United States

Across the United States over 60 universities and colleges have seen students and faculty organising encampments in a growing movement against the massacre in Gaza. A whole generation is being politicised and drawing conclusions about the nature of imperialism, the role of the police and the state and the need for collective action.

Protests against Israel’s American-backed genocidal onslaught in Gaza are escalating on campuses across the country. On April 17, students at Columbia University in New York City set up the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” demanding the university divest from Israel and companies that profit off the slaughter. The protest coincided with Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s appearance at a Congressional hearing aimed at slandering the Palestine solidarity movement as

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The term “to shed crocodile tears” derives from the fact that crocodiles have been noted to shed tears as they consume their victims. According to the Collins Dictionary, the meaning of the saying is “to pretend to be sad or to sympathise with someone without really caring about them.” Crocodiles do indeed produce tears, but they serve to keep the eyes clean and lubricated and are in no way connected to emotions. Today, we have many crocodiles in human form – they are called Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, newspaper editors, and so on. But Biden stands out clearly as the Chief Crocodile.

Last Sunday, our US comrades announced the launch of a brand new organisation: the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA). In just a week, it has caused something of a sensation. Social, mainstream, and state media outlets quickly picked up on the news. In total, millions in the US, and hundreds of millions around the world have seen the launch videos after being picked up by state media in a number of countries. The announcement has become a beacon for communists and class fighters across the continent and beyond, with our US comrades being flooded with hundreds of write-ins in just one week.

On February 25, hundreds of comrades gathered across the United States to discuss the founding of the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA)—a new political party for the new generation of class fighters eager to get active and organized in the belly of the beast. The meeting ushered in a new chapter for American communism. In the coming years, communism has the potential to become a mass political force for the first time in generations.

Yesterday afternoon, active-duty member of the US Air Force Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, in protest against US imperialism’s complicity with the war on Gaza. The news of this brave act of self-sacrifice by a single man has powerfully echoed through the hearts of hundreds of millions of men and women.

The Iowa caucus has kicked off another presidential election. Once again, we are told by the billionaire media that it will be a “historic election” that will shape the future of the country and the world. Insofar as the campaign is already accelerating the instability of bourgeois rule in the world’s most powerful country, they have a point.

The United Auto Workers’ (UAW) contracts with the Big Three automakers—GM, Ford, and Stellantis—all expired on September 15, 2023. Shawn Fain and the new UAW leadership were willing to lead the workers on strike. History shows that workers can win more with a fight than when no struggle is engaged in at all. However, Fain put forward a strategy of the “stand-up” strike, which he argued would be this generation’s answer to the sitdown strikes of the 1930s.

On the night of November 29, 2023, the public was informed of the death of Henry A. Kissinger, former National Security Adviser to the President and a former US Secretary of State. The bourgeois media along with various statesmen and politicians are shedding tears for their late loyal servant.

Israel’s decades of aggression against the Palestinian people reached a tipping point in the past week, sparking an almighty blowback. As could have been expected, this was met with brutal reprisals by Israel, which has been bombing Gaza savagely and indiscriminately for almost a week. As it prepares for a likely ground invasion of Gaza, Israel has ordered one million people to flee south—an impossible task, as there is nowhere in the world’s largest open-air prison to go.

Our comrades in the United States published the following article as the US government once again entered deadlock over the debt ceiling. Within hours of its publication, Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy came to a deal for a mere 45-day budget stopgap with the Democrats. Days later, in an unprecedented move, he was ousted thanks to a group of right-wing Republicans angry at the deal – a first in US history. These rollercoaster events show the turmoil wracking the regime in the US.

The ongoing UAW strike represents a historic opportunity for the labor movement, which all workers and all revolutionary youth must vigorously support. In a new twist, Joe Biden—an enemy of workers the world over, and head of the most reactionary imperialist power on the planet—showed up in Michigan yesterday to “support” striking workers.

In our recent article on the UAW contract battle, we said that this would be a big test for Shawn Fain and the new UAW leadership. We explained that the key question would be whether the new UAW leaders would try to lead a struggle within the limits of what is acceptable to the capitalist system, or whether they would challenge the very system that demands poor wages and conditions. The Flint Sit-Down strike of 1936–37 and other class-struggle plant occupations threw down the gauntlet to the employers: Who really runs the factory—the workers or the owners?

Autoworkers have endured decades of eroding wages and worsening working conditions as the Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—have shored up their profits by taking it out of the hides of the workers. But these workers are saying “enough is enough!” As a result, 150,000 union auto workers are gearing up for strike action in the US, as their contract with these companies approaches a September 14 expiration date.

The state of Texas is often viewed as an impenetrable cesspool of conservatism. Texas and other Southern states are known for the frequent attacks by the ruling class and their state governments against workers, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, etc., and many people write off the state entirely, thinking that this stranglehold can’t be broken.