What Future For Young People?
What kind of future is this society offering to young people today? From work to higher education, it seems like all the doors are being slammed shut. Pathways that are supposed to help you get ahead end up being dead ends. Try to get a job? You end up competing with millions of other people […]
New Orleans – Ten Years After Hurricane Katrina
Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina landed on the coast of Louisiana, flooding New Orleans. Even though this was a massive hurricane, the chaos that followed was man made. Who can forget the TV images of New Orleans mostly black residents, flooded out of their homes with no safe place to go, no medical care for […]
Elections 2016: A New Opening or Business as Usual?
Two opposing voices have emerged amidst popular disgust over politics in Washington D.C. – those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They have both received a great deal of media attention and have generated a visible public response. It would be a serious mistake to dismiss Trump as a loud-mouthed clown. European rightwing parties, once […]
Fight Back Against the Attacks
“De Juniac, resign”, “Management, resign”, “Valls, sold out to the bosses!” … “Fed up to be played off against each other”. This is how hundreds of Air France employees demonstrated Monday morning, interrupting the extraordinary Central Works Council. Two members of management wanting to escape any discussion… have lost their shirts. Valls and others condemn […]
The Middle East – Ripped Apart by Imperialism
On September 30th, Russian bombs began falling on Syria. Russian jets targeted Islamic State bases as well as militant groups backed by the CIA to oppose the Islamic State. This makes Russia the thirteenth country to bomb Syria in the past few years. These bombs and missiles are launched by countries set on maintaining their […]
People Make History – Not Politicians
Every election season we are reminded about how important it is to exercise our right to vote. We are told to hold our breaths and pick between two parties that don’t represent our interest. We are told that voting is the way to change things. We are told that the Democratic Party is the party […]
When Revolutionaries Stood in Elections
In the elections most people have experienced, no matter how appealing the candidates seem, something remains exactly the same – the candidates are promising to run the system in our interests. Even so-called progressives like Bernie Sanders only promise better versions of the same system. They believe the best we can have is a slightly […]
2016 Elections: No Choice for the Working Class
The 2016 Presidential election primaries have begun. Many working people are distrustful of both political parties and politicians in general. President Obama’s approval rating has stayed around 40 percent while the approval rate for the U.S. Congress has been below 20 percent for over a year. In an April 2014 poll, a record high of […]
VW or The ABCs of Capitalist Profit
Caught with their hand in the cookie jar! Following the revelations of the US Environment Protection Agency, the Volkswagen Group had to admit to fraud. Eleven million of its diesel vehicles worldwide have been programmed to reduce polluting emissions during certification tests. But on the road, these cars emit up to 35 times more polluting […]
Elections 2016: A New Opening Or Business As Usual?
Two opposing voices have emerged amidst popular disgust over politics in Washington D.C. – those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They have both received a great deal of media attention and have generated a visible public response. It would be a serious mistake to dismiss Trump as a loud-mouthed clown. European right-wing parties, once […]
Migrants: We Can Fight Unemployment By Standing Together!
The migrants continue to make their way to the gates of a Europe that has closed its borders: barbed wires erected by Hungary on its border with Serbia; columns of exhausted refugees trying to reach the border with Croatia, only to face another wall, a wall of police officers seeking to channel them with batons. […]
The Refugee Crisis Is Our Crisis
Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, half the entire population of Syria – more than 11.5 million people have been forced from their homes. More than 300,000 have been killed, 150,000 in the last year. Over four million Syrians have fled the country, into neighboring countries. The people attempting to escape to Europe […]
Welcome To Our Future Comrades!
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched this weekend in London, Copenhagen, Madrid, Stockholm and other European cities to demonstrate their support for the refugees. “Refugees Welcome” and “Open the borders” could be read on the banners. More than ever, we will need to again express our solidarity with these families, with these workers who risk […]
Three Days When Labor Showed Its Power
For those of us who have jobs, Labor Day can mean a day off work to spend with family and friends or maybe overtime. Some unions may organize a barbecue. But how much does this holiday have to do with honoring our contributions to society or celebrating our history? Today it can seem like we […]
A Recovery Only For The Rich
It has been seven years since the economic crash of 2008 – when tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and millions of families were kicked out of their homes. The government’s response to this crash is well known – they gave trillions of dollars to bail out corporations and the financial institutions that […]
Killed By Cops
In 2015, there have been 791 people killed by the police. Of those people, 103 of them were killed in the month of August alone. The youngest was 12 years old, while the oldest was 65 years old. They include Freddie Grey whose spine was severed while riding unrestrained in a Baltimore police van. They […]
Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton is the story of the rap group NWA, which launched the careers of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and the late Eazy-E. The story revolves around the group’s struggle to make their music while being manipulated by their management. As many critics have pointed out, the film avoids important and ugly parts of […]
The 1934 Minneapolis General Strike
The Minneapolis strikes of 1934 have always occupied a special place in the historical understanding of the Trotskyist movement
What Future For Young People?
