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The Corresponder
The Newsletter of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
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RESISTING TRUMPISM; ASSESSING FIGHTBACKS IN THE STREETS, ON CAMPUSES, AND THE VOTING BOOTHS
April 28, 2025, 8 pm Eastern
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)
Socialist Education Project (SEP)
4th Monday Webinar
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“That Americans seem to be rediscovering the art, science and potency of noncooperation — combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action — shows that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”
https://portside.org/2025-03-23/resistance-alive-and-well-united-states?utm_source=portside-general&utm_medium=email
This webinar will involve report backs and assessments of recent rallies, campus protests, and elections in the growing national resistance against Trump, MAGA, the oligarchy, and the threat of fascism. We will hear reports from labor and other social movement activists. We will then invite all participants in the webinar to report on events and organizing in their areas.
The webinar will be informative, inspiring, and will afford us the opportunity to reflect on the most effective forms of fightback.
Register below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6Q3CkfoyTy6xssHcmvdl6Q
...
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13 of 3,370
MLK was murdered 57 years ago today. (April 4th)
By Bill Fletcher
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While Dr. King was a very significant leader of the Black Freedom Movement, he was far from the only one and his leadership was constantly contested. He began as a 26 year old minister who found himself in the middle of a struggle in Montgomery, Alabama that he had never anticipated. Who would have expected a 26 year old leader at that point in time? Yet, there he was, and his age became one of the issues he had to struggle around, particularly with older veterans of the Black Freedom struggle.
The absence of a broader context has led most people to draw erroneous conclusions about the March on Washington. Though King's speech is most well known, the march started as a Black labor march, initiated by the Negro American Labor Council under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph. The NALC effort merged with that of the SCLC and, presto: August 1963.
Tensions within the liberal-to-progressive wing of the Black Freedom struggle were very intense. Roy Wilkins, of NAACP, was not at all pleased with King and his efforts at mass action. He resented the attention King received. There were others in that camp, but they had to handle these differences carefully due to the support that King was getting at a mass level. But to King's left, new issues emerged with Malcolm X, SNCC, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the explosion of Black Power. The entire question of the relationship of non-violent protest vs armed self-defense, as well as desegregation vs community control, not to mention matters of national self-determination, tore at the Black Freedom Movement. Though King managed many of these differences astutely, e.g., retaining a comradely, if not friendly relationship with Kwame Ture despite their political differences, it was becoming clear that 'one was dividing into two,' so to speak.
The last two years of King's life pointed to not only a challenge to his leadership--and I mean that on multiple levels--but also a strategic quandary for the Black Freedom Movement. In the aftermath of major legislative victories, such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, what next? And, of course, how to link the domestic struggles for civil and human rights with the global struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and white minority rule? These were questions King was grappling with until the moment of his death, and these issues divided the movement, a division that became more than apparent in the aftermath of King's death.
Martin Luther King was a unique revolutionary figure who was, in a very fundamental way, grappling with the challenges facing a freedom struggle, something that was in many respects an anti-colonial struggle, in a context where the victims of racist and national oppression were not the numerical majority. This led him to different conclusions than those advanced by many Black cultural and revolutionary nationalists. The differences were sometimes tactical, largely strategic, but rarely about the general goals (i.e., the end to Jim Crow, the expansion of democracy, peace). What King's tactical approach masked was his actual conclusion that his objectives could not be fully won within the context of capitalism. This conclusion has been suppressed in the popular imagination and media ever since April 1968. And Richard Nixon, as shrewd a politician as any, understood this perfectly well when he launched a double barrel assault on the Black Freedom Movement with both his so-called "Southern Strategy," as well as his call for "Black Capitalism."
We come not to mythologize Dr. King; we come to honor him, and to emulate his revolutionary essence.
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Sunday, April 6, 2025
HOOSIERS RALLY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN 2025:
IN THE TRADITION OF EUGENE V. DEBS
Harry Targ
Over 700 Greater Lafayette residents rallied around the Courthouse in a “Remove! Reverse! Reclaim!” rally, April 5, 2025. This rally, organized by many local groups including Indivisible, featured numerous colorful signs including “Morons are Gas Lighting America,” “Love Your Neighbor No Deportation,” “Hands Off Social Security, Our Bodies, Medicare/Medicaid, and Our Free Speech.” The rally included chanting, speeches, singalongs, and a march across the bridge from West Lafayette to Lafayette, Indiana. This rally, organized locally was part of over 1,000 rallies and marches around the country by millions of protesters who were saying “NO!” to virtually every policy instituted by the new Trump administration and the billionaires around him, especially Elon Musk.
