Chicago, IL – Organizers with the Coalition to March on the Democratic National Convention held a press conference outside City Hall on Tuesday morning to speak out against the denial of their permit applications. The Chicago Department of Transportation gave the coalition an alternate route four miles away from where the DNC is scheduled to happen.

“We reject their decision because we have the right to voice the demands of the people within sight and sound of the DNC. We demand a permit to march as a gesture of good faith that the police will not introduce violence into our family-friendly protest.” said Jasmine Smith, a co-chair of the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Torture (CFIST), which is a campaign of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

“Many of the attendees of the DNC are responsible for or complicit in U.S. aggression against other countries including genocide in Palestine, police committing crimes with impunity, mass incarceration, deportations, neglect of LGBTQ and reproductive rights, undermining of workers’ demands, and other injustices against the people,” Smith continued.

“We all have the right to protest within sight and sound of the DNC, but right now, Palestinians should be afforded even more of this right, since the politicians that will be here, including Genocide Joe Biden, are the ones responsible for the almost 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza by the U.S.-funded Israeli military since October 7,” said Nazek Sankari with the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

Tthe Democratic Party base in Chicago wants a ceasefire, wants to see Israel stop the genocide, wants to see its nominal leader, Joe Biden, stop arming Israel and end U.S. aid to Israel,” Sankari continued.

“We want money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupation. From Palestine to the Philippines, we demand an end to the U.S. war machine,” said Diana Balitaan with Anakbayan Chicago, after explaining how Democratic Party politicians are allied with the reactionary Marcos Duterte regime in the Philippines.

“We’re demanding that the Democrats act and vote on our behalf, on behalf of asylum seekers and all immigrants,” said Maggie Lugo, executive director of the Federation of Michoacan Clubs. “We’re not asking, we're demanding what we deserve.''

“With or without a permit we are going to be out there. They can't stop u,” said Regina Russell, member of Mothers Advancing Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS) in a written statement.

The coalition will be appealing the decision in court this week, but organizers emphasized that the mass movement will ultimately be responsible for winning the permit.

“This is not our first rodeo,” Joe Iosbaker with CAARPR said in reference to his and other coalition members’ experience organizing marches on NATO and the RNC, as well as mass rallies for all the fights coalition members are involved in.

Iosbaker continued, “We’re going to get a permit because the power of the people is stronger than the people in power.”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #UnitedStates #DNC #MarchOnDNC2024 #NAARPR #CAARPR #USPCN #CFIST #Anakbayan

For several weeks, UPS Teamsters voted by phone and by computer on whether or not to accept a recently negotiated tentative agreement on terms for the next union contract. On Tuesday August 22, The International Brotherhood of Teamsters released the results of that vote.

Over 86% of ballots cast were votes to accept the national agreement with more than 58% of eligible voters turning out to put their vote in the box.

In addition to the national agreement, members voted on 28 regional and local supplements. Only one of these was originally rejected, which was a small supplement covered by Local 769 in Miami. The Local 769 supplement was approved on Friday, August 25, and the contract will now go into effect immediately.

This vote comes after months of practice pickets, rallies, petitions, parking lot meetings and informational flyering. Tens of thousands of Teamsters participated in the contract struggle, most for the first time in their lives. Both the turnout and approval rate are starkly different from the results of a similar vote five years ago as well as prior contract votes.

In 2018 an agreement included concessions from the union was rejected by over 54% with less than 45% turnout. That vote to reject the contract was overruled by then-President Jimmy Hoffa Jr., and the contract was put into effect despite the “no” vote.

Numbers can’t tell the whole story, but they do say something. A comparatively high turnout indicates a more engaged membership in a contract campaign. A high “yes” vote on a tentative agreement generally indicates that members felt that the credible strike forced the company to give in. Taken together, it means when we fight we can win. While this understanding on its own isn’t enough to transform the labor movement, it’s certainly a requirement.

Eric Dorland is a 22.4 driver with UPS, and a member of Teamsters Local 638 in Minneapolis. He said, “My coworkers and I worked on this contract campaign for months and we’re proud of what we have won. Building a strike threat is what gets the goods.”

While the outstanding supplement in Miami and several stand-alone contracts in Chicago still need to be ratified, many Teamsters at UPS are looking toward the future of turning this contract fight into long-term gains. Though not everything was won, union militants are looking for more improvements to fight for in the next contract battle. There still remain massive unorganized non-union sections of the logistics industry, specifically at Amazon, that the Teamsters are going after. Using the recent wins at UPS will surely help the effort.

Many new leaders stepped up over the past year as part of the contract fight and they will now have a key role to play in building struggle on the ground to enforce this new contract, and to win further gains in future negotiations.

#UnitedStates #Teamsters

The publication of the new English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s book, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, is a major event for Marxists, as well as for scholars of Soviet history in the English speaking world. Originally published in Italian in 2008, Iskra Press has just released the first authorized translation into English, thanks to the translation work of Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro.

The late Domenico Losurdo was a first-rate philosopher, historian and scholar, and the author of many important works such as Liberalism: A Counter-History (2005) and Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History (2003). One of the most significant studies of Stalin ever written, English-speaking activists and scholars have long hoped that this important book on Stalin would be translated from Losurdo’s native Italian, but left-leaning publishers of Losurdo’s other books, such as Verso, refused to touch it.

It is noteworthy, as a bit of history about the translation, that when Henry Hakamäki wrote to Verso Books requesting that they publish Losurdo’s Stalin, Verso senior editor Sebastian Budgen responded, calling the book “one of Losurdo’s worst books” and insisted, “We will continue to publish the books by him that have intellectual merit and are based on real and serious research, but not these kinds of texts.” Hakamäki has noted, however, that the book contains at least “346 works cited in it, and has well over 1000 points of citation within the text.” Indeed, Losurdo is a world renowned scholar, whose research methodology in Stalin mirrors that of his other works. We can only assume, then, that by “these kinds of texts,” Budgen means that Verso will not publish books that challenge the anti-Stalin paradigm in scholarship, no matter how well researched.

Interestingly, this controversy regarding the book’s publication really cuts to the heart of what the book is about. The title of the book refers to the idea that a “black legend” has been constructed around Stalin with the intent of discrediting communism. This “black legend” regarding Stalin is the subject of the book. What does this mean? In historiography, which is the study of historical writing and research, a “black legend” refers to a sustained trend of fabrication, exaggeration, decontextualization, and distortion which aims to paint the subject as monstrous and without redeeming qualities.

In this sense, the book isn’t a biography. Losurdo’s book is a “history and critique” of the demonization of Stalin rather than a summation of the period of Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union, or an analysis of the figure of Stalin himself. The book breaks down this “black legend” in a systematic way, based on rigorous and well documented research. It shows how the history of Stalin and the Stalin era has been decontextualized, distorted, fabricated and exaggerated, in order to manufacture a political mythology of Stalin as a villain.

Stalin is a major figure in the history of the international communist movement, and both his theory and practice deserve careful study and summation, not just by scholars, but also by socialists and activists who are interested in building a better society. The demonization of Stalin has always been a cornerstone of anti-communism in the United States, and this demonization has been repeated by academics and even “socialists.” Some of these are indeed anti-communists, while others simply lack the courage to stand up to the anti-Stalin propaganda. Others still simply need to become better informed, which this book can help with.

But outside of the imperialist countries, Stalin is widely regarded as a great figure, who accomplished incredible things. Stalin is recognized for transforming the Soviet Union from a backwards, semi-feudal country to a world power, and for defeating Nazi Germany and saving the world from fascism. During the period of Stalin’s leadership of the USSR, the Soviet Union abolished illiteracy, did away with unemployment, provided universal healthcare and housing, and put an end to the cycles of economic crisis and famine that had plagued Russia for centuries prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

While the Trotskyites had long shrieked impotently about “Stalinism,” the true origin of Stalin’s demonization in the West, according to Losurdo, is Khrushchev’s so-called “secret speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences.” The first chapter of Losurdo’s book, entitled “How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report” deals with dissecting the claims made against Stalin by Khrushchev in his “secret speech.” From there, Losurdo goes through the many charges against Stalin from then to now, looking at the historical, political and social context as a whole, and helps the reader to come to a fair conclusion about what really took place in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership. Through the course of Losurdo’s work, the picture we are left with is very different from the one we are usually taught.

Losurdo notes that as scholarship has progressed. “On the whole,” he writes, “the caricatured portrait of Stalin drawn first by Trotsky and then by Khrushchev no longer enjoys much credit.” He also explains that “it now becomes clear that the Secret Speech is entirely unreliable. There is no detail in it that is not contested today.” And yet it still remains a cornerstone of the anti-Stalin paradigm.

As the Communist Party of China wrote shortly after Khrushchev’s secret speech, “the question of how to evaluate Stalin and what attitude to take towards him is not just one of appraising Stalin himself; more important, it is a question of how to sum up the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the international communist movement since Lenin’s death.” This is why Losurdo’s Stalin is an important and valuable book. It is a work of scholarship destined to shake up the predominant, anti-communist history that is taught at every level of U.S. society. It is also important for activists and revolutionaries to read.

