Americas

It's been a stormy week for America's CEO: a flurry of calls and meetings, a whirlwind of Tweets and press conferences, a blizzard of executive orders flying off his desk. In just a few days, Trump has set his stamp on US and world politics, economics, and relations. It was not mere hyperbole when the Marxists said that sharp and sudden changes were on the order of the day, that the process of crisis and class struggle was accelerating, that this was merely the beginning of the beginning of a new era.

Over 100 people gathered on U.S. Inauguration Day for the United Against Trump Town Hall held at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. The event was hosted by a coalition of organizations led by the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency, Fightback. Others who supported the event included the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Justice for Migrant Workers (J4MW), the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario (CFS-O), the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario (CUPE) and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

And so begins the Trump era: with worldwide protests, pessimism, and polarization.The carefully stage-managed inaugural spectacle had to be protected by 28,000 law enforcement officers. Militarized police kept people waiting for hours at vehicle checkpoints, going so far as to confiscate any fruit they found, lest the presidential motorcade be pelted on live television. In 2008, nearly two million Americans flocked to see Obama after his promise of "change we can believe in." In 2012, after four years of bitter disappointment, over a million turned up. Trump, who claims to have the support of a majority of Americans,

Since President Peña Nieto and his EPN government have implemented energy reforms, which focus on the increase of the price of petrol, there has been ongoing public outcry and nationwide mass demonstrations against it from the beginning of the New Year.

As with many other trends in our crisis-ridden capitalist world, the term “alt-right” meteorically arose from obscure corners of the internet to one of the most discussed political phenomena in the US. Donald Trump’s appointment of former Breitbart media executive, Steve Bannon, first as his campaign manager, then as his White House chief strategist, is interpreted by many as the alt-right’s entrance into the mainstream. Frenzied liberal media point to the alt-right as akin to Donald Trump’s brownshirts or stormtroopers, perpetuating the unscientific conclusion that Trump took power on the basis of a ...

At 10.29 pm on Friday, November 25, the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro died at the age of 90. His brother Raul Castro announced the news to the Cuban population and the world around midnight in a televised speech. His death was not unexpected, as he had been ill for a number of years and had already stepped down from his formal political responsibilities, but still it came as a shock to both friends and enemies.

Electoral results provide an important, albeit imperfect snapshot of the mood in society at any given time. Although they cannot reflect the full complexity of the subterranean changes taking place, they do provide valuable insights. Processes that have been quietly evolving over years and decades suddenly surface and take form. In these results, over time, you can trace the demographic, economic, social, and ideological changes taking place beneath the surface of society, as reflected at the ballot box.

The massive wave of defiance against Donald Trump’s election shows that millions of youth and workers will resist his government. Trump cannot resolve the crisis of capitalism and the poverty, bigotry, and instability that come with it. The Democrats and labor leaders have rolled over and offered to work with him. The International Marxist Tendency (IMT) has a different perspective. We are confident that Trump’s anti-worker agenda can be stopped in its tracks. This is our proposal for a program to fight and beat Trump.

On Wednesday 9th November the “free world” woke up to find it had a new leader. Donald J Trump had been elected the 45th president of the United States of America. The shock waves immediately spread across the world at this news, which contradicted all the confident expectations of the polls.

In the aftermath of Donald trump's selection as President of the United States of America, cries of “fascism!” again fill the air. However, as we shall see, although Donald Trump is a crass, bigoted, billionaire businessman, he is not a fascist. The secret to his win is not that he rode a mass fascist movement to power, but that the lesser-evil policy of the labor leaders and the “left” ran out of steam. With no class-independent alternative provided by the unions or Bernie Sanders, uninspired Americans stayed home in droves and the balance of victory was handed to Trump by rust-belt workers sick and tired of the decades of betrayals by the Democrats.

Nearly seventy comrades and contacts converged on the National Center of the US Section of the IMT in Brooklyn, New York for the 2016 Northeast Regional Marxist School. Held just days after Donald Trump’s stunning election victory over Hillary Clinton, it was a standing-room-only crowd as comrades from New York, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Louisville, KY, Toronto, Montreal, and London assembled for what proved to be a weekend of passionate political discussion. In addition, over 3,700 people from around the world tuned into the four sessions via live stream on Facebook.

On the day after the election, Americans woke to find themselves in a "strange new land." The Washington Post called Trump's victory a "cataclysmic, history-making upset." According to insider reports, the Republican National Committee and even Donald Trump himself did not expect the result.

Thus ends the “School of the Democrats.” What once seemed unthinkable—akin to an episode of the Twilight Zone—has become a surreal reality. As Hillary’s “blue wall” of “secure” states came tumbling down, tipping irreversibly in The Donald’s favor, the media pundits tried to maintain their composure, but they were clearly shellshocked—along with millions of others.

On the windswept plains of south-central North Dakota, hundreds of miles from any major city, a slowly simmering drama has exploded suddenly into public consciousness. The Standing Rock Sioux's battle to defend their water and lands while facing down vicious repression by private security forces and the state is the largest mobilization of Native unity and resistance in the US in decades. It also represents an important opportunity to unite the labor and environmental movements.