Category Archives: Government Oppression

The ideological propaganda campaigns waged to justify the imperialist wars of the past invariably relied on distortions, fabrications, and outright lies. As the writer Stefan Zweig observed in his recollections of the outbreak of the First World War, All the warring nations were already in a state of over-excitation and the worst rumor was immediately transformed into truth, the most absurd slander believed.

So it is that during the week since Putins invasion of Ukraine, the hysterical anti-Russian campaign spearheaded by the corporate media and sections of the middle class with the aim of legitimizing the US-NATO war drive has assumed horrifying proportions. Singers, artists, conductors, products, and even cats are being excluded or banished solely due to their Russian nationality or origin.

On Tuesday, Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter announced the immediate firing of Russian conductor Valery Gergiev from his position as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic. Reiter, a Social Democrat, issued an ultimatum to Gergiev shortly after Putins invasion of Ukraine: either he publicly criticize the Russian government, or he would be fired. After Gergiev failed to respond, Reiter cancelled all contracts with the world-famous conductor with immediate effect.

Star soprano Anna Netrebko suffered a similar fate at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. After a sustained campaign by the New York Times over Netrebkos Putin ties, i.e., her Russian nationality, Netrebko withdrew from her upcoming engagements at the Met and Berlins Staatsoper. In a statement declaring her opposition to the war, Netrebko said, Its not fair to force artists, or any other personality, to express their political opinions in public and denounce their homeland.

Similarly brutal treatment has been meted out to Russian filmmakers, who have effectively been banned from international film festivals, and athletes, who were prohibited from competing in the Paralympics, football World Cup, and other sports competitions. Retailers in North America and Europe have removed Russian products from their shelves. A university in Italy went so far as to attempt to ban a literature course based on the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist who died in 1881 after writing such iconic works of world literature as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The University of Milano Bicocca only relented after a public outcry.

This chauvinist campaign is being led by a section of the upper middle class infected with war fever. Media outlets, academics, and scientists who ought to know better have lapped up the pro-war propaganda of US imperialism and the NATO powers according to which the world was a peaceful paradise until the evil mastermind Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. They have cheered on the sanctions imposed on Russia, which amount to economic warfare and will devastate the population, and applauded the massive military build-up by the NATO powers throughout Eastern Europe.

It seems to have occurred to none of them that there is a principled, left-wing basis upon which to oppose Putins reactionary invasion of Ukraine, which he justified by invoking right-wing Russian chauvinism.

This opposition, rooted in the struggle to unify workers in Ukraine, Russia, and internationally in a global anti-war movement, does not require that one adapt to the predatory interests of the imperialist powers or cover up the role of fascism in Ukraine. It does not oblige one to maintain a shameful silence about the fact that among the NATO powers allies in their battle for a democratic and independent Ukraine are far-right nationalists and fascists whose political forefathers collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Among these complacent layers of the middle class, no critical examination of these historical and political issues raised by the Ukraine-Russia war is allowed. As the World Socialist Web Site noted yesterday, In reporting on the conflict, the distinction between journalism and propaganda has been obliterated. Everything is presented in black and white, and the media gives no space for the brain to work. According to the universal narrative, Russia invaded Ukraine because there is a monster called Putin, just as there were monsters named Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic.

Learned academicseven those who have grappled for decades with the complex problem of historical causationare in a state of intellectual collapse and are content to let CNN, MSNBC and, of course, the New York Times, think for them.

Listening to the lectures from opera company managers, sports officials, and academics attempting to justify the banishing of everything Russian, one would never know that US imperialism and its NATO allies have been waging uninterrupted war for the past three decades. None of these individuals or institutions asked American musicians or artists to answer for the horrific war crimes of the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations, including the savage bombardment of Serbia, the invasion of Iraq, black site torture programs, Terror Tuesday assassinations, and the massacring of civilians in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.

No performer who accepted a US government award, performed at the White House, or served as an academic or scientific adviser to the government was threatened with exclusion and the effective end of their professional careers due to American imperialisms wars of plunder, which conservative estimates suggest led to the deaths of some four million people.

Many of the same individuals engaged in whipping up anti-Russia hysteria have been no less vociferous in their denunciations of bans against Israeli academics to protest the Zionist regimes brutal oppression of the Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, the impoverished population faces indiscriminate violence from the Israeli military in conditions that aid organizations have likened to an open-air prison. Yet when supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign call for the suspension of ties with Israeli academics and bans on Israeli products, they are routinely vilified as anti-Semites. As of 2019, 27 US states had passed laws banning government agencies and employees from doing business with anyone who supported a boycott of Israel.

