Socialist Alternative #112 - May 2025

SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

SHUT DOWN TRUMP

ISSUE #112 | MAY 2025

BUILD FOR A ONE-DAY

STRIKE

KATIE H., BOSTON I grew up in rural Michigan as the eldest child of a single mother raising three kids.

Despite holding a master’s degree, my mom had to take low-paying jobs at our public school—without benefits—so she could be home with us. She couldn’t afford childcare, and we relied on Medicaid. Ironically, whenever she was offered a better-paying job, she had to

Fight Trump & The Far Right • The Democrats can’t and won’t stop Trump’s agenda. Fight Trump and his billionaire government’s far-right, authoritarian agenda with mass protests, walkouts, occupations, strikes, and a new working-class party.

• No scapegoating – it’s the capitalist system that creates crises and suffering, not immigrants, transgender people, or any marginalized group. Build working-class solidarity and struggle to fight back against the capitalist class’s divide and rule.

Work To Live, Not Live To Work • Raise the federal minimum wage to $25/hr, adjusted annually for cost of living increases, as a step toward a living wage for all.

• 32 hour work week with no loss in pay or benefits (minimum $52,000/year). Share out the work with the unemployed and create new union jobs.

• A minimum guaranteed income of $4,000/ month for the unemployed, disabled, and elderly, as well as for stay-at-home parents of children up to Pre-K or those unable to work.

• A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid – tax the rich to expand these crucial safety net programs.

• Combat the cost-of-living crisis – establish price controls on everyday goods.

Tax The Rich To Invest In Our Basic Needs • Free, universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and cancellation of all medical debt.

• Take the pharmaceutical companies and forprofit hospitals into democratic public ownership to develop state-of-the-art treatments and provide high-quality care at no cost to patients.

• Fully fund and drastically expand addiction and mental health services.

• A massive expansion of high-quality, permanently affordable, publicly-owned housing

turn it down. The raise would disqualify us from benefits, and after paying for private insurance for four, she’d be left taking home even less.

We were stuck—unable to make a big enough leap to escape the poverty trap.

At eighteen, I moved to Cambridge to study chemistry and biology at MIT. There, I was shocked at the immense pressure put on my peers to chase profit and prestige above all else. I was steered heavily towards pursuing a biotech startup or working for big pharma, and my interest in pharmacy was often dismissed. Working in pharmacy in the aftermath of COVID-19, I saw firsthand how broken our healthcare system really is. We were constantly overworked, critically understaffed, and forced to operate under unsafe conditions. Patients were routinely denied life-saving medications due to cost, insurance, and corporate greed.

My true political awakening wasn’t until

where renters are legally protected from discrimination. Pass strong universal rent control and stop the criminalization of homelessness.

• Fully fund public education and end school privatization. Stop all right-wing attacks on education; for a national curriculum written in collaboration with teachers’ unions, parents and students, based on the scientific method and an uncensored version of history.

• Cancel all student debt. Make all public college tuition-free.

• Eliminate gun violence – massive investment in jobs programs, after-school programs, and recreation centers as a starting point, combined with basic gun control policies.

Fight All Oppression • Fight racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and all forms of oppression with working-class solidarity and struggle. Build a mass, multiracial, multi-gender movement against systemic oppression and capitalism.

• Equal rights for all, including equal pay for equal work. End all harassment, discrimination, and violence against women, LGBTQ people, Black people, immigrants, disabled people, and all marginalized groups.

• End the institutional racism of the criminal justice system, the racist “war on drugs,” and mass incarceration. Invest in rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons. End low-paid prison labor, which is modern-day slavery. Abolish the death penalty.

• Arrest and convict killer cops. Immediately fire all police officers with a history of brutality and racist behavior. Demilitarize the police.

Put all police departments under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with the power to hire, fire, subpoena, and set budget priorities.

• No more voter registration – automatic voting rights for all.

• Defend the right to choose whether and when to have children. Free contraception as part of a broad program for reproductive health

www.SocialistAlternative.org 2

I was involved with the Gaza encampment protests on campus. I saw peaceful student demonstrators met with police violence, while the media distorted the truth and the Biden administration insisted on sending billions in weapons to massacre civilians. That was a wake-up call. I realized this wasn’t only about healthcare or war or inequality—it was about capitalism, a system built on exploitation, violence, and profit over human life.

That’s why I joined Socialist Alternative. We are fighting for a world beyond capitalism— where healthcare, housing, education, and a livable planet are guaranteed for all. Through organizing, I’ve found not only clarity, but community and a path forward. I realize now that real change doesn’t come from corporate politicians—it comes from us, workers and students alike, organizing together to fight for a socialist future.J including comprehensive, LGBTQ-inclusive sex education.

• Free, safe, legal, and accessible abortion. Stop all right-wing attempts to criminalize abortion.

• Paid parental leave for 18 months and free, high-quality childcare and preschool for all.

• Full legal rights for all queer people, including the right to self-identify and express one’s gender freely. Free, gender-affirming universal healthcare.

Defend Immigrants’ Rights • No immigrant detentions or deportations.

Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants, regardless of their job status.

• No to capitalist divide-and-rule. Unions must lead the way in uniting immigrants and USborn workers, organizing all workers and forming deportation defense committees in every workplace.

• Build a movement against the destructive policies of US imperialism around the world that drive working-class people to flee their home countries.

End All Imperialist War • Fight the rich, not their wars – build a massive, international anti-war movement.

• End the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The right to self-determination of all nationalities, with guaranteed rights for ethnic, religious, and national minorities. End the occupation and siege of all Palestinian territories.

• Abolish NATO and all imperialist alliances. Stop the military build-up between the two blocs led

by US and Chinese imperialism, and oppose the ramping up of nationalism around the world.

• Drastically cut the bloated U.S. military budget and redirect that money toward free universal healthcare, public education, and high-quality affordable housing for all.

• Capitalism breeds imperialism, plunging the world into devastating wars. Only international socialism can bring about lasting peace.

Rebuild Fighting Unions • We need unions that fight the bosses and their parties with tactics like strikes, mass

@Socialist_Alternative

@SocialistAlt

demonstrations, and open defiance of antiunion laws. Fighting unions should be democratically controlled by their memberships.

• Not another dime of union money to either party of big business – Democrat or Republican. Spend the millions now spent on corporate political campaigns to launch massive drives to organize non-union workers across the US, and run independent, pro-working class candidates.

• Union leaders must accept the average wage of the workers they represent.

• Reject both capitalist “free trade” policies and “America first” protectionism. US workers have more in common with workers around the globe than we do with the bosses at home.

• End anti-union “right to work” and “openshop” legislation. Implement simple majority card check for all unionization drives.

• Unions need to fight all manifestations of racism, xenophobia, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of discrimination and oppression. The unions should organize mass noncompliance, strikes, and walkouts against right-wing attacks.

End Climate Catastrophe • Ban new oil and gas drilling and take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership. Implement a democratically planned, just transition to 100% renewable energy as part of an international plan.

• A massive, unionized green jobs program. Give all workers in polluting industries the option of a union job rapidly building and operating green infrastructure with no loss in pay, benefits, or seniority.

• Fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from the more frequent and severe storms, floods, and fires caused by climate change. High-quality housing and assistance for those displaced or otherwise affected.

Build A New Mass Workers’ Party • No votes or donations to any Democrats or Republicans – the labor movement and social movements must build a new, anti-war, working-class party.

• Unite this new workers’ party around a common program, developed through democratic debate and discussion in every workplace, school, and community. It should take no corporate donations, no money from billionaires, and have a socialist program.

• All elected officials to make no more than the average wage of their constituents.

Revolutionary Socialism & Internationalism • Capitalism produces poverty, oppression, environmental destruction, pandemics, and war. We need an international working-class revolution against this failed system.

• Take the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the US economy into democratic public ownership. Run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of workers and the broader public.

• A democratic and socialist plan for the economy based on the common interests of working people and youth everywhere – for a socialist United States and a socialist world.

@SocialistUS

@socialistalt.bsky.social

socialistalternative.org

IN ACTION

KAI H.

National Assoc. Of Letter Carriers Branch 84 (Personal capacity)

Pittsburgh PA — NALC Right To Strike Protest

“I’m a member of BFN, Build A Fighting NALC, the burgeoning rankand-file reform caucus inside my union leading the fight for a democratic and fighting union everywhere! You all will have already heard that Trump and his billionaire cabinet are licking their lips as they prepare to launch a large-scale privatization attack on our public post office. The recent move by Homeland Security to dissolve the collective bargaining agreement for unionized TSA workers, which must be fought, is the opening salvo against all federal workers unions.

Unions fight for the whole working class, because the conditions my coworkers and I face at our workplace are tied to the conditions you, and all workers, face in our workplaces. If we win, our fight for more is bolstered across the board!”

LENA S.

High school student in NYC — Trans Day of Visibility Protest “Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to fix any of our problems because they both serve the billionaire class who only care about making profits.

We need to demand free healthcare for everyone, with free reproductive and gender-affirming care. Trans rights are workers’ rights! We need to demand a livable minimum wage with cost-ofliving adjustments and protections against workplace discrimination and harassment for every worker.

Education is a trans issue. We need a curriculum that’s created in collaboration with teachers’ unions that allows trans youth to be welcomed and celebrated as much as any of their peers.

Not only does the trans rights movement need to be intertwined with other movements, from immigrant rights to Palestinian liberation, the movement itself needs to be multi-gender, multi-racial and multi-able. We need to connect the trans struggle to other struggles in an explicitly anti-capitalist way.”

MAY 2025

Socialist Alternative members have been actively building the protest movement across the country.

Here are excerpts from recent speeches our members have made:

HENRY H.

Baltimore, MD April 5 Hands Off Protest “It’s been really exciting to see Bernie Sanders fill up stadiums on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. But we can’t fight oligarchy through the Democratic party that relies on Wall Street for power. Here in Baltimore, they tried to solve an affordable housing crisis by partnering with Goldman Sachs. This isn’t saving us from the oligarchy, it’s selling us to them. Bernie should link up with fighting unions to break from the Democrats and build a new mass workers’ party. We need a party that will actually lead the fight against oppression in all its forms and not just pay us lip service.

Socialist Alternative is calling for the broadest possible workingclass coalition and urgently building for coordinated, united mass action on May 1st to show that we are ready to fight Trump, Musk, the billionaires, and this entire capitalist system. Trump’s a bully and bullies only listen to power. Let’s show him our power on May 1 by shutting down business as usual through mass protests, walkouts, and strikes.”

SILAS R.

College student in Boston, MA Trans Day of Visibility Protest “Growing up in Tennessee, it has always been illegal for me to change my gender marker on my birth certificate. When I went to the DMV years ago with proof of surgery and a letter from my medical team, I was denied because of our governor Bill Lee’s laws.

Queer and trans people at my school were experiencing violence on a regular basis as school administration turned a blind eye. Hearing about rapes and beatings committed against LGBTQ people in neighboring states was not uncommon.