Stalin himself once said, “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” Losurdo has made an important contribution to our understanding and summation of that experience, and this translation helps to make it more accessible to readers in the United States and other predominantly English speaking countries. Today, people in the U.S are taking up socialist and revolutionary ideas in a way not seen in a very long time. Everyone who is interested in socialism’s history or its future should read this book.

This book is available from the Iskra Books website: https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique J. Sykes is the author of “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

#UnitedStates #BookReviews #MarxismLeninism #Stalin

Without a doubt, modern science has achieved a great deal. It has given us automation with the potential to free us from toil, medical innovations that extend life expectancy, and an understanding of the laws of physics and nature. It allows us to light and heat our homes with the push of a button, and to communicate instantly across the world. It gives us the ability to produce enough to fulfill the wants and needs of everyone. Science is a cornerstone of modern society in terms of what we produce and what we consume.

And yet, despite all of that, we live in a world where automation doesn’t free us, but instead threatens our livelihood with unemployment. These great medical innovations are inaccessible to millions. And the most basic wants and needs of the masses of the people go tragically unfulfilled. Our world is instead characterized by poverty, waste, war and environmental crisis. Why does science seem incapable of solving these issues?

The reason is simple. We live in a class society, where the exploiting classes, especially the monopoly capitalists, enrich themselves at the expense of working and oppressed people here and all over the world. In the United States and much of the rest of the world, modern science is bound to the interests of this monopoly capitalist class.

The dominant ideas in society are a reflection of the interests of the dominant class, and science is no exception. As the British Marxist philosopher Maurice Cornforth writes in his essay, “Dialectical Materialism and Science”, “Modern science is the creation of the bourgeoisie. It is one of the most typical products of bourgeois society. And it carries the mark of its bourgeois origin in its methods and in its ideas.” In other words, science is a part of the ideological superstructure, which arises from and reinforces the mode of production, the economic base of society.

No doubt, the ideologues of the bourgeoisie will object: “Not so! Science is perfectly objective and untouched by class interest!” Well, let’s see.

Ultimately, the ruling class takes a pragmatist approach to science. It isn’t interested in science merely for the sake of expanding knowledge, understanding and human progress. On the contrary, its approach to science is guided by one thing and one thing only: obtaining the highest rate of profit. Capitalism takes the pragmatist notion of “truth’s cash value” to its extreme. Capitalist innovation relies entirely on the anarchy of production to determine what technology is developed and what is left behind. Financial interests and lobbying groups, such as those of the coal and oil industries, play a tremendous role in holding back technology that would present a challenge to their bottom line, such as the development of green technology, for example.

We can also see how the monopoly capitalist class has a history of manipulating scientific research for the sake of oppression. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould writes in his book, The Mismeasure of Man, “The history of scientific views on race, for example, serves as a mirror of social movements.” Gould argues that science is “socially embedded” and that “culture influences what we see and how we see it.” This is why, according to Gould, racist biological determinism was for some time the norm in evolutionary science. Science thus became a weapon in the arsenal of white chauvinism and national oppression, promoting racist theories like phrenology and eugenics.

Geneticist Richard Lewontin writes in Biology as Ideology, “Modern biology is characterized by a number of ideological prejudices that shape the form of its explanations and the way its researches are carried out.” Biological determinism has long been used to justify national oppression against African Americans, Chicanos, and others, in order to justify the super-exploitation of the oppressed nations.

We also see biological determinism being used to attack women and LGBTQ people. For example, the ideology of transgender oppression is grounded in a metaphysical view of biological sex which it pits against a dialectical understanding of gender. What does this mean? As Engels puts it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. …For him, a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one to the other.” Biological determinism in regard to gender is metaphysical in this way, seeing sex and gender as inextricably linked, determined entirely by biological chromosomes, fixed, absolute, and immutable. This biological determinism is then used as a cudgel against trans people – as an ideological justification for their oppression hiding behind a claim to scientific truth, all in the service of maintaining the capitalist gendered division of labor.

In workplaces like Amazon and UPS, technology and science are used to track and discipline workers who don’t make productivity quotas. Artificial Intelligence is being used to replace workers in a number of fields. This is the kind of science and technology that the bourgeoisie is interested in developing and promoting.

In other fields science is likewise bound by the ideology of the ruling class. For example, genetically modified and hybrid seed production is driven primarily by the profit motive of agribusiness, rather than in the improvement of food in both quality and quantity. Take the agribusiness giant Monsanto, notorious for producing Agent Orange and for its seed patents. Monsanto instituted seed savings bans in order to ensure that farmers would have to buy seeds from them each season. Farmers defying Monsanto’s ban, even unwittingly, have found themselves fined for patent infringement.

In Colombia, for example, farmers who couldn’t afford to buy Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” seeds often ended up with their crops devastated by Monsanto’s aerial pesticides, or had their crops destroyed for containing patented seeds, even if those seeds were simply carried over by birds. Meanwhile, monoculture takes root at the expense of biodiversity, and the environmental crisis driven by capitalism escalates. This is just one example of how the brunt of capitalist environmental devastation falls upon those oppressed by imperialism. This is also true within the U.S., where environmental destruction disproportionately impacts working class and oppressed nationality communities.

The capitalists always and everywhere put profit over people and the planet. Coal and oil fueled the engines of the industrial revolution, and as such the technologies developed in the course of the industrial revolution were developed in line with and dependent upon the consumption of fossil fuels. This led not only to tremendous pollution, but also to the development of a fossil fuel industry with vast wealth and power. The U.S. imperialist financial oligarchy is deeply invested in fossil fuels and fossil fuel-dependent technology, to the point that they will go to any lengths to protect their oil interests, including military intervention at the cost of millions of lives. They oppose the development of clean energy technology and even promote climate change denial, taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the trajectory towards an uninhabitable planet.

While capitalism in its early phase promoted scientific progress and pushed technology forward in unprecedented ways, that is no longer the case as the fundamental class relations of society have come to hold back scientific progress. Marx explains this in broad terms. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he wrote, “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.” The progressive advance of the productive forces is the main factor in driving science forward. Now, the only way to free the productive forces of society from the fetters of the relations of production is social revolution.

Socialists aren’t luddites. On the contrary, socialism champions scientific advance. Socialism fundamentally changes the way science is used by society. In this sense, socialism is science unleashed. Socialism utilizes the science most despised by the capitalist class, Marxism-Leninism, which analyzes the laws of motion at work in society in order to reshape society to serve the needs of working and oppressed people. This partisan science of the working class is put to work to remove the fetters placed upon the productive forces by capitalist class relations. Just as capitalist class interest has come to hold science back, so too can working class interest propel science forward.

Socialism replaces the anarchy of production and the drive for the highest rate of profit with socialist planning. Cyclical crises of overproduction are eliminated. Scientific education is prioritized. In this way, science is no longer a tool to increase profit, oppress people – and to line the pockets of the ruling class at the expense of everyone else. Instead, the working class in power can put science to work to make a world free of exploitation, toil, want, waste and war.

This is the world the socialist countries are in the process of creating. Look at socialist China, where extreme poverty has been eliminated, and where developing green energy and reorienting development towards environmental sustainability has become a top priority. Even the New York Times has to admit “There is no doubt about it: China is doing more than any other country when it comes to renewable energy and electric vehicles.” In this article from the NYT morning newsletter from August 14, 2023, German Lopez asks, “How?” The answer, he says, is “China has poured a lot of money into the research, development and use of clean energy, using its extensive manufacturing base to build solar panels and wind turbines and bring down prices worldwide. It has provided subsidies to buyers of electric vehicles, as the U.S. now does. And it has pursued, and surpassed, aggressive goals: China vowed to double its capacity of wind and solar power by 2030. It is on track to meet that goal five years ahead of schedule.”

What the New York Times doesn’t acknowledge is that this great achievement is a result of China’s socialist system. It can do this because the working class is in power. Unlike the United States and the other capitalist countries, the Chinese economy isn’t compelled by a drive for maximum profit at the expense of the people and the planet. We need to follow their example, but the only way to do that is through the socialist transformation of society. If we want science to play a truly liberating and progressive role, we have to free it from the shackles of capitalist ideology. And the only way to do that is to get rid of this parasitic, wasteful and destructive class of monopoly capitalists once and for all.

J. Sykes is the author of “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

#UnitedStates #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory

Warning: Major spoilers for They Cloned Tyrone They Cloned Tyrone is a peculiar little science fiction movie set in the Glen, a fictional poor Black community existing in the South. It follows the life of the protagonist Fontaine, a drug dealer without any particular flair or personality.

The Glen is rife with poverty, inequality and unfairness. For an individual not well versed in political theory, these problems might seem interpersonal or individualistic. For a Marxist-Leninist, this could only be described as one thing: national oppression.

