The Nicaraguan presidential elections were held on November 7th, 2021. There were seven ballot options for the North and South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Regions: the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, Independent Liberal Party, Alliance for the Republic, Nicaraguan Christian Way, Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party, Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka Party (regional opposition party for the Carribean Coast), and the FSLN Front/Sandinista Alliance (led by Daniel Ortega). The voter turnout was about 65%, with 75% of those votes going to the Sandinista Coalition. These numbers have matched that of previous elections such as in 2016 the FSLN received 72% of the votes with a 68% voter turnout according to the Organization for American States (OAS) and in 2011 the Sandinistas received 62% of the votes according to the Carter Center. There were also more than two hundred foreign election observers from more than 27 countries and 67 of these people were also journalists.
           
​However, despite these signs of a normal functioning democracy, American and European media have decried these elections as unfair and Ortega a dictator. They allege that Ortega has imprisoned opposition candidates and banned foreign observers. It’s true that Ortega is running for his fourth term. However, it’s also important to remember that term limits aren’t very common outside the United States. Even then, the cap on term limits only became established in the United States after 1951 with the passage of the 22nd Amendment. Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency four times, yet no one would call him a dictator, in fact he is one of America’s most beloved presidents. Angela Merkel, in Germany, also served for more than fifteen years as Chancellor of Germany, yet no one is calling Germany a dictatorship. Ortega maintains a strong base of support among the Nicaraguan people, this is a fact recognized by the Carter Center and M&R Consultores (an apolitical polling group in Nicaragua).

Ortega and the Sandinistas were vital in overthrowing the US backed Somoza government, who after murdering Augusto César Sandino, a general who organized a rebellion of workers and peasants against the occupation by the U.S Marines, installed Anastasio Somoza and his family as puppets. The Sandinistas made Nicaragua into one of the safest countries in Central America and one of the most gender equal countries in the world. They uplifted millions of people from poverty and redistributed land from the landowners to the peasants. They are also one of the most food sovereign countries in the world with 80% of their food being produced within their own borders. Another fascinating fact is that 51% of property titles in Nicaragua were given to women, according to the World Bank.

This is a number that’s far greater than in Panama where women only own 34% of the property. Nicaragua also doesn’t suffer from the same amount of gang violence as its neighbors in El Salvador or Honduras. Its homicide rates are also the lowest out of all Latin American and Central American countries: 3.5 out of 100,000 inhabitants are killed by homicide in Nicaragua, compared to 37.6 inhabitants out of 100,000 in Honduras. The re-election of Daniel Ortega is a rejection of US imposed neoliberalism. The people of Nicaragua are not blind or stupid. They can see what neoliberalism has done to their neighbor Honduras, where gang violence, homicide, and most egregiously femicide are rampant. There is a reason why people support the Sandinistas and it’s not because they are brainwashed.


In addition, the notion that “opposition candidates” were arrested is very easily contradicted by the fact that there were up to seven ballot options and that Ortega’s name was not even the first to appear on the ballot. The first person to appear on the ballot was the leading opposition candidate Walter Espinoza Fernàndez, from the Constitutionalist Liberal Party. However, the majority of western sources claim that Ortega has arrested and silenced opposition candidates.

This is patently untrue when according to observers who were actually in Nicaragua during the elections one could find flyers and posters for the opposition everywhere. It’s also worth noting that the most popular TV channel in Nicaragua (Channel 10) isn’t owned by the government or the Ortega family but by a Mexican businessman called Ángel González. The vast majority aren’t in the hands of the government, instead they are in the hands of businessmen and entrepreneurs. TV stations in Nicaragua broadcast a variety of opinions both anti and pro-government.

While it is true that Dora María Téllez and Cristiana Chamorro and both did oppose the Ortega government, it’s also worth pointing out that they were found guilty of a variety of crimes that would have gotten them arrested in the United States or anywhere else in the world. Téllez conspired with the United States and played a part in the bloody 2018 coup, where hundreds of Nicaraguans were killed and Sandinistas were hunted down by right wing militias. If such an act occurred in the United States, Téllez would have been promptly imprisoned for treason if not worse. Chamorro, head of the Chamorro foundation and a descendant of the old colonial elites, received millions of dollars from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)  and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The Chamorro foundation has in turn sponsored tabloids and newspapers that call for the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government and the Nicaraguan government also found inconsistencies with the amount of money they reported compared to the amount that they received. The Chamorro family, nonetheless, has repeatedly rejected investigations from the Nicaraguan government. Money laundering, tax evasion, advocating for the overthrow of the government, and use of foreign funds in elections are all illegal in the United States. However, when an independent country that rejects neoliberalism or American imperialism tries to enforce these very same laws it gets labeled as authoritarian and is punished with sanctions, just look at Iran, Venezuela, Chile in the early 1970s, Iraq, and Syria.