The U.S. empire uses divide-andrule tactics to prevent any of us from getting what we want, which is living wages, life-saving healthcare, and housing. Transgender people are not the enemy, they are not out to get you. They just want to exist in a livable world like everyone else. We must unite all of the anti-Trump struggles as the fight against Trump, Musk, the billionaires, and the whole rotten capitalist system. The fight for a socialist world will benefit everyone.”

3

ECONOMY

Chris Gray, Minneapolis Editors’ Note: Trump’s trade war is rapidly developing and the full impact of his tariffs is not yet clear. Neither tariffs nor free trade are in the interest of the working class. Whether tariffs are used to shield domestic industries or enable “competitive” global markets, the result is often the same: workers are expected to bear the cost, either through higher prices or job insecurity.

In this Q&A, we provide socialist answers to many of the most urgent questions working people and young people are asking today. The pace of developments means that this Q&A is not the final word on tariffs or the world economy. Rather, it is a starting point for those looking for a socialist analysis that cuts through the pro-capitalist propaganda and lies of corporate media. Limited space means that we are not able to examine each question in its full depth, but our hope is that these brief answers help our readers better understand the broad points of the economic situation. For more international analysis on Trump’s trade war and the internationalist, socialist fightback, visit our international website at internationalsocialist.net.

What are tariffs?

Tariffs are a tax on products imported from other countries. Tariffs are designed to make imported goods more expensive. But, because U.S. importers still need to make a profit for their executives and shareholders, they pass any increased shipping costs onto workers in the form of higher prices or by finding ways to cut labor costs through automation or layoffs.

What’s happened so far?

Trump began imposing tariffs on Mexico and Canada in early 2025. Further tariffs then followed. Then, on April 2nd, Trump implemented steep tariffs on goods imported from other countries. Investors panicked as $4 trillion evaporated from the stock market, causing the value of workers’ 401k retirement accounts to plummet as much as 15%. Wall Street, CEOs, and billionaires who supported Trump on the basis of tax cuts were further frustrated when Trump seemed to accept a recession as a necessary “period of transition”.

Since then, Trump has now set tariffs for the rest of the world to 10% and focused on an escalating trade war with Chinese capitalism. China has implemented tariffs of its own.

American farmers who export 19% of their crops to China will be hit hard. Chinese airlines have been barred from buying Boeing aircraft, leading to 30% losses for the corporation and predictions of job losses in its factories.

Currently tariffs sit at 145% on most Chinese imports, and 125% on US imports into China — essentially ending trade between the two countries except on products like electronics that have been exempted for the present. Further

4

sharp changes in tariffs can be expected in the next period.

Why is Trump doing this?

Starting in the 1980s and 90s, U.S. billionaires and corporations, with policies advanced by the Republicans and Democrats, shut down thousands of American factories and moved production to countries like China where they could pay lower wages and make huge profits.

This neoliberal order was imposed upon working people with full force by U.S. capitalism and heavily benefited big businesses and individuals such as Trump and many others who today claim it to be “unfair”. The U.S. went from being the “workshop of the world” to importing the majority of consumer goods from other countries. This helped Chinese capitalism to position itself as a mass producer of cheap goods, threatening to decimate manufacturers of countries from North America to Europe.

Trump thinks he can reverse this process and force U.S. manufacturing to move back home, and thereby gain a more decisive economic advantage over China.

Can tariffs work?

to put hundreds of billions on the line if they have no guarantee of what the political situation might look like before their factories are even finished being built. After moving production to the U.S., businesses would have to launch major attacks on the working class to maintain profitability. Our ability to buy goods would then suffer, causing an overall slowdown and crisis.

Who pays for tariffs?

Working-class people will pay the price for Trump’s tariffs through price inflation, disruptions to supply chains, and job losses. Core inflation has steadily increased from 2.2% in February 2024 to 3.1% in March 2025. It has since fallen a little but economists predict it will continue to rise. One in six Americans are already “food insecure”, and tariffs are estimated to cost U.S. families an additional $4,600 extra this year on top of the current cost-of-living crisis. Many are questioning if it’s possible t. Meanwhile, it will devastate the economies of countries that depend on exporting to the U.S., resulting in increased suffering, wars and migration on a global level.

Have there been job It’s very unlikely that this works out the way Trump wants. Capitalists who are looking to losses so far? get rich quick by betting on the stock market would have to shel out billions over years to build factories that can compete with China’s.

Furthermore, no one knows what U.S. trade policy will look like two hours from now, much less in four years. Entire industries are not likely

Yes, automaker Stellantis announced 900 layoffs at 5 U.S. plants, and Ford is saying layoffs are on the horizon. Manufacturing reports showed over 4,000 workers have been fired from 19 factories in the U.S., and 15 factories

have closed altogether. Cleveland-Cliffs mining company has fired 1,200 workers in Michigan and Northern Minnesota citing weak auto demand, and the United Steel Workers union is reporting hundreds of its members have already lost their jobs.

Are the Democrats against tariffs?

Biden maintained all of the tariffs Trump implemented during his first term, and expanded on them. Furthermore, Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan was essentially protectionist in nature. Biden and Trump are both nationalistic, capitalist politicians, but they represent different strategies to bring back the global dominance of the United States.

Biden wanted to maintain the old “Western Alliance” from the Cold War, which meant fully backing imperialist wars like Ukraine to weaken Russia, one of China’s key allies. Trump sees Russia as a sideshow, and wants to focus U.S. imperialism to confront Chinese imperialism in the Pacific.

What’s the deal with bond markets?

Investors typically buy treasury bonds, or government debt, because they are looking for a safe place to stash their money when places like the stock market are too unstable.

As investors watch Trump talk about tanking the world economy, they view buying debt from

socialistalternative.org

ECONOMY the U.S. government as a riskier investment, and demand higher profits off their investments. Since March, the prices of long-term treasury bonds have decreased to their lowest levels since 2011. This is a sign that investors are losing confidence in the credibility of U.S. capitalism. The market raises bond yields to attract buyers. This makes it harder for the government to spend money to stimulate the economy, meaning recessions get worse and last longer.

Will there be a recession?

It’s possible the U.S. economy is already entering a recession, though the dust has not nearly settled from Trump’s trade wars.

Trump’s on-again/off-again tariff policy has massively increased insecurity about the future, forcing consumers and businesses to reduce spending and investmentment plans.

It has also forced companies to continually reconsider their supply routes, causing economic disruption.

The University of Michigan is one of the leading authorities on tracking “consumer confidence”, and they showed an 11% drop since March. The study showed the lower your income, the more pessimism you’re likely to have about the economy. This is reflected in retail sales being down 1%, and major corporations like Target, Walmart, Delta Airlines, and McDonalds reducing profit forecasts for 2025.

Automakers are expecting to see drops of sales in the millions this year.

How are rare earth metals relevant to this?

Rare earth metals are needed for vital components in modern electronics, and China controls 85% of global refining capacity. China has threatened to stop the export of these metals.

Rare earth metals aren’t actually that rare.

They are a byproduct refined from conventional mining, but it’s an incredibly toxic and environmentally destructive process. It’s not possible

to “bring back” production, which is why Trump is looking to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ukraine as possible alternatives to China. The quest for rare earth metals will drive naked imperialist exploitation all around the world.

What advantages does the U.S. have over China?

U.S. capitalism has an immense domestic market that can help it better weather trade wars because its economy does not rely as much on exports. The median American spends $44,058 in their domestic economy, while the median Chinese person spends $6,510. U.S. capitalism has the most powerful military in the world, which includes a series of overseas bases. Meanwhile, Chinese capitalism has its own particular crisis. Its smaller domestic market means it relies more on exports than the U.S. There are massive amounts of public debt.

There is overproduction—too much stuff and not enough demand for it—leading to falling prices and challenges growing the economy and paying off the debt.

a blow to the fragile U.S. economy.

What happened during the last major trade war?

During the Great Depression, the US passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which significantly raised tariffs on foreign imports. In the early 1930s, U.S. tariffs stood at 40%. Other countries retaliated, worsening the Great Depression. This ramping up of national conflicts, and the desperate conditions created by the depression, paved the way for World War II. The German ruling class turned to Hitler in an attempt to save German capitalism in the midst of the economic collapse and after repeated attempts at socialist revolution by the working class. In 1931, the British ruling class launched “imperial preference,” a free-trade agreement only between its current and former colonies.

The Dutch ruling class did the same thing in Indonesia and the South Pacific. This restricted the access that Japanese capitalism needed to these raw materials from Dutch colonies. The impact of tariffs was to strengthen the power of warmongers in Japan, leading to Japan’s entry into WWII.

What advantages does China have over the U.S.? Is there a similar risk of war today?

China is the biggest producer of goods in the world, which includes key components for major U.S. corporations who rely on China in order to make money. The Chinese economy has vast factories and modern infrastructure that can produce goods at low prices, thereby giving Chinese capitalists a competitive advantage. In 2022, there were 607 billionaires in China, second only to the United States. Furthermore, the so-called Chinese Communist Party, actually a capitalist party dominated by billionaires, ruthlessly controls the lives of working-class people in China, who earn poverty wages, often lack healthcare and access to affordable housing. The most advanced microchip foundries in the world are in Taiwan, 90 miles off the coast of mainland China. Even a slight disruption to these foundries would be

Yes. Trump wants to bring back U.S. imperialism as the dominant capitalist country, especially when it comes to “advanced” production like microchips, AI, and space. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, won’t accept this, and has staked his authoritarian regime on making China the dominant capitalist superpower, with its own imperialist ambitions like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Both imperialist powers have supported militarism and outright wars in the Ukraine, Middle East and Africa.

As history shows, the fight for imperialist global hegemony, which can coincide with intense trade wars, often lead to real wars, especially over situations like Taiwan, which the “west” relies on for microchips but China considers part of its country.

So what’s the anwer, according to socialists?

When politicians say things like “looking out for America first,” they mean “looking out for the profits of American corporations.” We oppose protectionism and trade wars, which are geared towards protecting U.S. business profits and are a step toward all-out war. But we also oppose free trade deals, which are just another way for corporations in dominant imperialist countries to enrich themselves at the expense of working people around the world and at home. Tariffs and free trade are two sides of the same coin: two tools of the capitalist system which is fundamentally based on exploiting workers and the environment for profit.

Making life better for the vast majority of working people won’t happen through tariffs.

As a first step, we need to tax the billionaires and the top 500 corporations to fund good

MAY 2025

union jobs, free healthcare, and high-quality affordable housing. But we also need an entirely new system to fundamentally fix the problems working people face that Trump falsely claims he’s going to solve. Socialists call for a democratically-planned economy on a global scale, where goods are produced and distributed to meet everyone’s needs rather than to make billionaires richer.J

No, but unfortunately some labor leaders have promoted the idea that American workers and American bosses are on the same side against foreign competitors (namely, China) and that policies protecting the profits of American bosses are good for the U.S. worker. In reality, corporations will use the same “America First” rhetoric to try to force American workers to “sacrifice” and accept low wages to make up for all the money big corporations are spending to reshore production to the U.S. Workers in the U.S. have much more in common with other workers internationally than we do with our exploitative bosses at home.