Now you may ask: is the movie operating from a Marxist-Leninist ideology? I say most likely not. But any film that portrays racism as a social evil rather than an individual problem will usually address some aspects of national oppression. But before we can analyze the movie, we must understand what national oppression is. That means we have to understand the Marxist definition of a nation.

For a Marxist, a nation isn’t simply what’s recognized on the map or by some political body. A nation is determined by scientific and historical characteristics and can exist without having a state or even a particularly strong national consciousness. In Marxism and the National Question, J.V. Stalin defines a nation as a “historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”

According to Marxist-Leninist theory, advanced by the well-known U.S. communist Harry Haywood, “Geographically, the Negroes are scattered throughout the United States, but almost one-third of their number (five million) are still massed in the Black Belt area… Any serious examination will show that the Negro population of the Black Belt is tied together by myriad internal bonds, by all facets and agencies of modern capitalism, has all the prerequisites for existence as a nation. (Harry Haywood, The Negro Nation Chapter 7).

The Glen itself is a representation of a community within an oppressed nation. Eventually they develop a national consciousness and begin to struggle for liberation. Before they can begin to struggle for change, however, the protagonists need an inciting incident – something that makes them aware of the social evils existing within the Glen.

The protagonists of the film – Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles – are three individuals trapped by the cycle of poverty and violence existing within the Glen.

The inciting incident of the movie is the death of Fontaine. He is shot and killed by a rival drug lord after confronting Slick Charles, a pimp, about the drug money Slick owes him. After dying, his consciousness is uploaded into the body of a clone that looks exactly the same. Fontaine doesn’t even know that his original body was murdered yesterday. When the drug dealer returns to Slick Charles demanding the money, Slick explains to him that he died yesterday. After Slick Charles and Yo-Yo, an aspiring journalist who is a sex worker under Charles’ management, prove to Fontaine that he did in fact die, he begins investigating what happened to his former self.

The three unlikely detectives discover details about a conspiracy happening in the Glen, and their continued investigation leads them to realize a sort of mind control drug is being injected into everyday items in their city.

The three heroes attend the local chicken joint because they believe it holds the clues to their mystery. They discover a white powder that makes people laugh is being injected into the food at the Got Damn Fried Chicken fast food place. A kind of mind numbing chemical is also active in the 2Clean Perm Cream used for straightening hair in the local salons. That same mind-controlling drug is also being used in the church, this time inside the grape juice.

These scenes are the great accomplishment of the movie and Juel Taylor’s greatest success within the entire film. There may not be a secret government organization secreting chemicals into these products in real life, but it’s because they don’t have to. Taylor masterfully manipulates hyperbole and the absurdity of this conspiracy to highlight how these products are a representation for the mechanisms used to contribute to Black impoverishment.

All three of these commodities are examples of the psychological and social tools of oppression used to control Black people and prevent our national consciousness from developing.

The fried chicken represents the effects of obesity and poor health due to the lack of sustainable and healthy food in Black communities. For poor Black workers, who experience more than their fair share exploitation, cooking full meals or affording nutritious ingredients isn’t always a reality. It’s why there remains a disparity in Black health rates, and why things like the COVID-19 pandemic more severely impacted Black communities than white ones.

The hair products serve as a way to dull the senses of Black people, in particular Black women, in the community, to dull their consciousness and control their minds. This is a metaphor for the way national oppression forces Eurocentric beauty standards on Black women and speaks to the higher requirements for beauty and womanhood placed on Black women in general. The catchphrase “straighter is greater” is used in a commercial that takes place during the film about the hair product, straight hair being a metaphor for assimilation into white beauty standards.

The most radical part of the movie is its criticism of the contemporary Black church. The grape juice is just one part of the movie’s satire on modern Black Christianity’s tendency to convince African American communities to accept their oppression. The pastor even tells churchgoers to not worry about possible eviction, rising rent, and bills and just focus and worry about God. They end up discovering the conspiracy has an underground laboratory inside of the church.

All of these locations are ordinary. From the outside, they may seem harmless or mundane. But now that our protagonists are conscious of the conspiracy, and aware that there is an external force working to sabotage and undermine the people of the Glen, they start to become conscious of the dangers that seemed like everyday parts of the Glen before.

This is a wonderful representation of national oppression and national liberation. The United States of America has purposely and meticulously created a political system that is unfair and unjust for Black people. At first, people accept that system as normal; they see it as the way their community has always been. But when circumstances change and the aggression and cruelty of the empire are exposed, some members of the community begin to develop a national consciousness. They start to understand the reasons behind their oppression and the sinister undertones behind the at times seemingly benign or mundane features of the system.

In the movie, Black communities are oppressed and treated like colonized nations so that government officials can find a way to assimilate Black people into being totally white. In real life, Black communities are oppressed so that the ruling class – the monopoly capitalists, politicians, and wealthiest property owners – can extract “super-profits” from the Black community.

Harry Haywood theorized that imperialists don’t just oppress Black people due to hatred and bias, although those do play major roles in the system of oppression that exist. The imperialists in our country do it to super-exploit the African American community, meaning that they can pay African Americans lower wages, use us as a way to perpetuate the drug trade in the U.S., and devote less resources into Black community’s public infrastructure, schooling and livelihoods.

This system gives a massive payout to the 1% of this country, while also acting as an obstacle to unity between the Black and white working class. Due to the stereotypes, bias and terrible conditions foisted upon Black communities, the elites get to pay everyone less and blame the oppressed for the reason why living conditions in this country are awful.

After discovering even more shocking truths about the Glen, including discovering that Slick is also a clone, one of the leaders of the conspiracy confronts the protagonists and reveals the Glen is being used as a scientific experiment. He threatens to murder Yo-Yo, Fontaine and Slick unless they return to their regular lives.

After an initial moment of despair, Fontaine and Slick unite the community to save Yo-Yo, after she is captured and imprisoned by the Institute for trying to expose the conspiracy to the press. Through trickery and clever planning, the Glen community leads a rebellion against the conspiracy with their community members.

The characters in They Cloned Tyrone don’t just accept defeat. They analyze their conditions and develop a plan to defeat their oppressors. Unlike They Cloned Tyrone, a single individual rebellion won’t defeat our oppressors. The monopoly capitalist class, the true rulers of our society, rule the African American Nation in the Black Belt South openly. They actively work to destroy these liberation movements and inhibit the development of the Black Nation, as well as the Chicano Nation, indigenous peoples, and other oppressed nationalities in the U.S.

The most important similarity between the movie and real life, however, is that the oppressed communities can fight back. We can win the struggle against our oppressors. Instead of organizing a quiet conspiracy, we need to build a mass movement that can win victories for the national liberation movement. We need to fight to institute community control of the police across the nation. And we need to fight to overthrow the monopoly-capitalist class for once and for all, so all oppressed communities, fictional or otherwise, can be set free.

#UnitedStates #Movies #movieReview

African American women across the county are in shock about the recent case of Jessica Ross and the decapitation of her baby, Treveon Isaiah Taylor Jr., during childbirth. This case illustrates the deeply troubling maternal and infant mortality crisis affecting African American communities. The heart-wrenching incident is a painful reminder of the urgent inequalities within the United States healthcare system that unevenly impact Black women and their infants. It is an unfortunate representation of a broader crisis that can only be addressed through the struggle for Black liberation and socialism.

Jessica Ross, of Georgia, filed a lawsuit against a Southern Regional Medical Center and others involved in delivering her baby Taylor Jr, who was allegedly decapitated during childbirth. The lawsuit claims that the hospital, located just outside Atlanta, attempted to hide the baby's death from the family. The complaint alleges that the doctor applied excessive traction on the baby's head and neck, resulting in Taylor Jr's death. The hospital insisted that the Treveon Isaiah Taylor, Sr, and Jessica Ross not view their baby and attempted to pressure the couple to immediately cremate Taylor Jr. The family's spokesperson states that the hospital only allowed them to view their baby wrapped tightly in a blanket to hide the decapitation.

This disturbing incident is not isolated. It exposes the deeply rooted racist and gender biased healthcare system that disproportionately affects Black women and their infants. Celebrities like Serena Williams have garnered media attention for her childbirth-related complications, shedding light on a much broader crisis. If even multi-millionaire African Americans are at risk of life-threatening injuries during childbirth, what does that mean for working-class African American women? Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.

Tori Bowie, a former Olympic track and field athlete, tragically lost her life at 32 due to childbirth complications. At eight months pregnant, Bowie was found dead during an unplanned home birth. The autopsy report indicated potential complications coming from respiratory distress and eclampsia – conditions linked to high blood pressure during pregnancy. The death of Tori Bowie mirrors the reality that African American women face during childbirth. For example, Black women are more likely to have preeclampsia and eclampsia during childbirth.

Additional stats show that African American women experience an infant mortality rate at 2.3 times higher than whites. This alarming statistic is a clear indictment of a capitalist healthcare system that refuses to adequately support and protect Black mothers and infants.