The pro-war layers of the upper middle class see nothing wrong in these gross double standards, because they long ago made their peace with American and European imperialism. During NATOs air war against Serbia in 1999, which included the German air forces first participation in warfare since World War II, there were no shortage of intellectuals and ex-radical politicians ready to justify the slaughtering of Serbian men, women, and children with hypocritical blather about NATOs warplanes protecting human rights.

Explaining the material roots of this phenomenon, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North wrote in 1999:

The social structure and class relations of all the major capitalist countries have been deeply affected by the stock market boom that began in the early 1980s. Perpetually rising share values, especially the explosion in market valuations since 1995, have given a significant section of the middle classespecially among the professional eliteaccess to a degree of wealth they could not have imagined at the outset of their careers. Those who have actually grown rich comprise a relatively small percentage of the population. But in numerical terms, the newly rich represent a substantial and politically powerful social stratum. [After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War, included in A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony, 1990-2016]

This stratum is now determined to provide the ideological justification for a catastrophic war between the US imperialist-led NATO alliance and Russiaa conflict which would be fought with nuclear weapons. Indeed, the savagery of the anti-Russia campaign they are leading can only be compared to the demonization of enemy nations during a state of war.

Even the right-wing Canadian daily National Post, a firm supporter of NATOs war drive against Russia, wrote somewhat nervously Friday, Its all seeming a bit like the opening months of the First World War, when Canada, and the wider British Empire feverishly renamed everything with even a whiff of German association. Berlin, Ont. got renamed to Kitchener. The Alberta communities of Bingen, Carlstadt, and Dusseldorf were all assigned more patriotic names. And the Royal Family even changed their name from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the extremely British House of Windsor.

But while war fever has a firm grip on the privileged layers of the middle class, the present crisis is viewed very differently by the broad mass of the populationthe working class. After thirty years of unending war and a steady decline in their living standards, workers have no appetite to be stampeded into a disastrous global conflagration. And after more than two years of a pandemic in which workers have been forced by governments around the world to sacrifice their health and lives for the protection of corporate profits, they treat with skepticism or outright scorn the claims of the political elite and their upper middle-class hangers-on to be fighting for democracy and on behalf of the free world.

The critical task now is to transform this latent opposition to war among the international working class into a conscious political struggle for socialism.

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The hysterical anti-Russian campaign and the US-NATO drive to war with Russia - WSWS

For an American-born Chinese girl like me, each rare trip back to my parents hometown is a blessing. Not just because of the warm waft of steamed dumplings mixed with the rumble of traditional Chinese drums, but because it allows me to spend time with Grandmama.

Before I could even properly walk, Grandmama had already taken on a significant role in my developmental life. She would teach me Chinese chess and hover my pudgy hands ever so slightly above the chess pieces, before then caressing me in a warm embrace. But it was not until I was six years of age when I realized that behind Grandmamas wrinkly smile hides a long line of womens oppression in China.

I remember always asking her, Grandmama, why did you have Daddy at such a young age?

Each time, she would look me softly in the eye and say, I had no other choice.

Grandmama really did have no choice. She was one of millions of women who sacrificed their education to take on household chores before even reaching adulthood. For centuries, the dual roles of Chinese men and women were represented by Yin and Yang, with women being the feminine and obedient Yin and men being the dominant and overpowering Yang. Little do people realize, the story of Yin and Yang is reflective of the fundamental ways in which China sustains power.

In the past 100 years, China has experienced revolutionary changes at a scale unlike any other nation. Despite large-scale political and economic shifts, one thing remains the same: the lack of women in government. Since the beginning of basic government institutions, male dominance in society has been associated with political legitimacy, whereas the role of women is to remain uninvolved with political affairs. China restricts female presence in government to prevent political uproar and illegitimacy. Hence, China has been dominated by male figureheads for the past century and deprives women of equal opportunities, both academically and beyond. For my Grandmama to take on a job in the 1900s would not only make her the target of societal backlash but would have been a nearly impossible task.

But lets be very clear just because women have access to education now and are receiving more schooling than ever before does not mean the fight against oppression is over. In fact, it has hardly even begun. July 2021 marked the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist party. Even 100 years later, it is still the same, oppressive nation that capitalizes on the inferior identities of women.

