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In March, the administration of Howard University in Washington D.C. rejected without explanation an International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) request to hold a public antiwar meeting on its campus.

The decision is an act of censorship directed not only against the IYSSE but the democratic rights of all students and workers at Howard University. It sets a chilling precedent for freedom of speech at the university and beyond. We call on all students, faculty and staff members at Howard University to oppose this censorship and demand that the IYSSE be allowed to hold its planned meeting on campus!

The planned meeting is part of an international meeting series, The War in Ukraine and How to Stop it. The IYSSE has already held successful meetings in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Sri Lanka, the UK and Canada. The meetings focus on providing a historical background to the war and explaining the socialist perspective on how to fight it.

Howard University initially gave the IYSSE a tentative approval to host a meeting as part of this series on campus in an email dated March 14. Just one week later, on March 21, an official from Howard Universitys office of central scheduling rejected the event. Unfortunately, the officials email states, after reviewing this event with the appropriate personnel, we are unable to host this proposed event. Please know that this decision is not a reflection on yourself, your program, or your organization. Please let me know if there are any questions.

The IYSSE responded to this email by asking for the specific reasons for the rejection. The university has failed to provide an answer.

There are two fundamental questions that all students should ask:

First: Why are students and workers at Howard University deprived of the opportunity to hear about the historical background to the war in Ukraine and the socialist opposition to it?

It has been over a year since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Already, it is the bloodiest war in Europe since the end of World War II, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.

The dangers of this war cannot be overstated. It has the worlds most heavily armed nuclear powers on a collision course that threatens a planet-wide conflagration. This is not hyperbole. Without any democratic mandate or discussion, the US and NATO have armed the Ukrainian government to the teeth. In the past year, NATO has given more than $100 billion in weapons and war planning to the Ukrainian military. This includes budget-busting spending on the USs own military. The US and NATO are at war with Russia, in all but name.

The IYSSE, the student and youth organization of the International Committee of the Fourth International, opposes the Putin governments war in Ukraine. The IYSSE in the US works in solidarity with the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists in the former Soviet Union, who are fighting to mobilize workers and youth against this war, and oppose both the Putin government and the Zelensky government from a socialist standpoint.

from Mehring Books

The New York Times 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History

A left-wing, socialist critique of the 1619 Project with essays, lectures, and interviews with leading historians of American history. *Now available as an audio book from Audible!*

But our opposition to the Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine comes from the socialist left, not the imperialist right. The fact is that the war in Ukraine was instigated by Washington and NATO. The official narrative given by the Biden administration about this war, that the Putin government is engaged in unprovoked aggression against its neighbor, is a self-serving lie. The US has not only invaded multiple countries and been at a constant state of war over the past 30 years. It has also systematically encircled Russia through the expansion of NATO and has been arming the Ukrainian regime for war since it coordinated the toppling of the pro-Russian Yanukovich government in the Maidan coup of 2014.

Washingtons real aim in this war is to assert US imperialisms domination over the vast resources of Russia and the former Soviet Union as part of a new imperialist redivision of the world. This insane operation has been intensified by the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the growth of class struggle internationally.

The IYSSE insists that students and workers have a basic democratic right to learn about this war, which has the greatest implications for their own lives and future. It is on Howard Universitys administration to explain why they refused to allow for a political discussion of these fundamental questions on their campus.

Second: Who were the appropriate personnel that rejected the IYSSE request to hold an antiwar meeting?

Howard University, a historically black college (HBCU), was founded after the American Civil War with the democratic goal to improve the education and advancement of disadvantaged persons in American society and throughout the world. Yet in its decision to reject, without any explanation, the IYSSEs request to hold an antiwar meeting on campus, Howard University repudiates the most elementary democratic rights of its students.

Students have a right to know who made this decision.

Was the university board of trustees involved? The boards leadership includes venture capitalists, along with representatives of Citigroup, ExxonMobil, and other corporations. Democratic Party congressional aides, media analysts and the cabinet officials of former Democratic presidents also sit on the board. In other words, Howard Universitys Board of Trustees represents the key shareholders of this war and the capitalist system as a whole: finance capital, big business, the media and the Democratic Party political establishment. These are the same forces that have helped instigate this war and have every interest in its continuation.

Students should also ask whether the universitys direct ties to the Pentagon played any role in this decision. In January, Howard University announced that it was forming a $90 million partnership with the US military to become the nations first HBCU-based University Affiliated Research Center. Announced to great fanfare, the director of Howards Data Science and Cybersecurity Center told The Dig that this initiative would provide operational advantages to our war fighters.