The situation is particularly dire in regions like the Black Belt South, where access to healthcare remains a struggle for many African Americans. One problem is the scarcity of Black doctors, particularly Black women doctors. It is wrong that in areas with majority Black populations, there is still limited availability of medical professionals. I have experienced this as a Black woman living in the Black Belt South. The scarcity of African American obstetricians and gynecologists in cities like Tallahassee illustrates the broader problem.

We need Black liberation and socialism to end this crisis. We must have self-determination and political power. We right to a proper education, jobs, safety and healthcare. We need a revolution. We need to build a united front against the rulers of this country, a united front with a strategic alliance of the multinational working class and national liberation movements at its center.

When we did have Black doctors, businesses, and thriving economic regions, we were attacked and brutalized in events like the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, also known as the attack on Black Wall Street. In every sector of life, African Americans are repressed. That is national oppression. It is not just racism, it is real inequality – an actual economic, social and cultural attack on African Americans. It is how the ruling class holds onto its grip in this society. The ruling class benefits from national oppression. We can no longer allow them to rule in this way.

The horrifying case of Jessica Ross shines a spotlight on the pressing need to address maternal and infant health care within African American communities. The entire structure of this country must fundamentally change. We must hold these healthcare institutions accountable, end systemic racism in medical care, and commit unwaveringly to the cause of Black liberation. No parent should have to endure such a devastating loss and only we as a society can do that.

#UnitedStates #NationalOppression #WomensMovement #Healthcare #BlackWomen #birth

It is growing more and more common to hear people repeating core elements of conspiracy theories. Many of these conspiracy theories grow from the fringes of right-wing extremist groups, then begin to creep into the mainstream through websites like Elon Musk’s Twitter (now renamed “X”), or through podcast personalities like Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, or through “influencers” on social media. They have grown even more prevalent since Donald Trump’s rise to power, as he himself promoted many of them from the Oval Office in Washington.

Indeed, conspiracy theories abound. Some appear ridiculous, such as “Area 51,” the “Mandela Effect,” or the “Flat Earth” conspiracy theories. Others are clearly more dangerous, like anti-vaccine conspiracy theories or the so-called “Great Replacement Theory.” Often many of these conspiracy theories are tied together and bleed into one another. Whatever they are, they ultimately blame social problems, real or imagined, on the secret schemes of a small group of shadowy elites.

Conspiracy theories present a problem that everyone interested in progressive social change should consider. It is important for people who want to change society for the better to be able to analyze what is going on, and since the ruling class does actually conspire, it is understandable that some conspiracy theories leave people confused. The rise of conspiracy theories coincides with a rise in public skepticism and distrust towards the government. And since the government is indeed untrustworthy, how do we tell what’s real and what isn’t? We should look at a few of these conspiracy theories and examine how we can tell fact from fiction.

First, on a fundamental level, how do we know anything? How do we know if what we think is correct or not? Marxism-Leninism provides us with a scientific theory of knowledge based on dialectical materialism. Knowledge is based on experience in social practice, in the class struggle, in production, and in scientific experimentation. Based on these experiences, we can formulate theories, test those theories against material reality in practice, and then use that practical experience to refine our theories. In doing this, we can come to understand the laws that govern different processes and find out how to interact with those laws to move forward effectively.

In the case of conspiracy theories, it can be helpful to understand a principle of critical thinking from philosophy called Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor basically says that if something could be explained equally well in more than one way, then the explanation that requires fewer guesses, assumptions and leaps is more likely to be true. So, when faced with any question, we should ask ourselves what we actually know about what’s going on, and what our guesses and assumptions are. If we find that there is another explanation that explains all aspects of the phenomenon equally well but requires less guesses and assumptions, we should operate from that explanation. The Chinese leader and Marxist theorist Mao Zedong put this another way when he said, with his characteristic directness, that we should “seek truth from facts.”

Let’s focus, then, on some of the more dangerous conspiracy theories. Take for example, the conspiracy theories currently promoted by U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is a man known to promote a host of conspiracy theories, from the idea that vaccines cause autism to the idea that chemicals in our water are responsible for turning children transgender. This is happening, according to these conspiracy theories, due to the maniacal schemes of a shadowy group of conspiring elites.

These assertions are not based on evidence, but that doesn’t matter to these people like RFK Jr. who promote them, because it takes far more time and effort to untangle and debunk them than to just throw them out there and see what sticks. They feed on conservative fear and uncertainty and protect themselves from rational and scientific refutation by saying that anyone attempting to debunk the theory must be in on the conspiracy or an agent of those who are.

Relying on conspiracy theories to whip up a political base is a strategy regularly employed by demagogues, from Hitler’s reliance on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to Trump’s promotion of ideas like the “Great Replacement.” According to this conspiracy theory, certain “elites” (here an anti-Semitic dog whistle) intend to engage in “genocide” against white people through policies of immigration.

The right-wing outcry against so-called “Cultural Marxism” and “woke” culture dovetails with this white genocide conspiracy theory, in that it argues that things like affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion programs are an insidious plot from “globalists” (another dog whistle) to oppress white people. This dovetails with another popular conspiracy theory, that left-wing protest is funded by the “globalists.” Often this has been expressed by saying that Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other groups are funded by George Soros. These theories all trace their roots back to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' based on a forged document detailing an alleged plot for Jewish world domination.

All of these conspiracies rely on spurious evidence and outright lies, and require a tangled web of guesses and assumptions to string together. They attempt to explain events in terms of conspiring groups of powerful elites, who are pulling the strings like super-villains right out of comic books. In reality, history is driven by objective laws, not the whims of secret cabals.

Nevertheless, there is indeed a financial oligarchy that has come to dominate much of the world. But this isn’t some secret cabal operating from the shadows. It is the billionaire class of U.S. monopoly capitalists who control many of the world’s financial institutions. This class of monopoly capitalists use their money and power to control the levers of state power, to dominate the media, and to maximize profits at the expense of the rest of us.

They don’t rule from the shadows, but openly wage war against the poor and oppressed in broad daylight. And they don’t do this because they got together and decided to do some imperialism, but because the laws of motion of capitalism demand it. The growing crises of the capitalist system required imperialist expansion in search of super-profits to delay this rotten system's inevitable demise. Ultimately, it isn’t the individual capitalists who determine things, but the overall, law-governed motion of the capitalist system.

The demagogue's trick is often to rely on lies, and also on distortions based on half-truths. The monopoly capitalist class does indeed conspire to dominate the world. Its real conspiracies are well documented and clearly evident. Examples include the counterintelligence programs against communist and national liberation groups in the United States (COINTELPRO), or attempts to destabilize and overthrow governments that go against the interests of imperialism. The conspiracy theorists will then make all kinds of leaps from this without any evidence to make their claims. Further, they will twist and invert facts to support their ideas. For example, often anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists will claim that one arm of the alleged Jewish plot for world domination is to use “the Jewish lobby” to control the U.S. government. This is a distortion. The reality is that things are the other way around. U.S. support for Zionism and the Israeli apartheid state, is cynically used by U.S. imperialism to justify its foothold for hegemony in the Middle East. Between Israel and the U.S., it is the U.S that is in charge, as it uses Israel as a proxy for military control of the region.

What, then, is the point of these conspiracy theories? It isn’t difficult to understand. Trump used allusions to the white-genocide, “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory to scapegoat immigrants for problems like unemployment – problems which are rooted in capitalist crisis. These lies serve to justify inequality and national oppression that is visited upon African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, native peoples and others.

Trump also used conspiracy theories to attack his political opponents. Early on, he was an outspoken proponent of “Birtherism” during Barack Obama’s presidency, a racist conspiracy theory which claimed that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and was thus not eligible to be president. He also promoted the idea there was a “deep state” conspiracy, which connected to the absurd QAnon conspiracy, to claim that the election was stolen from him in 2020 by an evil shadow government, from which he alone could save the American people.

Conspiracy theories are ideological. Ideology arises from the material base of society. Ruling class ideology has the function of reinforcing and reproducing that base. That means that bourgeois ideology props up the prevailing relations of production, the class relations of ownership and power, and the sum of existing social relations. This ideology is expressed in many forms through media, education and cultural institutions.

Capitalist ideology finds expression in the basic principles of liberalism and the tenets of the “American Dream.” But it is also served by the promotion of conspiracy theories. They are promoted by those who have an interest in distorting facts and spreading misinformation and confusion. While they often give the appearance of being outwardly subversive or anti-government, the reality is that the objective effect of the conspiracy theory is to misdirect people away from the real causes of their problems, rooted in the capitalist system itself. Instead they are sent on a wild goose chase, hunting for the clues of a secret cabal of shadowy conspirators.