Structural problems that date back to the 1900s have laid the groundwork for inequalities still present in modern China. Since women have historically been denied education and a voice in the political sphere, it is much harder for them to find well-paying jobs, thus making their social influence negligible. Of course, after nearly a century of cruel oppression, feminist movements have slowly sprouted throughout the nation, but they have been unable to garner any traction because the government is actively taking steps to prevent these movements from progressing.

I spent years living in Shandong, one of Chinas largest cities. During my time there, I was able to connect with countless other women who believed in the same feminist values as me. Even today, I see them as some of the most courageous women in my life and hold them in very high regard. In June 2021, a close friend of mine reposted social media hashtags about the #MeToo and #NotYourPerfectVictim movements, which sought to combat womens sexual assault and rape culture. These social movements deserve to be heard about and the voices of women behind these movements should be amplified. Instead, my friends posts were shadowbanned by the government, limiting her ability to speak up against the injustice Chinese women face. My dear friends experience with speech restriction is just an example of broader gender inequality within modern China. The identities of Chinese women are under attack, and their oppression is the reason why male figureheads are able to continuously wield unfettered power.

I hope that readers realize the importance of this issue, because our problems do not need to go unaddressed. The people I am talking about are not just blank faces of arbitrary women, they are real people with livelihoods and dreams. They are people who have had their rights and dignities stripped away because oppressive leaders stay powerful by draining influence from the ordinary citizen.

The most direct way to improve the lives of women in China is to change the way politicians at the highest level address this issue. Dare to sign petitions, start community initiatives, educate others about the injustices women in authoritarian countries face, or write an article like this to get the word out.

Dare to be heard, because that is a privilege not every woman has.

Image credit: Cyril Massenet

Excerpt from:

Chinese women's 100-year war with oppression - GlobalComment.com

If there was one thing that still united citizens of the Communist block in the early 1990s, it was the widespread hope to escape the Soviet drab, says Johannes Mueller, Head Of Research Macro Research, DWS Group.

No matter their disparate nationalities or their age, citizens hoped for a "normal" life of the sort most citizens of the democratic societies in the "West" take for granted.

Getting richer, but also being able to read and think what you want, and say or write what you think, without the fear of government oppression or foreign invasion.

In purely economic terms, some countries have succeeded better than others, 30 years on, as our "Chart of the Week" illustrates. Measured at current prices and purchasing power parity, it shows that at the end of Communism, Ukraine had roughly the same gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as Poland. Today, it is only a fraction. Poland has even surpassed commodity rich Russia by a decent margin. The same is true of Latvia; the other two Baltic states have done better still.

This probably understates Russia's economic performance from the point of view of its average citizens, not only because of higher income levels than most to begin with, as the imperial and industrial center of the old Soviet bloc. Since 1990 the distribution of income and wealth appears to have become extremely unequal; some estimates suggest that the amount of private wealth siphoned offshore over the years by the very richest Russians stood at about three times the official net foreign reserves by 2015.

For critical Russian journalists deemed incorrigible enemies, the reprisals, intimidation and, ultimately, murders of, began almost immediately upon Putin's initial ascent to power.

For most other Eastern Europeans, notably in Poland and the Baltic states, membership of the European Union (EU) offered an alternative model of how to combine economic with political freedom.

Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was sparked by a trade treaty with the EU, not by any realistic prospect of joining NATO. Similarly, the main demands among democracy activists in neighboring Belorussia that prompted the Moscow backed crackdown were better relations with the EU.

Contrary to what Putin seems to think, Ukrainians have long seen themselves as a clearly separate, European nation still in the process of defining where it stands vis a vis its neighbours.

And if that wasn't provocation enough, they want to determine their own future through free and fair elections - as it is normal in most of Europe. That Putin sees it a mortal threat says as much about his regime as the terrible scenes of cities getting bombed the world is currently witnessing.

30 years after the end of Soviet Communism, EU membership has proven a key factor in determining economic performance.

Sources: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, DWS Investment GmbH as of 10/31/21*Gross domestic product per capita in current price

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What Putin's war is really about - International Investment

In July of 1936, a failed military coup plunged Spain into civil war. The conflict pitted the leftist Republican government against fascist-backed Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. With Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini already in power in Germany and Italy, anti-fascists around the world feared that Spain would be the next to fall, threatening the future of European democracy.

