islands. It included live-fire and strike operations, as well as maritime and emergency-response scenarios. The local government was even made to share in the costs for hosting the military exercises, reportedly spending one million pesos for the exercises.

In Bugasong, Antique, Army and Air Force exercises began Oct. 19 and included air support and artillery operations. In Sipalay City, residents are being barred from designated mountain areas, farms and grazing grounds during artillery firing scheduled for Oct. 29-30. Such restrictions take land and livelihoods away from residents in the guise of “military readiness.”

The AFP has also held SIMEX “Aksyon Lucena” and regional exercises involving special forces, police, the Coast Guard and emergency-response agencies in Lucena City, Batangas and Quezon. In Sulu, the Army’s 11th Infantry Division launched Exercise Orion’s Taming, described as an interagency territorial-defense exercise involving civil-military disaster response and joint law enforcement.

We reject the use of civilian communities as combat training grounds and the concommitant imposition of military restrictions on people who have no say in these operations, nor benefit from these. These exercises are harmful to the civilian population: artillery fire and airstrikes threaten homes, farms, forests and fishing grounds, while unexploded ordnance can continue to endanger residents long after the guns fall silent.

These live-fire exercises blatantly violate international humanitarian laws requiring parties to protect civilian lives and property.

We stand with the fishing and farming communities harmed by these exercises. Their safety, livelihoods and rights must not be sacrificed for saber-rattling and military spectacles.

#Philippines #International #AFP #NDFP

New Orleans, LA – On Saturday, October 24, the New Orleans Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) hosted a “U.S. Out of Korea” event with around 20 attendees. Speaker Meredith Aby discussed U.S. imperialism in Korea and her recent trip to the southern part of the peninsula as a part of the Jaju Solidarity Delegation. Aby is a Central Committee member of the FRSO and a seasoned anti-war activist who founded the Minnesota Anti-War Committee in 1998, and a steering committee member of the Anti-War Action Network.

The Jaju Solidarity Delegation was organized by Nodutdol, a Korean diaspora activist group. The delegation included international activists from the U.S., the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii. Participants joined demonstrations against U.S. occupation in Korea this past August. Aby reported on their visits to several U.S. military bases in the Republic of Korea (ROK), where they learned about the history and breadth of U.S. occupation in the country. She learned from local Korean activists about their various struggles for independence.

“What Americans refer to as the ‘forgotten war’ is called the ‘war that never ended’ by Koreans,” said Aby, while discussing the history of occupation.

Shortly after Korea gained its independence from imperialist Japan, the U.S. swooped in and divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, splitting the country, and separating families. The U.S. also enacted various laws which disallow ROK residents to visit the northern part of their country and forced dispossession of their lands for U.S. military base expansion. There are currently 80 U.S. military bases (or U.S.-controlled Korean bases) spread across the country.

Aby’s presentation focused on the consistent pattern of dispossession, physical and sexual violence, and environmental degradation caused by the U.S. presence and control over Korea. She also highlighted the various instances of communities, villages, political and workers’ groups rising up against the occupation. On August 15, the delegation joined tens of thousands of Koreans in the streets of Seoul on Korea’s national liberation day. The people demanded peace, sovereignty, reunification with the northern part of the peninsula and an end to U.S. occupation.

Aby also relayed that, shortly after the Jaju Delegation’s visit, the ROK government resisted pressure from the U.S. to send South Korean troops and other military assets to the Strait of Hormuz and Iran. When the public became aware of Trump’s demand, demonstrations and mass protests erupted in the streets. ROK President Lee Jae Myung refused Trump and suggested that what Korea needs is operational control over its own military – something that has never been said by an ROK leader. This defiance is a clear sign that the U.S. is a declining imperialist power.

The event ended with questions and comments from the attendees. “I’m inspired by the Koreans who continue to demand their freedom from the still-growing number of U.S. military bases and influence in their government. I believe that every American has a duty to support their cause,” said Augusta Elebash from New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports.

#NewOrleansLA #LA #International #Korea #AntiWarMovement #NOSHIP #AWAN

Fight Back! interviewed Michael Humaña, a trade union leader from Chile, on October 14 to learn about the trade union struggle there and in Latin America.

Fight Back!: Which organizations are you a member of?

Michael Humaña: I am the president of the National Union of Education Workers in Chile (SNTE) and organizational secretary of the Continental Federation of Education Workers.

Fight Back!: What took place in Bolivia on October 10 and 11?

Humaña: In the Trópico of Cochabamba, Bolivia, we founded CIMA, la Coordinación Internacionalista de los Movimientos Sociales Antiimperialistas del Abya Yala. It is an organization that looks to be the anti-imperialist wall of the peoples to confront the criminal “Shields of the Americas” of Donald Trump.

With the leadership of President Evo Morales, we hope to be the anti-capitalist, socialist alternative of the peoples who struggle.

Fight Back!: What was your role in the meeting to form CIMA?

Humaña: In this anti-imperialist gathering, I was part of the coordination team.

Fight Back!: What is the significance of the presence and participation of Evo Morales at the gathering?

Humaña: Evo Morales is the leader of the revolutionary left and of the movements of peasants and popular in the south of our America. After the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Evo Morales transformed into the main anti-imperialist leader of all the continent. The experience of 14 years in the government of Bolivia, the proposal of Living Well and Pluri-Nationality, are examples for peoples of “Indoamérica.”

Fight Back!: Did the gathering result in any agreements, points of unity, or plan for action?

Humaña: The main objective of the encuentro was to advance a programmatic unity, therefore the resolution to found CIMA. There are the fundamentals to create a solid continental organization with real capacity to mobilize a front against U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism.

Some of the points of agreement are: Declare October 9 as an International Anti-Imperialist Day to honoro Che Guevara; to advance to building of a Continental Network of Popular Communication; defense of Mother Earth and common goods – this will be a fundamental task to confront predatory extractivism and confront electoral processes to retake local and national governments, but with a program that is socialist, anti-colonial,and anti-imperialist, without trusting the neoliberal politicians.

To demand the freedom of our political prisoners like President Nicolás Maduro, First Lady Cilia Flores of Venezuela, President Pedro Castillo and Victor Polay in Perú, former Assembly Representative Freddy Mamani in Bolivia, and to end the political persecution of social leaders on the continent like our brother Evo Morales Ayma.

Fight Back!: What are the lessons to share with movements in the U.S. that are to be learned from the national mobilizations in Bolivia?

Humaña: We believe in the fundamental task of unity of the social movements of the continent, from Alaska to Patagonia. The social movements in Bolivia give us the lesson that the bravery of the people can take down criminal and tyrannical governments. Unity of the working class, the peasants and students is fundamental to stop the oligarchies in our countries. The anti-imperialist conviction of the people of Bolivia must be an example to all the peoples of the world.

Fight Back!: Can you provide a brief explanation of the situation in Chile?

Humaña: Today in Chile, there is the return of Pinochetism to the government; the criminal military dictatorship returns to push reforms and deepen neoliberalism. Sadly, the previous governments of progressive neoliberalism and social democrats governed with the laws and constitution of the dictatorship. They have allowed education, healthcare and pensions to be run like a business and we have lost many social rights. So now, the far right comes to deepen the neoliberal agenda further. The popular movement and trade union movement are weakened and only the students maintain the call to rebel and engage in struggle against neoliberalism.

