This article appeared in the May 27, 2024, issue of Trabajadores (Workers), the daily newspaper in Cuba of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC). Miguel Bautista, the U.S. unionist interviewed in the story, visited Cuba in late April-early May as part of the “Labor and Youth Activists” delegation organized by the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee.
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This is a statement by Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers (UAW), released by the union May 17, 2024. Fain responds to the results of the union recognition vote at the Mercedes manufacturing complex in Alabama, which workers lost by a 56% margin. “While this loss stings, these workers keep their heads held high,” said Fain. “These workers will win their fair share. And we will be there every step of the way to support them.” His statement makes plain that the UAW remains committed to a nationwide union organizing drive, with whatever ups and downs lie ahead.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are fleeing Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, as Israel steps up its bombardment and threatens an imminent, even more massive invasion.Meanwhile, opposition to Israel’s genocidal war continues to grow. It includes encampments and other protests by students on campuses across the United States. Many of these student actions have been violently suppressed by the police on the request of university authorities. Faculty members and others across the country have issued statements condemning this crackdown and defending the students’ right to free speech. They include a statement by the Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “An Open Call to Fellow Jewish Academics,” which World-Outlook is sharing in this post.
HAVANA, Cuba — Keffiyehs and Palestinian flags were among the most visible symbols as Cuban workers began massing at 4:30 a.m. on May 1 for the 200,000-strong rally hosted by the five municipalities closest to the U.S. embassy here. It was one of several May Day rallies in Cuba’s capital. Ten other mass gatherings took place in Havana alone. More than 4 million Cubans celebrated May Day — the international workers’ holiday — in avenues, town centers, and plazas across the island. They gathered within walking distance of their homes and workplaces instead of joining a single, massive march in each city, in order to save fuel, which is in short supply due to the ever-tightening U.S. blockade.
An important and increasingly sharp debate is taking place today on what is antisemitism, or to use a more accurate term — Jew hatred. The Statement from Concerned Jewish Faculty Against Antisemitism we are publishing below, now signed by more than 1,000 Jewish faculty members across the United States, is a welcome and important contribution to this debate.
Palestinian American Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is also the author of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” and other books. In this interview, he explains the causes of the current war in Gaza and outlines his views on how the conflict in Israel and Palestine can be resolved. He also answers the smears of “antisemitism” leveled against the student protests demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.
Iran’s theocracy took power through a counter-revolution in the 1980s. The clerics crushed the independent struggle of Iranian workers and peasants who had carried out a popular uprising in 1979. That social revolution had reverberated across the region and the world. The mobilization of working people toppled the U.S.-backed monarchy of the shah — a brutal and hated regime. Since it tamed the mass struggle, the theocracy has held on to power through periodic brutal crackdowns on any expression of opposition to the Islamist regime. This article sketches the origins of this regime that underlie its current trajectory, including the damage it has inflicted on the Palestinian struggle.
Iran and Israel traded direct airstrikes on each other’s territory, for the first time, in a confrontation in April that raised the danger of a full-blown regional war. Both governments, however, stepped back from the brink after Israel chose to launch a limited strike in response to Iran’s large but ineffective rocket barrage aimed at Israel. Having avoided further direct military conflict, both countries returned to their long-running shadow war, in which Iran’s strategy is to arm and direct allied militias such as Hezbollah. These developments also shed light on Tehran’s pretentious “support” for the Palestinian liberation struggle. The clerical regime uses such posturing to prop up its dictatorial hold on power in Iran and its reactionary reach through proxy armies across the Mideast. Many Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as working people and others in Iran, are beginning to see through such grandstanding and now openly oppose it.