As a participant in the 700-person rally against hate, the greed of the wealthy, and the enormous human suffering at home and abroad caused the Trump administration, I was proud to be a Hoosier. I was moved to reflect on the life of one of Indiana’s most renowned citizens, Eugene V. Debs, five time presidential candidate under the banner of the Socialist Party.
Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun (Eugene V. Debs).
Born and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs began his political life as a teenager, served a term in the Indiana legislature, worked on the railroad, and spearheaded the formation and national mobilization of the American Railway Union, an early industrial union. When the ARU supported a strike of Pullman workers in 1894, the federal government, encouraged by railroad moguls, bankers, and the media, sent troops to Chicago to crush the workers’ movement. Debs and some of his comrades were sentenced to six months in jail for leading the Pullman strike.
And it was in jail, reading, studying, and reflecting, that Debs became a Socialist. For the remainder of his life he worked to mobilize the working class to use the ballot, the strike, and mass actions to organize and agitate for a new, humane, Socialist society.
He believed that those who produced all the wealth of society, workers (Black/white, men/women, native born and immigrants) should receive the fruits of their labors. They should receive the value of what they produced. They should control the means of their production. And they should have a predominant voice in the political institutions in their society.
For thirty years as a leader of the newly constituted Socialist Party, Debs articulated this vision before hundreds of thousands of workers. He garnered millions of votes over his five presidential campaigns. His party, the Socialist Party, produced a national newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, in Emporia, Kansas, which at one time had 700,000 subscribers.
Debs’ last incarceration resulted from his violation of the Sedition Act which prohibited any public opposition to World War I. He had made it clear in his famous 1918 antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, that the global working class had no interest in war; that the ruling class of bankers and manufacturers declared wars that workers were forced to fight.
The Eugene V. Debs story is vividly portrayed in a 29-minute video on his life (still available). The video, divided into eleven chapters, briefly discusses the lack of contemporary awareness of Debs and his movement; the rise of finance and manufacturing capital and its war on workers; the emergence of the Socialist Party as one working class response to capitalist exploitation; and the personal biography of Debs, from his youth in Terre Haute Indiana to national and global acclaim. It highlights the theory that capitalism is an exploitative system that in the end was antithetical to the interests of workers. Capitalists seek to divide workers (by race, gender, ethnicity, and nation) to weaken their capacity to organize. Debs also emphasized the inextricable connection between capitalism and war.
http://youtu.be/w82pFvUq3o8.
Sure, Debs was an activist a long time ago. Times have changed. But what has not, was reflected in the 700 passionate marchers today in a small Indiana town. That is, these Hoosiers were marching for justice. It is a long march, but worth taking.
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Seminole County Ends Water Fluoridation
by Jay D. Jurie
On April 9, 2025 the Seminole County, Florida, Board of County Commissioners voted 4 - 1 to eliminate fluoridation in County-provided water supplies. The action taken by the Commission resonates wider than just one county and is considerably more significant than many may realize. Fluoride has been added to many local water supplies around the country since at least the early 1950s as a means of preventing or slowing the development of dental caries and other forms of tooth decay. In the late 1950s this public health measure became controversial when the far-right John Birch Society waged a campaign against fluoridation, claiming it was a Communist-inspired blow against individual freedom.
Since then multiple credible studies and evidence gathered by dentists has shown that properly-fluoridated water is a significant positive contribution to dental health. Not only that but oral health is a significant contributor to overall health and well-being. Poor dental health has been linked to other serious ailments such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, and worsened outcomes for those with diabetes.
In recent years the advent of anti-science and anti-vaccination misinformation has added new scare tactics to a reinvigorated right-wing fight against fluoridation. In Florida, appointed by far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis, this effort has been spearheaded by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. Renowned for misleading statements during the COVID pandemic and anti-vaccine pronouncements, several months ago Ladapo held a Fox News conference against fluoridation. He met with some success after he embarked on a statewide tour encouraging local governments to remove fluoride from their drinking water. According to Miami New Times, since November 2024 four Florida county governments, including Seminole, and sixteen Florida municipalities, including Longwood and Lake Mary in Seminole County, voted to discontinue fluoridation.