The Pentagon has already delivered tens of billions worth of weapons, including tanks and sophisticated weapons systems, to the Ukrainian army. It is, hence, an interested party in this war.

Oppose political censorship at Howard University! Build the IYSSE!

In Depth

The New York Times 1619 Project

The Times Project is a politically-motivated falsification of history. It presents the origins of the United States entirely through the prism of racial conflict.

The act of censorship by Howard University comes amid a dangerous escalation of the war against both Russia and China, and growing effort to suppress discussion of revolutionary socialism as the genuine opposition to both capitalism and imperialist war. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, IYSSE meetings have been threatened with censorship and its participants subjected to right wing threats by far-right Ukrainian nationalist and pro-NATO forces. Thuggish threats have also been launched against our comrades in Sri Lanka.

The IYSSE refuses to be intimidated by these attacks. We have held successful meetings in spite of these attacks and call upon Howard University students to fight for their right to hear the socialist perspective on the war in Ukraine.

This fight raises fundamental questions of political perspective. Howard University is at the center of a filthy nexus of the Democratic Party, big business, militarism and the promotion of identity politics.

At Howard, millions of dollars for ceremonial positions and lavish speaking fees have been showered on racialist ideologues such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nahesi Coates. Hannah-Jones, the multimillionaire author of the New York Times 1619 Project, a mythological, racial re-envisioning of American history as a nonstop war between whites and blacks, was given $20 million in seed money to establish a so-called Center for Democracy and Journalism at Howard.

This has occurred while the low-paid workforce is denied basic job protections and living wages. Meanwhile, the students live in dangerously unsanitary dorm rooms on the campus.

Nikole Hannah-Joness purported first-of-its-kind academic center committed to strengthening historically-informed, pro-democracy journalism has printed nothing about the plight of the staff, or its students, or the creeping hand of US militarism, for that matter.

The role of ideologues like Hannah-Jones is to cover up the basic class issues in society, while promoting the interests of the wealthy upper-middle class that is closely tied to the US capitalist system and war machine.

In opposition to these forces, the IYSSE and the World Socialist Web Site have exploded the racial myths of society and exposed the reality of the class struggle, both at Howard and more broadly in our refutation of the 1619 Project.

It is for this reason, above all, that the universitys appropriate personnel have sought to ban us. But in resorting to this attempt at censorship, Howard University has only revealed that it knows our views will find support at its institution among students and university workers.

We call on all Howard University students, lecturers and staff to oppose this antidemocratic ban on the IYSSEs antiwar meeting! Students and workers have a democratic right to learn about the war in Ukraine! Fight to build the IYSSE at Howard University! Get in touch with the IYSSE today to join our campaign against censorship at Howard and against the war in Ukraine!

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Original post:
Oppose political censorship of antiwar views at Howard University! - WSWS

It is baffling that some people feel they can hurl the word socialist at someone as a slur to insult and demean that person when in fact the U.S. is a mixed economy. It works according to an economic system that features characteristics of both capitalism and socialism. Most advanced countries have a mixed economic system that protects some private property and permits a level of economic freedom in the use of capital, but also allows for governments to intervene in economic activities in order to achieve social aims and for the public good. At its core, socialism is when a society does things for the common good.

Capitalism and socialism can work well together. They prevent one another from becoming too extreme, too radical. Extreme socialism leads to concentration of power which leads to tyranny. Extreme capitalism leads to concentration of wealth which leads to tyranny.

Taking up a collection in church to help a family whose house burned down is socialism. North Dakotas publicly owned bank is socialism. Municipally owned sports stadiums, our military, postal service, police and fire departments, public schools and parks, public infrastructure, Social Security and Medicare all are socialistic.

We are all beneficiaries of a capitalist, socialist society.

Joanne Garing

North Huntingdon

See more here:
Letter to the editor: Our capitalist, socialist society - TribLIVE

The El Maizal commune is one of the most dynamic communal experiences in the country (Photo: Comuna El Maizal/Twitter)

On 20 October 2012, during the last council of ministers of the Venezuelan government attended by Hugo Chvez Fras, the then president pronounced what went down in history as the golpe de timn, the change of direction of the Bolivarian revolutions policy towards socialism. In his speech at the Miraflores Palace, Chvez called for self-criticism and higher efficiency of state management, not simply by increasing the financial resources and institutional power of the ministries, but by strengthening peoples power through the comunas (communes).