The RENACER Act was passed on November 3rd, four days before the elections. The RENACER Act calls for heightened sanctions on Nicaragua and restricts lending international financial institutions from lending money to the country. This comes despite the fact that Nicaragua is still a very poor country and that despite claiming these sanctions are only targeted towards the Ortega family and high ranking government officials, history has shown that “targeted sanctions” rarely harm the targets, instead it’s the people that suffer the most.

However, despite the various obstacles that has been thrown at them, Nicaragua, led by the Sandinistas, is no less deterred from continuing the legacy of General Augustino César Sandino in kicking out the American occupiers, whether that be in the form of US Marines stationed off the Coast of Honduras, puppet governments in the form of Somoza, right wing paramilitaries in the form of the Contras, or the use of astroturfed candidates and political movements to overturn the Sandinista Revolution. These elections have shown not only that the Sandinistas are overwhelmingly popular but that there is an alternative to neoliberalism.
 
Sources
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/01/cia-usaid-nicaragua-right-wing-media/
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections/
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/05/nicaragua-us-informant-dora-maria-tellez-mrs/
https://www.nicaragua.com/culture/television/
https://medialandscapes.org/country/nicaragua/media/television
https://aldianews.com/articles/politics/biden-enacts-renacer-act/67939
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/10/bills-signed-h-r-1899-and-s-1064/
https://www.coha.org/nicaragua-u-s-sanctions-will-disrupt-sustainable-beef-production-and-reforestation/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1064/text
https://www.statista.com/statistics/947781/homicide-rates-latin-america-caribbean-country/
https://blogs.worldbank.org/latinamerica/recognition-property-rights-women-central-america-mission-accomplished
https://archive.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/special/2003/0808nicaragua.htm
https://www.coha.org/feeding-the-people-in-times-of-pandemic-the-food-sovereignty-approach-in-nicaragua/#:~:text=Food%20sovereignty%20and%20the%20pandemic,beans%20and%20dairy%20to%20export.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/28062020-the-crisis-of-neoliberalism-in-honduras-oped/

Editorial Note:  Since the three Farm Laws were already passed in the Parliament (by unconstitutional means) and signed by the president of India, they can only be withdrawn by the Parliament, that is, the government has to bring another bill stating that the laws are being withdrawn, the MPs will vote on it, then the resolution is to be sent to the president. Long process.

After fighting for almost a year, farmers in India finally won a victory against the three farms laws enacted by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government last year. Prime minister Narendra Modi announced on Friday, November 19, that the three laws would be repealed and all legal processes related to the matter will be completed during the upcoming session of parliament.

The news of the announcement led to celebrations all across the country. People hailed the victory of the farmers’ movement and took to the streets and social media to express their joy, while recalling the sacrifices made by the farmers in their year-long agitation. Several called it a victory against the arrogance of power.
​
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which is spearheading the farmers’ movement, issued a brief statement welcoming the prime minister’s announcement. However, it also reiterated that some of its crucial demands are yet to be met and the fate of the ongoing agitation will only be decided after a detailed review later.

The full statement of the SKM can be found here.

​Welcoming the announcement, Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), saluted the farmers and their brave struggle against the three farm laws. He called the over 750 farmers who had died during the agitation “our martyrs.”
​
Yechury also demanded that the prime minister apologize to the farmers for causing “hardships and troubles by his dictatorial step of farm law to benefit his crony business partners,” and fulfill the other demands of the farmers.

The All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) also hailed the announcement of the withdrawal of the three laws calling it a victory for the peasants and the patriotic people of India.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress, the main opposition party, congratulated the farmers in a tweet for defeating the government’s arrogance with their struggle for truth.

Welcoming the announcement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation tweeted that farmers will not leave the protest sites until all the formalities of the withdrawal are complete and other demands of the farmers are fulfilled.

Reacting to the farmers’ victory, author and columnist Vijay Prashad wrote on Facebook, “first time in seven years the Man with the Saffron Beard had to admit defeat. Modi repealed the farm laws, not because he saw the light of their hideousness but because the farmers & the working-class would not budge.

After failing for months to persuade the government to withdraw the three farm laws, the SKM, a platform of more than 500 farmers’ unions from across India including the left-oriented AIKS, began its indefinite sit-in at all major border crossings to national capital Delhi on November 26 last year. The SKM argued that the three farm laws enacted promoted corporate interests at the cost of the farmers, and would eventually lead to the destruction of the farm sector in the country by endangering the livelihoods of millions and enabling the corporate takeover of agriculture.

The SKM had also demanded the enactment of a law on minimum support prices (MSP) and the withdrawal of the electricity amendment bill. MSP is a set of basic prices declared by the government in India based on which it procures certain farm products. Though it is expected that the market price of farm produce will not fall below the MSP, it is hardly the case and most of the time, farmers are forced to sell their produce at prices less than the MSP or less than the basic cost of production.