As growing evidence of the spread of this campaign and its success, Utah recently passed legislation banning the use of fluoride statewide, and at least nine other states, including Florida, are now considering similar laws. At the national level, on April 7, 2025, US Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a press statement that he had ordered a review panel to be convened and ordered the Centers for Disease Control to stop recommending fluoridation. On that same day, Trump-appointed EPA Director Lee Zeldin announced his agency would reconsider the use of fluoride. However, there is at least one state, Connecticut, looking at shoring up its fluoridation practices. It should be noted the CDC has considered water fluoridation as one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th Century.
In the face of decades of study and empirical evidence that have shown the benefits of proper levels of fluoridation, opponents of the practice have generated a number of scattered reports, mostly derived from foreign sources, that allege harmful side effects, especially to infant neurological development. These reports base their claims on fluoride levels that far exceed amounts that have been added to water supplies in the US. Perhaps most widely cited is a metastudy of 27 these reports based on fluoride levels at least twice those found in regulated US water supplies, and that produced inconclusive findings of any adverse effects. Citing this lopsided discrepancy in the viable evidence, one Seminole County commissioner voted in favor of continuing fluoridation practice.
In advance of the county meeting, this item was publicly announced and listed on the meeting agenda as a status report on fluoridation by the county utilities director. As it unfolded it became clear the underlying orientation of the report was an anti-fluoridation bias. At the conclusion of the director's presentation and after consulting with the county attorney the Board decided they wanted to do more than just hear the report, they decided they wanted to take action, to vote on the matter.
Constituting a majority, three of the commissioners, including its chair, then stated their minds were already made up in advance of the public hearing, they wanted to eliminate fluoridation. But as a hearing was already on the announced agenda, they then proceeded, but limited all public comments to a one hour total. At about 45 minutes into this, the chair prevented non-residents from testifying. Testimony from about ten persons with apparently some pro-fluoride expertise was thereby excluded.
Altogether about 20 people testified either pro or con, with about eight of us on behalf of fluoridation, the rest against. Those "against" were strongly influenced by anti-vaxx and misinformation stars US HHS Secretary Kennedy and FL Surgeon General Ladapo, along with various anti-science. anti-government, "fake news," perspectives as well as ungrounded personal beliefs. Proponents of continued fluoridation included two dentists, both impressively well-informed with evidence and experience illustrative of the benefits of fluoridated water.
In the lead-up to the vote, one of the two commissioners who had not earlier expressed an opinion related that while there were claims on "both sides" of the issue, in the final analysis she had to vote against continued fluoridation. Her statement revealed she doesn't understand a "preponderance of evidence" provides the basis of factual knowledge. The preponderant and long-standing reputable and verifiable evidence shows fluoride is both beneficial and safe if added correctly as a water treatment.
If more had showed up to testify on behalf of fluoride it wouldn't have made a difference since a majority of the commission had already made up their minds in advance of the meeting. That is, unless possibly hundreds more had shown up. That is an effect for which we must strive.
Still, even it it's not possible to galvanize a massive turn-out, it's important to show up and not let the right win by default. Something smoldering may eventually break out into the open. Besides which, this particular battle is not yet over. There are still municipalities in the county where fluoride will no doubt appear on the agenda. There is little doubt but that, like Utah, this issue will soon become formalized on the docket of the Florida Legislature. As noted above, it is already on local and state agendas around the country, and likely will become subject to federal regulation.
In conclusion, it is important that when and wherever possible people attend and participate in public hearings that involve the public interest. What occurred was not simply a matter of improved dental hygiene in one county, but part of an effort to fight ongoing attacks against public health in this country. Ultimately, not only the public health, safety, and well-being depend upon active civic engagement, but the future of democracy and our society. Please be assured the other side will show up and will make sure their voices are heard.
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By Carl Davidson on March 26, 2025
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By Caitlyn Scott
WTAE
Mar 23, 2025 -PITTSBURGH —Letter carriers in Pittsburgh participated in a nationwide rally Sunday in an effort to protect the United States Postal Service from what they say President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts and privatization could do to the organization and its workers.
The rally was held by the local union of Branch 84 alongside the National Association of Letter Carriers in the North Shore, which represents 2,800 carries in Allegheny, Washington, and Beaver counties.
"We're here to gather together to say no," Paul Rozzi, president of the Pennsylvania State Association of Letter Carriers, told Pittsburgh's Action News 4. "We don't want any of those things to happen. It doesn't only affect us, but it affects every patron."