Shawn Fain, the president of United Auto Workers is one of the most visible labor leaders in the country, with over 400,000 workers under his leadership. Many contine to look to him for action after the UAW’s “stand up” strike against the Big Three automakers. On CNN, he said “tariffs are a tool in the toolbox to get these companies to do the right thing, and the intent behind it is to bring jobs back here. And, you know, invest in the American workers.” Union leaders like Shawn Fain need to use their position to fight for the interests of the whole working class, which means linking the call for good jobs to the fight against deportations, attacks on trans people and imperialist wars. At the same time, Mahmoud Khalil, who was a UAW member when he was a student at Columbia University, was abducted from his home by ICE for the “crime” of protesting against Israel’s decimation of Gaza.

Unions need to fight back against Trump’s trade war on an independent, working-class basis. If the bosses try to close down a factory, workers should occupy the workplace and run it democratically. Strikes and workplace action will be necessary to prevent layoffs like the ones already announced at Stellantis, which will affect UAW workers. Unions and consumer groups should monitor prices to make sure corporations aren’t price-gouging.J

5

US POLITICS Trump’s tornado of right-wing attacks continues to pick up speed.

Can The Democrats Rehabilitate?

But What Comes Next?

ELAN AXELBANK, PHILADELPHIA

A recent CNN poll reports that 77% of Democratic voters believe Democrats in Congress are doing too little to oppose Trump’s agenda. 65% say that Democratic politicians need to stay principled as opposed to compromising with Trump, double the number from the early days of Trump’s first term.

The same poll has the Democratic Party’s overall favorability rating at 29%, the lowest ever since CNN started polling on this question.

6

And no wonder. It’s quite possibly never been clearer that the Democrats won’t save us. What’s urgently needed instead is a new, mass working-class party that can challenge the entire pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist political establishment, both Republicans and Democrats. Such a party would need to not just run in elections, but build struggle in the streets, communities, schools, and workplaces against Trump’s far-right authoritarian takeover and for a viable pro-worker alternative—not waiting for the midterms 18 months away but taking on Trump now.

But is such a party possible? If so, is it possible now? Could Bernie Sanders and AOC’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour be the jumping off point? The anti-Trump movement urgently needs to create space for democratic discussion and debate on this and many other key strategic questions staring us in the face as

Five months after Kamala Harris’s stunning defeat, some Democrats are beginning to show signs of life. This ranges from symbolic stunts like Corey Booker’s 25-hour speech in Congress to Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” tour which has been drawing crowds of tens of thousands at rallies across the country.

Different tendencies within the Democratic Party are beginning to emerge which will vie for strategic dominance in their effort to rehabilitate the party’s image after their historic defeat in November. However, in the fight to actually stop Trump’s agenda, no strategy that points to a single iota of compromise, or that puts hope in the institutions of capitalist government, will work. This strategy is all the Democrats have.

Rehabilitate their image as they may, their party is a dead end for our movements. We need mass working-class action independent of both corporate parties.

“A Democratic Party That Fights For Us”?

What started with a 2,500 person rally in Omaha, Nebraska and turned into 20,000 in Utah and 36,000 in Los Angeles, the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour is rapidly picking up steam.

Los Angeles was Sanders’ largest rally ever, including during his two presidential campaigns. That tens of thousands are coming out to these events, which are posed explicitly as an alternative to the strategy of do-nothing establishment Democrats like Chuck Schumer, shows just how much of a desire there is to fight Trump’s agenda and frustration at the Democrats’ inaction.

In late March, the New York Times article “Bernie Sanders Has an Idea for the Left: Don’t Run as Democrats” gave the impression that Bernie might finally be considering a more decisive break from the Democratic Party. But unfortunately, the third time does not appear to be the charm for Bernie. In an interview with left podcaster Hasan Piker, Piker asked Sanders if he thinks there’s momentum right now to break through the two-party duopoly. Interrupting the question, Sanders bluntly, and in no uncertain terms, said, “If you’re asking me do I think we can start a third party tomorrow, I don’t.”

Later that night, at a rally in Tempe, Arizona, AOC called for “a Democratic Party that fights for us.” Unfortunately, Sanders and AOC have not learned the lessons of their own failed decade-long effort to reform the Democratic Party.

We Can’t Wait For The Midterms At every rally, Sanders and AOC push the message that voting is the key way to stop Trump, implicitly pointing toward the midterms in November, 2026. But one need only look at the last 15 weeks to tremble at what can take place in the next 77 weeks if Trump is not decisively challenged by a mass working class movement now. We cannot afford for the sole next step out of the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour rallies to be running for office (something only a tiny proportion of people will do) and voting in the midterms.

The overwhelming majority of what Trump is doing will not be reversible simply by changing

the composition of the House and Senate. In fact, the vast majority of Trump’s damage is done with the stroke of a pen by executive order. Right-wing presidents have been decisively pushed back before, in the US and abroad. It was under Nixon that the US pulled out of Vietnam, the EPA was established, welfare expanded, and Roe v. Wade won. South Korea’s authoritarian president was forced out of office in April by a mass movement. Trump can be stopped, but not if our main strategy is to prepare for elections 18 months from now and remain within the confines of the pro-corporate Democratic Party.

Fighting Oligarchy To The End Instead, every Bernie rally should end with a clear immediate next step. If at the next “Fighting Oligarchy” tour rally, Bernie declared “Enough is enough, the Democratic Party can’t be reformed, we’re starting something new,” millions would heed the call. Sanders and AOC could call for neighborhood launch meetings in the next two weeks focused on building for a coordinated national day of strike action and student walkouts. Out of this could come city and statewide conferences which elect delegates to a national founding conference this summer where a party program could be democratically decided on and a national leadership could be democratically elected.

The program could be binding on all elected officials, required to take no more than the average wage of those they represent, and if they abandon the program, be subject to immediate recall. Unions could be given the opportunity to affiliate to the party and submit delegates on behalf of their memberships. Within weeks, such a party would be over a million strong and have a class struggle war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars. It could run hundreds of independent working-class candidates in upcoming elections, flowing directly from the anti-Trump movement in the streets and workplaces, not instead of it.

This party would be infinitely more effective than the Democratic Party ever will be in fighting Trump’s agenda, because it would be based on the power of the working class and mass movements. Given that any party which fights unequivocally for working-class interests will run up against the limits of what’s possible under profit-driven capitalism, it would ultimately need to adopt a socialist program.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Bernie is not planning to take this path, but we can’t afford to lower our sights for what’s truly needed. The labor and anti-Trump movement need to take up the mantle to build the kind of party that we urgently need.

The “Fighting Oligarchy” tour puts on full display the rising anger at both Trump and the do-nothing Democrats, but the strategy being provided is not going to work. Fighting oligarchy means fighting both parties of the billionaire class. It means not making a single concession to capitalist divide-and-rule, pitting one section of the working class against another. It means taking a clear stance against all imperialist war that serves only the ruling classes of this country and others, not ordinary people of any nation. It means fighting the entire capitalist system that breeds oligarchy in the first place.

If we’re going to fight oligarchy, we need to fight it to the end.J

socialistalternative.org

IMMIGRATION

three months, he is moving towards consolidating his power as an authoritarian, and has little to no regard for the justice system. The courts cannot be relied on as a way to defend against deportations, and certainly not to stop them from happening in the first place. The “Day Without Immigrants” strike of 2006 provides a powerful example of how a mass movement can push back anti-immigrant policies.

Lessons From May Day 2006

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE EDITORIAL BOARD On April 14, Trump met with self-described “world’s coolest dictator”, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to discuss his immigration plans. This meeting comes after Trump forcibly deported nearly 300 Venezuelans to El Salvador for alleged involvement in gang activity, despite no evidence or due process. He did so by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a rare law only used to detain and deport migrants during wartime, which after a back-and-forth in the lower courts was shamefully upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Bukele, who oversees the largest prison in Latin America in a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, welcomed Trump’s offer of $20,000 per deportee.

DAKOTA CASTROJARRETT, BOSTON Several weeks ago, the Trump Administration banned the Associated Press from access to presidential events held in the Oval Office after they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by its ridiculous Trump-ordained new name, Gulf of America. A few weeks later, the Trump administration announced it would start picking and choosing which news organizations could cover White House events.

Despite Trump campaigning on protecting free speech from the “woke left”, his administration has taken drastic steps to limit free speech, including these attacks

MAY 2025

Even when the courts rule against Trump and his draconian policies, there is little to nothing they can do to enforce their decision.

After Salvadoran green card holder Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported from his home in Maryland to prison in El Salvador in what the DOJ admitted to be an “administrative error”, a lower court ruled that he must be released from prison and that the US must facilitate his return home, where he leaves behind three children. Despite the ruling, and despite the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that the Trump administration needs to facilitate Garcia’s return to Maryland, Bukele assured Trump that he won’t release him.

The failure of the courts to meaningfully stop Trump and deportations is creating immense fear amongst immigrants and their families. As Trump has demonstrated multiple times in just

on the press.

Trump’s censoring of the media is part of his drive towards a more authoritarian state.

He wants to create fear within news organizations of critiquing him and his administration and to create avenues to punish those who do. This is a clear attack on what news Trump thinks working people should have the right to know about.

Trump and the capitalist class are preparing for a sharper period of inter-imperialist conflict between the United States and China. The media have historically been an important tool for the ruling class to whip up nationalism. One of the most egregious examples was during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. This brutal war was

In 2005, during George W. Bush’s administration, “The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005” (H.R. 4437) was passed by the Republicandominated House of Representatives. This infamous legislation contained a host of vicious, reactionary measures aimed at immigrants, including militarizing the border, criminalizing undocumented immigrants and anyone who helped them, and building a border wall. A true mass movement arose in opposition and succeeded in making it politically impossible for H.R. 4437 to become law.

In the spring of 2006, a powerful mood of anger at H.R. 4437 galvanized millions into mass demonstrations in cities all over the country. Some of the biggest marches in April were counted in the hundreds of thousands, and two million marched on an April 10 nationwide day of action. Large immigrant organizations, the Catholic Church, and Spanish radio DJs were involved in organizing and leading the actions, but these organizations were surprised by the size of the response from working-class Latino communities.

As the movement developed, it became more radical and went beyond calling for repeal of H.R. 4437 to rejecting the second-class status being proposed by corporate politicians backing “immigration reform” and demanding immediate legal status for all workers. At this

fueled by nationalistic flames that were fanned heavily by the media. They spread the Bush administration’s lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This is the kind of media Trump wants.