When world powers like the United States and the United Kingdom refused to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, more than 35,000 anti-fascist volunteers poured into Spain from 52 countries to take up arms against the Nationalists. They included Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, idealist intellectuals like a young George Orwelland communists committed to crushing an ideological enemy.

The Spanish Civil War looked like it could be the moment when fascism was finally thrown back, says Richard Baxell, an historian and author of Unlikely Warriors: The Extraordinary Story of the Britons Who Fought in the Spanish Civil War. There was this feeling that perhaps people could go out armed with just a gun and political conviction and do their bit alongside the Spanish people to defeat fascism at last.

The foreign volunteers who fought in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War hoped to stop the march of fascism in Europe to avoid a much larger war. It didnt work out that way.

Making of a flag for the International Communist Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, 1936.

Apic/Getty Images

The Spanish Civil War broke out less than 20 years after the end of World War I, and most world leaders desperately wanted to avoid being drawn into another global conflict potentially costing millions of lives.

In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to convince Congress to support the Spanish Republic. Instead, lawmakers passed a series of Neutrality Acts that cemented Americas isolationist stance in the 1930s.

In Europe, leaders from the U.K. and France called for all European nations to sign a non-intervention pact vowing to stay out of the civil war in Spain. All told, 27 countries signed the neutrality agreement, including Germany, Italy and the USSR. Hitler and Mussolini quickly violated the pact by sending arms and soldiers to assist Franco, and the Soviets eventually sent supplies and military advisors to aid the Republic.

A coach load of volunteers leaving Madrid to fight for the government against the rebels to the north of the capital, 1936.

Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

As Francos Nationalists marched toward the Spanish capital Madrid in August of 1936, it was clear that no allies were coming to the defense of the Spanish Republic. Thats when the first foreign volunteers began to arrive in significant numbers, to fight alongside the Republicans under attack in Madrid.

Volunteers came from Poland, France, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Latin America, Canada and dozens of other countries, organizing themselves into ad-hoc columns that spoke the same language. Women came, too, mainly volunteering as nurses in military hospitals. Baxell says that roughly 70 percent of the volunteers were communists, since the communist party at the time was the loudest and biggest organization that was battling fascism.

By the fall of 1936, the Communist International or Cominterna Soviet-led association of international communist partiesactively recruited foreign fighters who were organized into International Brigades like the Garibaldi Brigade (Italy), the Commune de Paris (France) and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (USA).

The International Brigades fought bravely to help repelthe Nationalists from Madrid, including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, who often led the charge as shock troops."

They were astonishingly brave, says Baxell. They went to where the fight was hottest and did everything they could to hold their ground. Many had experienced what was going on in Germany and knew they couldnt go home. Better to die in Spain than in Germany.

Volunteers from the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

More than 2,800 Americans, many who were members of the American Communist Party, crossed the Atlantic to volunteer as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Around a third of the volunteers were Jewish, spurred by a desire to combat the spread of anti-semitic fascist regimes in Europe.

One of them was Milton Wolff, a young communist from New York City who went on to serve as a commander of the Lincoln Brigade. When asked by a Congressional committee in 1939 why he joined the Spanish Civil War, Wolff testified, I am Jewish, and knowing that as a Jew we are the first to suffer when fascism does come, I went to Spain to fight against it.

At least 90 members of the Lincoln Brigade were Black Americans who saw fascist oppression in Europe as an extension of racial oppression experienced at home in the United States. Many of the Black volunteers were also communists drawn to the American Communist Partys vow to stand up for workers of all races. Black Americans bristled at Mussolinis invasion of Ethiopia and knew that Hitlers twisted aryan ideology had no room for people of color.

Vaughn Love, a Black volunteer, later said that "we didn't know too much about the Spaniards, but we knew that they were fighting against fascism, and that fascism was the enemy of all Black aspirations."

Of the roughly 35,000 foreign volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, an estimated5,000 to 6,000 were killed and thousands more were recorded as missing.They paid the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals, but in the end it wasnt enough. Franco and the Nationalists, with help from Hitler and Mussolini, overpowered the Republicans, took Madrid and won the war.

While some historians view the International Brigades as naive idealists or expendable pawns for the communist regime in the USSR, Baxell sees the volunteers in a more positive light.