The rallies across the nation come as Trump proposed moving the U.S. Postal Service under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover of the agency, which has operated as an independent entity since 1970.
Trump made the remarks at the swearing-in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He called the move a way to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.
"We hope that the Trump administration hears this message and we're not at war, but we're prepared to fight like hell," president of Branch 84 National Association of Letter Carriers of Pittsburgh Ted Lee said.
USPS says about 640,000 people would be affected by these changes if passed.
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Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America © 2025.
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The Tale of Two Spectacles: Trump's P.T. Barnum Tariffs vs. Cory Booker's Marathon Speech
Carl Davidson
Apr 06, 2025
LeftLinks Weekly, for April 4, 2024
Two men were at the top of the news this week. They were a dynamic duo of sorts, emerging as interconnecting opposites with clashing agendas and methods. Obviously, we are talking about President Donald Trump and the Honorable Cory Booker, Senator from New Jersey.
Let's start with President Trump and his pronouncement of 'Liberation Day.' Liberation from what, we might ask? No matter. In Trump’s mind, this is where the world economy will, in short order, yield to his demands and schemes around tariffs.
One thing you can say that sums up Trump: he is utterly shameless about lying to us. We know all politicians can lie at times, but Trump is in a wholly different league. He's our 21st Century P.T. Barum, reading the country as he would read a room, and figuring out how he can find enough suckers to fool most of the people part of the time. When he gets enough, he'll seize the option and go with it.
Take the picture of Trump with his chart showing the amounts that all the countries in the world are ripping us off, which is nearly all of them. Then, he shows us how he'll still be more than fair in retaliation and only hit them with tariffs for half the amounts.
What's wrong here? We owe it to Paul Krugmann, who knows a few things about economics, to point something out to us. Where in any existing social or economic realities do these numbers on the charts come from, Krugmann asks?
The answer: nowhere. They are entirely fake. Trump had his team simply make them up. You can try to make sense out of any of them, such as the E.U.’s balance of payments with the U.S., or the tariffs they have already placed on the U.S.
None of them fit. They're not even close. You can't stretch 3% to 30%. You might tweak it to 10 or 15 %, but the vast void remains. Trump is simply betting on no one looking them up. If someone does, like Krugmann, very few will listen to them. Why? As Trump always points out about all of his critics, they suffer from TDS, Trump derangement syndrome.
But stay with us for a bit more. There's a both a method and a message to Trump's madness.
Here's the first subtext: we are the victims of an unfair world conspiring against us. The second: Trump will get revenge for us against those looking down their noses at us. The
third: since we are still generous and fair people, we will even cut the bills due to us in half.
This politics has a name, revanchism, or revenging seeking. The last time we saw it in a big way was George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. But someone had to pay a price, no matter the costs in Iraqi lives and those of our soldiers. A earlier version was built up by the Nazis. Germany was dealt with unfairly at Versailles, so a new Nazi leadership had to reverse it, regardless of any treaties. Otherwise, Deutschland would never be respected.
Thus, today, despite all of his fakery, Trump still thinks we are due unlimited respect and deference from everyone. If Trump says Greenland and Canada belong to the U.S., his vision of a new world order must be accepted without complaints from the likes of Denmark.
We can get a peek at Trump's envisioned new world order by asking who's missing from the tariff list? Putin's Russia stands out. (Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were also missing, but since sanctions against them are already so ridiculously high, adding more might appear counter-productive). There's another subtext behind a soft handshake to Putin, while harshly leashing out at Ukraine and the rest of Europe.
It's an old trope of great Powers, with their ongoing redivision of the world. Trump wants to take us back to the era of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, pondering the globe and looking for weaknesses.
Trump wants U.S. sovereignty over all of the Western Hemisphere, starting by adding Canada and Greenland. Their homelands would become new U.S. states and territories. Then, Trump takes back the Canal Zone. On the other side of the globe, Russia gets to swallow Ukraine, bit by bit. Next, Putin can use all the rightwing parties he funds across Europe to have their countries submit to an envelopment into a new and wider Eurasian hegemony. All of the 'decadent LGBTQ Atlanticists' will be pushed back to the UK or the U.S.
What about China? Trump hits them hardest of all, with tariffs around 70% on nearly everything. What Trump ignores is the vast interconnections among Chinese, U.S, Japanese, and other worldwide capitalists. China's Ministry of Commerce replied curtly: " History shows that increasing tariffs cannot solve the United States' own problems. It harms U.S. interests and endangers global economic development as well as industrial and supply chain stability," according to the spokesperson. "There is no winner in a trade war, and protectionism leads nowhere," the spokesperson said.