In the face of these attacks by the Trump administration, the billionaire-owned media companies have done little to defend free speech or their journalists. Instead, they are bending the knee to Trump’s authoritarian attacks. The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) doesn’t allow the publication of articles critiquing Bezos anymore since he announced that the opinion page can only promote “personal liberties and free markets”. NPR recently told a gay reporter not to attend Pride. Several news companies have

point, the movement had moved well beyond what was acceptable to the Democratic Party, the alleged defender of immigrants’ rights.

When a call was made for a one-day nationwide strike and boycott, dubbed the “Day Without Immigrants,” the more conservative elements of the leadership of the movement, as well as Democratic politicians tried to put on the brakes.

Despite the campaign that was waged against the idea of a strike, May 1, 2006 was a historic day and an awe-inspiring success for the movement of immigrant workers.

Millions joined marches in large cities and small towns across the country, including an estimated 400,000 in both Los Angeles and Chicago. Hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike and paralysed important sections of the economy in many areas and the port of Los Angeles was shut down. In building and carrying out the first national political strike in many decades, the immigrant rights’ movement revived May Day in the U.S. as the international day for workers.

The mass movement of 2006 not only stopped H.R. 4437 but also helped to push back anti-immigrant attitudes in society. It did not, however, succeed in winning “equal rights for all workers” which was one of its key demands. Crucially, the wider US-born working class did not take action in support of the movement despite the sympathy of many. This allowed the ruling class to isolate, wear down, and ultimately savagely repress the movement .

Millions of people oppose Trump’s deportation policies. It would be a huge step forward to show this by organizing something on the scale of the “Day Without an Immigrant” strike in 2006. However, it will take a movement on an even larger scale to push back against Trump’s unprecedented attacks on students, trans people, unions and the environment.

We’ll need mass student walkouts and united strike action by the unions. Ultimately, capitalism relies on divide-and-rule tactics to keep all workers down. This is why a one-day strike that brings workers together would be so powerful, by shutting down the profits and power that uphold Trump and his cronies.J

settled suits with Trump, setting a dangerous precedent of the weaponization of courts against the media.

What is needed is to take the news out of the hands of billionaires who have no interest in the working class’ right to know what’s going on in the world. We need independent worker-owned and worker-written media.

Socialist Alternative’s newspaper, as well as our international journal and other publications, provides a workers’ perspective and a socialist analysis on the most important news items of the moment. Subscribe to Socialist Alternative to provide yourself with news from a working-class perspective at a time when that is needed more than ever.J

7

D

ocumented and undocumented workers are being deported without due process to the notorious Salvadoran prison CECOT. Student protesters are being kidnapped in broad daylight. Over one million federal workers have been stripped of their rights to negotiate a union contract. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are estimated to cost U.S. families $4,600 extra this year on top of the current cost-of-living crisis.

Many are questioning if it’s possible to resist Trump’s authoritarian, pro-billionaire agenda.

Since his inauguration, Trump’s favorability is already down 14%. His favorability among young men aged 18-29, considered a stronghold of his campaign, has declined a staggering 29 points. Inflation is the number one reason.

Trump’s agenda is being rejected by more and more working and young people.

But, it’s not enough to know what we’re fighting against. We need to know what we’re fighting for. Some billionaires want a return to pre-Trump “normalcy.” In 2020, we were told we just needed to get back to the “norm” and elect Biden as the lesser of two evils. Well, four years of “normal” capitalism under Biden saw high inflation, a continued decline in real wages, crackdowns on student protesters, and deportation levels higher than what even Trump is doing today. It strengthened Trump and the far right, who are emboldened to go even further than they did during his first term.

Trump can be defeated. But it won’t come through continuing to place faith in the Democratic Party or just waiting things out till the midterms. Following May Day, we need to escalate the movement against Trump. A next step should be to start building for a one-day strike to put Trump on notice. We’re coming for the billionaires where it hurts: their profits.

The Movement So Far Pockets of resistance have existed since Inauguration Day. In many cities, you’d see fifty protesters against the mass layoffs of federal workers one day, a hundred people out to protest the deportations of immigrants another day, two hundred to protest the kidnapping of student protesters, and so on. All of these protests shared Trump and Musk as common enemies, and many were organized by new organizations such as 50501 and the Federal Unionists Network (FUN). Many protests were led by people with little organizing experience, but felt they had to do something given the scale of ferocity of Trump’s attacks.

Democrats Are A Failed Opposition

The labor movement and union leaders have started to organize rallies against Trump’s attacks on union workers. The National Association of Letter Carriers and the American Postal Workers Union collectively organized over 500 rallies nationally in protest of Trump and Musk’s plans to privatize the postal service, which would place hundreds of thousands of good union jobs at risk.

Millions of people took to the streets for the April 5th “Hands Off!” protests in what has been, by far, the largest day of action against Trump this year. Now, the AFL-CIO, which represents over 15 million workers, is organizing rallies on May 1st in several cities to mark International Workers Day and protest Trump’s attacks on the labor movement, an important step to be built on further.

Labor Leaders Need To Lead Escalating protests are a crucial component of building a movement to defeat Trump. It’s encouraging that many of these more recent protests have steered away from focusing on just one issue and instead raised demands that can bring together wider forces: against the mass layoffs, deportations, the war in Gaza, and the deepening cost-of-living crisis. But feet in the streets alone are not enough. How can we actually defeat an authoritarian leader like Trump?

In statements and at protests, the overwhelming emphasis of some union leaders like AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler is to “fight like hell in the courts”. But Trump is purposefully ignoring the decisions of courts against his deportations.

In an Oval Office interview alongside the President of El Salvador, Trump aide Stephen Miller claimed that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against the deportation of union member Kilmar Abrego Garcia was actually a decision in Trump’s favor!

Working-class power doesn’t come from the courts or through writing letters to our elected representatives. Working-class power comes from the billions in profits workers produce for billionaires like Trump. It comes from our power to stop the economy dead in its tracks until we get what we demand.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, offered a different approach

8

to Shuler’s: that workers across different industries should strike together—a general strike— against the Trump administration and its attacks on workers. This cannot just be a talking point to be raised and dropped at a whim. Labor leaders like Nelson need to boldly organize to this end.

Rank-and-file workers have a critical role to play in transforming our unions into fighting and democratic tools to push back against Trump’s billionaire agenda. Where leaderships aren’t offering the necessary lead, union members should get together and propose resolutions advancing clear action steps, including walkouts and strikes, and build opposition groups to take on and replace conservative leaderships. The examples of the letter carriers’ ‘Build a Fighting NALC’ and the federal workers’ ‘Federal Unionists Network’ show that a serious fight can be organized even when elected union leaderships fail to provide a lead.

The highest profile act of resistance so far from the Democratic Party was the “heroism” of Sen. Cory Booker who … talked for a long time.

Remarkably, during his 25-hour speech Booker managed to avoid mentioning the kidnappings of pro-Palestine student protesters on college campuses, surely because of his own party’s role in paving the way for these attacks. He followed this up by voting for more military funding for Israel, just as videos were released of the IDF murdering paramedics in Gaza.

Democratic strategist James Carville has publicly offered the strategy most Democrats seem to be following: play dead and wait till the midterms. Carville thinks we should all just stomach whatever attacks come between now and 2026 and hope Trump shoots himself in the foot.

He has also come out against “pronoun politics” and is arguing the Democrats should only talk about the economy and drop the social issues.

No need to worry, we can just get our rights back in a couple years time. Until then, we will surely continue receiving fundraising texts and emails from the Democrats promising if you just “Vote Blue No Matter Who” one more time that we can stop Trump.

Election setbacks for Trump and the Republicans can absolutely reflect a shifting tide against his authoritarian, pro-billionaire agenda. The recent conservative loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, into which Musk dropped $25 million, shows the growing rejection of Trump even in states that voted for him in 2024. If Republicans lose seats in the midterms, it will show a rejection on the part of many working people of Trump’s authoritarianism and his right-populist economic agenda, which will inevitably fail to meet working peoples’ needs.

But the Democratic Party’s willingness to play dead, their commitment to representing the interests of billionaires and massive corporations, and their backsliding on issues like trans rights shows that they don’t even come close to offering the alternative to Trumpism working people need.

Bernie Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour is beginning to draw thousands, and even tens of thousands at every stop. The platform Bernie ran on in 2016 and 2020 for Medicare for All, raising the federal minimum wage, and waging war against the billionaire class is still immensely popular and offers a real alternative to the right populism of Trump. If these rallies are turned into mass organizing events, they would be far more powerful. This would mean not focusing on the distant midterms or the 2028 presidential race, but building the struggle now and laying the foundation for building our own party that refuses to

socialistalternative.org

take corporate and billionaire donations, has roots in the labor movement, and is committed to actively opposing Trump’s anti-worker agenda through building movements in the streets and in our workplaces. The dead end approach by Bernie of funneling movements back into voting Democrat needs to end. Any party willing to “play dead” at a moment like this is unfit to effectively oppose Trump and the far right.

How South Korean Unions Defeated A Wannabe Dictator The U.S. labor movement does not have to start from scratch or dive deep into history books to find a strategy capable of defeating Trump. In South Korea only last year, now-former President Yoon attempted to declare martial law.

This would have greatly consolidated his power and suspended many basic democratic rights, including the right to strike.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) immediately called for its over one million members to wage a general strike, demanding Yoon lift martial law as well as demanding he be impeached. South Korean workers and the KCTU defeated Yoon’s martial law through mass, collective strike action.

Later, when Yoon’s impeachment case was due to be heard in the courts, the KCTU organized an emergency delegates meeting. Hundreds of worker delegates across various unions set up chairs blocking a busy road, and publicly voted on a plan to wage a general strike again if Yoon were to be found not guilty. Yoon was indicted of attempting to lead an insurrection, in large part due to the pressure of a militant labor movement.

Since the strikes, KCTU reports it has grown significantly especially among young women workers. It’s now organizing for stronger public services and is carrying out a campaign, started last year, to organize the roughly half a million undocumented workers in South Korea. The case of KCTU shows that it’s not only possible to defeat authoritarian leaders, but these victories can be a springboard for the labor movement to fight for more.

After May 1, Escalate To A OneDay Strike!

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador’s most brutal prison, is a member of SMART, a union representing 230,000 mainly transportation and construction workers. Michael Coleman, the union’s president, is demanding his return which is an important first step. The labor movement needs to be absolutely clear that an attack on one union member is an attack on all union members.

But if Coleman went further and organized a one-day strike of all SMART members, calling on other building trades unions to not cross their picket line and join them to demand the release and return of their union brother, Trump could be forced to back down and bring him home.

Striking New York City taxi drivers were the nail in the coffin for the first “Muslim Ban” in 2017 during Trump’s first term, and it was TSA and air traffic controller sickouts that ended the longest government shutdown in history in 2018/19. This is where our power comes from, and we need to use it if we’re going to really take on Trump.