At the time, they showed the Spanish Republic and people around the world that Spain was not fighting fascism alone, says Baxell. Given what was going on in the world, that was a powerful message.

In her farewell address to what remained of the beleaguered International Brigades in 1938, the Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, praised the foreign volunteers:

Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicansmen of different colors, differing ideology, antagonistic religions, yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice, they came and offered themselves to us unconditionally You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy's solidarity and universality.

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Why So Many Foreigners Volunteered to Fight in the Spanish Civil War - History

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has split the hacking community, sending some of the most recognizable and powerful groups scrambling to pick a side to declare which has their allegiance.

In a tweet, hacking group Anonymous declared "a cyberwar against the Russian government" and has claimed to be responsible for attacks that brought down Russia Today, a state-backed news outlet, and several government websites. It also said it hacked other Russian state-TV channels.

Conti, a ransomware group with possible ties to Russian intelligence that attacked more than 290 American targets last year, declared its "full support of Russian government" and said it would use "all possible resources to strike back" at any adversaries. Cyberthreat intelligence company Orpheus Cyber reported another group united with Russia obtained stolen data from more than 45 Ukrainian government websites, and some of it is up for sale.

Motives that push hacking groups to pick a side range widely. Members of Anonymous have stated that their guiding principle is "anti-oppression," while Russian-aligned attacks may be state-sponsored. Pro-Russia attacks can also come from groups who feel pressured to operate on their behalf by the Kremlin.

"It's not entirely clear what the connection is between the ransomware gangs and the Russian government," said Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft. "At best, they are working within a permissive environment. At worst, they are working for certain wings of the Russian government."

"Some of the actions of Russia's government just prior to the war shutting down the REvil gang or arresting them and shutting down a number of dark web forums and shops these cybercriminals are afraid that if they don't support the regime, they're going to be next," said Alex Holden, the founder of Hold Security.

Hacking groups may become targets for moving away from their usual financial motives for attacks. After Conti declared support for Russia, an apparent insider who objected to the group's support for Russia leaked a trove of internal chat messages and other files that Holden says "mortally wounded" the gang.

"When we see things like this, we are learning how in 2021, 2022, cybercriminal enterprises operate, so we have [the] ability to detect and deter organizations like this in the future," Holden said.

Moving forward, experts say that any further cyber escalation could spell trouble for those outside the conflict zone, including Americans. Groups like Conti could come back to hit the U.S. as well.

"They are a highly effective ransomware group, albeit one that has terrible operational security," Callow said. "They likely do still have access to certain U.S. networks that they have yet to encrypt, and they could potentially do that any time."

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Hackers are being forced to pick sides in the Russia-Ukraine war - KBZK News

March 1, 2022 | Austin, Texas | Proclamation

First by the pen and then by the sword, brave Texans fought for their independence from a tyrannical government in Mexico that denied its citizens basic freedoms. In the fall of 1835 at Gonzales, Texans of all backgrounds banded together to fight for the cause of liberty and defend what was rightfully theirs. Months later, on March 2, 1836, while delegates gathered at Washington-on-the-Brazos to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence, brave defenders continued fighting for their freedom.

Many heroic Texans were lost throughout the revolution, most notably all of the defenders of the Alamo and those at Presidio La Baha in Goliad. Yet, their sacrifices were not made in vain and would serve as a rallying cry for the Texan forces under General Sam Houston. He raised an army and soundly defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, declaring victory and securing freedom for the new Republic of Texas.

As those delegates declared nearly 200 years ago, when a government ceases to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people from whom its power is derived, that government becomes an instrument of oppression which must be abolished. In rebellion against the actions of the Mexican government, fearless Texans gave rise to a free and sovereign republic.

The vision of freedom set down by our founders in the Texas Declaration of Independence lives on in the indomitable Texas spirit today. As we continue to build a 21st-century Texas, we must always remember how the sacrifices of past generations helped create a future for the next. At this time, I encourage all Texans to learn more about, reflect on, and take pride in our states unique origins and rich history.

Therefore, I, Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, do hereby proclaim March 2, 2022, to be Texas Independence Day in Texas and urge the appropriate recognition whereof.

In official recognition whereof, I hereby affix my signature this the 24th day of February, 2022.

