World

May 20th marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Akın Reçber; the Fourth Red Rose (Turkish: Dördüncü Kızıl Gülü) of May Day 1996, who died on May 20, 1996 as a result of the brutal torture he endured in police custody. Despite the brutal torture, Akın Reçber resisted to the end, and for thirty years his courage and determination have continued to live on in our struggle.

Well before Magyar took office, the LGBTQI+ rights and labor movements won significant victories against Orban. Securing those victories will require Hungarian workers to get ready to face the new boss

The meeting underscores what a segment of the global left denies: the Trump-Xi Jinping summit is a meeting between the world’s two leading imperialist powers. And this is far more significant than Trump’s last visit, during his first term.

The uprising encompasses multiple social sectors united in the streets. What began as a list of economic demands has turned into a unanimous call for the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz: Bolivian Workers’ Confederation (COB): on indefinite general strike, demanding real wage increases in the face of devaluation. Peasant and Indigenous Unions: The ‘Túpac Katari’ Federation maintains a total blockade of roads in the Altiplano. Peasants from the Amazon marched on foot for 24 days toward the capital. The Red Ponchos: The historic Aymara indigenous movement from the province of Omasuyos has joined the mass mobilizations through indefinite road blockades, strategic encirclements, and fierce resistance in the Altiplano region and at the main access points to the cities of El Alto and La Paz. Miners and Teachers: Massive columns of miners marched through downtown La Paz, while teachers brought educational activities to a standstill, demanding budget improvements. Marches by social sectors toward the seat of government: Popular formations are walking from Oruro to besiege the capital.

Nearly 5000 protesters assembled in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday, May 16, as part of the emergency mobilization dubbed All Roads Lead to the South.  The Montgomery rally followed the recreation of a segment of the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965, when 600 protesters were attacked by state troopers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, an event that has come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”  Faith leaders, politicians, and activists joined figures like the “oldest living foot soldier” from that original crossing, 84-year-old Annie Mae Avery, and Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who was an eight-year-old participant and victim of the police assault. These mobilizations were a response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling on the case of Louisiana v. Callais, which granted Louisiana the right to gerrymander voting districts to make Black representation to Congress nearly impossible. Within days of the verdict, other white Southern state governors and legislators rushed to use the ruling to squash the electoral voice of the Black community. This includes efforts in Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

For working-class people, the crisis of affordability has become more dire. Prices have been rising, rents are out of control, and many people work more than one job just to run in place. Many young workers are saddled with high debt from student loans. It’s not lost on them that the government, which is quick to bail out banks and corporations, has done nothing to help them. The Affordability Agenda highlights the basic bread and butter questions that form the affordability crisis, calling for affordable housing, good well-paying jobs and an end to wage stagnation, affordable universal needs such as “child care with fair provider wages, free school meals and expanded food assistance alongside anti-gouging measures.” The Agenda also calls for free higher education, comprehensive health care for all, free public transit, and publicly controlled utilities. While the planks in this program are both correct and supportable, there are limitations. If there is one lesson of the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, it is that no reform, no matter how hard won it might be, is permanent as long as capitalism continues to exist.

After ten days of being held captive and subjected to torture and abuse at the hands of the genocidal state of Israel, the coordinators of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), Thiago Ávila and Saif Abukeshek, were finally released this week and were able to return to Brazil and Spain, respectively. The crowd that greeted them highlighted the strength of the international mobilization and the relief felt, in Thiago’s words upon his arrival, at the “rectification of a violation.”

How can we defend unconditional support for the Palestinian liberation struggle—including the right to resistance—within the space of bourgeois democracy, especially when the government seeks precisely to suppress that support? The answer lies neither in adapting to the rules of the game nor in an abstract rejection of the legal arena. It is possible—and necessary—to use the very contradictions of bourgeois democracy against it. How can revolutionaries and those in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle use the formal freedoms of bourgeois democracy—freedom of speech, assembly, and the press; due process of law—to defend the right to self-determination, which includes, as the UN itself recognizes, “the struggle by all available means, including armed struggle”? This is the central contradiction we face. On the one hand, liberal democracies have been passing laws that equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, criminalizing BDS, banning slogans like “from the river to the sea,” and persecuting activists. On the other hand, we know that abandoning the legal arena means abandoning the working class and the youth to repression without defense.

Around the world, Zionist organizations have been leading a charge against free speech based on cynical, false charges of antisemitism.

Longtime industrial union leader and political activist faces 2 years' sentence for speech in defense of Palestinian liberation. His life story is the story of the Brazilian working class and pro-democracy movements.

Zé Maria's conviction anticipates the contents of Bill 1.424/2026, authored by Congresswoman Tabata Amaral (PSB-SP), which conflates anti-Zionism (opposition to Zionism, a colonial project) with antisemitism.

First published by the IWL in 2022 A confusion, always lurking but gaining traction in recent days, is that anti-Zionism is somehow a form of antisemitism. Nothing could be further from the truth. We understand that there are three types of confusion regarding this: the first is deliberate and therefore criminal, as done by the […]

Below, we publish an English translation of an attack against Zé Maria authored by Demétrio Magnoli in the major Brazilian newspaper, Folha do S. Paulo, followed by a response from Zé Maria published in the same paper. Original links to the Portuguese articles in the Folha are included. Freedom for antisemitic opinion By Demétrio Magnoli […]

Statement published on April 30, 2026Link (Portuguese) – https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/solidariedade-a-ze-maria-contra-arbitrariedade-censura-e-repressao-7a04 Brazilian trade union centers repudiate the conviction imposed by the 4th Federal Criminal Court of São Paulo on the national president of the PSTU, José Maria de Almeida. He was sentenced to two years in prison, in an open regime, for a speech in which he denounced […]

The Brazil-Palestine Institute (IBRASPAL) expresses its vehement repudiation of the conviction of political leader José Maria de Almeida (Zé Maria), president of the PSTU, by the 4th Federal Criminal Court, which sentenced him to two years in prison under the accusation of “racism.”This is a serious and alarming decision that criminalizes a legitimate political position: […]

Introduction José Maria de Almeida, Zé Maria, national president of the Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU), was sentenced to two years house arrest by the Federal Court in a case brought by the Israeli Confederation of Brazil together with the Israeli Federation of the State of São Paulo (case no. 5004694-46.2024.4.03.6181), under accusation of racism […]