The Bolivarian revolution was not to be limited to the seizure of the bourgeois state and the replacement of one ruling class with another. At the center of the process was always the aspiration to lead the transformation to a Communal State in which the communes form the political and economic basis of the future socialist society and in which the organized people build the conditions to meet their own needs. Chvez concluded his speech with the slogan commune or nothingeither the revolution invests in peoples self-organization and self-government, or the revolution is betrayed.

The problem Chvez posed in his last speech to the council of ministers refers to one of the central problems of any revolutionary movement, namely the relationship between the party, government, and organized people in the process of building socialism. Based on a meticulous study of revolutionary experiences in history, Chvez asked himself how to build the political process of socialism beyond the action of the state, and directly with the people.

Chvezs slogan from 10 years ago has in the meantime grown and turned into concrete projects that the organized Venezuelan people continue to protect using all means necessary as they advance along the path of the socialist revolution.

Beyond the rhetoric of the Western media, the Venezuelan people still constitute the key actors in the Bolivarian revolution. For many, the communes serve as a primary instrument for building socialism. The Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes and Social Movements, led by Jorge Arreaza, has registered 3,600 communes. However, according to ngel Prado, one of the founders of the El Maizal commune in the state of Lara and a member of the national leadership of the Union Comunera, There are only about 500 communes really active throughout the country. In 2021, Prado was also elected mayor of Simn Planas for the PSUV, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela founded by Chvez in 2007.

On March 4 and 5 of 2022, some 60 communes from the five regions of Venezuela founded the Union Comunera in a first congress held in the El Maizal commune. The Union Comunera is a kind of trade union of the communes, the result of an organizational process started years ago. Today, it occupies a decisive role in the daily life of the communes: it coordinates and acts as a multiplier of the communes experiences accumulated over the last 15 years, elaborates and disseminatesinternally and externallythe organizations political line, and builds political, ideological and technical training programs according to the needs in the territories. The Union Comunera was an important step forward in stabilizing the idea of communes in the country, Prado adds.

The El Maizal commune is one of the most dynamic communal experiences in the country. Established on March 5, 2009, it encompasses a territory of 2,300 hectares between the two states of Lara and Portugesa in the west of the country and more than 3,500 families with a total of 14,320 people. This is a territory that before the start of the Bolivarian revolution was abandoned by public institutions and where people lived in absolute poverty with precarious housing and an agricultural production that was barely enough for their own consumption. Surplus products were bought by intermediary traders who paid them a paltry price. This reproduced the subordination of direct producers to the arbitrariness of middlemen, large landowners, and multinational corporations.

With the rise of Chavismo, the situation changed radically. In 2009, the Chvez government enlarged the highway connecting Caracas with the West. The Comandante visited the construction site and stopped at the municipality of Sarare where he visited us. This meeting was decisive for the development of our communes and thus the whole territory, says Jos Luis Sifontes, one of the PSUVs provincial commune policy coordinators. From 2009, we started to occupy abandoned land and greenhouses and set up communal production units that were then regularized by the government. We have also built houses for about 300 families and school facilities for the whole territory. The funding came from the Great Housing Mission and the Ministry of Peoples Power for Education, but we did the work ourselves.

The beginnings of the El Maizal commune are exemplary for the dialectic between the socialist government and the peoples power of the communes. Driven by Chvezs electoral victory and the democratization of the countrys political and economic structures, the self-organized people acted on the territory, creating the conditions to meet their needs autonomously. The Chavista government, in turn, provides support where the communes need it, respecting the forms of territorial self-government. This is also the framework that can help one understand the regularization of occupied land, the financing of housing and schools and many other government projects in the territories. The government therefore does not simply control its citizens with policies from above, but provides the framework in which the people expand their participation from below. The commune activists insist, however, that building self-government is not simply a (precarious) balancing act between public institutions and popular power, but the permanent quest for total autonomy in the territories through communes.

Today, 14 years after the foundation of El Maizal commune, around 120 direct producers run 14 food production units: white and yellow maize, beef and pork, eggs, milk and cheese, coffee and various vegetables. In addition, a company created in 2011 manages the distribution of gas throughout the commune. Thanks to this collective management of the production and distribution of basic necessities, the commune largely succeeds in guaranteeing food sovereignty, which the activists describe as a fundamental weapon against the sanctions imposed by the United States, which, especially during the years 2015 and 2021, caused severe consequences among the Venezuelan population.