But, from the teachers and other popular forces, we continue giving battle to rebuild the Chilean popular movement behind a program and project with a socialist perspective and popular power.

#International #Chile #Labor #SNTE #CIMA

Orlando, FL – On October 19, over 30 people packed into Bookburn Cafe and Social in Orlando's Milk District to hear FRSO Central Committee member Chrisley Carpio give a detailed report back from her two-week solidarity trip to Korea.

The focus of the Jaju Solidarity Delegation to Korea, and of the subsequent North American speaking tour, was “U.S. out of Korea.” Participants at the event were eager to hear about the well-organized, high level of resistance by the people of Korea against U.S. military occupation.

Much of the presentation focused on the pattern of violence, exploitation, abuse and environmental degradation that the U.S. military has imposed on the people of Korea.

“Koreans are not just sitting back and allowing the U.S. to dominate their communities, their environment, and their daily lives. They are fighting back! There is an active and vibrant resistance movement that is fighting for peace, sovereignty, reunification and national liberation from the U.S.,” Carpio told the crowd.

#OrlandoFL #FL #AntiWarMovement #International #Korea

Minneapolis, MN – On October 17, the U.S. Out of Africa committee of Women Against Military Madness held its first protest at Mayday Plaza in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. The protest was part of the International Month of Action against AFRICOM, a month of actions focused on the withdrawal of U.S. military from Africa and bringing an end to U.S. involvement in African wars. AFRICOM is the U.S. military command that focuses on for Africa.

Protesters rallied in the predominantly East African neighborhood with signs that said, “Shut down AFRICOM” and “End U.S. drone strikes.” The neighborhood gave them a friendly response with honks and waves.

Lina Jebara, a member of the US Palestinian Community Network, spoke about the connection between U.S. imperialism in Africa and Israel’s genocide in Palestine and about how the Minneapolis Honeywell plan is contributing to these atrocities.

Jebara stated, “Today, we’re seeing the oppression of African countries subject to U.S. imperialist aggression converging and aligning with the oppression faced in the Middle East. The MQ-9 Reaper drone is yet another example that proves that the tools used by U.S. imperialism are one in the same, built and honed from centuries of plundering, colonizing and occupying nations.”

Honeywell makes the engines and navigational components for the MQ-9 Reaper drones used by Israel in its genocide of Gaza and by the U.S. in Somalia and Nigeria. Honeywell produces Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), a navigational component for the MQ-9 Reaper drones, at its navigation lab and production plant in northeast Minneapolis.

Protesters demanded an end to Trump’s racist war on Somalia. Trump has escalated U.S. air war in Somalia, increasing U.S. drone strikes and civilian casualties. Donald Trump has so far bombed Somalia 215 times in his second term as president and 434 times total. President Trump has bombed Somalia more than all the other presidents combined in the 20 years that the U.S. has been at war in Somalia.

Domestically, Trump is also engaged in a racist hate campaign against Somali people, and has called Somali people “garbage,” “low-IQ”, and “bad people,” and said that Somalia was “barely a country.” Trump has repeatedly attacked the Somali community in Minneapolis, using ICE during Operation Metro Surge to target Somali neighborhoods and most recently using ICE to raid Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Washington DC house as part of the attempt to revoke her citizenship.

Speakers from Black Lives Matter Minnesota and the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice highlighted the connections between the U.S. intervention in Africa and police militarization, racist police violence, and mass incarceration here in the U.S.

Alissa Washington, the founder of the Wrongfully Incarcerated & Over-sentenced Families Council-MN, talked about the importance of international solidarity, stating, “Our experiences are different, but they compel us to stand together. We want an end to the killing and exploitation of Black people, wherever it happens. If I want people to care about my family, I have a responsibility to care about families in Palestine, in Sudan, in Congo, in Somalia, and across the whole continent of Africa.”

The U.S. Out of Africa committee is a new committee in Women Against Military Madness. The organization calls for the abolition of AFRICOM, withdrawal of U.S. bases, and an end to U.S. drone strikes in Africa. The U.S. Out of Africa committee is working alongside the Minnesota Anti-War Committee on a campaign to stop Honeywell from producing weapon components in Minneapolis.

#MinneapolisMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #International #Africa #AFRICOM #WAMM #USPCN

¡Lucha y Resiste! entrevistó a Michael Humaña, un sindicalista Chileno y un internacionalista, el 14 de octubre para aprender sobre de la lucha de su sindicato y en América Latina

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Cuáles son las organizaciones de que estas un dirigente?

Michael Humaña: Soy Presidente del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de la Educación – SNTE Chile y Secretario de Organización de la Central Continental de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de la Educación.

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Que acaba de pasar en Bolivia esta fin de seman en pasado?

Michael Humaña: En el Trópico de Cochabamba, Bolivia, fundamos CIMA, la Coordinación Internacionalista de los Movimientos Sociales Antiimperialistas del Abya Yala. Organización que busca ser la Muralla Antiimperialista de los Pueblos para enfrentar al criminal “escudo de las americas” de Donald Trump.

Con el liderazgo del Presidente Evo Morales, esperamos ser la Alternativo Socialista y Anticapitalista de los Pueblos que Luchan.

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Cuál era tu posición en el encuentro?

Michael Humaña: En este encuentro Antiimperialista me corresponde ser parte del Equipo de Coordinación

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Que significa la presencia y la participación de Evo Morales en el encuentro?

Michael Humaña: Evo Morales es el Líder de la Izquierda Revolucionaria y de los Movimientos Campesinos y Populares del Sur de Nuestra América. Luego del secuestro del Presidente Nicolas Maduro de Venezuela, Evo Morales se transforma en el principal líder de los antiimperialistas de todo el Continente. La experiencia de los 14 años de gobierno en Bolivia, la propuesta del Vivir Bien y la Plurinacionalidad, son ejemplos para todos los pueblos de Indoamérica.

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Finalizaron acuerdos como puntos de unidad o un plan de acción? 

Michael Humaña: El principal objetivo del Encuentro era avanzar en la unidad programática, por tanto, los resolutivos de la Fundación de CIMA son fundamentales para crear una organización Continental sólida y con capacidad real de movilización para hacer frente al Imperialismo estadounidense y al sionismo israelí.

Algunos de los puntos de acuerdos son: Declarar el 9 de Octubre como Día Internacional Antiimperialista en homenaje al Che Guevara. Avanzar en la construcción de una Red Continental de Comunicación Popular. La defensa de la Madre Tierra y los bienes comunes, será una tarea fundamental para enfrentar el extractivismo depredador y enfrentar procesos electorales para recuperar los gobiernos locales y nacionales, pero con un programa Socialista, Anticolonialista y Antiimperialista, sin confiar en los progresismos neoliberales.

Exigir la Libertad de nuestros presos políticos como el Presidente Nicolas Maduro, la Diputada Cilia Flores de Venezuela, el Presidente Pedro Castillo y Victor Polay de Perú, el ex Diputado Freddy Mamani de Bolivia y el fin a la persecución política de líderes sociales del continente como el hermano Evo Morales Ayma.

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Cuales son lecciones a compartir con los movimientos en los EEUU que aprendieron desde las movilizaciones nacionales en Bolivia? 

