America

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.

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.

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 […]

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 […]

Thiago and Saif were abducted last week in international waters by Israeli forces, more than a thousand kilometers from Gaza, while sailing on a humanitarian mission in support of the Palestinian people. Of the 180 activists abducted, most were released after 48 hours, but Thiago and Saif remain in detention, subjected to interrogation and physical and psychological torture. In yet another affront to international law, the Israeli court decided on Monday, 4 May to extend the detention of humanitarian activists Thiago Ávila, from Brazil, and Saif AbuKeshek, members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, for six more days. The decision was made by the Ashkelon Magistrates’ Court, which granted the Israeli government’s request to keep them in custody until next Sunday (10 May) at 9 a.m., without presenting any formal charges against either of them.

My daughter, Carolina Garzón, disappeared in Quito, Ecuador, on 28 April 2012, while she was on holiday with classmates from the District University of Bogotá, where she was studying. Aged 22, she was a student activist and a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PST). The presidents of Ecuador and Colombia at that time were […]

The demonization and attack on immigrants remains a bipartisan project. Case in point, this past week the governor’s office of California announced that it will be turning over the driver’s license data of all 1 million undocumented immigrant drivers in the state to a federal database where their names, information, and addresses can be looked up. While implementation may be dependent on the legislature voting funds for the process, this decision has not yet been legally challenged and as of yet there have been no rallies opposing it. This is coming from the Democratic Party—the party that says it stands with immigrants! If they are willing to do this today, what will they do next?

On Tuesday, the 28th, the 4th Federal Criminal Court sentenced PSTU President Zé María to two years in prison for the crime of “racism.” What is most surprising is that the decision stems from a speech by Zé María in defense of the Palestinian people, denouncing the genocide and the colonialist regime imposed by the State of Israel on occupied Palestine. In the face of a decision with no legal basis, the PSTU will appeal to the Federal Court of São Paulo (TRF3). Beyond that, the party will not back down one inch from its condemnation of the State of Israel and the successive crimes against humanity it has been perpetrating under the gaze of the world.

Between Monday, March 16, and Saturday, April 4, a predominately immigrant workforce shut down one of the largest beef processing plants in the country. Beyond the “bread and butter” issues of wages, healthcare and safety this strike had much larger political implications about the ability of immigrant workers to organize and fight back against employer and government attacks in the workplace and community. The strike certainly raised questions about the difficulties workers face in winning contracts that deliver big economic packages and make meaningful long term gains. But what the strike lacked in financial impact it made up for as an example of fearless union members coming together from dozens of different ethnic backgrounds to stand up and fight.

Whether it's taking jobs, pricing out utilities or polluting neighborhoods, capitalist AI is an obvious menace. The fightback it's provoking also has immense potential

Pakistan’s role as an international mediator is not a sign of structural change, but a reconfiguration within the same system. The state uses its geographic position to enhance its relevance among competing global powers while managing internal instability. This external role is transformed into an ideological narrative domestically. State media and official discourse present Pakistan as an emerging global actor and an indispensable force for peace. At a time when the population faces inflation, unemployment, and severe economic pressure alongside repression, this narrative functions as a substitute form of hope—that international recognition is improving and future conditions will become better.

The recent detention of Guillermo Medina Reyes by ICE agents in San Jose, Calif., is a direct attack against immigrants and against the entire working class of this country. His arrest is part of a state offensive that combines immigration repression, the criminalization of protest, and a detention apparatus that clearly serves the interests of the ruling classes. Guillermo’s case cannot be understood outside the concrete functioning of the capitalist state—a set of institutions (police, courts, legislatures, national and local executive bodies, prisons, ICE) designed by the boss class to control, divide, and discipline the working class, particularly its immigrant sectors.