​The electricity amendment bill provides for private players in electricity distribution, which farmers think will lead to a rise in the price of electricity and the overall cost of production due to the withdrawal of government subsidies.

Following the protests at the Delhi border, India’s Supreme Court had suspended the laws for a year and formed a three-member committee to examine them. The farmers rejected the Supreme Court’s intervention and called the committee biased in favor of the government and the laws. Following this rejection by the farmers, some members of the court-appointed committee withdrew from it. However, proving the farmer’s apprehensions correct, on Friday, one of the members of the committee, Anil Ghanwat, called the prime minister’s announcement “the most regressive step” and accused him of choosing “politics over farmers’ betterment,” Press Trust of India reported.

The SKM took out numerous protest actions through their year-long movement, including the march of tractors on the occasion of Republic Day in January. The farmers also faced numerous oppressive measures from the state, the arrest of several leaders on false charges, and a vilification campaign targeting the agitating farmers as terrorists and accusing them of destabilizing the country.

The BJP has maintained that the three farm laws were in the interest of the farmers and will benefit agriculture in India. In October, the son of one of the ministers in the BJP government was accused of ramming his car into five farmers protesting the farm laws in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district. The SKM has asked for the sacking of the minister, Ajay Kumar Mishra, from the union government and punishment for all the culprits of the heinous crime.

For the first time in four years, every major opposition party in Venezuela participated in elections. For the fifth time in four years, the left won in a landslide. Voters elected 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 state legislators and 2,471 municipal councilors. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won at least 19 of 23 governorships (one race remains too close to call) and the Caracas mayoralty in the November 21 “mega-elections.” Of the 335 mayoral races, the vote count has been completed in 322 of them, with PSUV and its coalition taking 205, opposition coalitions 96 and other parties 21. Over 70,000 candidates ran for these 3,082 offices, and 90% of the vote was counted and verified within hours of polls closing. Turnout was 42.2%, eleven points higher than last year’s parliamentary elections.

Here’s why chavismo, the movement behind the Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, won:
​
1. Good governance in health, housing and food. Venezuela’s health policies in response to Covid-19 have been exemplary. The expectation in the U.S. was that the coronavirus would overwhelm Venezuela’s healthcare system, which has been devastated by years of sanctions. And yet, per million population, Venezuela registered 15,000 cases and 180 deaths. For the sake of comparison, the figures in the U.S. are 146,000 cases/million and 2,378 deaths/million, Brazil’s are 103,000 and 2854, and Colombia’s are 98,000 and 2,481. Unlike images we saw in Ecuador or Bolivia, there were no bodies of victims left on the streets, nor were there overflowing morgues like in New York.

​In terms of housing, the Venezuelan government has built 3.7 million homes for working class families over the past ten years, the majority of which were built and delivered by the Maduro administration while under sanctions.

As deadly as the sanctions have been, things would be significantly worse were it not for Venezuela’s most important social program in the past five years: the CLAPs. These consist of boxes of food and other necessities, some of which are produced locally, which are packaged and distributed by communities themselves. Seven million Venezuelans families receive CLAP boxes every month, out of a country of 30 million people. Not only has this program been instrumental in keeping people fed, it has invigorated the base of chavismo and reconnected the government with grassroots after the PSUV’s defeat in the 2015 legislative elections.

2. The economic situation is improving. According to an August 2021 survey by opposition pollster Datanálisis, 50% of Venezuelans consider that their lives have improved compared to the previous year or two. Despite sanctions that have caused a 99% drop in government income, the Venezuelan economy is stabilizing. Inflation is down to single digits for the first time in four years. Credit Suisse projected 5.5% growth in 2021 and 4.5% growth in 2022. Oil production hit an 18-month high in October, helped by a trade deal with Iran.

3. The left is united (mostly). The PSUV didn’t win the elections alone, they were united with 8 other left parties in a coalition known as the GPP (Great Patriotic Pole). The PSUV itself held internal primaries in August, the only party to do so. Over half the GPP candidates were women, 52%, while another 43% were youth. Overall, 90% of the candidates hadn’t held office before, suggesting a renewal of the party from the grassroots. However, this marked the second election in a row in which the left wasn’t completely united. A coalition that included Venezuela’s Communist Party ran its own ticket. These parties got less than 3% of the vote in the 2020 parliamentary elections and their decision to run separately appears to have had no impact on the gubernatorial races.

