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Category: Strategize!

  • European Decoupling From US Imperialism Is A Matter Of Global Security

    At the end of a four-year term, the Blinken-Sullivan-Austin trio, showcase of the Biden administration, will have distinguished itself by multiplying hotbeds of tension all around China, a NATO-Russia hybrid war, two genocidal wars, one televised in Gaza, the other covert, in Eastern Congo, a bloody conflict in Sudan, with millions of refugees, and the umpteenth attempt to kill Haiti – all topped off by mass mutilation in Lebanon and the devastating fall of Syria. As for extraterritorial sanctions and regime-change operations, from Georgia to Venezuela, via Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh, they have either been maintained or intensified.

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  • Waiting For A New Bandung Spirit

    In the last days of March, I was in China’s new city of Xiong’an, less than a two-hour drive from Beijing. The city is being built to relieve congestion in the capital, but it will also be home to women and men who are eager to develop China’s new quality productive forces and will be the centre of universities, hospitals, research institutes, and innovative technology companies, including high-tech farming. Xiong’an has the ambition of reaching ‘net-zero’ carbon dioxide emissions while using big data to harness social science to improve the quality of people’s everyday lives.

    The city is built amidst a massive web of lakes, rivers, and canals, with Lake Baiyangdian at its heart. On a chilly afternoon, a group of us – including Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research team members Tings Chak, Jie Xiong, Jojo Hu, Grace Cao, and Atul Chandra – took a boat across the lake to visit a museum dedicated to the fight against Japanese imperialism.

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  • How The Black South And Labor Can Unite To Create Good Jobs

    In far too many places, the struggles for racial and economic justice have become disconnected. Back in 2020, David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote that the Black-White wage gap nationwide was roughly the same as it was back in 1950. One reason for this outcome is the decline of unions. In other words, just as Black workers got stable union jobs, those stable union jobs started to disappear.

    The need to integrate racial and economic justice and pursue both objectives together is not a new idea. Speaking at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention in 1961, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”

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  • In Trade War With The US, China Holds More Cards Than Trump May Think

    When Donald Trump pulled back on his plan to impose eye-watering tariffs on trading partners across the world, there was one key exception: China.

    While the rest of the world would be given a 90-day reprieve on additional duties beyond the new 10% tariffs on all U.S. trade partners, China would feel the squeeze even more. On April 9, 2025, Trump raised the tariff on Chinese goods to 125% – bringing the total U.S. tariff on some Chinese imports to 145%.

    The move, in Trump’s telling, was prompted by Beijing’s “lack of respect for global markets.” But the U.S. president may well have been smarting from Beijing’s apparent willingness to confront U.S. tariffs head on.

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  • 50 Years Since Lebanese Civil War, Palestinian Refugees Cling To Hope

    On April 13, 1975, a busload of Palestinian civilians was ambushed in Ain al-Rummaneh, a predominantly Maronite Christian neighborhood in East Beirut, by Phalangist militiamen who committed a massacre. That moment, often cited as the spark of the Lebanese Civil War, did not emerge from a vacuum — it followed years of tension between the Lebanese state, sectarian militias, and the growing Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon, which started in 1971 when the PLO arrived after being forcibly expelled by the Jordanian state following the events of Black September.

    Fifty years have passed, and the debate over the role of Palestinians — specifically Palestinian factions under the PLO — in the Lebanese Civil War remains mired in a murky combination of emotions, facts, myths, scapegoating, and to some extent, political erasure.

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  • Labour Victories, Failures And Lessons In History And Solidarity

    They say that if we fail to learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat it. Recent events in my hometown of Vancouver and across North America call this warning to mind today.

    On April 5 in Vancouver, a municipal special election saw two candidates from the more or less left end of the political spectrum, Sean Orr of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) and Lucy Maloney of the NDP-adjacent One City party, elected to city council, a result that represents a stern voters’ rebuke to the developer-friendly regime of Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party.

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  • The Best Response To Tariff Wars? Declare Economic Independence

    Where I live, in Palm Springs, California, Canadian snowbirds are selling off their properties and angrily vowing never to return to the United States. Once back home, our northern neighbors are pulling Kentucky bourbon and other US goods from the shelves and liberating themselves from the tariff-obsessed lunatic in the Oval Office. The same story is playing out across the globe, including with close friends in Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia, where the most immediate result of our self-inflicted trade wars is the collapse of Tesla sales.