Michael Humaña: Hoy creemos que es una tarea fundamental la unidad de todos los Movimientos Sociales del Continente, desde Alaska hasta la Patagonia. Los movimientos Sociales de Bolivia nos dan la lección que con valentía el pueblo puede derrocar a los gobiernos tiranos y criminales. Que la unidad de la clase obrera, los campesinos y los estudiantes es fundamental para frenar a las oligarquías nacionales. La convicción antiimperialista del pueblo de Bolivia debe ser ejemplo para todos los pueblos del mundo.

¡Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Como puede explicar la situación en Chile ahora?

Michael Humaña: Hoy en Chile ha vuelto a gobernar el Pinochetismo, los criminales de la dictadura militar vuelven al gobierno para impulsar reformas de profundización neoliberal. Lamentablemente los gobiernos del progresismo neoliberal y la socialdemocracia, gobernaron Chile con las leyes y la constitución de la Dictadura, permitieron que la educación, la salud y las pensiones fueran un negocio y se perdieran como derechos sociales. Por tanto hoy, la ultraderecha solo viene a profundizar más de 30 años de neoliberalismo con gobiernos civiles. El movimiento popular y sindical está muy debilitado y solo los estudiantes mantienen viva la llama de la rebeldía y la lucha antineoliberal.

Pero desde el magisterio y otras fuerzas populares seguimos dando batalla para reconstruir el movimiento popular chileno tras un programa y proyecto con perspectiva socialista y de poder popular.

#International #Chile #Bolivia #CIMA #Labor #EvoMorales #MichaelHumana

New York, NY – A group of eight activists attended the October 15 arraignment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores in a show of support for the kidnapped Venezuelan leaders. The activists included representatives of the Anti-War Action Network, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and leaders of the New York City Latin American community.

At the hearing, President Maduro and Cilia Flores both entered the courtroom with chains shackled to their feet. Maduro waved to the crowd watching the trial, knowing a plurality of the crowd were U.S. federal agents and escualidos who supported his kidnapping and U.S. invasion.

The judge presiding over their case, Alvin Hellerstein, who is 92 years old, struggled to sit on his chair and to even read aloud the new charges of terrorism. Maduro and Flores confidently declared their innocence – claiming these charges as completely false and bogus.

Although the court documents do not name the alleged victims who are cited throughout the indictment, the descriptions given match some well-known figures who have worked to undermine the Maduro government. The person identified as “Official-3” matches the description of ex-General Raúl Baduel, arrested in 2017 along with two co-conspirators in a plot to massacre civilians at a political rally and blame the government in order to destabilize the Maduro administration. “Victim-3” matches far-right leader Leopoldo López, who attempted to organize coups against the Venezuelan government in 2002, 2014 and 2019. Finally, “Victim-7” matches Osman Khan, an American citizen who, since his release in 2022, has built a career speaking for pro-regime-change think tanks like the Atlantic Council.

One of the activists in attendance at Thursday’s arraignment, Ebtesham Ahmed of the Freedom Road Socialist Organizations, traveled to Venezuela for the International People’s Assembly for Sovereignty and Peace of our Americas in December 2025, shortly before the U.S. kidnapped Maduro and Flores in an illegal raid on January 3, 2026.

“When I was in Venezuela, I talked to people there from all different sectors – from students to workers to indigenous people and more – all of them demanded the U.S. respect their sovereignty and to take its hands off their country!” said Ahmed.

Lucy Pagoada-Quesada, a Honduran activist living in the U.S. and a retired NYC teacher added, “The case of the U.S. government against the constitutional President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro Moros and the First Lady Cilia Flores has no legal grounds. It’s a clear case of lawfare, judicialization of politics. It’s a political case that has two major reasons: To take over Venezuelan oil and other natural resources and to destroy the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution. The kidnapping of a president violates all international law, U.S. law and Venezuelan law. We, as taxpayers, cannot allow the government to perpetrate this or any other illegality or violation of the law.”

The activists reiterated their demand that the U.S. government drop the charges against Maduro and Flores and return the President and First Lady to Venezuela. They also shared that a New York City-based coalition of progressive organizations opposed to U.S. intervention abroad plans to rally outside the next hearing, scheduled for December 17, when Judge Alvin Hellerstein will hear oral arguments on the motion to dismiss the charges.

#NewYorkNY #NY #International #InJusticeSystem #PoliticalRepression #Venezuela #AntiWarMovement #Maduro

Porto, Portugal – On Saturday, October 17, the rage of the people in the streets of Spain and France over the deteriorating quality of life for working-class and young people fully arrived in Portugal. Unions led massive marches around the country, and encampments led by young people demanding affordable housing were reestablished in Porto, after government repression earlier in the week. The protests spread to the capital of Lisbon and other cities.

Since October 10, young people in Porto, inspired by the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of neighboring Spain have tried to maintain an encampment demanding an end to skyrocketing housing costs while wages stay flat. But the police responded to the protesters with brutality, injuring 37 people and callously dismissing them and their demands in a way that shook the conscience of the country.

In that context, Portugal’s largest and most militant union federation, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), led huge marches in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra on Saturday, October 17. The marches brought thousands of working-class people into the streets in a similar trajectory as the young people who have been pressing the demand for affordable housing.

The CGTP put forward concrete demands that could address the deep capitalist crises that working people face in all aspects of life in Portugal – like a 15% increase of the minimum wage, increases in pensions and social security, strengthening the national health system (SNS), and increasing funding to education.

Portugal’s conservative government has been systematically chopping away at working people’s quality of life, defunding public systems then privatizing them for the profit of the rich and multinational corporations. They’ve allowed private equity firms and short-term rentals like AirBnB to gobble up real estate, driving housing prices through the roof, while passing a new law that weakens renters’ protections and makes evictions easier.

After the CGTP marches filled the streets on Saturday, thousands of people gathered that evening in assemblies and decided to reestablish a tent encampment in Porto’s Praça Dom João I and to establish a new encampment in Praça do Rossio in Portugal’s capitol, Lisbon.

After having said earlier in the week that he would draw a hard line and absolutely refuse to allow a tent encampment in Porto, and then sending in the police to injure protesters in their tents in middle of the night, Porto’s municipal leader Pedro Duarte was forced to backtrack and allow the encampment to be reestablished on Saturday night in the face of huge public sympathy for the protesters and widespread repudiation of his harsh treatment of peaceful protesters. Lisbon’s officials were also powerless to stop the establishment of a huge new encampment in the center of the city.

At the union march in Lisbon on Saturday, CGTP Secretary General Tiago Oliveira said, “Today, it is quite evident that we live in a state of permanent class conflict – a conflict that is intensifying and becoming increasingly clear to each and every one of us. Let us be aware of one thing: when we have a government that does not view the world through the eyes of those who work—those who live by their own labor, the youth, and the majority of the people—it is highly unlikely that we will see policies that address the interests of workers, retirees, young people, or that same majority. These are distinct and opposing interests—class interests—and big capital will never look toward the working population with the aim of improving their living conditions. Instead, it will always pursue policies that serve its own interests and the accumulation of wealth through exploitation.”

Oliveira then called on people “to make this coming November a month of action and struggle – and, among other initiatives, to commit here and now that on November 24, the day the final vote on the national budget is scheduled to take place, we will be there, out in the streets near the Assembly of the Republic, for yet another major day of struggle!”