In order to effectively organize and change society, we need to understand it and the laws that drive it. Ultimately the point of analysis is to change the world. The source and aim of Marxism-Leninism is the practical, revolutionary struggle of the working class. The broad masses of the people need to come to understand the nature of the class that oppresses them, and to understand that the way to defeat them, at the most basic level, is to act together in their own class interests. We have to identify the real enemy to know how to fight them. Conspiracy theories stand in the way of developing this class consciousness. They spread confusion where the advance of the class struggle demands scientific and sober analysis. The best way to fight the spread of conspiracy theories is to fuse the science of Marxism-Leninism with the movement of the multinational working class.

J. Sykes is the author of “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

#UnitedStates #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is proud to announce that longtime Chicano revolutionary Carlos Montes was elected to co-chair the Chicano Latino and Other Oppressed Nationalities Commission, newly formed this July 2023. This followed his re-election to the Central Committee at our Congress held in May 2022. The Chicano, Latino, and Other Oppressed Nationalities Commission will help build Chicano power and develop theory. It will also work to forge alliances with Native American people in the Southwest. Carlos self-recruited to FRSO in the mid-1990s, when he saw the importance of building revolutionary organizations to fight for Chicano liberation and socialism.

Carlos Montes has a long proven history of fighting for Chicano liberation and working to forge alliances with the Black liberation movement and working-class struggles. He was one of the original founders of the Brown Berets where he was part of organizing the East Los Angeles High School Walkouts of March 1968 and the first Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam war in 1969. Carlos has worked and led struggles against U.S. wars, participating in protests against the Vietnam war and recently against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and NATO/G7 summit held in Chicago. He helped initiate and led the mega marches of 2006 when millions of Mexican immigrants took to the street to protest and stop the racist Sensenbrenner bill.

Carlos has traveled and shown solidarity with nations fighting against U.S. imperialism. In 2022 he attended the 43rd anniversary of the Popular Sandinista Revolution in Managua, Nicaragua. In March 2023 he participated in the tenth anniversary celebrations on the life of Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela. He has also traveled to Cuba several times and fought to end the U.S. blockade. He has lived and traveled extensively in Mexico.

He participated in and spoke at all the major protests at the RNC and participated in the initial refounding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) in 2019.

Carlos has faced state repression many times due to his political activism. He continues to organize today on the ground in the poor working-class Chicano communities of Boyle Heights and East L, fighting against police killings, promoting public education against privatization by charter schools, for immigrant rights, and against the current US/NATO war. FRSO is proud to have Carlos Montes in our leadership.

For more information on Carlos, see his website: www.carlosmontes.org

#UnitedStates #ChicanoLatino

On Sunday, August 13 at 3 p.m. Pacific time (4 p.m. Mountain / 5 p.m. Central / 6 p.m. Eastern), Freedom Road Socialist Organization will be hosting an online event entitled “Class Struggle Unionism and the Tentative Agreement at UPS” featuring rank-and-file Teamsters, some of whom are FRSO members.

“Thanks to the efforts of militants in the rank and file of the Teamsters, we have turned the page on the Hoffa-era concessions,” said Richard Blake, a member of Teamsters Local 512, “This time we organized a real contract campaign, mobilizing the rank and file, and established a credible strike threat, leading to real gains. The company watched thousands of Teamsters across the country come out for practice pickets and meetings, and it scared them.”

In a recent statement on the tentative agreement from the organization's Labor Commission, Freedom Road Socialist Organization wrote that “many of our members throughout the country are rank-and-file Teamsters. We have helped to build this contract fight in centers, hubs, and on the road. We are proud of the level of militancy and organization that the rank and file contributed to allow IBT leadership to be bold at the table and provide the first credible strike threat in decades. The Teamsters threatened to essentially shut down the U.S. economy, and the capitalist class bowed down.”

Members of the Teamsters will now vote on whether to accept the tentative agreement. Results of the vote will be released in late August.

You can register for the event at https://www.tinyurl.com/upsta

#UnitedStates #Teamsters

We want to give our support and solidarity to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in their victory in the contract battle with UPS. Militants in the Teamsters have demanded an uncompromising approach to contract negotiations. Since August of last year, the new leadership of the Teamsters listened to the members and launched a massive contract campaign, a breath of fresh air in the labor movement. As a result, they have achieved huge gains at UPS, reversing decades of Hoffa concessions. Members are looking over the tentative agreement now in preparation of voting it up or down.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization is proud to say that many of our members throughout the country are rank-and-file Teamsters. We have helped to build this contract fight in centers, hubs, and on the road. We are proud of the level of militancy and organization that the rank and file contributed to allow IBT leadership to be bold at the table and provide the first credible strike threat in decades. The Teamsters threatened to essentially shut down the U.S. economy, and the capitalist class bowed down.

The wins in this agreement are just a steppingstone to what a militant labor movement can accomplish. We believe that the trade unions must implement this militant approach and have a fully engaged and organized rank and file. The way we win all that can be won for the working class is through organization. Although the tentative agreement is not perfect, taken as a whole it represents a huge step forward for workers at UPS.

We believe the strategy for revolution in this country is building a united front against imperialism to overthrow the capitalist class who have caused nothing but heartache and harm to the multi-national working class. We are proud of our deep roots in the trade union movement that will play an important role in this united front. We run deep in the Teamsters, as well as other unions throughout the country where our members are leading shop floor struggles and bringing militancy to the forefront of the trade union movement.

Nothing was ever won by simply compromising with corporations and the billionaires who run this country, who have hoarded vast amounts of wealth and left working people fighting for scraps. UPS is no exception, having made record profits since the COVID-19 pandemic began because they shortchanged their workers through two-tier driver classifications and poverty level wages for part-time employees. It was only through a fighting rank-and-file union movement that the Teamsters were able to win this tentative agreement.

Now is the time to join labor organizations and Freedom Road Socialist Organization so we can build fights in our workplaces and create a political party led by working people, for working people. The Democrats and the Republicans have left us behind while bending over backwards to appease business owners and millionaires. We believe the future is bright and the conditions are ripe to win all that can be won.

#UnitedStates #Teamsters

By Anti-War Work Team of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

The Anti-War Work Team of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) condemns the recent U.S. Congressional resolution invoking unconditional support for Israel.

The resolution follows on the heels of comments made by Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) to a pro-Palestine protest in Chicago earlier this month in which she correctly identified Israel as a racist state and pointed out that the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination. In a bipartisan effort to exonerate Israel of its crimes and to shame those who speak out, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution defending Israel, which was supported by more than 400 Congressional Representatives, including 195 Democrats.

Denial of reality, however, does not change that reality. Israel is not only a racist state; it is a violent apartheid state and a puppet for U.S. imperialism.

Israel, with the help and approval of the U.S., has maintained a regime of ceaseless violence for 75 years, displacing, brutalizing and murdering Palestinians, including women, children and the elderly. It has enacted policy after policy explicitly targeting Palestinians, actively pursuing the total extermination of the Palestinian population. Israel’s racist policies are not limited to Palestinians – it has also targeted African immigrants through forced sterilization programs in the recent past. Further, tactics developed and employed by the Israeli Occupation Forces and Israeli police to terrorize and dominate Palestinians have been adopted by police in the U.S., who serve the same role as an occupying force in oppressed nationality communities here.

The story of the Palestinian struggle, however, is not only one of horrific brutality, but also of heroic resistance. Palestinians have fought for the right to their land for more than 100 years. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization supports the liberation of every inch of occupied Palestine from Zionist occupation and colonization, from the river to the sea; we uphold their struggle to realize the Right of Return, and the right of self-determination to which all nations are entitled, by any means necessary. We especially support the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its revolutionary struggle for a free, democratic and socialist Palestine.

It is only due to the dedicated and militant organizing by Palestinians and their many allies around the world that the narrative is finally shifting. Representative Jayapal’s initially correct identification of Israel as a racist state came only as a result of Palestinian demonstrators shutting down an event that Jayapal was speaking at, and demanding that she own up to the fact that Israel is a racist and apartheid state. Support for the Palestinian liberation movement among the masses is at an all-time high. No amount of statements or resolutions from detached politicians wedded to U.S. imperialism can turn back the tide of popular resistance or the support the movement has garnered in recent years.

As communists and proletarian internationalists in the U.S., we have a duty to continue to splinter the ruling pro-Israel coalition through the organization of mass action. We call for an immediate end to all U.S. imperialist aid to criminal, racist, settler colonialist, apartheid Israel, including all financial, military, diplomatic and political support.

Despite the best efforts of the imperialists and their Israeli running dogs, Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!

End U.S. Aid to Israel!

Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!

#UnitedStates #Palestine #MiddleEast

Fight Back! is circulating the following call for a Twitter storm in solidarity with Colombian revolutionary Simon Trinidad, a political prisoner held by the U.S. government in the Florence, Colorado supermax prison. The National Committee to Free Simon Trinidad

Please join our “Twitter Storm” on July, 30, 2023, from 9am to 9pm Eastern time. We are celebrating the 73rd birthday of Colombian revolutionary Simon Trinidad and demanding the U.S. government commute his sentence so he is free to return to Colombia.