China stuck back today with matching high tariffs on all U.S. goods. China is hard to bluff on such matters.
Trump and Putin may favor a Great Power 'new world order' taken from George Orwell's 1984: Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia, where two are always switching sides to subdue one. China. however, rejects such games. It usually prefers the current set of international rules for world order, the United Nations Charter, its world courts, and its General Assembly and Security Council, along with its welfare agencies and peacekeeping forces. It expresses no interest in a return to the hegemonic battles of an earlier age of imperialism.
Next, Trump has gone out of his way to insult and attack the Republic of South Africa. He has expelled its ambassador to the U.S. and resurrected the false claims of injustice toward the Afrikaners. Why this is so is a puzzle not simply explained by his current partnership with the Afrikaner-turned-American, Elon Musk. We do know, however, that Russia is deeply engaged with several African rebel groups and their irregular warfare. One could readily argue that feeding a growing hostility to the U.S. in Africa could be a backhanded assist to Russia's concerns on the continent, mainly extracting its mineral wealth.
What remains is an explosive wildcard in the Middle East. Under the radar, Trump has been shifting fleets of B2 'Stealth' bombers to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, within easy striking distance of Iran and its nuclear facilities. Trump has offensively demanded talks with Iran but so far has been rejected. Combined with the ongoing crises in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel's northern border regions, the whole region could blow up at any moment.
Now, set these depressing thoughts aside, and let us turn to Cory Booker. The New Jersey Senator took the spotlight from March 31 to April 1, 2025, when he opened a long speech on the Senate floor, pledging to continue as long as he was physically able. He lasted for 25 hours and five minutes.
What was the context? For months, the Democratic Party as a whole has been under intense pressure from its grassroots constituents, along with independents, to take a leading role in the fight against Trump and the MAGA bloc in Congress. Both Houses are divided by slim margins of less than 4 votes.
The Justice Democrats, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with Bernie Sanders, were the first to lead. Sanders formed an 'Anti-Oligarch' campaign, and together with AOC, saw tens of thousands turning out for their rallies in the Heartland states and in the Southwest. They are still going on.
What does Booker represent here? While he checks all the progressive boxes on key issues, Booker's political profile is a bit to the right of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He's not a member of it, he's just a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. But he springs surprises at times, taking direct actions placing him clearly on the left. Anyone among the top Democratic leaders could have taken an action like Booker's marathon speech, but he was first out of the gate. And he did an excellent job of it.
"When I started my floor speech in the Senate on Monday night," said Booker," I did it because the things that make our country different are under attack, and millions of people are asking us to speak up and acknowledge the crisis we are in. We need to keep at it. We need relentless calls to action. We need to continue to demand change until we receive change."
At the close of his speech, and several times within it, Booker made reference Georgia's Rep. John Lewis, RIP, and his advocacy of getting into 'good trouble, necessary trouble' as Cory's inspiration. Lewis was nearly beaten to death at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He had already been in 40 jails and had risen to be chairman of SNCC.
(This writer had Lewis stay with him and his two roommates for a few nights in our apartment at Penn State in 1963. He was quiet, determined, and with his bib blue jeans and clear vision, he inspired us all. He was raising money for SNCC campaigns. Our campus civil rights group helped him raise a bit, but we did more. We 'adopted' a SNCC project in Biloxi, Mississippi, then sent two of our members to work in it, and raised even more money, becoming 'Friends of SNCC.').
With 'good trouble,' Lewis was tapping into the driving force of the First Reconstruction, termed 'abolition democracy' by WEB DuBois. The force of abolition democracy energized much of Booker's speech and likely kept him going. He had to pass the speaking record of South Carolina's Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who, as Booker pointed out, engaged in the filibuster against the Civil Rights Bill to keep African Americans like Booker out of the Senate. Cory succeeded by a good margin.
Who will stand up next? We shall see. Tomorrow, April 5, a Saturday, will present a huge wave of protests against the Trump regime in both D.C. and every other state capital or major city across the country. We will join them and fan the flames for more. Most importantly, we will build our organizations, our central weapon against the money and guns of our adversaries. Work for an ongoing Spring Offensive. The prairie grass is dry, and sparks are falling everywhere.