#International #Portugal #Labor #CGTP

Porto, Portugal – A protest encampment sprang up in the heart of Porto on October 10 demanding affordable housing and has now continued for many days. Inspired by the massive movement that brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets in Spain in recent weeks, on October 10 protesters rallied and then set up tents in Porto’s Praça Dom João I, with a banner reading, “Can’t afford rent? Bring a tent!”

After one night, police removed the tents from the plaza, and Porto’s Mayor Pedro Duarte said tents absolutely would not be allowed. Protesters continued occupying the plaza without tents.

Then on October 14 during an evening rally of around 1000 people, protesters again set up around a dozen tents in the plaza. Police quickly moved in to try to remove the tents but then retreated after the protesters refused to back down.

The demands of the Porto encampment are: Down with the new anti-tenant rent law that was just passed; stop evictions; halt the buying of housing stock by capitalist investment funds; more public housing; rehabilitation of vacant housing property, and put in place a rent ceiling

Portugal’s neighboring country of Spain has been convulsed since late September by mass protests demanding affordable housing and an end to evictions, after an 87-year-old woman named Maricarmen was evicted from the Madrid home where she had lived for more than 70 years, after an investment firm bought the property and jacked up her rent. In response, encampments and protests spread throughout Spain.

Then, about a week after her eviction, Maricarmen died, with most people placing the blame squarely on the government and naming her traumatic eviction as the cause of her death. Spain’s main unions have announced a general strike for November 11, and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called snap elections after an attempt to pass new housing legislation in response to the crisis failed. The new elections are coming up November 29.

Housing costs have skyrocketed in major European cities over the past decade, while wages have stagnated. Rent in Portugal’s main cities of Lisbon and Porto has gone up even more than in Madrid and Barcelona in Spain. So, it’s no surprise that the movement sparked in Spain has now spread to Portugal. The Porto encampment is one of several that have sprung up in cities throughout Portugal this week.

The movement seems poised to gain momentum this weekend, as Portugal’s largest and most militant union federation, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), is organizing mass demonstrations on Saturday, October 17 in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra protesting the high cost of living while wages stagnate. The CGTP’s protests are demanding higher salaries, better pensions and public services, an end to the increasing cost of living, and defending the national health care system (SNS) and social security.

#International #Portugal #PeoplesStruggles #Housing

In 2026, there have been massive uprisings globally against war and declining economic conditions, and India is no exception. The current round of mass demonstrations has shaken the country and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, to their core.

Global shortages in oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) have had a series of repercussions in India, heightening existing problems during this time. But, while the U.S. war on Iran has worsened conditions in India, the people in India are also struggling amid declining employment rates, austerity and political repression created directly by the BJP.

The effects in India of the U.S. war on Iran

During retaliatory strikes from Iran, Saudi Aramco was hit in Ras Tanura, and Qatar suspended LNG production. India imports around 60% of all its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from other countries, and a large proportion of these imports are from Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. As a result, India is now prioritizing domestic LPG usage, creating a shortage and skyrocketing prices for industries that need it.

88% of India’s oil is imported. Before the war, crude oil prices were $69 to $70 a barrel. After the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, world Brent Crude futures prices topped at over $120 a barrel. At the same time, the Indian Crude Oil Basket price hit an all-time high of $142.69 a barrel.

The rising price of crude oil has put tremendous pressure on India’s foreign reserves and balance of payments. It has also resulted in an increase in inflation and reduction in economic growth. The CAD (current account deficit) has increased tremendously, meaning India spends more on imports than it gains on exports. This has resulted in depreciation in value of the Indian rupee compared to the dollar; currently one U.S. dollar equals 97 rupees, an all-time high.

To counter the inflation, the Reserve Bank of India has increased interest rates on loans and reduced the supply of money, making it harder for ordinary citizens and businesses to acquire loans. This has reduced economic activity, such as industrial output and job creation, particularly in oil services, construction and retail businesses, leading to increased unemployment. Large sections of urban youth now face joblessness.

Internal policy failures, misleading data, corruption

India has nearly 400 million people aged 15–29, and millions graduate on a yearly basis with STEM degrees but are met with only tens of thousands of jobs. Despite being some of the most educated in the world, Indian youth face the crisis of unemployment.

Despite showing growth on paper, the Indian economy reveals conditions of stagflation caused by large-scale imports of fertilizer and energy import costs. Industrial growth has in fact stagnated, leading to reduced job creation. Wages have also not grown enough to counter inflation.

A large majority of India's workforce remains trapped in low-wage work. Internal migration for jobs remains high. Indian government policy has moved the country away from the kinds of manufacturing that employ millions of workers. India is also still largely agrarian, and the population of youth graduating from colleges cannot find non-agrarian jobs to meet their needs.

According to the BJP government, the overall unemployment rate is between 4.6 and 5.5%. However, several independent economists assert that the unemployment rate is being inaccurately reported, pointing to outdated definitions of what is considered employment as a source of the distorted figures.

Recent events that have sparked protests

One example of extreme competition in jobs and college placements is the National Eligibility- Entrance Test (NEET). Over 2 million students sat for this exam to get enrollment at medical colleges, out of which only 6% had placement. The NEET exam also saw a major paper leak scandal, resulting in the cancellation of the exam. The cancellation resulted in mass demonstrations by student protesters citing systemic failures in exam conduction, corruption and favoritism. Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched to the parliament building demanding the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. Pradhan was finally forced to resign amid massive pressure.

The BJP, however, has no desire to give up power, and has instead manipulated the Indian constitution and haphazardly introduced bills and enforced them through various arms of the state. From the farmers bill, which tried to smash the power of peasant farmers, to labor codes designed to weaken union power, the BJP in the last decade has brought the lives of working people to ruin. They have incited religious riots, heightened caste tensions, and pitted tribal communities against each other all throughout India.

In October 2025, the BJP regime introduced the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) of electoral rolls through the election commission in a bid to retain and gain power in states where they historically had shortcomings. The SIR, alongside the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the past, was introduced to particularly target religious and caste minorities across India. The SIR came into effect in May 2026, leading to 130 million Indian citizens losing their voting rights. 9 million voters were affected by the SIR in West Bengal – a state where left parties were in power for 34 years – leading to a major electoral victory in that state for the BJP.

Since October 10, the deletion of voter rolls has resulted in massive protests in New Delhi and across the country, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyaneshwar Kumar, with the protests being led by unions such as the CITU (Center for Indian Trade Unions), communist parties, and youth and student organizations. Millions of people in New Delhi gathered to demand justice and the resignation of the election commissioner, with several thousand people from nearby areas and neighboring states traveling via train.

The repression against protesters has been remarkably high. 41,000 security personnel and police were deployed at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Between 2000 and 7000 protesters were either detained or jailed. People arriving via train or flight were detained before they even reached the Jantar Mantar.

Entire central leadership bodies of communist parties have been detained or jailed. Telephone communications and the internet were jammed throughout the city of New Delhi. The Delhi police even removed Jantar Mantar’s status as an official protest site.

The repression, however, has not caused a reduction in the number of protest attendees, but instead resulted in an overwhelming upsurge.

The conditions in India are rapidly declining due to internal policy failure and external imperialist pressure from the U.S. and Europe. The worsening of conditions is resulting in a cascade of never-before-seen mass demonstrations. The BJP are clearly shaken and are clutching at straws, increasing repression to retain their power. The people, however, understand that the BJP will use every avenue to trample democratic rights, and that the only way things will change is action in the streets.