A second fundamental weapon against the political and economic isolation produced by US imperialism is international solidarity. The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) has sent its members to be part of its internationalist brigade in Venezuela since 2005. Their function is summed up in their slogan technicalize knowledge, elevate consciousness. In the different areas of agricultural production in the country, the MST supports producers thanks to the experience and knowledge accumulated over the last 40 years of occupying land, building camps all over Brazil, and developing sustainable agriculture against agribusiness that exploits workers and destroys territories.

In the El Maizal commune, specifically, the internationalist brigade has helped run the Che Guevara Agricultural School for three years. Thanks to the permanent presence of the MST, the school offers technical, but also political and ideological courses in which several dozen young people from the area can perfect their learning of agricultural techniques and elaborate the deeper meaning of territorial production in the construction of socialism. This school does not replace the public school, but adds to it.

If El Maizal represents the ideal example of an agricultural commune, the Eternal Commander March 5 socialist commune is one of the most advanced urban communes in terms of territorial rootedness. Located in the El Valle neighborhood, it covers a hill of over 11 hectares of the city, brings together some 6,000 inhabitants and has 19 socially-owned production units. This is an area where problems existed before the revolution and continue to exist today: many homes do not have running water, electricity is precarious, to reach the highest homes one has to climb hundreds of stairs without the possibility of using public transport.

The young militants active in the barrio are mostly organized in the Left Cultural Front (FCI). In the neighborhood that approaches the main street Av. Intercomunal de El Valle, two militants, Gabriela and Ericsson, welcome me and tell me about their journey. The FCI was born in 2010/2011 as a student movement. We came into contact with the world of communes initially thanks to El Maizal began to work on political-ideological training. Then, in the years 2017/2018, we built brigades that went across the country to bring together the experiences of the communes. From there the idea of the Union Comunera was born.

Communes are not only political-organizational structures in a given territory, but they should create their own economic-productive base. In the urban context, socially-owned enterprises cannot produce food like in rural communes, but they are active in the service and distribution sector, often from shops, which play a fundamental role in the neighborhood. Gabriela explains: Here we sell products from the other communes, such as coffee, panela, cocoa, products from the Andean areas. This economic exchange constitutes the financial base of the communes. But that is not all, because the construction of a network of producers and territories has a political and educational purpose. By doing this, we strengthen the role of the communes and insist on the centrality of organization in the revolutionary process.

At least two other projects of the March 5 Commune deserve attention. The first is a recycling system that on the one hand helps to build sustainable garbage collection, and on the other provides jobs for people living in the area. Together with the Peoples Power Ministry for Ecosocialism, a recycling training school has also been opened where people can learn work techniques another example of the government-peoples power dialectic with the aim of strengthening the peoples way to socialism. This moral economy is an essential element in the formation of a workers consciousness that is not simply based on exchange value, but on concepts such as self-organization, mutualism, and sustainability.

The second area of political work is called La Ruta de las Flores. It is a feminist communal policy that offers answers to the needs of women, children and adolescents in the area. I met Emily, 24 years old and also a militant of the FCI, in the Communal Technical House Tejiendonos Mujeres, a feminist meeting center of the March 5 Commune. She explains to me that their organization does not simply stop at the practical issues of feminist intervention such as sex education, campaigns against gender violence, network of psychologists supporting women and children, etc. They are working on drafting a text of theoretical orientation that seeks to establish a communal feminist line that combines gender and class contradictions. We are not against men, we dont want half the cake or to overturn gender relations, we dont want to be either leaders or oppressed. What we want is to change the recipe of the cake, we want another way of relating on all levels, Emily told me.

Capital is not simply an economic relationship between workers and bosses, but a relationship that touches every social sphere, even outside the world of work. Socialism therefore cannot be limited to changing economic property relations, socialism is also a cultural and moral issue. The Ruta de las Flores is an example that highlights the moral significance of the communes as organizational instruments that aim to permanently create new social relations. Started in the March 5 Commune, this feminist project now exists in four other communes in the states of Sucre, Lara, Miranda and Tchira.

Ten years after the death of Hugo Chvez, political participation of the people, self-organization, and self-government from below continue to constitute the soul, body and heart of Chavismo. The construction of socialism, however, cannot be limited to local activism. Jos Luis Sinfontis recalls how Chvez also insisted on this: Before his death, Comandante Chvez explained it precisely in one of his speeches: those who stop at the local cannot build socialism; localism is counter-revolutionary.