What kind of future is this society offering to young people today? From work to higher education, it seems like all the doors are being slammed shut. Pathways that are supposed to help you get ahead end up being dead ends. Try to get a job? You end up competing with millions of other people […]
Puerto Rico Debt Crisis – The Rich Make The Poor Pay
On July 7, the Puerto Rico government failed to make a 5.8 million dollar payment due on the Island’s immense 72 billion dollar debt to Wall Street banks. The governor of Puerto Rico explained that the Island’s debts were unpayable given the long-term decline of its economy. Immediately following Puerto Rico’s default, the bankers demanded […]
Back to School in a Failing Society
School bells are ringing again as students are going back to their own daily grind behind the desks at the public schools. Cramming into over-crowded classrooms with insufficient resources, students are facing an uphill battle looking at their future. Parents have to watch their children go out the door into a more dangerous world with […]
The Origins of the Police
For most of human history, daily issues of society were settled by people themselves, in their communities. There weren’t always police on every street corner with the power to stop, search, and harass people in the name of the law. Police forces were introduced by governments controlled by the wealthy, not to protect people but […]
A Nation of Mass Incarceration
The US has the largest prison population in the world. With five percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, half a million more than China, which has five times the population. There are about 2.3 million prisoners in the US and about seven million either locked up or on […]
Imagine If…
Imagine If… Today we know that the world is divided into the one percent and the 99 percent. While most people are struggling to survive, a small portion of the population is living in luxury. It doesn’t have to be this way. The problem today is one of maximizing our possibilities. Imagine if the 99 […]
Climate Change? No! We Need a System Change!
There have been five major extinction events on earth where most of the larger plant and animal species were wiped out. The last extinction killed the dinosaurs. An asteroid crashing into earth and drastically changing the climate caused that extinction. Now we are living in what could be the sixth extinction. But this time, our […]
Racism – A Cancer of This Society
We live in a society based on divisions. The main division, which is hardly ever discussed, is the division between those who control the wealth and productive forces of society, and those who do the work. Those in control of the economy determine what to produce, who will produce it and who it is produced […]
Women Hold Up Half the Sky…
But Don’t Have Half the Power or Half the Wealth The claim that the division between the sexes today is natural, or has always been this way, is not true. For most of human existence humans lived in small groups, worked together, shared the resources and took collective responsibility for the young and the old. […]
School – Education or Adaptation?
Almost everyone who is involved in education knows that it isn’t working the way it should be. School days can be spent racing from class to class with no time to think. Many just wait for the day to end. Both students and teachers can feel trapped in classes that seem boring or irrelevant. It […]
Capitalism – A System of Constant War
We live in a world ravaged by endless war. The estimated death toll from wars in the 20th century is over 187 million, not to mention the millions of people whose lives were left in ruins in the aftermath of these wars. The wars of the past century and of today cannot simply be explained […]
What Kind of World Do We Want to Live In?
The school year is beginning. This year is another opportunity to shape the path that your life will take. But as we get ready for the hard work of the school year, we should ask ourselves: what kind of society are we inheriting? Today, young people are forced to deal with the stresses of an […]
Our World is Full of Contradictions – Enormous Possibilities Wasted by Exploitation and War
We live in a world threatened by mass extinctions. Carbon emissions and other pollution have heated the planet almost past the point of no return. We live in a world at war. Corporations and banks rake in huge profits, while tens of thousands are killed, injured, and millions made homeless and turned into refugees. Factories […]
Our Solution Isn’t At The Ballot Box
Fox News staged the first Republican presidential debate last week. While there were differences in style among the candidates and they wanted to claim their own political territory, they all promoted pretty much the same messages. They attacked immigrants, especially so-called illegal immigrants – each trying to sound tougher than the next with their proposals […]
Summertime Should Be Easy!
The summer months are a time to spend with our families, visit relatives in other cities, and simply hang out and get some rest. But for workers, the family time and relaxation has to be squeezed into our schedules before we have to clock back in to work. Without a job all you have is […]
Evictions Can Be Stopped
During the depression of the 1930s as many as 35 percent of workers were unemployed. They had no unemployment insurance and quickly fell behind in their rent. But much of the time they didn’t get thrown out of their homes because large numbers of people stood up together against the police to block evictions. With […]
What Happened to Public Housing?