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  • Our Future Is Not Determined By The US Or Europe

    “Debating the resources of the Global South is becoming urgent, but it is even more urgent to discuss how it is that most of the resources for the production of technology and goods are from the Global South and yet it is the North that takes all the wealth,” Cassia Bechara began her presentation, adding: ”in 2024 the wealth of the world’s richest millionaires was the greatest in history.”

    Although the speakers focused on the Global South in their presentations, they expressed different views on the same topic, as in the case of Márcio Pochmann, President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

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  • What Would A General Strike In The US Actually Look Like?

    Something is in the air: A perception that American democracy and livable conditions for working people may only be saved by the kind of large-scale nonviolent direct action variously called “general strikes,” “political strikes,” or, as I will refer to all of them, “social strikes.”

    Calls for mass disruptive action are coming from unlikely places, like Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, an organization normally associated with legal action through the courts. When Romero was asked in a recent interview what would happen if the Trump administration systematically defied court orders, he replied, “Then we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.”

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  • Strike Highlights Palestinian Frustrations With ‘Symbolic’ Protest

    Palestinians across the West Bank observed a general strike on Monday protesting the renewed Israeli genocide in Gaza. The strike was observed in all West Bank cities and towns and joined by all civil society bodies. The Palestinian Teachers’ Union announced the halt of all classes, while the Palestinian Bar Association announced that all lawyers and judges were called to abstain from attending court hearings. The “national and Islamic forces,” the coalition of all Palestinian political parties, also called for the general strike. It was observed by all of Palestinian society in the West Bank, including businesses and public transportation.

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  • PATCO’s Lessons For This Crisis

    Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order revoking the collective bargaining rights of more than 700,000 federal workers is the largest act of union-busting in U.S. history.

    The closest historical parallel is Ronald Reagan’s busting and decertification of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. When 12,000 air traffic controllers initiated an illegal strike on August 3, 1981, and stayed out in defiance of Reagan’s ultimatum, the federal government came down on them with all its might.

    Many PATCO leaders were arrested, the union was bankrupted and decertified, and the strikers were permanently replaced and banned for life from returning to the Federal Aviation Administration.

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  • 10 Years Ago, Baltimore Cops Killed Freddie Gray

    In the 10 years since Baltimore police officers killed Gray, roughly 3,100 people — mainly Black men — have been murdered in Baltimore; more than twice that many have suffered fatal overdoses; one mayor, one state’s attorney and one police commissioner have been convicted on federal charges; more than 15 police officers have been implicated in the Gun Trace Task Force RICO case, where officers conspired to illegally detain and rob Baltimore residents; more than $70 million has been paid out in settlements relating to police misconduct; the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) budget has increased by nearly $150 million…

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  • The March In Friusa Failed; The Neo-Fascist Movement Was Divided

    Just as was warned by leftist and social organizations , the march called by the Dominican far right against the community of Friusa on March 30 ended in chaos, violence and destruction of community property. Both the government, through its spokesman Homero Figueroa , as well as the paramilitary organization Antigua Orden Dominicana (AOD), which organized the march, are washing their hands and accusing alleged infiltrators of the violence, all in an attempt to do damage control and evade responsibility. According to the authorities, weapons were confiscated and 32 arrests were made.

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  • The Fire This Time

    We live in perilous times. The mobilizing passions of fascism are no longer a distant echo of history—they are here, surging through the United States like an electric current. We are in a period of social, ideological, and racial cleansing.

    First, the notion of government as a democratizing public good and institution of social responsibility—that once held power to account, protected the vulnerable, and nurtured the ideals of justice and collective responsibility—is being methodically destroyed. The common good, once seen as the essence of democratic life, has become the enemy of the neoliberal fascist state. It is not merely being neglected—it is being assaulted, stripped bare, and left to rot in the shadows of privatization, greed, and brutality—the main features of gangster capitalism.