4. The opposition is divided. Never known for their unity, the Venezuelan opposition suffered a major split as a result of some parties opting for boycotting elections and attempting to overthrow the government, while others preferred a democratic path. Despite all the major parties participating in these elections, the opposition was split into two main coalitions, the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable) and the Democratic Alliance. The vast majority of the 70,000 candidates are in the opposition and they were running candidates against each other in almost every race. Of the 23 gubernatorial races, six were won by PSUV candidates with less than 50% of the vote and by less than six points – more unity between the MUD and Democratic Alliance could have made the difference.

A count of the votes in the gubernatorial and Caracas mayoral races show the PSUV coalition taking 46% of the total vote, with the rest split between the various oppositions. A united opposition could win in Venezuela, but “united opposition” is an oxymoron.

5. The opposition is deeply unpopular. While much is made about the alleged lack of support for President Maduro (the millions of votes his party got will never be acknowledged by the U.S.), it’s less known that the opposition is deeply unpopular. Here are the disapproval ratings for some of the opposition’s key figures: Juan Guaidó, 83% disapproval; Julio Borges (Guaidó’s “Foreign Minister), 81%; Leopoldo López (Guaidó’s mentor and mastermind of coup attempts), 80%; Henry Ramos Allup (longtime opposition leader), 79%; Henrique Capriles (2012 & 2013 presidential election loser), 77%; and Henri Falcón (2018 presidential election loser), 66%. All of these but Falcón are part of the MUD.

The MUD coalition spent years claiming they represented a majority, a claim which couldn’t be verified by their strategy of electoral boycotts. However, their return to the electoral process only marked a ten point increase in voter turnout compared to 2020. Moreover, the MUD placed below other opposition parties in 9 of 23 states and in Caracas. The MUD only won one of the three governorships taken by the opposition. This might be due in part to widespread rejection of U.S. sanctions. The MUD has repeatedly endorsed deadly sanctions despite the fact that 76% of Venezuelans reject them.
​
The MUD enjoys the political, financial and logistical support of the United States and the EU, while members of other opposition parties have been denounced and sanctioned by the U.S. for negotiating with the Maduro administration. These elections should put the Biden administration on notice that continuing to support the MUD, and in particular, the fiction of Guaidó as “interim president”, is a failed policy.

​“After a long and painful journey, we made it home to victory,” exclaimed Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the NYTWA. “Today marks a new dawn, a new beginning for a workforce that has struggled through so much crisis and loss. Today, we can say owner-drivers have won real debt relief and can begin to get their lives back. Drivers will no longer be at risk of losing their homes, and no longer be held captive to debt beyond their lifetime.”

The workers who drive New York’s famous yellow cabs fell victim to a debt crisis manufactured by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and predatory lenders financed by Wall Street.

Drivers have an average loan balance of USD 550,000. Over 900 have filed for bankruptcy since the price of the medallion was artificially inflated to an all-time high of USD 1 million in 2014 before falling dramatically.

The NYTWA proposed a plan to reduce and restructure this debt so that workers can pay it off while still making a liveable wage. Under the agreement, Marblegate will restructure loans to a maximum of USD 200,000, and with a USD 30,000 grant from the city, the highest loans will be reduced to USD 170,000.  The interest rate will be capped at 5% over a 20-year term, equaling monthly payments of USD 1,122.

The deal will work alongside the city’s federally-funded USD 65 million Medallion Relief Program, which went into effect on October 30 and has provided USD 21.4 million in debt relief for 173 medallion owners so far.

Victor Salazaar, a worker who has been driving yellow cabs in the city for almost three decades, said, “We can live with some respect and dignity. This victory will mean a lot of dignity for families who have been ignored for far too long.”

This article was updated November 19 to reflect the final election results.

A new administration will soon take the helm of the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union. The Teamsters United slate swept to victory in this week's vote count, beating out their rivals 2 to 1.

It’s the first time in almost a quarter-century that a coalition backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union has taken the driver’s seat in the international union.
​
The incoming president is Sean O’Brien, leader of New England Joint Council 10. He says his top priorities are to unite the rank and file to take on employers, organize Amazon and other competitors in the union’s core industries, and withdraw support from politicians who don’t deliver on union demands.

Essential to organizing at Amazon or anyplace else, O’Brien argues, is winning enviable contracts for the existing Teamsters. “Our biggest selling point to potential members is showing in black and white what a union contract can do,” he said. “We’ve got to have a grassroots campaign to engage our members working in similar industries and showcase what Teamsters can do—and that means negotiating strong contracts that people want to be part of.”

In UPS negotiations in 2023, he says, the union must abolish the second tier of drivers, raise the starting pay of part-timers from $14 an hour to $20, and crack down on subcontracting and Uber-like deliveries by “personal vehicle drivers.” He and his running mates have pledged to strike UPS if necessary.

Five years ago, O’Brien won an Eastern region vice president spot on the incumbent slate of longtime President James P. Hoffa, who is retiring this year. But in 2017, Hoffa fired him as package division director after O’Brien insisted the UPS bargaining team should include opposition leader Fred Zuckerman, president of Local 89 in Louisville, who had led the 2016 Teamsters United ticket that nearly toppled Hoffa. Now Zuckerman will take the number two seat as secretary-treasurer.