Following the 2023 strike at the Big Three auto companies, UAW President Shawn Fain called for the labor movement to organize a general strike in 2028. Major unions like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represent nearly two million members

MAY 2025

collectively, have already passed resolutions to join the effort, a hugely positive step. Not only should more unions join the call, including the whole AFL-CIO, Fain and other union leaders should come out with a new date significantly sooner to challenge Trump now, not in three years. Millions of workers across all industries would answer the call and Trump and his billionaire administration would be, for the first time, truly on the backfoot.

Trump’s kidnappings of immigrant, pro-Palestine protesters is an attempt to shock and awe. They rightly recognize that many movements, including those capable of taking down authoritarian leaders, can be ignited by students and young people. While some universities like Harvard are, at this point, refusing to give in to Trump’s demands to eliminate DEI and hire faculty aligned with his agenda, these thoroughly ruling-class institutions are anything but reliable allies. In fact they’re the same universities that facilitated brutal crackdowns of the proPalestine encampments last year under Biden.

Student unions and campus activist organizations should take the lead by organizing demonstrations and mobilizing students to larger protests both on and off campus. Many students, especially international students, are scared to take action for fear of arrest, suspension, revocation of financial aid, or deportation. If the labor movement provides a bold lead, with strength in numbers, this could give students the confidence they need to come out on May 1st and beyond to show they won’t back down to Trump’s bullying tactics. Student walkouts, alongside strike action by the labor movement, would be an even more powerful stand against Trump.

All of these struggles, on campus and in the workplace—among immigrants, trans people, and federal workers—should organize mass meetings to build for a national day of strike action in coordination with the labor movement. If Fain used the organizing muscle of the hundreds of thousands of UAW members, or if Bernie Sanders directed the momentum of his Fighting Oligarchy tour to these ends, the movement would be far more powerful.

Taking up the call for a one-day strike points the way to something that can definitively give Trump a fight. To maximize participation, it should be built for at the shop floor level, with democratic discussion and strike committees that involve a wide layer of workers who want to fight back. This kind of organization would also help build unions’ muscles and prepare them to win stronger contracts in years to come. Even if Trump doesn’t back down after a single day of strike action, it would signify a major escalation in the struggle. It could raise workers’ experience and confidence, bring more workers into the struggle, and could be a step towards strengthening the movement to beat him back. When the working class shows its full power, we can take on Trump and the whole rotten capitalist system he embodies.J

To truly defeat Trump means bringing in the widest possible layers of the working class.

We need to know not just what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for.

Socialist Alternative calls for a mass working-class movement that fights to: • End all deportations and offer full citizenship rights for all!

Return all those deported under Trump’s draconian rule.

• Release all student protesters and end campus repression! End the war in Gaza and all imperialist wars.

• Fully fund our services! Defend against all attacks made to Social Security and Medicaid.

• A federal jobs program, good union jobs for all and the right to strike for federal workers!

• $25 federal minimum wage with cost of living adjustments to keep up with inflation.

• End the attacks on trans rights.

Tax the rich to fund transinclusive Medicare for All. • Break with both corporate parties and build a new workers’ party.

• No tariffs and no corporate “free” trade! Bring the top 500 corporations into democratic public ownership and plan the economy according to human need, not profit.

9

FIGHTING OPPRESSION

⚧ but there is no evidence that trans participation makes youth sports any more dangerous or less “fair”. Subjecting children to sex testing in order to play is cruel and ripe for abuse. The anti-trans frenzy means girls are being interrogated for having short hair or early growth spurts, experiences that will only discourage kids, both cis and trans, from participating in sports. This is about socially isolating trans kids and denying them the benefits of sports.

D

ebating biology in sports has been a favorite pastime among right-wing culture warriors for years. We are constantly inundated with reports on “men competing in women’s sports” and long discussions about individual athletes’ biology. For the average person, it can be difficult to parse what constitutes an “unfair” biological advantage, and how that fits into the current state of competitive sports.

Pundits like Michael Knowles take advantage of this confusion to scare people into believing trans people are a threat, particularly in women’s sports.

The main right-wing talking points boil down to this: transgender and intersex individuals have an unfair biological advantage over cis (identifies with gender assigned at birth) women, and this poses an extreme threat to the safety of cis women.

Does Testosterone Define A Binary In Sports?

Testosterone is often cited as the biological difference between men and women that creates the need for sex-segregated sports and for policing women’s sports in pursuit of fairness. But is it? Caster Semenya is a cis female athlete with an intersex condition that produces increased testosterone. Following her win in the 2009 800-meter women’s World Championships, she was subjected to extensive sex testing and was ultimately banned from competing in that event. Semenya’s case led to a regulation on certain track and field events requiring competing women to have a testosterone level under 10 nmol/L (the low end of the normal range for cis men). Roughly 2% of people have an intersex condition—100 times more common than identical twins.

But what is testosterone and what does it do? Testosterone is a hormone, one of many chemical messengers that tell your body what to do and when. Testosterone is the main androgen, responsible for the development of what are generally considered “male” sex characteristics. Cis men have higher concentrations of testosterone than cis women, although wide variation exists in both groups.

During puberty, testosterone promotes muscle development and increases hemoglobin concentration (which raises the body’s blood oxygen carrying capacity). This suggests that, on average, people who experience testosterone-based puberty have higher strength and aerobic capacity than people who do not.

Yet we cannot predict the athletic ability of a

10

specific individual based on their hormones.

Athletic ability is not a single dimension, and testosterone is not a magical chemical that induces all-around athletic domination.

Binaries can be useful for categorization and organization, but some, like the male-female sex binary, ultimately fail to accurately describe the vast nature of human biology. Distribution of sex characteristics is better represented as a bimodal curve, a continuum with clusters around two poles, often crudely labeled “male” and “female”, but with an overlapping middle (see image). Characteristics—like height, body mass distribution, or even metrics of athletic performance—vary widely within each (“male” or “female”) cluster. This means that the difference between two given cis women can be wider than the difference between a given cis woman and a cis man. Even chromosomes do not determine a straightforward sex binary.

There are myriad intersex variations like XXY, mixes of XX and XY, and uneven gene expression. Whether trying to define biological sex by chromosomes, anatomy, or hormones, two rigid categories simply do not suffice.

They want a return to “traditional” gender roles and the “nuclear family” which historically have been used to keep a patriotic capitalist society humming. They rely on division to keep workers fighting for scraps.

tells a different story. Several studies show that hormone treatment therapy (HRT) can erase this “advantage”. After 2 years of HRT, trans women show no statistical difference from cis women in their 1.5-mile run time, and after 4 years of HRT, no statistical difference in sit-up performance. Thus if any individual trans woman outperforms a cis woman, that outperformance is likely within the range of typical variability already present among cis women. These studies are likely just the tip of the iceberg in this still-new field of research on trans athletes.

Sports already accommodate greater variation among cis members of the same sex than might exist between a trans and cis athlete. In football, athletes with different body compositions have advantages at playing different positions. Running backs are smaller than offensive linemen because they need more mobility. Hockey operates on a series of “codes”, enforced by players, to try to make inevitable physical contact between players fairer and to prevent injury. Weight classes in wrestling and boxing level the playing field between competitors. Karate competitions are organized by skill level, belt color, not gender.

People have solved the question of fairness many times before. There deserves to be a good faith discussion about what fairness in professional sports means, if sports should be gender-segregated, and more. But that’s clearly not the aim of the “debate” instigated by the right.

Youth sports are crucial to the social and physical development of children and teens.

Most youth sports are not competitive in a professional sense until after puberty and many sports remain coed until then. Prepubescent children have similar athletic performance regardless of sex. New proposed bans on trans athletes include elementary school level bans,

Why Is This Such A Big Part Of The Culture War? Right-wing culture warriors have latched on to the issue of trans women in sports because this conversation is nuanced, and the biology is barely understood by the public. Both corporate parties promote the narrative that trans people are unsafe in women’s spaces despite the complete lack of evidence for this. Instead of facing real issues in women’s sports, like underfunding, abuse, and toxic self-harm cultures, these ghouls point the finger at an already extremely marginalized minority. They want to push trans people back into the closet, to restrict bodily autonomy, and to narrow the definition of “woman” and “man”. They want a return to “traditional” gender roles and the “nuclear family” which historically have been used to keep a patriotic capitalist society humming. They rely on division to keep workers fighting for scraps.

Any coach will tell you that what separates a champion from others with athletic skill is mentality, a voracious determination to not only overcome obstacles, but to face them head on.

Human sex characteristics won’t tell you which athlete has drive, focus, dedication, access to training resources, or the economic stability to play. We can celebrate people who excel at their sport, but this does not encompass all of what sports mean in our society. Sports are about companionship and teamwork. Teamwork trains workers to overcome divisions and build solidarity.

The answer to this problem is not further exclusion, but to fight together for the betterment of society as a whole—a key part of that being creating space and funding for programs that allow everyone to enjoy athletics and sports culture.J

How Do We Decide What’s “Fair”?

Currently, most sports are segregated along the sex binary in the name of fairness, but given that the binary is incorrect, how do we decide what is actually “fair”? Biological differences contribute to comparative athletic ability, but hormones are not the only factor, or even the most important. Hormones impact height, weight, and joint mobility, but there is much variability and no guarantee. There are men with high levels of testosterone who are underaverage height and weight.

You might think that trans women would be stronger and faster than the average cis woman if they experienced testosterone-based puberty. However, research into trans athletes

socialistalternative.org

FIGHTING OPPRESSION

Rob Rooke, Bay Area

In the early days after Adolescence’s release, it was touted as a powerful mystery thriller about a young boy accused of murder. There are many shows whose hooks sound quite similar, The Sinner, Elite, Dark, the list goes on and on. However, it quickly became clear as Adolescence took the U.S. by storm that there was nothing ordinary about this show. It is not a whodunnit, murder mystery—it is a social drama that explores the rightward radicalization of young men. By the end of the first episode you know who did it—the show explores why.

The extreme right continues to make gains in winning over young men to their ideas in recent years. Figures like Andrew Tate, and thousands of lesser known influencers, “lifestyle coaches,” and pick-up artists, have successfully exploited young boys’ sense of alienation by framing the world as one hostile to men. The four-part Netflix series Adolescence walks us through one such boy’s world.

Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s series may be the most profound piece of television since David Simon’s deep exploration of the U.S. urban social crisis in The Wire.

Adolescence, a show about a young boy who brutally murders his female classmate, unfolds with each episode specializing in the specific aspects of the world of violence that contributed to the murder.

More Than A Murder Series The opening scene begins with a seemingly over-the-top military-style police invasion of a suburban home of the family we are led to believe could not be connected to the crime.

The dad assumes the cops are there for him, the 13-year old son is in bed and soon in tears,

MAY 2025

distraught and wets himself. The attention to detail in the responses of each family member is a reminder of the reality of the militarization of policing that has become normalized in recent years.