Governor Greg Abbott

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Governor Abbott Issues Proclamation For Texas Independence Day In 2022 - Office of the Texas Governor

Sue Atkins, Southampton East Socialist Party, Chair Southampton trades Union council

I have had plenty of bad experiences. I was spiked last week in a pub, which I had considered to be a safe place. Ive also had to witness some of my friends leave in ambulances, when they just came out to have some fun and a dance. These are the words of a young woman in Southampton, describing her experiences in the city.

Southampton has the second highest number of sexual offences reported in England, and has seen a 240% increase in recorded sexual offences over the past five years. This figure has been worked out following a 91% increase in referrals to a local victim support charity since the Covid pandemic began. These shocking statistics are not isolated, and will be familiar throughout the country.

A Safe Night Out

That is why the Socialist Party in Southampton is campaigning for a Safe Night Out, together with the trades union council and Socialist Students, on International Womens Day, 8 March.

Domestic violence and rape are on the increase too. In Southampton in 2021, there were 1,945 rape investigations and only 85 resulted in a charge or court summons. Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted and convicted fewer people for rape in 2020 than in any year for which data exists.

For the victims, this lack of support and acknowledgement can be devastating. Indeed, of the people who told someone about being assaulted but did not report it to the police (five out of six women, and four out of five men), 40% said they were too embarrassed, 38% thought the police couldnt help, 34% thought it would be too humiliating, and 25% also thought the police wouldnt believe them.

While women are disproportionately affected by these issues, they affect all genders and we need a united campaign to address them. The local elections in May can play an important part in the struggle for the services and resources that we need.

Many services that used to be run by local councils have been cut to the bone, disbanded, or handed over to charities or the private sector.

For example, local authorities now have a statutory responsibility to fund domestic violence services. However, this comes with no promise of sufficient funding from central government. Local authorities have to fund these services on already stretched budgets.

The womens refuge in Southampton is run by Womens Aid, a charity that can offer support for only six months. While that is an important and welcome resource, what happens after that? With sky-high rents and a lack of affordable homes, it is important for local councils to build new council houses to enable women and children to move on safely and securely, without the prospect of a possible return to the circumstances that they have escaped from.

There is much that Southampton City Council, and other local councils, could do, but it needs councillors with the political will to make it a reality. Labour, Liberal and Tory have all taken turns at running the council in Southampton, and all have been found wanting.

We hear time and again from frustrated workers: They are all the same it makes no difference who you vote for. The consequence is that around 60% of the electorate dont vote, seeing no option on the ballot paper that will act in their interests. Labour were in control for nine years until 2021. In that time they cut 1,000 jobs and 160 million from the budget which devastated local services and resulted in the Tories regaining control last year.

The struggle for womens rights benefits us all and should not be seen in isolation. If no-one else is standing up for women and our local communities, then we will. We need socialist councillors who will fight for:

Socialist Party members will be proud to stand in the local elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. All the main political parties have failed us, and Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer has made it clear it offers no challenge to the status quo.

It is time for a new mass party of the working class to be built as part of the fight for a socialist alternative to the sexism, inequality and crisis of capitalism, and we will play our part.

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International Women's Day: Build a working-class political alternative to inequality, oppression and austerity - Socialist Party

Those trying to convince Americans that vocal frustration with and protests against local school boards are a conservative political ploy will have a harder time after San Franciscos recent school board recall election. Three members of the citys Board of Education, including its president, were recalled, each by more than 70 percent of the vote.

Amid the pandemic, San Francisco schools stayed remote long after neighboring districts had returned to the classroom. Meanwhile, the board focused heavily on renaming schools in whose namesakes it perceived any potential ties to oppression rather than addressing academic setbacks. For the citys sizable Asian community, altering the merit-based admission criteria to an elite high school program to shift the racial balance to enrolling more Black and Hispanic students was the final straw.

The specific complaints against the San Francisco Board of Education sound more like those coming from a rural-conservative-meets-new-development-progressive suburb like Loudoun County, Va., than from the bluest part of California. But declining faith in local school boards is a bipartisan phenomenon, and it seems that even the most politically lopsided areas are not immune.

This lack of trust will eventually push people into action to reconfigure or abandon the institutions that no longer serve them. The San Francisco recall is a good example of how that can play out, even without the backing of a major political party or a professional campaigning organization: The recall effort was led by two ordinary parents who just wanted to be able to trust that the public schools would be there for their children.