Teamsters United has won a controlling majority on the union’s 27-seat international executive board.

​It took years of organizing to get here. But the bigger task is what comes next—not just pointing to the problems confronting the union, but tackling them.

“We have to right the ship,” said John Palmer, a current Southern region vice president who will become an at-large vice president. (In 2016 Teamsters United won in two regions, giving the coalition six seats on the union’s executive board.) “It takes many, many miles to turn a battleship around in the middle of the ocean, and that’s what we have to do here.”

“If you want change, you have to change,” said Local 572 steward Frank Halstead, a Los Angeles grocery warehouse worker and TDU steering committee member. “The structure determines effectiveness. They’re going to have to reallocate money.”

For instance, rather than continue padding officers’ salaries with multiple titles, he wants the union to hire energetic full-time division representatives who can help locals in the same industry build a strategy to coordinate their bargaining, raise standards, and fight threats like automation.

“Under the current administration there are no full-time warehouse division reps,” Halstead said. “You have officials from certain locals who hold that title, but they can’t do two jobs; you can’t be a business agent at a local and a division rep. That’s the kind of stuff that has to stop.”
​
The organizing department needs restructuring too, said Palmer, who worked there for years. “We waste a tremendous amount of money flying organizers around the country,” he said. “That time and resources could allow us to train people out of locals to do this. We need to have that skill on the ground everywhere; we don’t need a lot of specialists airdropped from D.C. who disappear the minute a campaign is over.”

August 2023, when the UPS contract expires, isn’t as far away as it might sound. “A contract campaign basically needs to start on day one,” said Chicago Campaign Coordinator Dave Bernt, another TDU steering committee member. “We need to have a national coordinated contract campaign to get members engaged, to use their engagement as leverage in negotiations.”

Making the strike threat more than a bluff starts with “basic communication,” Bernt said. He means headquarters should use methods like texting and social media to inform the 320,000 UPS Teamsters of the timeline and what’s at stake. But he also means member-to-member: “Just as we campaigned for office, we need to have members go out to their gates and engage their membership, talk about the issues and talk about how to prepare for negotiations. Start socking away money; don’t make any major purchases.”

​Braswell agrees: It’s time to encourage members to put away $20 or $50 each pay period, and to make the word “strike” more familiar, less scary. (The union also has a strike fund of more than $300 million that hasn’t been used in decades, O’Brien says—and he plans to put it to use.)
​
“UPS, they’ve had a free ride for the past 23 years,” Braswell said. “They didn’t have to take us seriously when we came to the negotiations table. That’s going to change.”

Organizing Amazon will be a “massive long-term task,” Palmer said. “It’s going to require the help of religious groups, community groups, environmental groups, and other unions. We have to have a really deep, well-thought-out strategy.”

But other targets are in closer reach: industries and companies where the Teamsters already represents part of the workforce, and could gain leverage by organizing more.

“In the waste industry we have New York, Chicago, L.A. with relatively high density,” Bernt said, “but we have whole areas particularly in the South where we represent hardly any waste workers, [even though these are] companies we already have contracts with.”

Grocery warehouses are another example. The Teamsters represent some Costcos and some Krogers. “Why not all?” Halstead said. “With those numbers comes increased strength, increased resources. Then you can start to think about going after the Amazons and these giants.”

What happens to an opposition group like TDU when it’s in coalition with the leadership?

“It’s a lot less complicated than people think,” Bernt said. “Our strategy, I think, will continue to be the same. Our goals are to build union power through engaging the rank and file in fights against the bosses. That’s been our goal when we were in the opposition, and that’ll continue to be our goal as we’re part of a coalition that’s running the union.”

TDU leaders argue the union needs more leaders coming up from below. It’s TDU’s mission to encourage and train them.

O’Brien said the campaign had proven the value of the coalition behind it. “I love the relationship, and I’ve committed we are going to work hand in hand moving forward,” he said. “TDU, Teamsters United, and all Teamsters are going to play a significant role in policy-making in the International. I always told people—I grew up Irish Catholic, and there were always disagreements around that dinner table. But reasonable people will find reasonable solutions for reasonable problems.”

“I’m just excited,” Braswell said before the vote count began. “I’m at the end of my career here. When I first came in, they taught us, ‘When you leave here, you need to leave it in better shape than what you found it.’ It was always my fear because of Hoffa I was going to leave my union and it was going to be a total mess. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“In my small way I contributed to it. I did my part. I left my union in a better place.”
​
Jonah Furman contributed reporting to this article.