#International #India #Opinion #Commentary

A major demonstration took place on Sunday, October 11. It was promoted by social media influencers in the state, and the people of Guadalajara made it clear to the governor, Pablo Lemus, that they would show up en masse. The governor responded by assuring the people of the chance to voice their frustration, which came to be a false promise.

Around 10,000 protesters were met with violent repression on the streets, being both teargassed and hosed down. Families who came out to demonstrate were confronted by riot police. 39 people were arrested, which activists have referred to as kidnappings, due to Mexico's history of disappearing political prisoners.

The next day, during her morning Conferencia del Pueblo (a morning address that the president gives to the Mexican people), President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the police’s actions, calling on the governor of Jalisco to give an extensive report of Sunday’s events.

Governor Lemus countered by spewing false information about the events that took place, and he offered to hand this water service problem to private corporations, all the while appropriating progressive talking points of supporting the people to exercise their right to demonstrate. Sheinbaum responded, “We do not agree with supporting the privatization of the water service.”

How did this crisis explode?

Like the October 12 editorial in the progressive Mexican news outlet, La Jornada, states, this was an inevitable outcome of Lemus and his party’s (Movimiento Ciudadano) negligence of this almost 20-year-old issue.

The issue had been a priority of the MORENA (Movimineto de Regeneracion Nacional), the current governing party of Mexico) party for the past six years, through the completion of the El Zapotillo dam in the village of the same name. Only this time, it would include the indigenous and peasant communities of the village on the planning table, whose resistance movement against the dam caused its halt back in 2009. Former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says that the just resistance to the dam was sparked by corporate greed and polices of the neoliberal government that was in power at the time.

This lack of cooperation with the ruling progressive MORENA party from people like Lemus has caused the systemic violence of thousands of people in Guanajuato, taking away the human right to clean water.

#International #Mexico #PeoplesStruggles #Water

Seattle, WA – On October 3, activists from Seattle Against War rallied in solidarity with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores for the Anti-War Action Network’s day of action. Activists canvassed passersby and collected petition signatures demanding the release of the kidnapped leaders.

This is one of many actions to demand “Hands off Venezuela” since President Trump abducted Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on January 3. Since then, Maduro and Flores have been held prisoner at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on false charges of narcoterrorism. The Trump administration is continuing its collusion with prosecutors by tacking on charges of human rights abuses against Maduro and Flores.

Flores is being tortured in prison. Flores has lost over 25 pounds in jail and is suffering from deteriorating cardiac health. A U.S. District Court judge has denied her request to be released on house arrest to manage her health problems.

The activists demanded an end to U.S. militarism and intervention in Venezuela, chanting, “U.S. Navy, CIA, we don’t want you, go away!”

Seattle Against War member Rae Lee said, “It’s completely upside-down that the United States, a country which bombs and disintegrates people every day, a country that constantly violates international law to serve the interests of its monopoly capitalist class, is able to play world police and kidnap the ruler of another nation.”

#SeattleWA #WA #AntiWarMovement #International #Venezuela #SAW

The chief imperialist predator Donald Trump is set to arrive in the country next month. With blood stained sharp claws and outstretched wings, he brings Pax Silica to fully seize the country’s land and wealth in the interest of American capitalists. Bringing oppressive schemes, he is certain to be met by the Filipino people with vigorous protest.

In various parts of the country, most especially in the vast countryside, resistance breaks out amid the worsening oppression of the broad masses of the people. Their suffering, hardship, hunger and plummeting living standards intensify as a result of the Marcos regime’s programs and policies that favor the interests of the ruling class and big foreign capitalists.

“Economic and security hub” in Tarlac, railways under the Luzon Economic Corridor, mining operations from Nueva Vizcaya, Mindoro, Romblon, Samar, to Caraga and Saranggani, “solar farm” in Nueva Ecija, airport in Bukidnon, “bamboo plantation” in Lanao. There is a push to accelerate, increase and expand logging, mining, plantations, tourism and energy projects, and infrastructure that grab hundreds of thousands of hectares and drive out tens of thousands of farmers and indigenous peoples from their land, and fisherfolk from their fishing grounds.

This worsens the widespread problem of peasant landlessness. The reactionary government’s four decades of land reform is a fraud. Seven out of 10 tillers still do not own land. This is most glaring in rice fields, sugarcane lands and vast haciendas and plantations, where the worst forms of feudal and semifeudal exploitation prevail. Day-long, back-breaking toil brings no promise of a better life amid high production and living costs, and losses due to low-balling and price manipulation of agricultural products. Farmers are drowning in debt to usurers and banks that exploit their desperate situation.

Intense militarization and fascist repression by military and police forces magnify these suffering. Where logging, mining, plantations or other land-grabbing enterprises encroach, there repression is most brutal. Martial law under the framework of “counter-insurgency” is imposed on barangays in the form of limiting people’s movements, including prohibiting peasant masses from working their fields, even during planting or harvest season.

Widespread fear comes with the approaching Super El Niño, which will devastate agriculture, cause further losses to peasant masses, and bring severe hunger in the countryside. The people’s anger rages amid the Marcos regime’s meaningless measures in the face of the impending disaster.

Frequent military exercises of the US and AFP also bring fear in the countryside. Beyond disrupting the livelihoods of peasant masses and fisherfolk, they also endanger their lives and destroy the environment that sustains them.

The widespread suffering in the countryside is the suffering of the entire nation. Peasant masses make up the majority of the Filipino people. They are the biggest productive force in the country. They are entire families who till the land, generating wealth, despite many of them being “invisible” in the reactionary state’s statistics.

The widespread conversion of agricultural lands destroys food production, deepening import dependence, causing the prices of rice, vegetables and other food products to further rise. The cost of living in the country relentlessly rises, while wages and incomes of the majority of the people remain low.

The severe situation in the countryside reflects the persistent crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. There is no genuine land reform and national industrialization. Agricultural production remains backward, productive jobs are severely lacking, especially amid mass displacements. More and more peasants become landless, and become farmworkers or semiproletarians in the countryside. To survive, they settle for seasonal work tied to agricultural production and commerce.

The deepening crisis and sharpening contradictions of the international monopoly-capitalist system further worsen the social and economic crisis in the country. The crisis in the countryside is particularly severe, driven by the push of American and transnational corporations to monopolize the plunder of the country’s natural resources, and pull down the prices of export products.

Driven by the aspiration for genuine land reform, enshrined in the program of the Party and of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the peasant masses have embarked on the struggle for national-democratic social change. Along this path, they unite to advance their immediate demands: for lowering of land rent in the form of changing the share in harvest and costs in favor of the peasants, wage increases for farmworkers and agricultural workers, elimination of usury and giving fair farmgate prices.

The anti-feudal struggles of peasant masses are linked with the struggle of the entire people to defend land rights against intensifying land-grabbing and plunder of the country’s wealth and patrimony. Thus, people in both cities and rural areas must unite. The countryside is virtually blanketed in tinder. The sparks of resistance will surely ignite a great fire of resistance.

Workers, semiworkers, young students, and other sectors in urban areas are challenged to head to the countryside and join hands with peasant masses in the struggle to advance their land rights, fight exploitation and defend the country’s patrimony.

