Cuba: international solidarity with working class in Gaza
Thousands of people gathered as part of World Day in solidarity with the Palestinian people, so that another genocide is not committed, this time in the city of Rafah. The event in Havana, Cuba, where I am spending a few days with my family, was an anti-imperialist tribune, in front of the embassy of the North American government, attended especially by young people. During the protest event, young representatives from different sectors of the country spoke, including workers' unions and several young Palestinians studying at the international medical school. Their broken voices narrated all the pain and suffering of their people who have been carrying on for more than 75 years fighting against Zionism and Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories. Their families have had to unite and leave everything behind.
All voices agreed in a unanimous condemnation of the Zionist government of Israel for the genocide committed against the heroic Palestinian people. This occasion has cost, in a few months of bombing, the lives of more than 30,000 innocent civilians, including more than 19,000 lives of children.
Different slogans were shouted, including the now famous one, “FREE, FREE PALESTINA!”
Transit workers say bosses’ attacks mean fight back!
After the recent attack on New York City Transit Conductor Alton Scott, city transit workers took a brave stand against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) bosses. They filled out safety forms and refused to operate their trains, causing mass service disruptions on several subway lines for a day! Workers were and are fed up with the bosses’ failed solutions to protect them and for a moment in time realized that withholding their labor is part of the solution! The action has the bosses in full attack mode, with Governor Kathy Hochul announcing plans for 1,000 members of the state police and National Guard to patrol the subway in response. When capitalism is in crisis and the ruling class has no real answer to the racist unemployment, lack of housing, mental health, and drug addiction ailments their system creates. Instead they are ratcheting up their attacks on workers, specifically Black and Latin workers. These actions don’t serve to keep riders safe but instead foster an environment of fear and unwillingness to fight back.
Capitalist media tells us day in and day out that the only way to solve these anti-social behaviors in the working class comes through their fascist Klansmen in Blue, complemented by their cousins in the fascist military. This is the same National Guard that has no qualms about taking in proud card-carrying Neo-Nazis in their ranks! While he forces cuts on the city’s critical social services, liberal Mayor Eric Adams funds the New York Police Department to the tune of $11 billion, the largest police budget in the country. It’s the same cycle: after another of these attacks, more cops flood the trains, yet the attacks continue. Now military forces stand armed with rifles outside Grand Central as a show of the ruling class’s power, while impoverished families struggle to pay their rent and put food on the table.
Meanwhile, racist Adams blames these cuts on migrant workers escaping U.S. imperialism’s clutches, despite his city council projecting the city to take in an additional $1 billion more than expected for the fiscal year! MTA workers and riders have nothing to gain when looking to these stooges for protection.
The Progressive Labor Party knows only the working class can put a permanent end to worker-on-worker assaults. Join us in the fight for not just a safer subway system, but a world where workers can be safe once and for all: a communist world.