As the rich and comfortable stayed indoors and rode out the worst months of the pandemic on their Peloton bikes, workers around the country shifted into a different gear. Ten thousand farming equipment workers in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and Georgia walked out of their jobs, joining 1,400 cereal workers at Kellogg’s plants in Nebraska, Michigan, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, as well as 1,100 coal miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama and nurses in New York and Massachusetts. And thousands more are waiting in the wings—from workers in academia, to health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon, California, and Hawaii, to film and television workers in the entertainment industry who averted a strike after threatening to walk off the job and reached a tentative agreement, which will now be voted on.

That’s not all. New York City taxi drivers have idled their iconic mustard-yellow cars and camped outside City Hall for more than a month, holding a 24/7 protest vigil that escalated to a hunger strike last week. The hunger strike by members and supporters of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance is taking place before a fast-approaching quarterly budget modification deadline on Oct. 31. Before the deadline, if he so chooses, Mayor Bill de Blasio can add a loan guarantee to lower the monthly payments on the crushing debts that drivers have accrued (averaging half a million dollars per driver) as a result of predatory licensing schemes.

Whatever you want to call this marked uptick in worker militancy, one thing is clear: In general, and on an individual level, workers are more confident than they’ve been in a long time, and they are seizing the crisis in front of them to their advantage. Members of the vast “order-taking class” are deploying their newfound leverage to command better wages as employers struggle to fill vacancies in a tight labor market while the pandemic still rages across the nation. And it’s not just big, headline-grabbing strikes—the increasing boldness and assertiveness of workers is manifesting in other important ways.

“We are witnessing a unique opportunity for many workers who have been on the front lines of a global pandemic and recognize that employers are struggling to hire,” said Johnnie Kallas, project director of Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker, an online database that documents labor actions and strikes no matter their size.

​“For example, we have documented six separate strikes by bus drivers—union and nonunion—since late September involving anywhere between 20 and 200 workers,” Kallas added. “Nearly all these strikes include demands related to higher pay. Health and safety concerns have also been voiced by striking workers.”

Meanwhile, in what some are calling the “Great Resignation” and others have described as an “unofficial general strike,” some 30 million U.S. workers have quit their jobs from January to August, a stunning collective rebuke—expressed on an individual level—to the common degradations of low-paying, demeaning jobs.

Stephanie Luce, professor of labor studies at the City University of New York, notes that strikes extend beyond formal strike authorizations called by unions. “We may be seeing a lot more work stoppages that are not formal strikes called by unions, or formal strikes in smaller workplaces, and informal work actions.”

“We should consider the range of workplace actions workers engage in to protest their conditions of work, from formal strikes to work slowdowns, sick-outs and quitting. Workers have always employed a range of tactics that should be considered part of striking.”

And why not throw in the towel? The average worker is more productive now than ever but has seen their real wages stagnate for decades as the cost of living rises and the lion’s share of profits have been siphoned off by those at the top. (The fact that the wealth of the 1% has exploded over the course of the pandemic has only made it clearer that we are all playing a rigged game.) While workers struggle to keep their heads above water, they’ve seen CEO pay soar to stratospheric heights, ballooning by 19 percent in 2020, or $24.2 million on average, according to an August study by the Economic Policy Institute.

​Some have channeled their discontent into the throes of collective bargaining and bustled about the perimeter of picket lines. However, while workers have, indeed, turned the heat on the bosses, the flame of worker militancy is not yet a blowtorch capable of setting off conflagrations of work stoppages across the country.

From January 2021 to today, there have been 258 strikes—39 of those strikes, involving approximately 24,000 workers, have occurred in October alone, according to the Labor Action Tracker. By contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which only tracks work stoppages involving at least 1,000 workers, puts the figure of strikes at 12 since January 2021, based on data up to September 2021.

Here’s the sobering truth: The discontent fueling the current uptick in strikes and protests is incredibly important, but that uptick still pales in comparison to the 485,000 workers who went on strike in 2018 and the 425,000 in 2019 during a strike wave involving teachers in states from West Virginia to Arizona, as well as workers in auto plants and hotels. Go even further back to 1971, when more than 5,000 work stoppages involving over 3,000,000 workers occurred, and the comparison to today’s strike numbers puts the reality of labor’s situation in even starker relief. Tens of thousands of workers fighting back in 2021 is significant, but there are roughly 14 million union workers in the U.S. alone, according to the 2021 annual report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Basically, it’s a big country—and we still have a long way to go.

“I think the term ‘strike wave’ gets thrown around too much, because it depends on what you are comparing,” said Kallas. “We also know that changes in our economy have made striking much more difficult since the 1980s, making it important to contextualize these historical comparisons.”