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Sunday, March 30, 2025
RESISTANCE TO TRUMPISM AND THE RADICAL RIGHT AGENDA SPREADS LIKE WILDFIRE: In Indiana Also
Harry Targ
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An estimated 300 citizens of the Greater Lafayette, Indiana area assembled Sunday for a Town Hall with Congressman James Baird, who indicated he would not attend. Organized by Greater Lafayette Indivisible and allied local organizations people came with a sense of the immediacy of threats to healthcare, education, livable incomes, and the very soul of democracy.
Congressman Baird (a member of the three “B’s" and an "R” of Indiana politics) supports the Trump/Musk agenda to destroy democratic institutions and programs that serve the people.
The three “B’s are Governor Braun, Senator Banks, Congressman Baird, and the “R” is Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. Three of the four came from the 4th Congressional district of Indiana and all four oppose the role of government and policies that attendees came to support.
Congressman Baird, 4th Congressional District, for example, opposed the outcome of the 2020 elections, supports President Trumps anti-immigrant policies, supports military aid to Israel, and endorses the destruction of the Department of Education. As to the latter Baird stated on March 25, 2025 that;
“President Trump has made it clear: we are putting parents back in the driver’s seat of their children’s education, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Since the Department of Education was created in 1979 under President Carter, educational outcomes have not improved. Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds are at the lowest levels in decades, while average per-pupil spending has increased. Our children deserve better.”
While school choice policies have been a disaster for Hoosier education because funding for public education has been cut, Baird proudly pointed out that Indiana was an early state that encouraged them.
“Indiana has been a leader in school choice for years, ensuring every Hoosier family has the freedom to choose the educational option that best fits their children’s needs. This Executive Order is a monumental step in making school choice a reality for every family, improving educational outcomes for our students, empowering parents, and making American education great again.”
Attendees at the Town Hall spoke with anguished concern about threats to education, persons with serious mental health needs, impediments to women voters and families struggling to get by paycheck to paycheck. (As to the latter United Way empirical studies have found that nearly forty percent of Hoosier households earn below a livable wage). And many who spoke at the Town Hall pointed out that society’s wealth is increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a small number of billionaires.
The audience listening to these testimonies and the presentation by the Lafayette Indivisible moderator was energized and responded with enthusiasm to calls for united action in the weeks ahead. Attendees left the meeting with a sense of common purpose, a commitment to building a united front of groups: labor, healthcare, immigrant rights, anti-racism, women’s groups and progressives in both the Democratic and Republican parties.
The event was energizing and represented one local Indiana community’s response to the threats to democracy and human rights paralleling the grassroots organizing occurring all around the country. Scholars of social movements recently pointed out:
“That Americans seem to be rediscovering the art, science and potency of noncooperation — combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action — shows that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”
https://portside.org/2025-03-23/resistance-alive-and-well-united-states?utm_source=portside-general&utm_medium=email
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JFK Files: Revelations from the Covert Operations High Command
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Special Group and PFIAB Meeting Minutes Provide Dramatic View of CIA Operations
Top Secret Briefings Describe Clandestine Operations in Brazil, Chile, British Guiana, Haiti, Italy, Japan, and Congo, Among Other Targeted Countries
Washington, D.C., April 7, 2025 - Just six months before the 1964 military coup that overthrew the government of João Goulart in Brazil, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Plans Richard Helms briefed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) on CIA clandestine operations in South America’s largest country. “[CIA] is carrying out covert action in the labor movement and CIA believes that Communist control can be weakened,” Helms advised board members who monitored intelligence operations on behalf of President Kennedy, according to a fully declassified summary of the September 10, 1963, Top Secret briefing posted today for the first time by the National Security Archive.
Helms and his deputies also updated the PFIAB on the status of covert actions and regime-change operations in other targeted countries. In Cuba, the CIA was shifting “from external raids to internal sabotage operations,” running ten “black” operations per month, and targeting “dissident Cuban elements,” among them Cuban military officers. In British Guiana, the CIA secretly financed a 79-day general strike to destabilize the elected government of Cheddi Jagan, funneling money for the strikers through the AFL-CIO. CIA plans to organize an exile force against Haitian dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier were foiled when Juan Bosch, president of the Dominican Republic, refused to let the agency use his country as a base of operations.