Their story frustrated parents becoming successful recall leaders may seem extraordinary, but it tracks closely with underlying attitudes about change and the American system of government. SPNs State Voices poll also found that three-quarters of voters believe that the most meaningful change happens at the local level, and more than four in five feel local participation is what keeps the American system of government alive. Specific to education, 88 percent agree that there needs to be more transparency in the system.

Long-term frustration, the power of local engagement, and a growing list of local political upsets are sending the message that traditionally sleepy municipal boards should get back into the practice of first and foremost being responsive to the people they serve. As more Americans lose trust in formal institutions, they will continue to push back from the ground up.

Erin Norman is the Lee Family Fellow and senior messaging strategist at the State Policy Network.

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Americans Declining Trust in the Politicians Who Run Their Schools - Governing

By Cathy HuntTroup County School Board Chair

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. In one of several Black History Month presentations that I watched or listened to in February, I was reminded of this observation by Frederick Douglass. Then I recalled the interesting story, as shared in his autobiography, of how he learned to read, and I pulled a book off a shelf to re-read that chapter.

Born to an enslaved mother on a Maryland plantation around 1818, he was sent at the age of eight to serve a Baltimore family, the Aulds.

Early on, Mrs. Auld (described by Douglass as kind and tender-hearted, and by nature not fit to embrace the career of slaveholding mistress) enjoyed teaching him the alphabet and sight words alongside her own little boy.

However, when Mr. Auld became aware of this enterprise, he put an abrupt stop to it, recognizing that education and slavery are incompatible with each other.

Going forward, the boy was never allowed to even touch another book in the home.

But a fire had ignited in young Fredericks heart.

He continued reading lessons with white playmates in the street, some of whom would give him ten minutes for the price of fresh-baked bread which he smuggled from the house, others who would do so because they liked the teaching itself.

By age 13, Douglass was reading fluently and had amassed a secret collection of small books and pamphlets.

The more knowledge he gained, the more discontented he became with his lot in life, reinforcing Mr. Aulds opinion that slavery and education are indeed incompatible.

During his teenage years, Douglass was hired out by the Aulds to work on various plantations.

At one, a pious master offered to his slaves Sunday School lessons with an emphasis on reading the New Testament.

These sessions were well attended for a few months until other plantation owners, again recognizing the dangers of too much knowledge, demanded an end to them.

At age 21, Douglass escaped slavery and in very short order became a highly sought lecturer in the Northeast and wrote the first version of his eloquent autobiography. When it was published, he decided he would be safer going to live in England for a couple of years.

It was still an antebellum America in the 1840s. He returned to the United States when friends raised money to buy his freedom.

He went on to establish a newspaper, advise President Lincoln, work for civil rights and womens suffrage, and hold many government offices.

Douglasss story reminds us that literacy is fundamental to enlightenment and success.

In days gone by, it was about the only way to broaden your horizons and fill up idle hours.

Nowadays there are so many other media screaming for our attention that too many people put too little emphasis on the privilege and importance of reading.

If you are reading this, you recognize the value of the printed word. Think about how you can share your values with young, impressionable minds in your family and your community.

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HUNT COLUMN: The incompatibility of education and oppression - LaGrange Daily News | LaGrange Daily News - LaGrange Daily News

Karl Marx once said of the past that it weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Vladimir Putin has made clear that he, for one, is haunted by the legacy of Vladimir Lenin and the workers revolution of 1917 that tore down the tsarist Russian Empire.

Speaking just days before ordering his onslaught on Ukraine, Putin said that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, or to be more precise, Bolshevik, communist Russia. Lenin was Ukraines creator and architect, he saidan act which Putin blames for dividing up the indivisible Russian state. Putin is right to be haunted by Lenin. The revolutionary politics of the Bolshevik Party, which he led, remain a lodestar for all genuine fighters for freedom and democracy for the working class today.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was a high-water mark for international working-class struggle that saw the creation of the worlds first workers state under the control of democratic workplace-based councilsthe soviets. While it only retained this character for a few short years before international isolation saw the undermining of workers democracy by bureaucratic tyranny under Joseph Stalin, the democratic achievements of that time echo even one hundred years later.

One of these long-lasting achievements was the establishment of independent states all through the territory of the old Russian Empirecreated in the storm and stress of the revolution and resultant civil war. These included not just Ukraine, but the states of central Asia like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in the Caucasus and all across Eastern Europe with the establishment of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states.