In 1937, in a period when workers were fighting all over the country for jobs, wages, housing and more, the U.S. Government began a program that promised to provide affordable public housing for low-income families. But the Government never followed through on this commitment. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that most black families […]
The Bay Area – Too Expensive to Live
The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,200 – the highest in the country. Oakland and San Francisco had the highest year-to-year increase in home prices in the country – over an 11 percent increase since last year. Rents in San Francisco increased over 14 percent in one year, and 19 percent in Oakland, […]
New York: Making the Housing Crisis Worse
Rents are skyrocketing in New York City. In the last five years rents have climbed 55 percent while wages have fallen by four percent (when adjusted for inflation). In the last six months, rents have soared twelve percent, and most New Yorkers pay over 42 percent of their income in housing. For most working-class renters […]
Houses For Living – Not For Profit
About 3.5 million Americans sleep in shelters, transitional housing, and places not meant for living. Another 7.5 million Americans have lost their homes and are living doubled-up with family or friends. Over 580,000 people sleep on the street. Over eleven million households pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing, living on the […]
The New Housing Crisis
The U.S. media and the politicians like to pretend that the economy has recovered and is picking up again. If you are among the less than one percent who own the banks, the corporations, the land, the wealth of this country, this is true – in fact times have rarely been better for them. But […]
Vultures Are Not Scared By Polls
Just days after being rejected by Greek voters in the referendum of July 5, the creditors’ austerity plan is back. First, the Greek Prime Minister himself pushed through, on July 9, at the Parliament, the exact program that was turned down by the ballot box. But that was not enough for Hollande and Merkel, who […]
We Can Say “No”
The leaders of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were determined, promising the flames of hell to the Greek population if it had the audacity to refuse the measures they wanted to impose. But this was not enough: 61% of Greek voters voted “No” in the referendum that asked if they were […]
The Fourth of July – Whose Revolution?
The Fourth of July is the time when we are supposed to celebrate the American Revolution by showing patriotism, watching fireworks, waving some flags, having a barbeque and going shopping. But if we look at the real history, there isn’t very much for us to celebrate. What was the American Revolution really about? Like many […]
Racism Must Be Opposed!
The horrific murder of nine Black people inside Charleston South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a tragic example of the racist violence at the core of this society. People across the country gathered to express their grief and anger and the politicians and spokespeople took the opportunity to join the tens of thousands […]
The Environmental Crisis – The Problem is Capitalism
download illustrated PDF of this pamphlet Contents Fighting For Our Planet – Fighting For A Future (April, 2014) Destruction of the Environment – A Ticking Time Bomb (April, 2014) Fracking – Another Sign of an Insane System (April, 2014) Keystone XL Pipeline – A Toxic Disaster (April, 2014) The Destruction Of West Virginia (November, 2013) […]
Ignominy in Power
The migrants of La Chapelle, in Paris, expelled by the police, and their brothers in Ventimiglia, blocked at the Franco-Italian border, may not have noticed, but yes, really, France is a land that welcomes the stranger, oh so humanitarian, as Valls (the Prime Minister) or Cazeneuve (the Interior Minister) would say. No worries for the […]
A Game For Us – Business For Them
Bay Area basketball fans have enjoyed a season of incredible ball playing. With the Warriors in the NBA playoffs thousands more have been drawn to watch. The skills and teamwork has made this a memorable playoff. Stephen Curry is a household name for those who rarely follow the game. The media has been full of […]
FIFA’s Corruption – Just The Tip of The Iceberg
On May 27th, Swiss police agents arrested nine officials of the International Federation of Football Associations or FIFA, the organization which governs major soccer tournaments including the World Cup. Along with these officials, five corporate executives from sports companies were arrested. The Swiss government is extraditing these officials to the U.S. where they have been […]
Amtrak: A Profit-Driven Tragedy
Last Tuesday an Amtrak train derailed, killing eight passengers and wounding 200 others. Quick to assure the public that nothing is wrong with the Amtrak system, politicians and the media agreed on their reason for the crash: “Engineer Error.” They want us to believe this crash happened because of a neglectful train engineer, who took […]
Baltimore: For Once No Business As Usual
The announcement by Marilyn Mobley, Baltimore State’s Attorney, that the medical examiner’s report showed that Freddie Gray’s death was a homicide, came as a great surprise. Even more surprising was that six police officers were charged with his murder. Gray was chased down by three cops for no legal reason. He was then thrown in […]
California’s Drought: A Wasteful System
Because of this extreme drought, California has been hit with a massive water shortage, as most of its water sources are at record low levels. The message from the politicians has been that individuals are to blame for massive amounts of water wasting. In March, Governor Brown issued an emergency water bill to reduce city […]