3+ week, 11+ hour ago (744+ words) As a new McCarthyism sweeps universities across the country, several professors facing attacks on their academic freedom came together for a panel at Rutgers University on November 7. The panelists showed in their remarks how the various attacks on Palestine activism, criticism of the Far Right, and basic free speech are not relegated to one [] Left Voice member Tatiana Cozzarelli spoke on the panel about the campaign to reinstate the four professors fired by the City University of New York (CUNY) for Palestine solidarity, and the broader repressive climate that students and faculty at the university are facing. She emphasized the larger potential of a strong fight against repression: We have to think about how these campaigns in defense of our right to speech, our right to defend Palestine, our right to speak out against the genocide, are connected to a…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago (720+ words) Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory reflects a working-class desire for change, but his silence on universal health care shows the dead end of bourgeois politics. We must build independent working-class power through rank-and-file assemblies and action committees to win the healthcare system we need. Yet the fights our union leaderships pursue often focus on bread-and-butter issues, which are helpful but ultimately serve as a temporary fix that doesn't change the system's structure. When rank-and-file demands trend toward broader issues, the union bureaucracy often co-opts and stifles these movements, recommending that workers concentrate on "more realistic" demands. Why? As articulated by Antonio Gramsci, the mainstream union apparatus functions as part of the "integral state'an extension of the capitalist state's influence into civil society, designed to contain working-class militancy and maintain ruling-class hegemony. This means our task is not to abandon unions but…...

6+ day, 12+ hour ago (352+ words) The zine brings together writings and art'from CUNY students and workers on solidarity and repression at CUNY and beyond. Containing articles, creative writing and art about the history of political repression at CUNY, immigrant struggles under Trump, hopes and limits of the Zohran Mamdani moment, the general strike in Italy and more, the launch event united the CUNY community. CUNY students, workers and alumni launched the second issue of the YNUC Anti-Capitalist Zine. This issue focused on the CUNY Fired Four, solidarity and repression at CUNY and beyond. Hakeem Jeffries is the enemy of everything Mamdani claims to stand for. Instead of making peace with the Democratic Party, socialists should be leading the fight for working people to break from them once and for all. The recent vote in the House to "denounce the horrors of socialism" is not happening…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago (698+ words) An interview with Doug Greene, an independent historian from the Boston area, about his new book on the Moscow Trials. The Moscow Trials, beginning in 1936, were based on astounding claims: prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky accused many top Bolsheviks of conspiring with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to destroy the Soviet Union " the very working-class government the accused had helped create. Some 700,000 people were executed during the Great Purges. Can you give us a brief overview? Then and now, these accusations strain credulity. But lots of communists suppressed their doubts, saying that there must have been lots of counterrevolutionary conspiracies, and Stalin was at most overreacting to real threats. What was the material basis for the Purges? Defenders of Stalin would say something like: you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs " and this kind of bloody violence was necessary…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago (401+ words) The recent vote in the House to "denounce the horrors of socialism" is not happening in a vacuum, but as millions in the country are seeing that capitalism has nothing to offer but misery. To deliver on these aspirations, we have to fight for a socialist, working-class party. Against the lies and fear mongering of the political establishment, we have to defend the banners of the socialist Left. Its legacy is not the caricature presented in Congress; it is the legacy of millions of workers and oppressed people who fought to end capitalist exploitation. Sou Mi is an activist based in New York City. DSA is the largest organization in the United States that openly defends socialism. It bears particular responsibility in the process of creating or hindering the formation of a new party. Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory reflects a…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (359+ words) On Wednesday, Kings County Hospital doctors, nurses, PCAs/PCTs, transporters, and others rallied outside of the hospital to demand that the administration halt an unsafe plan to decommission one of the CT scanners that would put patients at risk. If you would like to support, sign the open letter to NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Mitchell Katz here." Nina is writer and editor for Left Voice. She lives in New York. On Monday, my coworkers and I at the Metropolitan Museum of Art filed for a union election. If we win, around 900 museum workers will be unionized with the UAW. But we don't just need a union: we need a fighting union that expresses the collective voice of its rank and file. On Thursday, Starbucks workers and supporters rallied to kick off an indefinite strike. Workers are demanding higher pay, better…...

12+ hour, 35+ min ago (605+ words) Donald Trump is using the bogeyman of drug trafficking to potentially start a war with Venezuela. But the aggression is really about U.S. imperialism, and controlling Latin America. Over the weekend, the Trump administration ramped up threats of military intervention in Venezuela, announcing that it is closing airspace over the country. The moves are part of U.S. military buildup in the region, and come on the heels of deadly strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast and demands for Nicol's Maduro to resign. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claim the aggression against Venezuela, which has killed over 80 people since September, is about self-defense and fighting "drug trafficking." Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt claimed that they, "have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war." Some in Congress are feeling…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago (545+ words) The UN security council is moving forward with a "peace plan" that will further oppress Palestinians. It shows that the movement for Palestine must follow the example of Italian workers who went on strike for Gaza. Luigi Morris, Samuel Karlin and Sou Mi The vote paves the way for a new occupation of Gaza, or even for the resumption of Israel's genocide. It calls for the creation of an armed force that can fire on Palestinians, and whose mission would be to demilitarize the Gaza Strip and disarm Palestinian factions on behalf of Israel " a goal Israel has failed to achieve with its genocidal war. This jockeying of regional powers to take advantage of the opportunity for expansion, comes with its own set of tensions. Writing in Revolution Permanente, Left Voice's sister publication in France, Enzo Tresso explains: This vote…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (542+ words) The Trump administration has announced an official military operation against Latin America. It's based on the same drug war rhetoric used for his domestic war on immigrants, showing why resistance to militarization of U.S. cities should also be anti-imperialist. The United States has for months been attacking boats around Venezuela, claiming with no evidence that these vessels were being used for drug trafficking. The United States military has already killed about 80 people in these attacks. Writing in La Izquierda Diario, Milton D'Leon explains: In fact, the U.S. military build-up in Latin America and the Caribbean is expanding faster than some may realize. U.S. soldiers and Marines have begun training in the jungles of Panama for the first time in decades, and" the U.S. plans to revive a deactivated base in the country, along with reopening deactivated bases in Puerto Rico and Ecuador. As Trump…...

3+ day, 12+ hour ago (611+ words) Many of Zohran Mamdani's supporters believe that under his leadership, New York can set a positive example of municipal socialism for the rest of the country. But by neglecting the power of Mamdani's base and focusing on "socialism" in just one city, that fight is already being restrained. This idea that as a mayor, Mamdani essentially has no choice but to be diplomatic with Trump in order to resist the president's ire has recently been questioned by Boston mayor Michelle Wu. Wu is certainly not a leftist by any stretch of the word, but she recently challenged Mamdani's approach to Trump, saying she's "not interested in a bromance with the federal regime." While Wu is in the spotlight for her biting comments, she's not the only example of how mayors can take very different approaches to Trump than Mamdani did. An…...