The Top Secret White House memorandum titled “Board Panel on Covert Action Operations” was declassified, uncensored, as part of the 80,000 pages of Kennedy assassination records released in March. Numerous other PFIAB records were included in the release, along with the unredacted minutes of the “Special Group”—the elite interagency committee that vetted and approved U.S. covert operations around the world. The National Security Archive is posting a special selection of these unique records today.
Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi, Associate Professor of Instruction in international affairs at the University of South Florida and a research fellow at the National Security Archive, said the PFIAB and Special Group minutes provide a distinct and unique history of covert operations: “These documents shed light on the inner workings of the U.S. government’s covert action high command: their motivations, priorities, frustrations, and disagreements; and their determination to employ political violence, economic sabotage, and large sums of money to intervene in the internal affairs of countries the world over.”
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WOMEN AND POLITICAL STRUGGLE
On March 24th we had this program on Women and Political Struggle in honor of International Women's Month. We had 3 wonderful guests for the program who spoke on their work.
Beth Howard is the author of the forthcoming memoir from Haymarket Books Rednecks for Black Lives and Appalachia Organizing Director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). She lives in Lexington, KY, but grew up in a rural white working class community in Eastern Kentucky. She has organized in the American South for seventeen years, primarily in her beloved state of Kentucky. Beth has been a lead organizer on winning campaigns to raise the minimum wage and restore voting rights.
Kathy Sykes has been a long time Civil Rights and Community Activist and Advocate.Kathy Sykes was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 2015 to 2019. Kathy is Co-Coordinator of Helping Hands Community Outreach, Inc. a non-profit that focuses on increasing voter participation and policies that affect working women and their families.
Tina Shannon Her main political activity has been chairing a Progressive Democrats of America Chapter to help form the progressive coalition in my county. She’s been involved in a wide range of issues, from serving on her local school board to advocating for single payer healthcare, rallying local community to support union actions and bringing progressive/radical speakers and classes to the public, also participating in her local peace group and helping other groups whenever possible
In their own words
| | "how I found common cause in the fight for rascal and economic justice. So I work for Showing Up For Racial justice which is SURJ and we are the largest national bringing working class white people into to the fight for racial justice. . .so we can actual get the kind of systems we can actually live in, You may have a chapter in your city or town or close to you....In 2020 I wrote an essay called 'Rednecks for Black Lives'...that went viral as a kid of call to action..." | | "March is international Women's Month I'm reminded of Kwame Ture, Stockley, , Carl Michael who said organize, organize, organize. Join an organize or create one. But we must organize. This is so Important because we are still fighting against the spiritual wickedness in high places not because in the past...because about is what happening right now...We are the DEI they are talking about..." | | ""I''m here in western Pennsylvania in the rust belt and I too are from Appalachia....I think the most important thing that happened to me was my transformation from being an activist to being an organizer....she [daughter] went to elementary school and lo and behold a right-wing Christian group took over our school board So some people asked if I would run on a slate with them. So I said yes..." | | See more from their talks in future issues | | |
Honor Black History Month
February 24th
"Abolition Democracy" and A Third Reconstruction
and a Tribute to Mark Solomon
| | "It's one thing for a fascist clique to take office in DC and begin to wreak havoc. But we're a big country of 50 states, hundreds of large cities and 3000 counties. They will have to go through all of them to consolidate their fascist hegemony, the long march through the civil society institutions 'in reverse,' so to speak. But we can fight them every step of the way, from our localities, then networking outward and upward. Win on our local ground first. We rarely win at the top what we haven't already secured at the base." Carl Davidson | | The grass is dry in Cleveland. Be sure to click the play button. | | |
With the winning of the Trump/Vance ticket along with the far right in leadership of all 3 branches of government we need to bury our differences and build the left and the Progressive Majority, a majority that we know exists on most issues of public policy.
We need to build our organizations to defend democracy, in our communities and at the state and national levels including progressive gains won over several decades.
IN GENERAL WE NEED TO REBUILD OUR LEFT: PEACE ACTIVISTS, FEMINISTS, WORKERS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, AND ALL HUMANISTS WHO UNDERSTAND THAT. (HOWEVER WEAK) US DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS ARE UNDER ATTACK AND THE VERY PEACE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITION OF THE WORLD ARE UNDER ATTACK
Harry Targ
| | "Organization is the central task; revolutionary education is the key link." Carl Davidson | | |
Carl Davidson
Mar 10
New Video Courses
How the U.S. Civil War Made Canada
New Text Courses
Alexander Dugin, the Imperialist Philosopher Who Demanded the Ukraine War
New Blog Post
Marxism is the ‘True Scripture’ of Us Communists, By Tang Aijun, Study Times, China
New in the Archives
Historical Roots of American Fascism and Antifascism: Bibliography-in-Progress, for the Marxist Education Project 2025
New in Cultural Studies
The Communist Folk singer Who Shaped Bob Dylan
To visit the OUL, go here: http://ouleft.org
| | Organization is the central task; revolutionary education is the key link. | | |
Our Amazing Resource for Radical Education
CURRENT FEATURE: In the 'Study Guides' Section
A 4-PART STUDY OF THE SHAPING OF THE
RUST BELT WORKING CLASS.