The filming of each episode in one continuous take allows both for the edge-of-your-seat tension of the home raid and for the engrossing, 44-minute interview between the female child psychologist and the boy, Jamie, in the third episode. The mini series’ first episode paints a picture of the legal system in relation to kids. We are led to feel empathy for Jamie’s sudden shocking arrest and his lone departure to the police precinct, as a teen child. This first episode stands out also, in part, for the brilliant and heartbreaking performances of the lead actors, but also because—in contrast to later episodes—it shows how keen we are to assume the innocence of young boys. It isn’t until the last five minutes of the episode that we’re meant to even consider that Jamie may be guilty. The darkest irony surrounding the social media fame of this show is that many TikTok reviews center around the question of Jamie’s potential innocence.

Episode two is primarily centered in Jamie’s high school, where conflicts are common and where the issue of the wider growth of misogyny among boys unfolds into the developing story. Overly big class sizes, demoralized teachers and all of society’s wider crises turn in the pot. School dysfunction and the social media bubbles that kids have to navigate on their own further complicate the environment for young girls and boys.

approached for a date when she was most vulnerable. This low confidence eventually rises into vicious violence.

Just as we feel the series has reached its high point with the incredibly well-written and well-acted Episode 3, then we go to a possibly darker place in the final episode: the dad. Jamie’s father comes across as a decent working-class guy, with a sense of humor and someone who has tried to live a life as a good person. Like many men of his generation, he has broken the cycle of his own father, who beat him and possibly beat his mother. But a fiery anger still stirs just below the surface that the rest of his family are well aware of.

Jamie’s dad is not written as a flat, simplistic caricature, but with the sensitivity that is critical to understanding him, allowing us to begin to understand how generational male violence evolves.

Incredible Danger Of The Manosphere Adolescence does not crudely blame Jamie’s raging anger simply on his father. Police militarization and violence, the schools, and Jamie’s blameless immaturity are all unfurled before we get to the violence tremoring in Jamie’s dad.

We would be drawing the wrong conclusions if we did not squarely center Jamie’s fundamental radicalization by the manosphere.

The extreme right have access to young boys through their phones all day long. They continuously spout hatred and encourage violence and control over women and girls. In past decades school shooters have often singled out girls to murder; however, today’s danger is far greater as the organized right now give a political framework and justification for this violence.

The series attempts to paint a holistic picture of how young boys become capable of extreme anti-women acts. It does not name names: there are no big general references to capitalism. However, Adolescence is unequivocally a condemnation of this society. You can’t have capitalism without violence. It is a system based on inequality that cannot maintain itself without terrible violence.

Adolescence is both a great piece of drama, and at the same time also a very real and terrifying warning. The right-wing encroachment into the minds of young boys should alarm us all.

The extreme right, if they had full power, would lock up, and possibly execute all those who argue for equality. The rise of far right misogyny is a real phenomena in our schools and in the internet bubbles inhabited by young boys.

As this show desperately tries to convey, there is nothing to be gained—for any ordinary person—by leaning into the violent ideology of the manosphere.

As wrenching as it is to admit, in a greater sense, both Jamie and Katie are victims of this ferocious snake oil being sold to young boys. There are millions of school-aged boys in American schools who are daily being victimized alongside their female and gender nonconforming peers. Victimized by a crumbling public school system, victimized by the prospect of endless low wages and student debt, and victimized further by a reactionary rightwing regime hoping to justify it all by pointing the finger at anyone already marginalized under capitalism.

Barely anyone is happy with the mess the world has evolved into. Socialists need to step into the void and engage with young people and help them find a road towards unity, respect and understanding of all the oppressions in this world and where they come from. The far right must be driven out of the schools, but that cannot be done without a concrete alternative. J

Jamie & His Dad The last two episodes put Jamie and his dad into focus. It literally asks what it is to be a man in this society. The psychologist, charged by the courts to assess if Jamie understands the seriousness of murder, asks all the questions a feminist might want to ask a misogynist were they on an equal footing. The interview is very, very disturbing. Layer after layer of questions begin to reveal the incredible anger that Jamie feels. His incredibly low self worth mutates into attempts to prey on those weaker than him, including Katie, the victim, whom he

11

LABOR MOVEMENT

ADAM BURCH, MINNEAPOLIS After running a campaign with a right populist promise to defend the interest of working Americans, Trump has used his first months in office to ferociously attack federal workers and their unions. By executive order Trump has ended the collective bargaining rights for some one million federal workers, which affects nearly the entire federal workforce spanning some dozen federal agencies and departments. It amounts to 7% of the country’s total union membership. Not only has Trump ended collective bargaining rights, but he’s also shut down entire agencies, and eliminated more than 200,000 workers’ positions. He’s fired workers in their probationary periods, instituted a hiring freeze, offered buyouts, and ordered remote workers to return to the office in violation of their union contracts, hoping that this will make them quit.

Trump’s message to all federal workers is that their labor would be more productive in the private sector, where they can make more profits for big business in their competition with Chinese industry. Practically speaking, the bosses won’t simply hire some million workers quitting their federal jobs, and many would find themselves jobless. More importantly, this is blatant union busting and denigrates the labor of millions of working people.

Leading the effort to strip federal workers of their union rights and their very employment is the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and his socalled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He argues that much of the civil service is corrupt, lazy, and unnecessary. Trump and Musk also have tried to justify their attacks by saying they are rooting out DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs in government.

Ultimately, this is a divide-and-rule crusade, designed to undermine worker unity and potential for fightback, amid these attacks.

When Trump was on the campaign trail railing against the “Deep State” and pledging to “drain the swamp,” many thought he was talking about well-paid senior department heads, not regular working people. In reality, most targets of DOGE have been ordinary workers: veterans’ healthcare providers, social security office workers, USPS mail carriers, air traffic controllers, and more.

Twenty-First Century PATCO? Trump and Musk’s attacks on federal workers are reminding many of the 1981 PATCO strike and many are asking if this is another “PATCO Moment”. When PATCO air traffic controllers went on strike, then-President Ronald Reagan fired all 11,000 of those striking

12

workers (even after PATCO endorsed Reagan in the election the year before). This is seen by many as the breaking point that signaled neoliberalism’s “open season” on the labor movement as a whole. For decades afterwards the labor movement suffered many defeats and unions hemorrhaged membership.

However, it wasn’t just the firing of the PATCO strikers that made this defeat for labor so deep. The most decisive factor in the defeat was the refusal of the leadership in the U.S.

leadership continued to capitulate, just hoping to survive.

Current UAW President Shawn Fain seemed to understand this back in March, saying that after the PATCO firings “the labor movement failed to act in that moment, and we have been paying the price ever since,” and that “the actions the administration has taken today are many times worse than PATCO.” However, since then Fain has supported Trump’s tariffs, and hasn’t defended UAW member Mahmoud

Khalil, from Trump’s deportation machine over If Bernie and AOC Khalil’s entirely justified protests against the used their tour to genocidal war in Gaza. Even worse, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien says that “there is a lot call for a one-day of fat in the government” and that “ultimately national strike against the courts are gonna decide” whether DOGE cuts are lawful.

Trump’s agenda, it Fain seems to have forgotten what he said about PATCO. Instead of promoting illusions in would supercharge tariffs being able to bring back manufacturing jobs, labor leaders like Shawn Fain should be the federal workers’ leading the charge in building a movement of fightback with the solidarity between public and private sector to defend the union rights of all workers confidence they need workers while throwing the UAW’s full weight behind protecting their members from deportations. to take this struggle to the next level.

Labor Movement Must Build For A labor federation (AFL-CIO) to take mass action in support of the fired strikers. Instead the labor leadership hid behind a legal approach and relied on the courts. That leadership failed to recognize that the crushing of the strike would be the declaration of open war on the working class that it was. Their inaction only emboldened the bosses for further attacks while the

National One-Day Strike

Fortunately, there are rank-and-file union workers taking a better approach. Organizing federal workers launched the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) and have called actions and meetings across the country. Among their demands are: no cuts to vital services, no mass layoffs, and to end the funding freeze.

It’s critical that rank-and-file union members are prepared to go further than the leadership of AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union), who are only fighting DOGE through the courts.

If we’ve learned anything from PATCO—and countless right-wing attacks since—it’s that the courts won’t save us.

Postal workers in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) are also fighting back, amid an exciting contract campaign in which workers overwhelmingly voted down a sellout Tentative Agreement (TA).

This No Vote campaign was primarily built by the union reform group Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), an initiative started by letter carrier members of Socialist Alternative. No Vote rallies nation-wide were organized by BFN members who are now tying the fight for a strong contract to the fight against Trump’s attempt to privatize USPS. On April 5th the anti-Trump movement took an important leap forward when FUN, 50501, SEIU, AFT, AFGE, other unions and left groups organized protests across the country that filled the streets with millions, in the biggest anti-Trump protests this year. The movement has also been joined by Bernie and AOC’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour around the country hosting rallies that are attracting tens of thousands of people looking for ideas to fight back.

What’s clear is that Bernie and AOC need to closely link up their rallies with the labor movement to coordinate direct action, especially with groups like BFN and FUN that are moving into struggle against Trump in a much more militant and democratic way than the official labor leadership is willing to do. If Bernie and AOC used their tour to call for a one-day national strike against Trump’s agenda, it would supercharge the federal workers’ fightback with the confidence they need to take this struggle to the next level.

The spineless Democrats have lost much credibility among the working class, unable to defend workers against Trump and having betrayed unions many times in service of the party’s corporate backers. These anti-Trump protests should raise the call for a new workers’ party that bases itself on these movements of struggle and runs candidates across the country independently from the Democrats to reflect and amplify struggle in the halls of power.

Socialist Alternative, other left groups, and unions are calling for the next day of coordinated, mass protests against Trump to be on May 1, International Workers Day. This year’s May Day protests will likely be one of the largest in years and a key opportunity to build towards a national one-day strike to shut down Trump’s agenda.J

socialistalternative.org

INTERNATIONAL

Serbia: How to Fight Authoritarianism RACHEL WILDER, PHILADELPHIA

Over a quarter of a million Serbian people— students, professors, farmers, parents, and more—took to the streets of Belgrade on March 15th against the corrupt government of Aleksandar Vučić, the president. This protest brought out approximately 5% of the population of the country, was the largest single day of protest in Serbia’s history.

Student protesters built for the day by marching hundreds of miles through the country in the weeks and days before. They picked people up in cities and towns along the way, and marched to the capital for the day of action.

The movement started after the tragic collapse of a railway canopy — funded by China’s Belt and Road Initiative — in November of 2024 that killed 15 people in the country’s second largest city of Novi Sad. The collapse sparked almost daily protests, with students demanding publication of documents related to the reconstruction of the railway station, a halt to the prosecution of students arrested during the protests, and a 20% increase in the budget for higher education. What started as outrage at a tragedy has turned into a massive cry against corruption and rigged elections and for more democratic rights in the country.

As the protests have continued to grow, they have faced retaliation, including a supporter of Vučić driving a car into a protest. Most egregiously, the government has likely used long-range acoustic devices (sonic weapons that emit painful levels of noise) on protesters, although the government is still denying this.

