Past Posts by Descending Date

Even the corporate press pronounced Biden’s recent Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles as a flop, while the balance between red states (and we don’t mean Republican) and blue states south of the Rio Grande is tipping to the left. Most recently, Colombia elected its first left leaning president, following similar victories in Chile, Peru, and Honduras, which in turn followed Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico.  And the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential contest slated for October is a leftist. Meanwhile Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – countries led by explicitly socialist parties – remain in the crosshairs of US imperialism, suffering ...

Our speaker, John Parker began his trip to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on April 27 as part of a fact-finding mission organized by Struggle-La Lucha newspaper in the U.S. to gather eyewitness observations and testimony of Lugansk residents. He also visited Russia, where he conducted interviews and was present at the May 9 Victory Day parade, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany and honoring the 27 million Soviet people who died fighting fascism. John Parker was a candidate for U.S. Senate in the June 7th election. He recently returned from Russia and the Donbas region on a fact-finding ...

Often we only see  the border from the U.S. side, despite the fact that many more people live in the border region south of the wall than north of it.  Despite the media fascination with the wall, people live their lives and organize vibrant social movements that are virtually invisible in the U.S. Yet they have a direct impact. From winter strawberries to flat panel televisions, people north of the border consume what’s produced just a few miles south of it.  This presentation, with photographs, will probe more deeply into the lives of the people of the border itself, rather than simply ...

Roe v. Wade to be abolished? That's the intent of the pending Supreme Court decision, a draft copy of which has already been leaked to the media. This will be a human rights disaster for women. On May 11,2022  the U.S. Senate voted down the Women’s Health Protection Act 49 to 51. The WHPA would have made abortion legal, eliminating the role of the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion and nullifying the pending Supreme Court decision,  How do we fight back against this grossly undemocratic decision? We certainly can't trust the Democratic Party leadership, Speaker: Rosa Astra, an ...

Spanning nearly the entirety of the Western left in its inadequate response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, organizations ranging from the U.S.-based Democratic Socialists of America to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) have all mistakenly branded the Russian special military operation in Ukraine as an "invasion" and the proxy war between Washington and Moscow as an "inter-imperial" conflict. American journalist and political analyst Max Parry explains how this misinterpretation only serves US-NATO imperialism, even when they claim to denounce the latter. Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York City. His writing has appeared widely ...

As the imperialist warmongering by the US, NATO and the EU against Russia has recently escalated into a proxy war in Ukraine, a revolutionary party, "The Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DIP, Devrimci İşçi Partisi in Turkish), has taken an unflinching anti-imperialist stance that distinguished it from most organizations and groupings on the Left. In this session, we will discuss the role of Turkey as a NATO ally in this war, and the strategy revolutionaries in the NATO countries should take towards the war. We will talk about Turkey’s involvement not only in Ukraine as a NATO country but also its involvement ...

The left in India is woefully silent on this movement and has not even summarized the significance of the movement, let alone learn anything from it. The left in US today remains fairly unconcerned about the enduring farm crisis in the country. But should it remain aloof from it? Is there a problem with the “center-of-attention” of the left worldwide? Has it got side-tracked into politics of disinformation and politics of diversion? Has it become more or less a side-show for liberalism? Is it getting so caught up with electoral politics that it is failing to set a new agenda ...

Dr. Halbi will present on the class character of the Chinese state. touching on changes in the conditions of the working class in China, why we cannot call China socialist but also why the Chinese state is such an important advance for the international working class. He will also cover the nature of US imperialism's antagonism towards China. Speaker will be Wadi'h Halbi , Communist Party, USA ...

The administration at City College of San Francisco is planning to lay off over 50 full-time tenured faculty and to replace few, if any, retiring faculty. Even before the pandemic, despite expecting increases in funding, they planned and acted to lay off 250 part-time faculty for the Fall 2020 term. The number of faculty at CCSF have been reduced by over 40% in the last ten years. These actions have come at the expense of CCSF’s predominantly working class and lower middle-class students of color. Their education opportunities have been greatly reduced. Rick Baum has been teaching American Government part-time ...

Beginning with the recognition that war is not so much between individuals as between states, we therefore examine Engels: "The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax" (Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State). Eugene E Ruyle, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cal State Long Beach, and President of the East Bay Chapter of Veterans For Peace (Berkeley/Oakland) ...

The economic depression ongoing since 2008 has put the dangers of fascism and imperialist world war, but also popular revolts and revolutions, back on the agenda. While the working class and oppressed communities around the world have been rising in revolt for more than a decade, no revolutionary organization adequate to face up to the task of bringing down the bourgeois order has crystallized. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic and the danger of fascism have been ravaging humanity. In this presentation, we will consider the tactic of Workers’ United Front as a way out of the dilemma facing the revolutionaries today ...

Moving Toward Socialism with a Left Unity Slate - Peace And Freedom And Green Party  In The June California Primary – Laura Wells April 17, 2022 10:30 AM Pacific Time Laura Wells will discuss the historic decision this year in which the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party created a Left Unity Slate of statewide candidates for the June 7, 2022 primary in California. This cooperative strategy was based on the many shared values between the two parties, all of which will save lives, money, and the planet. Among the values are a single-payer "Medicare for All" healthcare ...

Judy will present a history of Workers World Party and the role it has consistently played in the working class movement in the U.S. Judy will discuss WWP's positions on self-determination, the fight against racism, sexism, gender and transphobia and anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry. Judy will also talk about the significance of the recent Amazon and Starbucks workers union victories to the working class and progressive movements in this country. They will also discuss the rise of the rightwing, the US war drive and how we can fightback ...

Robert Jensen will outline four key challenges facing humanity: size, scale, scope, and speed. What is the sustainable size of the human population? What is the appropriate scale of a human community? What is the scope of human competence to manage our interventions into the larger living world? At what speed must we move toward different living arrangements if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences? The sooner we face the realities of these challenges without unwarranted faith in ideology or technology, the more likely we can create the conditions for a soft landing for humanity. These ideas are drawn from ...

After brief presentations by members of the ICSS Program Committee, we will continue our discussion on the situation on Ukraine. Speakers will include Allan Miller, Mehmet Bayram , Richard Fallenbaum, Gene Ruyle, and perhaps others ...

Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022. As of now, hundreds of civilians and thousands of soldiers of both sides have lost their lives. Oil Prices have risen steeply. Working classes in the US and Russia and in fact all over the world will be poorer as a result of additional inflation, which in the past year in the US was already very high, at 7.9%. However, this war did not start in 2022, but rather in 2014, with the Maidan counter Revolution aided and encouraged by the US. There is a great present danger ...