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  • Forging Resistance To The War On Cuba

    As the Trump/Rubio diabolical duo devise new attacks against Cuba, hundreds of activists gathered at New York City’s Malcolm X Center over the March 15-16 weekend to strategize how to strengthen solidarity organizing in the U.S. and Canada. Marking the centennial of Malcolm X’s birth (born on May 19, 2025), this year’s US-Cuba Normalization conference was dedicated to the memory and legacy of Malcolm X and uplifted the decades of connection between the Cuban and U.S.-based Black liberation struggles.

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  • Trump Exposes The Elite Classes

    Institutions led by members of the ruling class theoretically have the power to oppose anyone who should dare to confront them, even if the confrontation in question is led by the president of the United States. Actions taken by Columbia University and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison (known as Paul, Weiss), were stunning as they obsequiously met Trump administration demands to stifle protest and to provide pro bono legal services to conservative causes. Closer inspection of how these supposedly august institutions operate should end any questions about why they responded as they did.

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  • What To Do If The Insurrection Act Is Invoked

    With President Trump constantly flooding the zone, there’s a chance to think ahead about the possible implementation of the Insurrection Act. One of Trump’s presidential actions calls for the Secretary of Defense and Homeland Security to submit a joint report by April 20. The report will offer “any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”

    President Trump loves direct control and so it strikes me that invoking the Insurrection Act is very likely. This occasionally used provision empowers the president, with few legal limitations, to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops inside the country.

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  • Ruling To Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia Gives Clues About How to Fight Back

    On Friday, April 4, a Federal District Judge ordered that Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man who was erroneously and illegally sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, be returned home by midnight on Monday, April 7, 2025. During a hearing in the lawsuit filed to demand his return, the judge discussed with the Justice Department attorney many ways in which Abrego García’s arrest and deportation were unlawful. She also reached the resounding conclusion that the US government still has effective custody over him and can restore him “to status quo”—meaning living with his family and working legally in Maryland.

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  • Palestine Missing From ‘Hands Off!’ March

    On April 5, protesters will converge on Washington to hold a massive march in support of Palestine.

    The President has changed since the last big event in DC, but many of the demands have not. Activists are calling on the United States government to stop bankrolling the genocide in Gaza and sever ties from apartheid Israel.

    The additional element this time around is the Trump administration’s vast deportation program, which has targeted multiple university students for participating in protests.

    “This movement is made of students, workers, teachers, artists, activists, healthcare workers, tech workers and people of conscience all over the world who will not back down in the face of repression and intimidation, and will never back down so long as Gaza is under attack,” reads a statement on the march’s website.

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  • Canada’s Support For LNG Is Support For Trump’s Fossil-Fuelled Fascism

    American so-called “natural gas” (the mixture of hydrocarbons made up mostly of methane) production began to explode under President Barack Obama and has continued to increase under every president since. Liquified natural gas exports, which involve an energy intensive liquefaction process that enables the gas to be shipped, kicked off around 2016 and have also climbed steadily upwards every year. The main problem that the gas industry faces is not regulation, but markets: the rate of renewable adoption in Asia is exceeding all expectations and LNG markets are expected to be dramatically oversupplied in the coming years.

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  • Immigrant Rights Activists Fight Attacks On The Palestine Movement

    While political prisoner and Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil remains in ICE detention in Louisiana, his lawyers are fighting for his freedom in New Jersey. On Friday, March 28 they were in Newark to argue for Khalil’s upcoming immigration hearing to take place in New Jersey, rather than Louisiana where a judge is more likely to go along with the Trump administration’s political persecution of Khalil.

    While Khalil’s legal team advocated for him in the district courthouse, hundreds of supporters rallied outside chanting, “We want justice, you say how? Release Mahmoud right now!” and “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation!”

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  • Inside The Resurgence Of Jewish-Led Palestine Solidarity

    Over the last year and a half, the movement for Palestinian liberation has become one of the largest American social movements of the decade. Not only that, there has also been an incredible resurgence of the Jewish left, as Jewish Palestine solidarity organizations, such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, organize a growing contingent of young Jews for an end to the genocide in Gaza. As Israel violates its ceasefire agreement and commences an aggressive bargaining campaign, one that killed 400 people in the first night, this movement is only going to grow as the world collectively reckons with the destruction that has been caused.

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  • Will Federal Workers Rediscover Their Militancy?