The Committee is calling for a Twitter Storm with the following instructions:

1) On Twitter, start a new tweet:

Upload the Simon Trinidad flyer (the image above) and the information

2) In the text box, write “FreeSimonTrinidad” and tag U.S. President Biden “@POTUS” and Colombian President Petro “@petrogustavo”. Please also tag the Colombian court asking for Trinidad’s return “@JEP_Colombia”

3) Repeat as many times as you can to push the #FreeSimonTrinidad into trending

Who is Simon Trinidad?

Simón Trinidad is a Colombian revolutionary and political prisoner of the U.S. empire. He will pass his 73rd birthday in solitary confinement in a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Simón Trinidad, born Ricardo Palmera, is imprisoned following a bogus extradition to the United States in 2004. Trinidad was convicted on trumped-up charges, and sentenced to 60 years in a Washington D.C. courtroom because he was fighting in Colombia for the freedom of his own country. This year he is being requested by the Special Peace Jurisdiction Court (JEP) in Colombia to help move his country towards peace with justice. With the incoming Petro-Marquez administration and strong mass movements, the conditions have changed in favor toward Trinidad’s release and role as a peace negotiator. Now is the best and probably only chance he will have to be set free and contribute.

On his 73rd birthday, revolutionary and progressive forces are calling for a Twitter Storm, in Spanish a Twitazo, that will tag President Biden to do the right thing and set him free.

“Now is the best and probably only chance Simon Trinidad will have to be set free. He can make great contributions to peace with justice in Colombia. His voice is an important one for the future of all Colombians. We need action now!” said Tom Burke with the Committee to Free Simon Trinidad in Michigan.

#UnitedStates #PoliticalPrisoners #SimónTrinidad

On Tuesday, July 25, the Teamsters reached a tentative agreement for the UPS 2023-2028 contract which covers 340,000 workers across the country. The agreement follows a rank-and-file campaign for a strong contract that resulted in a 97% strike authorization vote in June, and practice pickets all around the country in July in the lead up to a potential national strike on August 1.

In their negotiations and strike readiness campaign the Teamsters were fighting against decades of concessions from the previous administration under the leadership of Jimmy Hoffa Jr.  Tired of givebacks, members elected new leadership that put Sean O'Brien at the top spot in 2021. After months of actions at UPS hubs around the country by rank-and-file Teamsters and massive worker rallies in New York and Los Angeles, UPS gave in to Teamster pressure on July 19 and asked to come back to the negotiation table, in the face of an impending strike.

In the new agreement, full-time workers at UPS won the elimination of a second-tier lower wage class of drivers. They also won air conditioning in package cars, and language against forcing drivers to work six days a week. Part-time workers won between a 33% and 55% wage increase over the course of the contract depending on years of service, more full-time jobs and an opportunity to do seasonal work that was previously offered to people off the street. All UPS Teamsters won MLK day as a paid holiday.

“We, the militant Teamsters, forced the company to bend. They would've given us nothing, but we stood strong and fought for every single gain in this contract. Solidarity made this happen and we're just getting started,” said Adam Gerardo, a cover driver from Local 512 in Jacksonville, Florida.

UPS Teamsters will vote on the tentative agreement by mail between August 3 and August 22.

Read the full tentative agreement here.

#UnitedStates #Teamsters

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) took another major step forward with the launching of an African American Commission and a Chicano/Latino plus other oppressed nationalities commission. Comrades from more than a dozen cities where the FRSO does organizing among African Americans, Chicanos, and other oppressed nationalities gathered to carry out a decision by the 9th Congress to establish these commissions.

Attendees ranged from veterans of the upsurge of the Asian American, Black, and Chicano peoples struggles in the 1960s and 1970s to a plurality of the meeting who joined in the last three years following the rebellions and protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The meeting also reflected a surge in organizing by the FRSO in new cities, in both the African American and Chicano nations in the South and Southwest, respectively.

Participants formed into the two commissions, discussing the Marxist-Leninist theory on the national question, and the particular experiences and thus demands of different oppressed nationalities within the United States. There was also discussion of key forces in the African American and Chicano nations, and how to further party-building and recruitment to the FRSO in the oppressed nations and among oppressed nationalities.

Michael Sampson, chair of the African American Commission, who became active in the 2012 struggle for justice for Trayvon Martin, said, “The creation of the African American Commission is a historic advance in our fight for Black liberation today.”

Sampson continued, “The Black liberation struggle is a struggle for national liberation. The creation of the African American commission will only strengthen the fight against national oppression because of the historic role that Black people have played, from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s to the fight against police crimes today.”

Marisol Marquez, co-chair of the Chicano/Latino (plus) Commission, who joined the struggle for immigrant rights more than ten years ago, said that “We were able to target areas within Aztlán, where the commission plans on expanding. Launching this new commission is a significant advancement for us Marxist-Leninists doing organizing among Chicanos and Latinos. It is a big step in accomplishing our goal for freedom from national oppression.”

Masao Suzuki, member of the FRSO Standing Committee and chair of the Joint Nationalities Commission, said, “The launching of the African American and Chicano/Latino (plus) commissions is a major victory on the path to building a new communist party in the United States. These commissions, along with our Labor Commission, will help advance the struggle for Marxist-Leninist leadership needed to forge a strategic alliance between the working class and the oppressed nationalities, which is at the core of the united front needed to overthrow the capitalist system and establish socialism in the United States.”

#UnitedStates #OppressedNationalities #frso #Socialism #commissions

On Sunday, July 16 at 3 p.m. Pacific time (4 p.m. Mountain / 5 p.m. Central / 6 p.m. Eastern), Freedom Road Socialist Organization will be hosting an online event entitled “UPS Teamsters on the Frontlines” featuring rank-and-file Teamsters, some of whom are FRSO members, speaking on the latest in their current struggle for a contract with UPS.

“This Sunday we'll be hearing from the front lines of the class war,” said Richard Blake, of Teamsters Local 512, “From real fighters who are leading the struggle on the shop floor.”

IBT President Sean O'Brien has made it clear that if no tentative agreement is reached by July 31, the Teamsters will strike UPS. Teamster locals across the country are preparing for a potential strike with practice pickets.

For over ten years, FRSO members who are Teamsters at UPS have organized to lead struggles on the shop floor, fight for and win positions of leadership, and build a fighting labor movement across the country.

Now, FRSO members who are rank-and-file UPS Teamsters across the country are on the front lines leading practice pickets, keeping their coworkers up to date on the contract negotiations, and preparing to strike if there is no tentative agreement by July 31.

You can register for the event at https://www.tinyurl.com/frsoteamsters

#UnitedStates #Teamsters

The new book, The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century, by Carlos Martinez and published by Praxis Press, is a valuable and important defense of socialism in the People’s Republic of China today. As the U.S. ramps up propaganda and aggression against China, this book addresses an important need, for everyone who wants a better world, to understand and defend China.

The book begins by acknowledging that there is a great deal of ignorance and confusion, especially in the imperialist countries, about China. Martinez writes, “Even among socialists and communists, there are misconceptions and important gaps in understanding.” He addresses these issues head on.

The first chapter focuses on the continuities of the revolution in China, from the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921 until today. Martinez gives an overview of the history of the Chinese revolution and defends that legacy of Mao Zedong, while giving a balanced account of Mao’s more controversial initiatives, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

For example, while acknowledging that the turmoil and disruption of the Cultural Revolution significantly impeded China’s development, he also points out that it “had a more directly useful outcome” in terms of preventing the “ideological decay that was taking place in the Soviet Union.” According to Martinez it “set the parameters of how far Reform and Opening Up could go” and “laid the groundwork for Deng Xiaoping’s Four Cardinal Principles, which the CPC continues to observe today: 1) We must keep to the socialist road; 2) We must uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship; 3) We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party; 4) We must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

Furthermore, he explains that the movement to send young intellectuals down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution “was a crucial factor in the development of a new generation of young intellectuals with a close understanding of the needs of the peasantry and the situation in the countryside.” It is noteworthy that Chinese President Xi Jinping was himself sent to the countryside as part of this movement.

Looking at the post-1978 Reform and Opening Up period initiated by Deng Xiaoping, Martinez recognizes that many see this period as “a turning point in the wrong direction.” Martinez argues against this view. Instead, Martinez notes, “Deng Xiaoping’s strong belief was that, unless the government delivered on a significant improvement in people’s standard of living, the entire socialist project would lose its legitimacy and therefore be in peril.”

This is a point that Martinez revisits in the chapter “Will China suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union?” He argues that the combination of economic stagnation and ideological decay in the USSR led to the collapse of socialism in the USSR.

This point should be made clearer. Indeed, while the material basis of Soviet revisionism was rooted in the economic reforms of the Khrushchev period, which emphasized market reforms, profitability, material incentives, and so on, a deciding factor was the question of the class struggle in the superstructure and the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism by the Soviet leadership. Contrast the People’s Republic of China’s Four Cardinal Principles with Khrushchev’s revisionist theses of “state of the whole people” and “party of the whole people,” negating the class character of the USSR and Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it is easy to see the gulf that stands between the two approaches.