All democratic classes and sectors are called to join the New People’s Army and take part in the peasant war, which is a major component of the people’s war. In the countryside, the NPA is continuously strengthening itself by tirelessly deepening and expanding its ties with the peasant masses. In the face of intensifying oppression, the NPA is determined to advance the armed struggle to support the struggles of peasant masses and the whole people.

#International #Philippines #CPP #NPA

Lisbon, Portugal – Protesters gathered October 7 in Lisbon to oppose U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s presence in Portugal for a meeting with government officials.

The theme of the protest was “Marco Rubio is not welcome here!” with the main slogans being “Peace in the world! No war! End the genocide against the Palestinian people! Stop the aggression against Cuba!”

The protest was organized by the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation (CPPC) with participation from organizations in solidarity with Palestine and with Cuba, as well as the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and several other organizations.

Just days before Rubio’s visit to Portugal, Portuguese prosecutors announced that they were opening an investigation into whether it was legal under the Portuguese law and constitution for the Portuguese government to allow the U.S. military to use Portugal’s Lajes Air Base for the U.S. war against Iran. The investigation was initiated by a complaint filed by one of Portugal’s left opposition parties.

The PCP states, “Marco Rubio is a key figure behind the criminal policy of confrontation, aggression and war promoted by U.S. imperialism. His visit to Portugal exposes the shameful alignment and subordination of the PSD/CDS government to the U.S. The PCP calls for the continuation and expansion of solidarity with peoples resisting the threats, interference, and aggression of imperialism, and for the struggle for rights and improved living conditions—opposing militarism and war.”

#LisbonPortugal #International #Portugal #MarcoRubio #PeoplesStruggles #PCP

Indianapolis, IN – September saw the revolution in Yemen enter a new stage. The Ansarallah movement, known in the Western press as the Houthis, secured sweeping victories all along the Red Sea coast and dealt a mighty blow to imperialism and its puppets in the region.

Beginning on September 3, Ansarallah launched a general offensive in Yemen's coastal regions to wrest control of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait from the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), the name for the U.S. and Saudi-backed puppet regime.

Days later, on September 9, Ansarallah fighters positioned in the country's highlands descended roads and riverbeds to the coastal plain and captured the port of Mokha. The Saudi-backed mercenary troops occupying the city, already battered by a month of missile and drone strikes, called for reinforcements but could not hold the line. By September 10, their troops had all run off and the port was liberated.

A day later, Ansarallah took both the Hanish Islands and Perim Island, a volcanic outcrop two miles off the Yemeni coast that narrows the shipping channel. In less than a week, the entire Red Sea coast of Yemen passed into the hands of the revolution. Ansarallah now holds the southern gate of one of the most important trade routes in the world, closing it entirely to Saudi and Israeli shipping.

Since this breakthrough, the fighting moved inland and south. Ansarallah now battles for the Kahboub mountains, which look down on both the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the road to the key southern city of Aden. The city of Marib, which is both the center of Yemen's oil industry and the puppet regime's last stronghold in the north, has entered the revolution's crosshairs.

The offensive was Ansarallah's answer to a war Riyadh chose to restart. A UN-brokered truce had largely frozen the front lines of battle since 2022. In early July 2026, Saudi Arabia barred an Iranian plane carrying senior Ansarallah officials home from the funeral of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from landing in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, and later bombed the airport runway. Ansarallah declared a naval blockade of Saudi ports on July 20 and has struck Saudi tankers and Aramco facilities in the months that followed.

Riyadh begs, Washington balks

Ansarallah's Red Sea offensive comes at a time of serious weakness for the Saudi oil economy, which is already pressed as a result of the U.S. war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz. On September 10, drones launched from Iraqi territory struck pumping stations along the Saudi East-West pipeline, which carries crude oil from the kingdom's eastern fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Without the strait of Hormuz, the pipeline is Saudi Arabia's only export route that avoids the Persian Gulf entirely, moving between 4 and 5 million barrels per day, representing roughly 5% of the world's oil supply. The damage forced Riyadh to shut it down. Subsequent attempts to re-open the pipeline have encountered further attacks.

The U.S. war on Iran, along with Ansarallah's revolutionary breakthrough in Yemen, has sent oil prices to the moon. Brent crude, which sold for $60 per barrel in January, climbed past $108 per barrel after the attacks. In August of 2026, Saudi Arabia reported its lowest level of crude oil production in over 35 years. These effects have spread across the world, causing fuel prices, particularly for diesel, to skyrocket. A gallon of diesel fuel is approaching $6.50 in the United States, hitting as high as $9.99 per gallon in some parts of the country.

The news of Ansarallah's lightning advances arrived as a terrible shock to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who called U.S. President Donald Trump to demand intervention after the fall of Mokha. Trump refused the Saudi request, though he promised intelligence and targeting data on top of the roughly 200 U.S. military personnel already in the kingdom.

This refusal by the U.S. was not easily accepted by the Saudis, whose existence as a regime is largely premised on the backing of Western imperialist powers. According to the New York Times, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare strikes on Yemen before calling them off on September 20. Even pleas by the PLC to reconsider fell on deaf ears.

European imperialists stepped in where Washington hesitated, no doubt motivated by the fuel crisis that has gripped the continent as a result of the U.S. war on Iran. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham committed on September 21 to use the Royal Air Force for refueling Saudi warplanes. France, for its part, pledged to guard Saudi energy infrastructure. On September 22, the G7 foreign ministers demanded that Ansarallah halt its attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Yemen and the camp of resistance to imperialism and Zionism

The revolution in Yemen is part of a camp of resistance to imperialism in the Middle East. Ansarallah leads the struggle in Yemen, but this united front is anchored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This front also includes the Palestinian liberation movement, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and progressive and patriotic forces in Iraq.

When the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran in February, Ansarallah entered the fight in late March with missile and drone strikes on Israel's Ben Gurion airport.

Ansarallah and the Yemeni people have shown consistent solidarity with Palestine and paid dearly for it in blood. In November 2023, the movement seized an Israeli-linked ship and closed the Red Sea to shipping tied to Israel entirely. Over the next two years, Ansarallah targeted more than 100 merchant vessels and sank four. Container traffic through the Suez Canal fell from about 80 ships per week before the fighting to just 26. Israel's only Red Sea port saw its revenue collapse in this period before eventually shutting down. When Washington offered Ansarallah a separate truce in May 2025, the movement accepted but refused to let it cover Israel. Yemen would not trade Palestine for its own safety.

The Zionists answered with terror, with Israeli warplanes striking Sanaa and killing Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, along with much of his cabinet, in 2025. Military chief of staff Muhammad al-Ghamari was later killed as well, along with his 13-year-old son. Today, Israel remains under blockade by Ansarallah for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Red Sea offensive has opened a second chokepoint against U.S. imperialism. With Hormuz shut and Bab-el-Mandeb now in Ansarallah's hands, both sea lanes that carry Gulf oil to the world are choked by the camp of resistance. Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, called the coastal campaign a “resounding victory,” and responded to Saudi warnings to rein in Ansarallah by rightly noting that Iran does not control the actions of Yemen's leaders.

Washington is currently stretched thin by its war on Iran. Still stinging from its 2025 defeat in Yemen, the Trump administration is reluctant to reengage Ansarallah, even at the urging of its close ally. For its part, Ansarallah has shown great strategic discipline in its fight with the Saudi occupiers while maintaining its robust presence in the united front against U.S.-Zionist aggression. They have followed the terms of the ceasefire by confining the blockade to Saudi Arabia and Israel, something even Trump has publicly acknowledged. That has left Riyadh to fight alone.