The other slogan of the communes, independence, commune and socialism, sums up this internationalist perspective. Independence: from foreign interference, especially US imperialism, but also from multinationals and the national bourgeoisie with special interests (large landowners, private investors etc.). This independence also means food, political, and economic sovereignty. Commune: commune or nothing, a revolutionary process that is not top-down, with the belief that the communes can serve as a tool against the bureaucratization of the party and government. Socialism: acting local is not enough, communes without clear structures, without a government, and without socialist policies are reduced to petty-bourgeois localism.

The militants in the different territories of the country fight for the communes, as they attempt to transform Venezuela into a communal, socialist state.

See more here:
The advance of the commune in Venezuela - Peoples Dispatch

The gravesite at the Germiston Cemetery where Hani's mortal remains are buried was declared a national heritage site in 2017.

JOHANNESBURG - The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) President Zingiswa Losi said while a lot had been achieved since the dawn of democracy, questions needed to be raised on whether the African National Congress (ANC)-led government had realised Chris Hani's dream of socialism.

Losi was speaking at the 30th anniversary of Hani's death in Boksburg on Monday afternoon.

She said those in positions of power must introspect on whether they had neglected the poor and marginalised.

Hani, who was shot and killed at his Boksburg home on this day in 1993, was an advocate for an equal, non-racial South Africa that would prioritise the needs of the poor.

Losi said the tripartite alliance - comprising the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party - should continue on the same path.

She wondered: "In just over two weeks, we will have achieved 29 years of our liberation. The question is: have we honoured the vision of socialism and justice that comrade Chris set for ourselves? Have we fully utilised levers of state power handed to us by the people, or have we become distracted by the trappings of power?"

See the original post:
Cosatu asks: has the ANC realised Chris Hani's dream of a socialist state? - EWN

COMMONWEALTH Games fever came to town as a North Yorkshire community celebrated Jack Laughers triple gold achievement in the 2018 games.

Jack completed his Commonwealth gold medal hat-trick on Friday, April 13, 2018 after triumphing in the mens synchronised 3m springboard with Chris Mears in Australias Gold Coast.

Back in his Ripon hometown, his parents Jackie and Dave were watching the action from the comfort of their living room before being whisked away to a surprise celebration party at the Ripon Spa Hotel.

Read more: Metal detectorists reunite WWI soldier's badge with amazed North Yorkshire family

Mr and Mrs Laugher were escorted to the bash by one of the most successful British swimmers of all time, Mark Foster, and were greeted by rapturous applause and a sea of England flags and Jack Laugher masks as they entered the hotel.

Clearly moved by the occasion and their sons incredible achievement, Mrs Laugher said they would never get used to seeing Jack winning gold medals.

She said: We were very nervous for him, he was so wanting the hat-trick of golds and we went through every emotion with him.

Ken Loach has always worn his heart on his sleeve, his cannon of provocative films carrying at its centre the socialist spirit that has driven him throughout a career that has lasted more than half a century.

That unflinching spirit was evident to all who gathered at The Forum to hear the award-winning director share his thoughts on issues ranging from the NHS to Jeremy Corbyn, media manipulation and the political climate in the North-East, on April 11, 2018.

The director of Kes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake travelled to Darlington to introduce his documentary, Spirit of 45, and to support an evening organised by activist Louise Graham and Darlington Film Club in opposition to growing privatisation of the NHS.

A piece of history was uncovered as a major programme of refurbishment was carried out on the Saltburn Cliff Tramway, in April 2018.

Original features were being restored and Victorian designs followed as much as possible as part of the overhaul of the 1884-built cliff lift.

Work had been carried out to strip the mechanical workings of the lift back into component pieces.

Numerous items had to be repaired or replaced following detailed investigation due to the age of the lift.

Components from the time Britains oldest water balanced tramway was first built had to be found and restored whenever possible, including original cast iron fittings.

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Damaged parts particularly a number of cast iron fittings such as wedges, rollers, baseplates and axle boxes were melted down and recast in the original style.

Councillor Carl Quartermain, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Councils cabinet member for tourism, culture and communications, said: The tramway is simply iconic and a wonderful part of our tourism offer. Its fantastic to see this refurbishment coming together so well so it can be enjoyed for many generations to come.

Contractors, Rapid Consulting Engineers, focused on using local specialist companies with the restoration works, including William Lane Foundry in Middlesbrough.

See the article here:
When socialism was on fire as Ken Loach visited Darlington - The Northern Echo