    On March 27, President Donald Trump summarily overturned decades of federal labor relations policy and stripped more than 700,000 government workers of their union rights with a stroke of his sharpie. His executive order Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs, which effectively voided union contracts at dozens of departments and agencies, constitutes by far the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history.

    The stated rationale for Trump’s order—that the targeted workers are in agencies that affect national security and they therefore are ineligible for union representation—is flimsily transparent.

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  • Ecuador: Luisa González Signs Unity Pact To Counter Neoliberalism

    This Sunday, March 30, as the electoral campaign for Ecuador’s presidential elections on April 13 progresses, Luisa González, candidate of the leftist Citizen Revolution movement, participated in the National Meeting for an Equitable, Plurinational, and Violence-Free Ecuador. There, she signed an agreement with indigenous movements and other social organizations ahead of the runoff.

    Before tens of thousands of people gathered in Tixán, Alausí canton, Chimborazo province, González signed a roadmap to advance toward unity with Guillermo Churuchumbi, national coordinator of the Pachakutik movement.

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  • A People’s History Of San Francisco’s Most Notorious Neighborhood

    Few San Francisco neighborhoods have had more ups and downs than the 33-block area still called “The Tenderloin”—a name which derives from the late 19th century police practice of shaking down local restaurants and butcher shops by taking their best cuts of beef in lieu of cash bribes.

    At various periods in its storied past, the Tenderloin has been home to famous brothels, Prohibition-era speakeasies, San Francisco’s first gay bars, well-known hotels and jazz clubs, film companies and recording studies, and professional boxing gyms. 

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  • Setting The Pace In Auto: Thinking Bigger Than Tariffs

    President Donald Trump’s infatuation with tariffs dates back to the 1980s, when he first said tariff was “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” On March 26 he announced “a 25 percent tariff on all cars not made in the U.S.,” but exempted auto parts that comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA.

    For those parts, and for the 25 percent of U.S.-sold vehicles that are assembled in Mexico and Canada, the tariffs will be applied partially at an undisclosed date to only the non-U.S. part of the vehicle’s value. Essentially, auto manufacturing is already so integrated across North America that the administration has left carve-outs for Mexico and Canada.

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  • Organizing To ‘Green’ Your Job: What Works?

    Stewards often build fights around small issues, and they need to. But stewards also have a special charge to stay ahead of the boss—to think big about shifting power on the job, including by driving the move to green production.

    The union can fight smarter when it’s not just reacting to the boss’s plans—when members have talked over their own goals for making work different.

    The first task is to open up talk beyond the usual suspects. No matter the good intentions, passing resolutions and creating isolated green committees doesn’t flex much worker power.

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  • Does Columbia Still Merit The Name Of A University?

    It was never about eliminating antisemitism. It was always about silencing Palestine. That is what the gagging of protesting students, and now the gagging of faculty, was always meant to lead to. While partisans of the Israeli-American mass slaughter in Gaza may have been offended by their protests, large numbers of the students whose rights of free speech have been infringed upon via draconian punishments were themselves Jewish.

    Many of those faculty members who are about to be deprived of academic freedom and faculty governance, and perhaps fired, are themselves Jewish, indeed some are Israelis.

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  • Tenants On The March: An Interview With Cea Weaver

    In many parts of the country, rising rents have hit a political limit, as politicians, unions, and community organizations increasingly recognize the centrality of housing to the cost-of-living crisis. New York State’s 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, San Francisco’s 2022 collective bargaining ordinance for tenants, and Los Angeles’s 2022 “mansion tax” represent new forces in local politics—and alternative bases for the struggle over power within our society. These initiatives use the state to reshape the business models and ownership patterns pushing workers and their families further away from their jobs, into smaller, more expensive living situations.

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  • It Is Time To Reckon With The Reactionary Rantings Of ADOS/FBA

    We revolutionary Africans in the U.S. have to finally confront the internal contradiction that is the ADOS/FBA faction that has emerged and gained legitimacy and influence. Through the inexplicable support of noteworthy political figures like Dr. Cornel West, and despite the glaring, divisive, and deeply offensive contradictions in that movement, ADOS/FBA have become so influential that they have deeply confused and divided the already embattled Black masses with their counter-revolutionary, reactionary and racist ideology.

    American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) is a reparations movement that advocates exclusively for Black Americans descended from enslaved people in the U.S.

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