Martinez rightly notes that the CPC’s reform period took a “grassroots” approach that was “patient, incremental, and results-oriented” while the Gorbachev “reforms” that brought about the final restoration of capitalism in the USSR in 1991, were undemocratically imposed on the Soviet people, rather than leveraging the creativity of the Soviet masses.

Martinez explains, “Although China’s reform process served to introduce market forces into the economy, the whole process was carried out under the tight control of the government and took place within the context of a planned economy.” Indeed, the commanding heights of the Chinese economy remain state owned, with state owned enterprises making up 60% of the economy; and most of the value created by the working class in China is socially distributed, going towards the betterment of society. And while the revisionists in the Soviet Union attacked the history of the USSR and spent 30 years dismantling the rule of the proletariat and its party, the opposite has taken place in China, where the CPC maintains its central, leading role, based on the scientific application of Marxism to Chinese conditions. In fact, when rightists in the CPC led by Zhao Ziyang tried to restore capitalism in 1989, the CPC stood firm in its commitment to the socialist road.

A highlight of the book is a careful and thorough analysis of “China’s long war against poverty.” The People’s Republic of China has eradicated extreme poverty. What does this mean? “At the start of the targeted poverty alleviation programme in 2014,” Martinez writes, “just under 100 million people were identified as living below the poverty line; seven years later, the number was zero.” The Chinese government defines extreme poverty alleviation in terms of what it calls the “two assurances and three guarantees.” As Martinez explains, “The two assurances are for adequate food and clothing; the three guarantees are for access to medical services, safe housing with drinking water and electricity, and at least nine years of free education.” He contrasts this to the advanced capitalist countries, where nothing is promised, where profit is more important than people, and where poverty and inequality are on the rise.

Likewise, the book highlights the People’s Republic of China’s commitment to ecological development. Martinez writes that, “Over the last decade in particular, China has emerged as the undisputed leader in the fight against climate breakdown, and the results of this leadership are reverberating globally.”

Against the charge from some, even on the Left, that China is imperialist, Martinez argues that “imperialism doesn’t look like this.” He explains the Leninist theory of imperialism as monopoly capitalism. According to Lenin, imperialism is based on the concentration of capital into monopolies, whereby the economy becomes dominated by a “financial oligarchy.” The export of capital takes center stage, and monopolist capitalist associations share the world among themselves, leading to the total division of the world among the imperialist powers. The October Revolution in 1917 ruptured this imperialist chain, and the other socialist countries, including China, followed suit.

Against the claim that China is imperialist, The East is Still Red emphasizes that China’s role in the developing world is qualitatively different from that of the imperialist countries. It acknowledges that imperialism has the function of locking in underdevelopment, while China’s role encourages development while respecting sovereignty. The book discusses this issue in terms of China’s role in “building a multipolar world.” The concept of “multipolarity” doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue, however, as Martinez himself acknowledges by saying that “the multipolar narrative doesn’t make explicit reference to anti-imperialism.”

Indeed, it would be clearer to understand the place of China in relation to the four fundamental contradictions operating on a world scale: the contradiction between the working class and the capitalists, the contradiction between the imperialist powers, the contradiction between the imperialists and the oppressed nations, and the contradiction between the imperialists and the socialist countries. Of these, the contradiction between the imperialists and the oppressed nations is primary, meaning it is the contradiction that is driving things on a world scale. What China is doing is providing aid to the countries of the developing world that allows them to avoid the liberalization, privatization, domination and plunder that are central to the neo-colonialist approach of the imperialist countries. While this development isn’t sufficient to bring socialism to those countries, it does serve to further weaken imperialism.

Importantly, Martinez also discusses the growing drive for war against China from the imperialist powers, especially the United States. He explains how the U.S. attempts to manufacture consent for aggression against China, and answers the propaganda with facts. Against the “Third Camp” Trotskyites who say “Neither a Washington nor Beijing,” Martinez is clear that they are, in fact, playing right into the hands of the imperialists.

The bulk of Chapter 5 of The East is Still Red is devoted to debunking the imperialist accusations that the People’s Republic of Cina is committing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. The book refutes the lie that the Chinese government is committing “cultural genocide” and is operating “concentration camps.” Similarly, it exposes the role of the U.S. in attempting to destabilize Xinjiang.

The book ends with a call to “unite to oppose the U.S.-led New Cold War on China,” and says that “All those that oppose imperialism must resolutely and consistently oppose the U.S.-led New Cold War in all its manifold forms.” This is certainly true, and this book makes a great contribution towards that effort.

#UnitedStates #BookReviews #China

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5.

The Tampa 5 have their second court appearance on Wednesday, July 12. The newly formed Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5 is calling for protests around the country to drop the charges. This call is in conjunction with the National Day of Protest already called for by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and by the New Students for a Democratic Society.

We are calling specifically on District Attorney Susan Lopez and Prosecutor Justin Diaz to drop the charges on Gia Davila, Jeanie Kida, Chrisley Carpio, Lauren Pineiro, and Laura Rodriguez. They are campus protesters who were attacked by the University of South Florida Police Department, and not the other way around.

Actions to Take on July 12:

1. Organize a protest – at a county courthouse, a local police department, on campus, wherever you think people can go and see you. Or find one near you!

2. Call in to the 13th Judicial Court of Florida State Attorney's Office to demand that the charges be dropped. We will send out call-in details – time, phone numbers, and script – closer to the date.

Actions to Take Anytime:

1. Host any or all of the Tampa 5 in your city or on your local campus as we conduct a speaking tour around the country

2. Sign your organization onto this petition and help us spread the word about the Tampa 5: https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

The Tampa 5 are students and workers who attended a Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society protest on March 6th to save diversity programs at the University of South Florida and to oppose Ron DeSantis' anti-education bill, HB 999. They were attacked, arrested, and now charged with felonies by the University of South Florida Police Department. Their felonies and potential prison time were doubled by the unelected, DeSantis-appointed state attorney, Susan Lopez, and her underling, Justin Diaz. They now face five to ten years in prison for exercising their right to protest and freedom of speech. The students were suspended and one of the five, the campus worker, Chrisley Carpio, was fired from her job at the university.

On June 24th, over 130 attendees of an emergency defense conference founded a new organization: the Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5, which is national in scope. We are embarking on a long-term defense campaign to get the charges dropped and to defend the right to free speech in the state of Florida, and we need your help!

Thanks so much for your solidarity and support so far, and we'll see you in the streets!

#UnitedStates #StudentMovement #PoliticalRepression #Tampa5

Max Shachtman was one of the original founders of the Trotskyite movement in the United States. He was a pragmatist, an opportunist even among opportunists, who led the first major split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1940. At that time, he broke with the orthodox Trotskyite position that the USSR should be understood as a “degenerated workers state” and that it instead had come to be ruled by a new “bureaucratic collectivist” class.

Under the cloak of the theory of the “degenerated workers state” the Trotskyites kept up the pretense of support for the Soviet Union while making every effort to subvert and delegitimize it. Shachtman abandoned that pretense and raised the slogan of “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism.” Shachtman instead said the Trotskyites should form a so-called “Third Camp” equally opposed to both. In reality, however, the Third Camp Trotskyites aimed most of their fire at the communist movement and the Soviet Union.

Shachtman didn’t limit himself to opposing socialism in the USSR. He also opposed national liberation here in the United States. Shachtman wrote an entire book devoted to denying the right to self-determination for the African American Nation in the Black Belt. In his essay “Race and Revolution” from 1933, while Communist-led sharecroppers were militantly resisting Jim Crow terror in the Deep South, Shachtman argued that national self-determination for African Americans was a “reactionary utopia.”

Later, two other figures rose to prominence among the Trotskyites that would come to shape Shachtmanite Trotskyism as it developed: Hal Draper and Tony Cliff. Draper was part of the group who split with Shachtman from SWP, while Cliff was a founder of British Trotskyism.

To put it briefly, Hal Draper argued that so-called “Stalinism” (that is, Marxism-Leninism) represented “socialism from above” whereas Trotskyism represented “socialism from below.” According to Draper, “Stalinism” imposes socialism on the masses “from above” while Trotskyism seeks the “self-emancipation” of the masses, “from below.” Of course, this is nonsense, as anyone with experience with either can attest.

Anyone who has ever encountered Trotskyism in practice can attest to its commandist, rule-or-ruin methods among the masses. This is what working class “self-emancipation” by the Trotskyites looks like! On the contrary, the Marxist-Leninist organizational method of the mass line, based on the principle of “from the masses to the masses'' represents the dialectical method of leadership, where correct ideas are drawn from the felt needs of the masses, concentrated and honed by theory, and then propagated among the masses through struggle. This is the way to build towards revolution. “Socialism from above” and “socialism from below” aren’t metaphysically separated as the Trotskyites would have it, but are dialectically intertwined.