The student protests have grown into a mass force, encompassing a large layer of society, and posing the biggest threat to Vučić’s regime since gaining power in 2017. At the same time, the protests are not armed with demands which present a real alternative to the capitalist system the Vučić regime oversees. The rise of right-wing, authoritarian crackdowns is becoming all too common internationally and is a symptom of the capitalist system in crisis. Linking the struggle against corruption and authoritarianism

MAY 2025

to the international fight for a socialist alternative is crucial.

Vučić Losing His Grip Recent polling has shown the protests are supported by 59% of the population, with less than a third of the population supporting Vučić.

While the protests rage on and his popularity dwindles, Vučić’s international alliances are becoming unstable as well. On the one hand, Serbia has close economic ties with Russia and China, particularly its complete dependence on Russian natural gas. Serbia also refused to join the EU and other countries in placing sanctions on Russia after the start of the Ukraine War. On the other hand, Vučić has also allowed Serbian companies to sell arms to Ukraine and has been trying to diversify energy sources to introduce more renewables to reduce dependency on Russia.

While the EU champions itself as a bastion of Western democracy, there has been

a noticeable lack of support from the EU for the recent protests. Pro-EU forces worry that the protests will lead to an “anti-European mood” amongst young people. But the capitalist governments in the EU won’t put up any fight for democracy unless it interests them. Just last year, the EU pushed through the building of the Jadar Valley lithium mine in Serbia, despite the massive protests against it over health and safety concerns. The building of the mine has the potential to drastically decrease the EU’s reliance on China for lithium and raw materials — economic gains far outweigh any protests from Serbians in the eyes of the EU powers.

For A Socialist Serbia & Region!

While a main demand of the movement has been for Vučić to step down, there is little being put forward as to what would replace him. Trade unions and student groups must call for mass organizing meetings to discuss the alternative needed.

A new mass working-class party should be formed to fight to make this alternative a reality. A socialist program for public ownership and democratic workers’ control over all infrastructure projects, education, and other key industries, could help to pull the organized working-class further into the struggle. While the involvement of teachers unions in the protests has been key, this needs to be built upon, towards a coordinated general strike to bring Vučić down.

Moreover, the movement can’t just be contained to Serbia. Corruption and backsliding of democratic rights across the Balkans and Southern Europe has sparked massive protests in the region. Many of these protests have been sparked by tragic incidents, like the collapse of the railway canopy in Novi Sad, that put the corruption in government-run programs, like infrastructure projects, on full display.

In neighboring North Macedonia, protests have broken out because of a nightclub fire that killed 59 people in an entirely preventable disaster, and have even used slogans from the Serbian movement. In Greece, there was a general strike in January marking the two-year anniversary of the Tempe rail disaster that killed 57 people.

Protests have additionally been seen in Hungary against the corrupt media, in Georgia against rigged elections, and Turkey against the authoritarian Erdogan.

From Vučić to Erdogan, these corrupt authoritarians can’t be reformed away or replaced with another capitalist talking head. The whole capitalist system, based on never-ending profits and imperialist subordination, needs to go. Workers across the region must link up their struggles for democracy in a fight for international socialism.J

A youth revolt is in full swing in Turkey. They are squarely challenging the direction of the country towards more repression, represented by the corrupt Erdoğan regime. Millions of people have attended rallies over the past month. Every Wednesday there are rallies in Istanbul, and every weekend there are rallies in rotating cities.

Almost a decade of high inflation, miserably low pay, and the drive away from secular public education to one dominated by religion has raised a generation of young people for whom fundamental change is the only answer.

The main driving force of the huge rallies are the feeder marches from Turkey’s universities. While 18-24 year olds only make up 10% of the country’s population, one survey estimated they make up 70% of people attending the protests.

In March, the riot police attempted to lock down all universities, but those sieges were broken by mass action by students themselves as they broke out of their campuses and onto the streets.

One social media post of a young student getting her nose broken by the kicks of riot police went viral. If the repression gets more brutal, that may lead to even bigger demonstrations, as parents and older workers realize they also need to step up.

President Erdoğan’s party was heavily defeated in the 2024 local elections and is looking to hold onto power with whatever means are necessary, including police batons and tear gas. While the regime’s arrest of the opposition political leader, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was a trigger for this movement, this is not a movement simply for electoral change.

The future for young people in Turkey is a bleak one with more repression if they fail to bring the masses of workers into the struggle to bring down the authoritarian Erdoğan regime. The most popular student chant sums up the challenge: “Fight Until We’re Free!”J

READ THE FULL ARTICLE:

13

CLIMATE

JOIN ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST

Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity with revolutionary socialists around the world fighting in our workplaces, communities, and schools against the exploitation people face every day under the capitalist system.

We don’t just talk—we organize and fight to change the world. We build protests and walkouts, we organize unions and strikes.

We led struggles that won the country’s first $15/hr minimum wage, landmark renters’ rights and a tax on Amazon to fund affordable social housing. Now our members are helping to lead fights of Amazon workers and USPS letter carriers to win a $30/hr starting wage.

Every week, we have branch meetings in cities across the country where we analyze events from a Marxist perspective and discuss our work. Trump, poverty, discrimination, war and environmental destruction are symptoms—capitalism is the disease. Join Socialist Alternative today!

SAMMY ALBRIGHT, NEW HAVEN

SUBSCRIBE TO SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Get our monthly paper, written by and for workingclass and young people, delivered right to your door or inbox.

14

The world’s on fire and Trump and the billionaires are taking away the fire hydrants. He’s opened up so much federal land to drilling that even the oil CEOs are telling him to stop!

Beyond that, he’s looking to gut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and setting his sights on the Clean Air and Water Acts.

The EPA was won through mass struggle, culminating in the 20-million-person strong protests on April 22, 1970 for the first Earth Day. These protests combined mass outrage against environmental destruction with creative organizing tactics from the student antiwar movement and the organizing muscle of the labor movement. While watching Trump’s horrific attacks on the environment (and everything else), we should study the first Earth Day to learn how to fight back.

The Environmental Teach-In During the 1950s-70s, the environment wasn’t the only thing on fire. In 1969, the anti-Vietnam War movement was reaching its peak. On October 15, 1969, 15 million people across the country participated in the largest ever day of protest to that point. The power of the movement motivated everyone into action.

The “teach-in” was a key tactic to educate and discuss strategy for the anti-war movement. Under the impact of a growing wave of radicalization, the teach-in format was taken up by other struggles including the environmental movement.

Environmental movements had been developing for over a decade and, combined with the anti-war movement, gave Democratic Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson a push for a national day of “environmental teach-ins”. The UAW played an instrumental role in financing the newly formed organization Environmental Teach-In, donating $2000 to get it off the ground and a lot more to print materials for Earth Day itself.

Because they had such a small team, Environmental Teach-In trusted local organizers to try out different actions. On April 3, 1970, they purchased a full page advertisement in the New York Times, calling for people to organize actions on April 22, 1970 which they called Earth Day. During the week of April 22, 1970, twenty million people engaged in Earth Day protests. Local organizers planned a wide array of actions on Earth Day. Protests and teachins were held on 2,000 college campuses, in 2,000 community centers and in 10,000 high schools across the country. Unions mobilized their members to actions.

At the University of Michigan, the birthplace of the “teach-in”, 50,000 people packed into their basketball arena for a teach-in. There, among other speakers, UAW president Walter Reuther gave an emboldened speech about the role of unions in the environmental movement.

In Manhattan, protesters set out picnic blankets on Fifth Avenue, which was shut down to traffic. In San Francisco, activists dumped oil into the reflecting pool at the offices of Standard Oil. In New Haven, students interrupted a teach-in organized at Yale to appeal for support for the jailed New Haven Black Panther Party members, connecting the environmental struggle with the Black power struggle. In Tacoma, Washington, high school students rode down a highway on horseback to protest automobiles. The 1970 Earth Day protests both shut down business as usual all across the country and educated a generation about the environmental crisis.

Importantly, Earth Day was just a launching pad, and environmental organizing continued after that. Environmental Teach-In renamed itself to Environmental Action (ENACT). The UAW’s 1970 Convention passed a resolution pinpointing pollution as a key bargaining demand. On June 12, 1970 UAW teamed up with ENACT and other environmentalist organizations to send a joint letter to Congress calling

for “air pollution control standards so tough they would banish the internal combustion engine from autos within the next five years” to “guarantee every American a safer, cleaner atmosphere by 1975.”

The collaboration also went the other way; ENACT and young environmental activists supported the UAW in advocating for the Occupational Safety and Hazard Act in 1970. The early environmental/labor coalition demonstrated how sustained organizing could win significant reforms.

These gains were won under the hated Republican president Richard Nixon. Nixon was no environmentalist or secret progressive. Just a month earlier, he had called out the National Guard to crush the postal workers’ strike. The mass pressure of Earth Day forced him to make concessions.

In July 1970, he proposed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and it began operation in December. The power of the early environmental movement also forced the passage of landmark reforms like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act in the next two years.

These reforms drastically reduced pollution in American cities and the lives of millions of working people.

The Climate Today The 1970 Earth Day provides us valuable lessons for the fight against climate change today, including how mass movements of ordinary people force change from below.

The mass teach-ins—which involved millions from all sections of society—show the type of movement we need now. Today, one of our key chants at protests is “students and workers, unite and fight!”

The solidarity from the UAW with the environmental cause is a striking example of uniting to fight for a broader cause.

The movement showed that, under the pressure of mass struggle, even a reactionary president like Nixon or Trump can be forced to pass wide-sweeping environmental reforms.

However, Trump’s attacks on the EPA show that every reform won through struggle can be clawed back by the billionaire class. Today, the path towards environmental destruction has only been accelerated and exacerbated since the 1970s, so protecting the EPA as it exists today will not be enough.

Climate destruction is rooted in capitalism itself. Capitalism’s need for constant expansion places profits above any environmental concerns; we saw that both with the horrific pollution in the 1960s and with the present-day climate crisis, which Trump is accelerating.

Alongside unions, immigrants’ rights organizations, and left groups, climate organizations should mobilize to a day of nationwide actions on May 1, specifically helping to organize student walkouts. But to actually mitigate or even reverse climate catastrophe, we urgently need to overthrow capitalism in order to implement a democratically-planned, just transition to 100% renewable energy as part of an internationally-coordinated effort.J

socialistalternative.org

INTERNATIONAL

NAOR KAPULNIK, SOCIALIST STRUGGLE MOVEMENT

Socialist Alternative is an active organization with members across the country. Joining means basic agreement with our ideas and a commitment to putting them into action. Apply to join and a member in your area will reach out to you shortly! If you don’t see an area near you listed below, contact our national office.

SSM is Socialist Alternative’s sisterorganization in Israel-Palestine.

Editors’ note: This article was originally published by Socialist Struggle Movement on March 19, a day after the fragile ceasefire was broken by the Israeli government.