Ansarallah and the National Democratic Revolution in Yemen

Ansarallah is a liberation movement that leads the national democratic revolution in Yemen today. Its base is among farmers, tribesmen, soldiers, and the urban poor of the country's highlands. Its enemies are imperialism, chiefly the U.S. and its Saudi and Emirati clients, and the comprador and feudal forces that sold Yemen out to them.

Ansarallah's ideology is based on the liberation theology of Ayatollah Khomeini as well as Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, who founded the movement, admired the Iranian revolution for its anti-imperialist character, as well as Iran and Hezbollah's resistance to U.S. and Israeli wars in the region. He was killed by Yemeni armed forces, backed by Washington, in 2004 after calling for a boycott of American and Israeli goods. His brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, has led the movement ever since and maintained its anti-imperialist, popular character.

While imperialist and Zionist propaganda disparagingly paints Ansarallah as a tribal or sectarian militia, the movement's program is national, democratic and unifying. Its National Vision calls for a modern, democratic, unified Yemeni republic, committed to elections, and equal rights for citizens regardless of tribal or religious identity. Ansarallah leaders, for their part, have said openly that an Islamic Republic along the lines of Iran cannot work in Yemen, owing to the population's religious diversity. In turn, the movement draws recruits across sectarian lines, confirmed in a 2015 Middle East Institute study that found Ansarallah fighters from every region and sect. Its ranks have grown from an estimated 100,000 members in 2011 to 350,000 in 2024.

Ansarallah grew out of the poorest parts of Yemen. Saada, the birthplace of the movement, carried longstanding economic and political grievances stemming from decades of marginalization, neglect, and repression by a neocolonial government loyal to Riyadh and, in turn, the United States. For three decades, Ali Abdullah Saleh ruled Yemen as a client of foreign powers. Between 2004 and 2010, his army waged war on Ansarallah's home province of Saada, backed by the U.S. under the banner of the so-called global war on terror. He was forced out after a series of mass protests in 2011, handing power to his deputy, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Ansarallah's road to power ran through a fight over the price of fuel, which erupted in July 2014 when Hadi's government cut subsidies and sent costs soaring. Mass protests demanded relief for the broad masses as well as the resignation of the government. Ansarallah entered Sanaa on September 21, 2014. Less than a year later, Hadi had resigned, fleeing to Aden and then to Riyadh, where the former regime and its supporters (wealthy sheikhs, generals, and financiers) enlisted Saudi Arabia to wage war on their own people.

When Saudi Arabia, with full U.S. backing, began its brutal genocidal war on Yemen in 2015, Saleh, the ousted leader, temporarily found himself antagonistic to his former master's interests and joined an uneasy alliance with Ansarallah. This fell apart in 2017 when Saleh switched sides again, leading to his elimination by patriotic forces in Yemen. The Presidential Leadership Council that survives today as the puppet rulers of Yemen is what remains of that old order, governing from hotel suites in Riyadh.

Today, Ansarallah leads the real government of Yemen, which administers the areas of the country where about 70% of Yemenis live. It governs from the capital, Sanaa, through the Supreme Political Council, which includes figures from outside the movement. It aims to liberate the rest of the country by driving out the Saudi-backed mercenary forces concentrated in the south and east.

Partition: The imperialist-Zionist fallback option

As the Saudi puppet regime collapses further, the old scheme of partitioning Yemen hangs over the war. It is a reactionary demand, and the class forces pushing it reveal its true purpose.

Until recently, a third force claiming to govern part of Yemen existed. The secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC), built and paid for by the United Arab Emirates, seized Hadramawt and Mahra regions in December 2025. This area accounted for roughly half of Yemen's territory and almost all of the former south. As the closest Gulf partner to Israel and a regional rival to Saudi Arabia, the UAE hoped to partition Yemen into a northern and southern state once again. Riyadh, fearing an Emirati and Israeli foothold on both sides of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, turned its own forces on the STC and crushed it in a matter of weeks, forcing Emirati forces to exit Yemen.

From 1967 to 1990, Yemen was divided into two countries: the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in the south. For more than two decades, the PDRY was led by Marxists, socialists, and progressives and operated as a significant counterweight to imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East. It carried out land reform and mass literacy campaigns, and armed the revolution in neighboring Oman's Dhofar province. Palestinian organizations like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sent fighters for training in the PDRY and received material support from the government. The country was unified in 1990 amid the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, bringing an end to the PDRY and putting the country under the sway of the Gulf monarchies.

The STC waves the flag of the PDRY, but its politics are its exact opposite. Its vice president, Hani bin Breik, was a Salafi cleric who offered STC aid to reactionary Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who aided NATO in overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Its military was built almost entirely with Emirati money around Salafi religious fundamentalists. The STC's leading figures are Emirati clients, not the veterans of the National Liberation Front who drove the British out of Aden in the 1960s.

While antagonistic to Emirati attempts at extending its influence, Saudi Arabia's only consistent goal for over six decades has been keeping Yemen weak. It armed the reactionary Zaydi monarchy in 1962 to fight the revolutionaries and later worked with the U.S. to isolate and undermine the PDRY. After reunification, Riyadh cynically backed secessionist forces in the 1994 civil war to re-divide Yemen.

Today the Saudi puppet government officially defends unity, but if the Presidential Leadership Council is reduced to a rump in the oil-rich south and east, partition is possibly what the imperialists and their attack dogs will reach for.

As the vanguard of Yemen's national democratic revolution, Ansarallah has opposed dismemberment of the country consistently. They rejected an imperialist-backed scheme for a federalist political system, calling it a plot to divide Yemen into poor and wealthy regions to the benefit of foreign powers.

U.S. hands, Saudi crisis

The war on Yemen has been an imperialist project of the United States from the jump. Washington supplies the bombs, the intelligence, and, until 2018, the aerial refueling that has allowed the kingdom to rain death down on hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. A UN estimate at the end of 2021 put the death toll for the war at 377,000 Yemenis, with 150,000 directly killed in fighting and the remainder, mostly children, through resulting hunger and disease. The World Health Organization found that Saudi warplanes and their mercenaries on the ground deliberately targeted Yemeni water and public health infrastructure to maximize terror on civilian areas. No full count or estimate of casualties has been released since fighting resumed after a nearly four-year ceasefire.

In 2024 and 2025, the U.S. bombed Yemen directly. Trump's Operation Rough Rider savaged Yemen with 339 airstrikes on more than 1000 targets for 52 days, In April 2025, a U.S. strike on the Ras Isa fuel port killed 80 civilians, mostly port workers. A little over a week later, another U.S. air strike on a migrant detention center in Saada killed 68 African migrants. The Pentagon officially admits over 150 civilian deaths, while independent monitors put the number higher.

Operation Rough Rider was a failure. On May 6, 2025, Trump called it off and accepted a ceasefire with Ansarallah despite vowing to annihilate the movement at the outset of war. Even as it has resisted rejoining combat operations out of fear, the White House still backs the Saudi counter-offensive to the hilt. May 2025 saw a $142 billion arms deal announced between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including the sale of F-35 jets.