Tony Cliff was a British Trotskyite who disagreed outwardly with Max Shachtman on many points, but truly represents an extension of his Third Camp theory. Cliff’s book State Capitalism in Russia critiques Trotsky’s theory of the “degenerated or deformed workers states” and Shachtman’s theory of “bureaucratic collectivism” in favor of the theory that the socialist countries are “state capitalist.”

According to Cliff, the socialist countries are “state capitalist” because the Law of Value still operates, they still engage in commodity production, and surplus value still exists. Cliff argues that a “permanent arms economy” prevents cyclical crises, ignoring the fact that constant military spending isn’t sufficient to prevent crises of overproduction in the imperialist countries. Regarding countries like Cuba and China, that Trotsky would call “deformed workers states,” Cliff says they are undergoing “deflected, state capitalist, permanent revolution.”

The simple truth is that Cliff argues from an idealist position. He fails to understand, as outlined by Marx in “Critique of the Gotha Program” and further explained by Lenin in The State and Revolution, that socialism cannot help but carry forward elements of capitalism. In reality, however, the fundamental contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between socialized production and private accumulation. This contradiction is at the heart of the crises that plague capitalism over and over again. The reason the socialist countries don’t experience these crises is that this contradiction largely no longer exists in socialist countries, or where it does it is only on a very small scale. The commanding heights of the economy in the socialist countries are controlled by the state, and the value created by the workers goes primarily into the betterment of society rather than the pockets of the members of the capitalist class.

Of course, problems exist in the socialist countries. Contradictions continue in the period of the socialist transition, including classes and class struggle. But socialism’s reason for existence is to eliminate those problems step by step. This demands a scientific and materialist approach, starting not with ideals, but with the way things really are.

In the United States, the most significant group to come out of this current was the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a group that constantly placed itself on the wrong side of nearly every struggle. The ISO were Third Camp Trotskyites who drew heavily from Draper and Cliff. They opposed the anti-imperialist struggles and the socialist countries internationally, and took either a rule-or-ruin approach to the mass struggles here, or merely shouted from the sidelines. Like the SWP in the 1930s, with its dissolution and entry into the Socialist Party to commandeer the SP or steal away its members, history has repeated itself with the ISO. The ISO likewise dissolved itself in 2019, and by now most of its former members are hiding out in the social-democratic big-tent organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

These modern-day Shachtmanites now try to inject their petty bourgeois ideology into the people’s struggles through DSA. For example, in an article from June 23, 2023 in The Tempest, entitled “Time for DSA’s internationalists to show solidarity with Ukraine,” they argue for the U.S. State Department’s line of support for the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and argue in favor of U.S. taxpayer money funding arms for Ukrainian forces. This position only diverts money away from people’s needs at home while supporting the imperialist war waged by the United States. It is shameful for so-called “socialists” and “internationalists” to support the cynical scheme to send the Ukrainian people to die as proxies for the hegemonic ambitions of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and their NATO allies. U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of the working class and oppressed people of the world. This is a point these “third camp” Trotskyites emphatically refuse to understand.

From every angle, beginning with Trotsky himself and moving through Cannon and Shachtman to Draper and Cliff, Trotskyism again and again presents itself as a lapdog of the U.S. ruling class against socialism and anti-imperialist struggles. Under the cover of its demand for “socialism from below” it opposes socialism everywhere it exists. While pretending to uphold proletarian democracy, it approaches the masses with a sectarian and dogmatic rule-or-ruin attitude. It is an ideology that has failed to lead a successful revolution anywhere, and it is a trap laid at the feet of the workers movement. It is an important task of Marxist-Leninists to expose the true nature of this ideology everywhere it rears its head.

#UnitedStates #MLTheory #AgainstTrotskyism

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

The fight for full equality does not follow a steady or straight-line path, and the ebbs and flows of the struggle for LGBTQ liberation are no exception. The past half century in the U.S. has seen the efforts of the gay and trans rights movements realized in the gradual decriminalization of same-sex relationships, protection against workplace discrimination, and the enshrinement of marriage equality by the Supreme Court. And yet, right-wing reactionaries are increasingly using an anti-LGBTQ agenda as a weapon. The homophobic and transphobic distortions of “family values” are serious attacks on our democratic rights and are a smokescreen to hide the destructive policies which hurt working and oppressed people.

Like every rebellion, the uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York City and the protest movement that followed shows that ongoing abuse and persecution makes insurrection inevitable. The police attack in the early hours of June 28, 1969 was not an anomaly, but a part of regular raids by law enforcement using the badge as a license to detain, harass and humiliate the gay, trans and gender-nonconforming people in their communal spaces.

The community that gathered at Stonewall that evening saw police descending on a LGBTQ gathering place, and they were reaching the end of their rope. The patrons did not take their harassment quietly, and police responded with violence – attempting to stamp out resistance with boots and billy clubs. The confrontation that night heightened and developed into a full-fledged rebellion spanning five nights, where, with bricks and molotov cocktails, the LGBTQ community fought back against police terror and demanded their right to exist in the spaces they created for themselves.

Anti-LGBTQ attacks from the state

So far this year, 70 anti-LGBTQ laws have been passed across the U.S., including bans on gender-affirming healthcare, school curriculum censorship, and laws which give institutions a license to discriminate on the basis of gender and sexuality. State legislatures across the country have received over 520 bills that are explicitly anti-LGBTQ, and 220 of these specifically target transgender and other non-binary people. The proliferation of bills, including laws that strip away hard-fought-for rights and protections, show that far-right reactionaries and the state are marching forward with a coordinated attack meant to force LGBTQ people back into the closet.

The most aggressive advances of anti-LGBTQ legislation have come down in Florida, Texas, Tennessee and North Dakota, but a number of other southern and midwestern states are not far behind. There is a critical struggle to demarcate sanctuary cities in states that have stronger legal protections for LGBTQ people on the books, for those seeking refuge and access to life-saving resources like gender-affirming healthcare, and to demand that those cities offer more than just a symbolic welcome. At the same time, protest movements and many hundreds marching on state capitols in Louisiana, Texas and Florida send a clear message – we are going to stay and fight.

Stonewall’s Legacy

As we reflect on that night at Stonewall and the liberation struggles that came before and after it, we’re reminded of what’s at stake, and all we have to gain. The uprising at Stonewall was not the first uprising against homophobic and transphobic police brutality in the late 1960s. That watershed moment was an unavoidable development of a broader movement, including many other protests in response to anti-LGBT police raids, such as the 1966 Compton Cafeteria riot in San Francisco, and the Black Cat Tavern Protest in Los Angeles. The refusal to accept the violence and dehumanization was growing, and Stonewall sparked the broad base of oppressed people to collective action and organization reaching far from the site of the original uprising.

LGBTQ people were present and fighting in the firestorm of mass struggles of the late 60s and early 70s – women's liberation, anti-war, and in the particular the Black liberation movement. A number of the leaders in the protests after the Stonewall rebellion had been active in those other movements. These were the radical politics taken into the new formations. The Gay Liberation Front groups positioned their fight in solidarity with these movements, with national-liberation struggles and the fight against capitalist exploitation.

This organizing context meant an LGBTQ mass movement could emerge in the streets after Stonewall to change the course of the movement’s history. The attack by police that night was answered by a refusal to back down quietly.

Building a grassroots movement

The anti-LGBT attacks from the state have shown that the meager legislative gains in the past period were not only a false promise of safety, but also not even a permanent one. Equal rights in marriage, laws against housing and employment discrimination – these were concessions made by the monopoly capitalists that paper over the fight for full equality and liberation that still rages on.

The limited access or outright denial of vital healthcare for trans people, the homelessness faced disproportionately by LGBTQ youth, an education that hides the full history and humanity of LGBT people in our public school system – this is what we mean by a lack of equality, and why the fight continues.

Our task is in building a mass movement that is rooted in grassroots struggle that is bold enough to demand real and sweeping changes. Taking back Pride is recognizing that power comes from the people. We are not abandoning the fight for full equality and an end to all oppression.

#UnitedStates

Carlos Montes, a member of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, condemned the Supreme Court for their June 29 ruling that bans affirmative action at colleges and universities.

“The successful struggle for affirmative action in the late sixties opened the doors to higher education for thousands of African Americans, Chicanos and other underrepresented oppressed nationalities,” said Montes.

He continued, “This opened the doors to thousands of African Americans and Chicanos to become educators, lawyers, doctors and other professionals. This led to improvements in the quality of life for oppressed nationality communities!”

The Supreme Court ruling came on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Dodd decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The right-wing majority of the court is part of the growing attacks by the right on women, LGBTQ people and oppressed nationalities. There are bills in states around the country aiming to limit so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” or DEI programs designed to admit and graduate more oppressed nationality students, and this ruling will just add fuel to the fire.

Those who are fighting back are being repressed by the government. The latest example is the Tampa 5, who the University of South Florida and the DeSantis administration is trying to jail. The campus activists were demanding more Black students and defending DEI programs.

#UnitedStates #SupremeCourt