It is estimated that over 1,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military since it broke the ceasefire. Eighteen months into the war, the UN estimates that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now at its worst and the Israeli government refuses to pledge an end to the war. With changes taking place since, especially the major escalation of anti-democratic attacks on activists and protests in the U.S., we took it upon ourselves to make edits and additions to the original.

The Israeli government breaking the latest ceasefire has unleashed widespread slaughter in the Gaza Strip. Within a few hours, more than 400 people were killed in the hellfire on March 18. Entire families perished in the early morning.

At least 63% of the victims were women, girls and children. The genocidal war has been renewed with the full backing of Trump, a scenario that we warned about in advance.

• Solidarity with the two million residents of the Gaza Strip surviving under military bombardment. Most of them have been crowded into the tents of the displaced persons camps for a year and a half.

• Solidarity with the families of the hostages, who are sacrificed by a government that again torpedoes a deal for their return.

• Solidarity with civilians on all sides of the fence, in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, inside the Green Line, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the region in general—in the face of another intensified wave of massacres, oppression and imperialist aggression.

In a cynical and horrific manner, the Trump-Netanyahu gang presents the indiscriminate mass murder as a step designed to pressure the Hamas leadership to agree to the dictates of their governments. It’s unclear whether their plan is to continue and even intensify the offensive, and if the new bloody phase of the war will last for weeks or months.

The Regime’s Lies—Who Violated The Agreement?

“Israel deliberately violated the ceasefire agreement with Hamas on Tuesday night, with American approval, because it did not want to meet the full conditions it committed to two months ago. There

MAY 2025

(646) 371-9016 info@socialistalternative.org @Socialist_Alternative @SocialistAlt /SocialistAlternative.USA @socialistus

is no other way to explain the decision to resume fighting in the Gaza Strip.” -The Israeli HaAretz newspaper.

The Israeli government did not meet any of its commitments under Phase Two of the ceasefire agreement. It torpedoed the negotiations and refused to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor in Southern Gaza. In order to force Hamas to unilaterally change the terms, the government systematically violated the ceasefire with daily attacks—bombings that killed dozens of people, preventing aid and food from entering Gaza, preventing access to drinking water, cutting off electricity to desalination plants, and preventing tens of thousands of wounded and critically ill people from leaving Gaza for treatment.

The Trump regime’s barbaric attack on Yemen is coordinated with the new massacre in Gaza. White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt clarified the direction of the Trump regime: “Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran—all those who seek to terrorize not only Israel, but also the United States—will pay a price.” The White House thug’s actions strengthen Netanyahu’s crisis-ridden government and increase the danger of multi-front military aggression by Israel backed by US imperialism.

The strategic goal of the Israeli government is to continue the direct occupation of the Gaza Strip for the foreseeable future, in contradiction to its official statement of reaching a comprehensive deal.

Escalating The Struggle Under heavy anti-democratic suppression, some protests have escalated around the world, including the US, with thousands protesting on April 5 in Washington, DC. Hundreds of Gazans have protested against the war and the dead end of the Hamas government.

Hundreds of thousands marched in

streets throughout Israel against Netanyahu’s far-right regime. Security forces snatched a Palestinian flag during a Bernie Sanders rally in Idaho, leading the crowd to chant “Free Palestine” while Bernie himself shamefully tried to calm them down (pictured above).

We must clearly and loudly oppose the renewal of the war.

We call for mass protests against the war, the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the settlements, racism, and the national oppression of the Palestinians. The attempts of the governments in Israel and the U.S. to crush democratic rights of antiwar activists need a mass response.

Both governments, while deporting and imprisoning activists, are working to pass anti-worker budgets and crush social services. The trade unions—some of whom are seeing their own members being fired, imprisoned, and deported— need to step in and organize mass days of action together with the broader movement.

We Demand: • Immediately return and reinstate all activists who have lost their jobs, been expelled from school, and lost their legal resident status!

• End all attacks on democratic freedom of speech! Solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and all others retaliated against for standing up against imperialist murder!

• Israeli military out of Gaza! End the war! Release all thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees imprisoned in the torture camps and prisons of the occupation and release all Israeli hostages.

• Rebuild Gaza; welfare for everyone!

Join us at the protests and continue the struggle!J

Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative (ISA). Learn more about the ISA at internationalsocialist.net.

MID-ATLANTIC NEW YORK CITY, NY..................ny@socialistalternative.org PHILADELPHIA, PA..............philly@socialistalternative.org PITTSBURGH, PA...............................sapghbc@gmail.com

NEW ENGLAND BOSTON, MA.....................boston@socialistalternative.org

MIDWEST CHICAGO, IL....................chicago@socialist.alternative.org CINCINNATI, OH...........cincysocialistalternative@gmail.com GRAND RAPIDS, MI........ Gr.SocialistAlternative@gmail.com MADISON, WI.....................madison@socialistalternative.org MILWAUKEE, WI..........milwaukee@socialistalternative.org MINNEAPOLIS, MN.................mn@socialistalternative.org

PACIFIC LOS ANGELES, CA........socialistalternativela@gmail.com BAY AREA, CA...............bayarea@socialistalternative.org SAN DIEGO, CA...........sdsocialistalternative@gmail.com SEATTLE, WA..................seattle@socialistalternative.org

SOUTHEAST NORTH CAROLINA...................nctrianglesa@gmail.com

SOUTHWEST HOUSTON, TX...........houstonsa@socialistalternative.org

Contact our national office for all other cities or areas! info@socialistalternative.org SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

Editorial Board: Bia Lacombe, Chris Gray, George Brown, Jesada Jitpraphakhan, Leah Stevens, Leon Pinsky, Rachel Wilder, Tony Wilsdon, Varun Belur Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

15

Trump’s deportations of student anti-war protesters are a significant escalation of the attacks on the movement against the genocidal war on Gaza. But it’s no surprise that many of the same university administrations that have been unleashing police to arrest and attack peaceful protests are caving to Trump’s demands for draconian anti-protest policies, to alter curricula, to end affirmative action, and more.

To open up a seat at Trump’s negotiating table and hoping to restore $400 million in government funds, Columbia administrators immediately crumpled under the pressure. They agreed to update campus restrictions so protesters are not allowed to wear masks, campus police have been deputized with arrest powers, and most egregiously, the university suspended, expelled, or revoked the degrees of 22 activists who participated in the Gaza encampment last spring, including the president of the graduate student union organized under UAW. On the other hand, Harvard University administrators, bolstered by their $53 billion, tax free endowment, showed willingness to resist the pressure campaign by declining Trump’s demands. Despite this, it is crucial we don’t put our faith in these universities to fight back for us.

The billionaire class, including both Trump and those who run these elite universities, understands the power students can wield in the battle to resist imperialism and their reactionary agendas. They know students have played crucial roles in spurring on workingclass struggle throughout history, including during the anti-Vietnam war movement, and even more recently in Bangladesh. We need to fight to broaden out the student movement on and off campus, and link up with the wider anti-Trump movement. The labor movement, especially on-campus unions, needs to take up the fight against repression.

The Campaign To Silence Dissent The campaign of campus repression reached new heights on March 8, when Donald Trump ordered the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident and student activist at Columbia who helped lead the proPalestine encampment there last spring. Over a month later, an immigration judge has just set a dangerous precedent by ruling Khalil eligible for deportation because Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, single handedly deemed Khalil’s

beliefs “in conflict” with U.S. foreign policy.

On April 14, another Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, was targeted for his proPalestinian beliefs when he was arrested by ICE at what he thought was his citizenship test.

Like Khalil, Mahdawi was persecuted under the logic that exercising the right to free speech to criticize U.S. imperialist interests poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security. An estimated 1000 student visas have been revoked since Trump’s inauguration.

The White House claims that this campaign is designed to root out antisemitism on campuses. But protesting the horrific genocidal war on Gaza is not antisemitic. Beyond this, falsely tying the violence of the Israeli state to the protection of Jewish people in any way only further encourages antisemitic sentiment.

Jewish students have played a critical role in organizing and supporting demonstrations against the war.

Dueling Visions Of Higher Education For years, Trump has promised sweeping reform to the higher education landscape and now he’s seized on student anti-war protests as an opening to these many-sided attacks on universities.

Many working people see universities like Harvard and Columbia as the ruling class bastions that they are, and Trump is able to tap into that class anger. The skyrocketing cost of attendance, predatory student loan systems, and legacy admissions that favor the rich have pushed these already inaccessible universities even further out of reach for ordinary Americans. By pointing the finger at “woke” colleges and universities—and their

students—as the enemy, he pits a section of working class people against social struggle and the anti-war movement.

If we want to defeat Trump’s agenda once and for all, is resisting demands like those put on Columbia and Harvard enough? The answer is clearly no. While we must absolutely reject the withholding of public funds as leverage to get universities to enforce Trump’s authoritarian crackdown, we need to go further. Private universities, which largely represent the liberal wing of the ruling class, should be brought into public ownership, with free tuition and democratic working-class control over research and scientific exploration, guided by public need, not private profit. The elite universities will never be on board with this, as their interests ultimately lie with the rest of the ruling class, not working people.

Fight Back With Solidarity & Class Struggle Many students, particularly immigrants and international students, are understandably fearful right now. This fear of fighting back is exactly what Trump wants. But the only power that can stop this repression is courageous, united mass action of students and workers.

There is strength and safety in numbers, so we need to build on our campuses for the biggest protests possible. And while students must build for this, campus workers and unions need to join the fight in order to really shut down Trump’s repression.

The movement should link up with the fight against mass deportations, attacks on trans rights, the mass firing campaign of federal workers, and the rest of Trump’s

authoritarian agenda. We need organized national days of escalation—like walkouts, occupations, and strikes—demanding the release of Khalil, Mahdawi, and all other political prisoners.

To bring in as many students and workers as possible, we must take up a program that goes even further to fight for broader working class demands like taxing the rich to fund free public college, affordable housing, and universal healthcare.

Now more than ever, the labor movement needs to show up in solidarity with student protesters. If Trump can deport student protesters, he’ll also be emboldened to come for workers on picket lines. Just one day before contract negotiations were set to begin, the president of UAW Local 2710, which represents graduate student workers at Columbia University, was expelled. UAW, which Mahmoud Khalil was also a member of, should be calling for mass rallies, strikes, and protests against this repression.

Only the strength of the labor movement, combined with the strength of movements of young and working people, can actually force Trump to back down and protect our democratic rights.J

★ For a nationally coordinated student and campus worker walkout against attacks on the right to protest—tax the rich and elite universities & end military spending to fund free public college for all! ★ Release Khalil, Mahdawi, and all ICE prisoners— make all universities sanctuary schools! ★ Drop the charges against student activists who led non-violent campus protests! ★ Restore federal funding to universities and convert them into free, public institutions! ★ Open the books—students and campus unions deserve a say in how their tuition dollars are spent!