Americas

On Friday 15 March, Colombian President Gustavo Petro took to the streets of Cali. In the speech he delivered on the day, he proposed a constituent assembly as a route out of the various problems his presidency has encountered in attempting to pass the reforms for which he was elected.

It is not often that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the communists agree on something. But the deep crisis of capitalism that we are facing today is an existential threat that cannot be ignored by the most serious strategists of capital. Therefore, the latter are increasingly reaching the same conclusion as Marxists despite coming from the opposite side: that revolution is around the corner.

On the night of Friday 5 April, in a clear violation of international law and bourgeois institutions, President Daniel Noboa ordered his police to invade the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been granted political asylum by the Mexican authorities.

Revolución Comunista [Communist Revolution] is here! On the 23 March, during a Marxist School titled, “Lenin’s life and ideas”, Revolución Comunista was officially launched, a new organisation, which aims to organise communists in El Salvador and which has as its medium-term goal the founding of a Revolutionary Communist Party.

The following is the Resolution of Lucha de Clases – CMI Venezuela on the political and electoral situation, approved by its Central Committee. Future analyses will be published that add further detail to the position the resolution puts forward. We invite the most conscious layers of the workers’ and wider mass movement to read, analyse, circulate and discuss the content of the text. It is a contribution to the debate on what position consistent revolutionaries should take in the coming presidential elections and the kind of organisation we need to put the forces of the Venezuelan working people back on their feet.

The term “to shed crocodile tears” derives from the fact that crocodiles have been noted to shed tears as they consume their victims. According to the Collins Dictionary, the meaning of the saying is “to pretend to be sad or to sympathise with someone without really caring about them.” Crocodiles do indeed produce tears, but they serve to keep the eyes clean and lubricated and are in no way connected to emotions. Today, we have many crocodiles in human form – they are called Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, newspaper editors, and so on. But Biden stands out clearly as the Chief Crocodile.

A gang-led coup in Haiti has led to the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. US imperialism is scrambling to regain control of the situation and has organised negotiations to create a transitional council to take power. But with the Haitian state in utter disarray, the gangs are moving to solidify their control of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Revolutionary times call for revolutionary solutions. Capitalism is driving society off a cliff. With mass poverty, environmental destruction, war, and genocide—this system has to go. That is why the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency is founding the Revolutionary Communist Party!

The PNP and JLP went head-to-head in local elections on 26 February for the first time in eight years. But rather than an eagerness from voters to cast their votes, turnout was Jamaica’s lowest ever at barely 29 percent. This is a clear rejection of not just the PNP and JLP, but the whole rotten edifice of Jamaican capitalist ‘democracy’.

Last Sunday, our US comrades announced the launch of a brand new organisation: the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA). In just a week, it has caused something of a sensation. Social, mainstream, and state media outlets quickly picked up on the news. In total, millions in the US, and hundreds of millions around the world have seen the launch videos after being picked up by state media in a number of countries. The announcement has become a beacon for communists and class fighters across the continent and beyond, with our US comrades being flooded with hundreds of write-ins in just one week.

On February 25, hundreds of comrades gathered across the United States to discuss the founding of the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA)—a new political party for the new generation of class fighters eager to get active and organized in the belly of the beast. The meeting ushered in a new chapter for American communism. In the coming years, communism has the potential to become a mass political force for the first time in generations.

Yesterday afternoon, active-duty member of the US Air Force Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, in protest against US imperialism’s complicity with the war on Gaza. The news of this brave act of self-sacrifice by a single man has powerfully echoed through the hearts of hundreds of millions of men and women.

Once again, bourgeois politicians and media are raising a hue and cry over pro-Palestine protests. This time, it’s over a protest that supposedly took place outside of Toronto’s Mount Sinai hospital. Media have reported on Justin Trudeau’s condemnation, “The demonstration at Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday was reprehensible.” There’s only one problem—the story is made up. There’s no depths that the ruling class won’t stoop to to smear the Palestine solidarity movement and shield their ongoing support for mass murder.