From the settlers to the present, and how its consciousness is conflicted. Prepared by Carl Davidson and Rebecca Tarlau,
with some help from the DSA Rust Belt group.
There are hundreds of video courses here, along with study guides, downloadable books and links to hundreds of other resources for study groups or individuals.
Nearly 10,000 people have signed on to the OUL for daily updates, and more than 150,000 have visited us at least once.
Karl Marx's ideas are a common touchstone for many people working for change. His historical materialism, his many contributions to political economy and class analysis, all continue to serve his core values--the self-emancipation of the working class and a vision of a classless society. There are naturally many trends in Marxism that have developed over the years, and new ones are on the rise today. All of them and others who want to see this project succeed are welcome here.
NEW UPDATES...
On our Blog Page:
How to Create a Future of Cheap Energy for All
The WIRED & Octopus Energy Tech Summit in Berlin was bursting with innovative ideas for reaching net zero and on working together at an ever-greater scale.
How to Build an Underground Resistance Force in 16 Steps
Lessons from Blue Virginia, a community-based organization of women
Our Latino/a Studies Dept:
Forced Amnesia: The Hidden History Of America’s Far West
An emotional and historical journey through the American West on the tracks of the pre-1848 border, to meet families that lived there since long before the US takeover.
Our History Dept:
Marcus Rediker on the Quaker Abolitionist and Seaman Benjamin Lay – History from Below after the Transnational Turn.
This seminar subtitled “The Case of a Forgotten 18th-century Revolutionary,” was given by Marcus Rediker as part of the Development Studies Seminar Series on 24 October 2017 at SOAS University of London
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| | With grave new challenges from the current administration, Hard Ball Press is raising our game, with new books & new Staff. | | Click go to Hard Ball Press for fresh information about organizing the workplace and building union power. | | |
Hard Ball Press is thrilled to welcome Cynthia Selene Hernandez to our staff. Cynthia will take charge of new book development, design and marketing, beginning with a children's book about Women In Construction.
Cynthia began her organizing career during the Free Trade Area of the Americas protests in Miami in the early 2000s. As a student organizer in 2006, she took part in the Justice for Janitors campaign at Florida International University, which successfully advocated for improved wages and working conditions for janitorial staff.
With the support of a Pell Grant, Cynthia joined Florida International University's Labor Center (FIU), advancing from research intern to senior research associate and instructor. Her focus on wage theft led to the enactment of seven anti-wage theft county ordinances in Florida. After nearly a decade at FIU, she became the Executive Director of the South Florida AFL-CIO. She led labor and community coalitions to enhance wages and benefits for low-income families in Miami-Dade County.
In 2018, Cynthia joined Resilience Force as Florida Director, advocating for labor protections for resilience workers. As Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida in 2022, she returned as Resilience Force National Training and Education Director.
| | | | Be sure to check out the latest organizing tools from Labor's Book Store and the latest labor news from Work-BItes. | | | |  | |
New Studies
on the Left
Paperback $19.95
...is a journal of socialist theory and practice. It is the successor to ‘Dialogue and Initiative, published as an annual journal of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in book form from 2012 to 2022. It will continue the CCDS policy of left unity, including articles with a variety of left perspectives, including debates.
This issue contains over 30 articles grouped under the headings of Analysis and Global Reach, Debate and Controversy, Labor, Socialism, and Book Reviews. Some are reprinted from other sources, but many appear here for the first time.
Among the authors are David Bacon, Joan Braune, Carl Davidson, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Jerry Harris, Jay Jurie, Paul Krehbiel, Sun Liping, Adewale A. Maye, Duncan McFarland, Jasmine Payne-Patterson, Vijay Prashad, Nikhil Pal Singh, Harry Targ, and Janet Tucker.
Table of Contents
Click HERE to purchase
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