The establishment of these states was not a result of Lenin alone, as Putins great man version of history has it. Rather it reflected the democratic struggle of nationalities that the Russian Empire had long oppressed and forcibly integrated into the Russian state. Prior to 1917, this oppression ranged from apartheid-like laws directed against the millions of Jewish people who lived within Russian territory, to a horrifically violent form of settler colonialism against the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, to the forced imposition of the Russian language in schools and in government in territories like Ukraine (so-called russification).

Lenin and the Bolsheviks related to this democratic struggle by arguing that only a workers revolution could smash the oppressive Empire which kept workers in economic and political slavery, and that socialists should seek to unify the struggles of all of the oppressed under the workers banner. To achieve such unification Russian workers needed to fight, as Lenin put it, against every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects, and be able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation. This meant supporting oppressed nationalities in the Russian Empire in their fight for self-determination.

After the working-class insurrection of October 1917 in central Russia, one of the first declarations of the new soviet government was on the status of oppressed nations like Ukraine. The soviets proclaimed, the abolition of any and all national and national-religious privileges and disabilities and the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.

Conservativesin line with their understanding of the mass, participatory, and democratic Russian revolution as an authoritarian conspiracyhave frequently accused the Bolsheviks of pure cynicism regarding such declarations. In an article reporting on Putins recent comments about Lenin and Ukraine, for example, Mark Katz in The National Interest argued that Lenin and Putins views on the question amounted to the same thing: wanting to to restore control over lost parts of the Russian Empire. Lenin, in Katzs view, was simply more realistic than Putinhe knew a more accommodative approach toward Ukrainian nationalism would better serve Russias long-term interests.

Serious studies, such as that undertaken by Jeremy Smith in 1996, have given proper credit to the consistency of the revolutionary democratic aspirations of the Bolsheviks, and their achievements after 1917. Far from cynically wielding calls for self-determination as a fig leaf for a renewed Russian imperialism, the soviet government actively championed the rights of the nationalities previously oppressed by Russia in order to win them over to the liberatory potential of a society run by and for workers.

This involved efforts to promote autonomy for oppressed groups to make soviet power genuinely a peoples power. The new soviet government recognised such autonomy not only when petitioned, but proactively. Between 1918 and 1923, thirteen autonomous republics were establishedrepublics which continue to exist to this day in the territory of modern Russia.

This commitment to self-determination was most significantly expressed in the promotion of indigenization rather than the imperial russification policy that existed up to 1917. This meant the promotion of, and education in, languages like Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh and Azeri in their respective states. The promotion of native languages cannot be separated from the massive educational effort which the soviet government undertook after the revolution which saw literacy more than double in ten years.

Putins attack on the democratic achievements of the October Revolution is not just the demented ravings of a mad dictator. Rather it reflects a calculated desire to strengthen the reach and power of the modern Russian state, which Putin sees as heir to the Empire of the Tsars. Just as under the Tsars, a society of such immense inequality, injustice and exploitation as Russia today can only be maintained by systematic oppression. This means imperialism abroad and repression at home.

For this reason Russia in 2018 passed a new law banning the autonomous republics from instructing children in their native language for more than two hours a week, while also making such instruction optional. This was followed up in 2020 by a referendum constitutionally recognising Russian as the language of the state-forming nationality, and at the same time banning marriage equality and strengthening the powers of the presidency which Putin holds.

In these actions and in Putins invasion of Ukraine we see clearly that the interests of the exploitative oligarchsthe capitaliststhat rule Russia today are a mirror of the interests of the Tsar and the feudal aristocrats that stood behind him. And like the revolt against the Tsar during World War I, we see today that many Russians have risen up to oppose imperialism. The challenge for this anti-war movement is to take seriously the lessons of history which Putin is distorting.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks understood firstly that the working class was the social force which in modern capitalist society had the social power to overthrow capitalism and an interest in bringing about a society of genuine democracy for all the oppressed and exploited. In order to do so back then, the Bolsheviks had to make common cause with all the other groups oppressed by the Russian statepeasants, religious minorities as well as nationally oppressed groupsto unite all these struggles into one unconquerable torrent to wash away the tyrants.

If the anti-war movement in Russia today and the brave Ukrainian resistance movement can forge a common front against imperialism based on their shared class interests against the Russian state, then Putin will no longer have nightmares about a Bolshevik past, but a Bolshevik present, too.

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Lenin is Putin's worst nightmare - Red Flag