​We need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time; we need to identify and cultivate the passions among America’s rank and file that have made this a special moment, but we also need to be clear-eyed about the deep challenges preventing this moment from becoming a movement. For instance, while it’s become a routine journalistic genuflection to cite a September Gallup poll showing more than 68% of Americans approve of unions, the amount of new workplace organizing efforts doesn’t match up to these shifting trends in public opinion. At the very least, this should temper our feverish excitement about the potential of a new worker upsurge expanding to encompass millions of workers who can bring the bosses and our rigged economic system to their knees. We’re not there yet.

Momentum building is crucial to movement building, and successful strikes are indeed contagious, emboldening workers elsewhere to take action in their own workplaces. But “a failed strike that ends with the strikers permanently replaced by scabs can spread fear and hopelessness across communities and industries,” Shaun Richman, program director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College, wrote for In These Times. Translation: as much as new strikes and public excitement about worker struggles can help lift the labor movement off its back, failed strikes and fizzling public commitment to those same struggles can push the movement farther in the wrong direction. Even if worker militancy is growing, workers have a deliberately narrowed path to navigate to victory, shaped by decades (even centuries) of anti-worker laws and anti-union culture. This is why, in the same piece for In These Times, Richman makes the case for labor law reform, including the right to return to work after a strike (remember that fateful day in 1981 when Scab-in-Chief Ronald Regan fired over ten thousand air traffic controllers). It is also why many workers, labor leaders, and labor advocates have pushed for the passage of the Protect the Right to Organize Act—doing so, they argue, would open up pathways for workers to take today’s militancy and turn it into forms of worker organization that have real teeth and muscles.

If such changes to U.S. labor law happened overnight, for example, it would have huge implications for miners in Alabama, who are going on eight months on strike and have seen scabs replace some workers (and hit picketers with their cars). Likewise, nurses in Massachusetts are approaching eight months on strike with their Texas-based employer Tenet Healthcare refusing to rehire striking workers while hauling in $448 million in profit in the third quarter.

“Leverage to win is obviously different in different industries and companies,” said Peter Olney, a former organizing director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, pointing to the St. Vincent nurses and a national day of action he’s coordinating with the Democratic Socialists of America. “Tenet has over 450 facilities and just brought in $2.4 billion during COVID and they are gushing with cash. They are making a political statement to unions that dare to challenge them. The path to settlement would be labor solidarity, but only 30 facilities are union nationwide and SEIU has a national ‘organizing’ agreement with Tenet that forbids solidarity.”

While Olney welcomes the new militant attitude and workers’ desire for better jobs, he sounds a sober note about how that desire alone “cannot overcome pre-existing realities of union weakness and lethargy. Organizing the massive un-organized private sector remains key.”

​Luce from City University of New York agreed. “As much talk as we hear about workers gaining power in a tight labor market, these long strikes show the tremendous power imbalance that still remains between the average employer and the average worker,” she said. “Employers have far more rights, resources, lawyers and political power than do workers, which means that despite their cries of helplessness, the average employer will be able to outlast the average union on a picket line.”

Since April, two dozen workers at the United Metro Energy Corporation fuel terminal in Brooklyn, New York, have been out on strike after more than two years of negotiations broke down between Teamsters Local 553 and billionaire John Catsimatidis. Six months into that strike, eight workers have received permanent replacement letters. The Teamsters had already filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board for the company’s alleged targeting of union activists, and filed new charges as the investigation unfolded.

The original two dozen workers on strike have dwindled to 14 today, as many took jobs elsewhere when faced with permanent replacement letters, according to striking worker Ivan Areizaga, 56, a terminal operator who has been working at United Metro Energy Corporation for nearly six years.

“I dedicated myself to the company. I’ve been working from 10PM to 7AM. They didn’t even have consideration that I have a family. I want to have a weekend with my kids,” he said. “The only time I took off was when my mother passed. Three days after, I came back to work, never missed a day, and did everything I was asked for.”

Beyond the long hours, Areizaga also discovered that he was earning $27 when the industry standard for the same job is $37 hourly. A father of three, he began thinking about retirement and a pension. So he joined up with his co-workers and formed a union, leaping at the prospect of financial stability.

​“I’m 56 years old. How many years do I have to work in order for me to make a decent living and provide for my family?” he asked himself.

“As much as the Union has the right to strike, we have a right, under federal labor law, to permanently replace employees to enable us to service our customers,” Catsimatidis said in a statement to the local newspaper The City, making explicit that the dictatorship of employers is largely a legal offensive.

Shortly after going on strike, Areizaga said, the company cut his health benefits. He recounted the experience of his son, who has diabetes, calling from college in North Carolina panicked because he couldn’t access his medication. “Dad, what’s going on,” his son asked him. “I can’t get my medication.”

“What we’re asking for he got in his back pocket,” Areizaga said of billionaire Catsimatidis. We were there through the pandemic when everybody was home; we were there providing for New York.”