Ansarallah's sweeping Red Sea offensive is bringing the internal crisis in Saudi Arabia to a head as well. The U.S. is losing its criminal war on Iran, which has opened all of the Gulf monarchies up to sweeping retaliation. Riyadh is under fire from all sides. Its alliance with the UAE turned into open war in southern Yemen. Its oil exports are cut off at both ends of the peninsula. Recent Saudi attempts to reverse Ansarallah's gains along the Red Sea have also failed, and its forces in Marib are besieged.

The most decisive moment in Yemen's revolution for over a decade is unfolding. Its successes strike a mighty blow to both imperialism and Zionism, and the liberation of the whole country will strengthen the camp of resistance.

#International #Yemen #Ansarallah #Houthis #SaudiArabia #Palestine #Feature

The movement has included massive marches, ongoing encampments, growing calls for a general strike, and Prime Minister Sanchez now calling for a snap national election in response to the movement.

Mass protests erupted after the September 23 eviction of María del Carmen “Maricarmen” Abascal, who lived in the same Madrid apartment for roughly 70 years. An investment fund acquired the building and sharply increased her rent. She could no longer afford to live in her own home. Images of police removing the elderly woman from the apartment outraged people and became a rallying point for widespread anger over soaring rents and housing insecurity.

The anger fueling the protests comes from a growing gap between housing costs and people’s wages. Average rents in Spain have gone up by about 40% over the past decade. In cities like Madrid and Barcelona, rents have gone up far more than the national average. Meanwhile, wages for young workers increased by less than 10% during the same period. Especially for younger workers and retirees, stable housing is increasingly out of reach.

Three days after Maricarmen’s eviction, on September 26, many thousands of people took to the streets in Madrid and dozens of other cities under the slogan “Not one more Maricarmen.” After the protest, people didn’t go home. They established an encampment in Madrid's Puerta del Sol that grew into a permanent protest camp. Organizers from the Madrid Tenants' Union declared they would remain until meaningful housing reforms were enacted.

The movement soon spread beyond Madrid. Protest encampments appeared in Barcelona and other cities while demonstrations and support actions were organized across the Spanish state.

The central goal of the protests is that housing be treated as a right rather than a financial asset for profit. This has resonated deeply throughout the country and beyond. The same realities of massive rent and housing cost increases combined with stagnating wages exist in cities across Europe, including Lisbon, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin and London.

The mass movement for housing rights has quickly created a major political impact. After the Spanish parliament rejected key emergency housing measures, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez dissolved parliament and called a snap election for November 29, arguing that voters should decide whether stronger intervention in the housing market is needed.

The movement has not dissipated, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in mass protests again on Saturday, October 3. Because the housing crisis is so severe and widespread for working people, it just took the single spark of the outrageous eviction of Maricarmen to start a prairie fire. With hundreds of thousands of people participating in ongoing protests and new elections coming that will center on the right to housing, the movement seems likely to keep growing. And with similar housing crises throughout Europe, the movement could easily spread further.

#MadridSpain #Spain #International #Housing #PeoplesStruggles

At an afternoon rally held during the busy ArtPrize festival off of Monroe Avenue in Grand Rapids, GROW members held signs calling to “Free Cilia Flores,” “Release Flores and Maduro,” and “Stop Trump’s attacks on Venezuela,” and discussed the impact of U.S. sanctions with local festival attendees.

The demonstration elicited support from many attendees, who expressed outrage at the Trump administration’s ongoing war on Iran and intervention in Latin America. When approached by a counter-protester, a member of GROW explained that the organization stands against the idea that the United States can kidnap foreign leaders like Maduro and Flores, and that it is a matter of upholding the Venezuelan peoples’ sovereignty against U.S. aggression.

October 3 marked nine months since the violent kidnapping of Maduro and Flores on January 3 by U.S. forces. The harsh conditions at MDC Brooklyn, where they are being held, has reportedly resulted in Flores experiencing a mild heart attack and losing 24 pounds. The U.S. government previously attempted to deny payment to President Maduro’s legal defense from February 2026 until late April 2026.

As part of its local effort to carry the campaign to free Maduro and Flores, and to end U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, GROW is holding actions on the 3rd of every month to heighten these demands and plans to until they are finally released from U.S. custody. Currently, the federal trial for Maduro and Flores is scheduled to begin in June 2027.

The Grand Rapids Opponents of War can be followed on Instagram under the same name.

#GrandRapidsMI #MI #AntiWarMovement #International #Venezuela #GROW

Fight Back! News Service is circulating the following statement from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

This week we recognize the three year anniversary of the October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood, a courageous bid for liberation that embodied the aspirations of all of us who yearn for a better world.

The world has also witnessed the crime of the century in the form of a relentless U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza that has stolen many tens of thousands of lives, in the aim of erasing Palestine and Palestinians—something that will never be accomplished. But in the context of these crimes and horrors, October 7th stands as an enduring beacon of resistance. It was a pivotal moment that lit sparks of solidarity across the world and at the same time shattered the myth of Israel’s invincibility. It exposed the fundamental weakness of the Zionists and their U.S. imperialist backers, and changed the trajectory of the worldwide struggle against imperialism, forever.

Of course October 7th did not happen in a vacuum, but was the legitimate and righteous response to 75 years of ethnic cleansing, of Nakba, of the daily reality of occupation in the form of military violence, land and water theft, demolition of homes, of people trapped under apartheid.

In response to this context, the Palestinian resistance struck a major blow to the heart of the Zionist war machine. It was a historic and tactical triumph—in minutes, the supposedly bulletproof Israeli military apparatus collapsed into confusion and panic, with an entire military division disintegrating in a half hour, and with it, a staggering moral defeat. The unthinkable scale of the genocide that followed is the proof of their desperation. They tried to destroy the Palestinian resistance, but Palestine has an inalienable right to exist that October 7th stands firmly on.

The beacon of October 7th and the fight against continued U.S.-Israeli aggression set off a cascade of heroism in the region and across the world. From Lebanon, to Yemen, to Iraq, to Iran, forces of resistance have risen to challenge U.S. imperialism and Zionism in the region. In the past 3 years these forces have delivered countless blows to imperialism, and the position of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East is never going to be the same as it was. U.S. empire, in its accelerating decline is not able to carry out this destruction with its rabid lapdog Israel forever. In fact, in the scheme of things it is losing its grip on the Middle East. The camp of resistance is able to deliver setbacks and drive strategic wedges between the U.S. and its potential allies. The resistance continues to advance, with the steadfast role of Iran and the tactical brilliance of forces in Lebanon and Yemen, arm in arm with other progressive and patriotic forces throughout the Middle East.

Resistance to imperialism is a force that will never be snuffed out.

There has over the past period been a profound reverberating effect of October 7th that goes across the entire globe. Hundreds of thousands have poured into the streets in cities, from Amsterdam, to Washington, DC, to London, to Istanbul, flooding them with the flag of Palestine. There have been massive encampments on college campuses and fierce battles in city council rooms—there has been a global awakening where people from all walks of life look at the real face of the enemy and see it for what it is, and the ranks of the fighters joining the struggle against that enemy continue to grow.

It is right to rebel and the struggle continues now. We demand an immediate and total end to all U.S. aid to the apartheid state of Israel, the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and the release of political prisoners.

Stand with the Palestinian resistance! End U.S. aid to Israel! Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!

#Palestine #FRSO #October7 #International #Statement