Areizaga and his co-workers supply New York with heating oil, diesel, and gasoline, which keeps New York City schools, hospitals, and the subway warm; they are also responsible for fueling local gas stations. They and their labor are nothing if not essential for the city and its residents. And yet, existing labor law makes it much easier than it should be for bosses to dissociate the work from the worker, allowing them to replace the latter with anyone willing to do the former while safely ignoring the needs and concerns expressed by employees like Areizaga.

John Catsimatidis of United Metro Energy Corporation didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“We’re not giving up. We have lost a lot already,” Areizaga concluded.

If we want Striketober to be more than just a short, bright moment in time, we cannot forget about workers like Areizaga (or the miners at Warrior Met Coal, or the nurses at St. Vincent Hospital). We must do what we can—all of us—to help them win their struggles, and we must have a concerted strategy for addressing or removing the systemic barriers that make winning so hard.

Striketober may very well be just a viral hashtag, but the growing worker militancy it invokes is unmistakably in the air, fanning like pixie dust down to the lowest number of workers banding together to form unions and strike. What remains to be seen are efforts to rebuild class organizations on an even more massive scale for a lasting rebalance of power in the struggle of the many against the rapacious few.
​
This piece first appeared at The Real News Network.

The latest debacle for the Democrats in Virginia highlights the increasing hollowness of the Biden regime. Ushered in on the exuberant wave of anti-Trumpism, Biden has revealed himself to be just as spineless and reactionary as his detractors from both left and right prophesied.
           
And yet, there are supposed leftists that continue to cling to the hope that his regime can be ‘pushed to the left,’ or that a people’s movement can force the Democrats into conceding reforms they obviously would never pass of their own accord.
           
The left must cut through the illusions. It ought to remember its Marxist roots and rediscover its commitment to building an independent workers’ party. Nothing can be gained by supporting the Democrats. By calling the Republicans ‘fascist,’ the left seeks to justify any ‘united front’ no matter how devoid of any real class content. The left is content to abandon class struggle and become a grassroots lobby of the Democratic Party.
 
No more! Working people are fed up with it - which is why they voted for Youngkin. Until the left offers itself as a fierce and uncompromising alternative, workers’ desire to change the world will continue to manifest in reactionary ways.
 
           
A recent article urged the Democrats to put their ‘best’ foot forward and highlight their policy ‘successes’ in order to win voters back. But what successes? Biden continues the anti-immigrant policies left over from when he was the Vice President; there has been no substantive Coronavirus relief, and now rent is back to being enforced and federal student loans are about to be called in again; the U.S. continues its election-meddling in places like Nicaragua and Cuba; and despite the high-profile tokenization of a few people of color in high places, Biden will always be remembered for his support for the War on Drugs and his revealing gaffe that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."
 
Working people rightly hate the Democrats. To shamelessly sell them the Democratic Party anyway in the enthusiastic language of ‘Marxism’ and ‘class struggle’ is nothing less than betrayal.
 
           
These are the same leftists who pronounce in one sentence that it’s all Manchin or Sinema’s fault and in the next claim that the Democrats and Republicans form but two wings of the same party of capital. This kind of inconsistency is why the left has been so marginal and incapable of influencing recent events. These two positions cannot be reconciled. Either we are for the complete political independence and maturity of the working class, or we abuse the revolutionary proletarian tradition to sell out to the Democrats. There is no third way. It is either revolution or liquidation.
           
But what of “reform?” The Democrats offer no reform. They rely on scapegoats like Manchin and Sinema to throw their hands up and distract from the fact that they literally profit from legislative gridlock. Even if a new New Deal passed, it wouldn’t achieve the same effect as reforms did back in the Gilded Age. Back then, reforms were concessions rendered to the all-powerful left. And they demonstrated to workers their own power and convinced them to keep fighting for more, to not merely be satisfied with the crumbs but to go for the whole feast. But now, if any reforms are forthcoming, they are not the result of the left. They are rather the condition for a new consolidation of capitalism. If the elites ‘reform’ anything they do so to shore up their own basis of power. Working people know that such maneuvers don’t owe themselves to their own intervention because politics has ceased to be contested ground. The left has ceded politics to the Democrats. There is no reform possible when the specter of revolution is not being actively raised.
           
​Instead of bemoaning or softening the Democrats’ defeat in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere, we ought to celebrate it. To hell with the Democrats! They offer nothing but disappointment for the working people of the world. We ought to remember Marx’s own words quoted above: we struggle “not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.” The future must be proletarian. It cannot be a united front, a lesser of two evils, an evolutionary and gradual road. It can only be won through revolutionary struggle against all class enemies, including every member of the Democratic Party. This does not make us Republicans, of course. It makes us rise above the pettiness of U.S. elections by offering the only real solution to this country’s polarization and economic stagnation.
 
If the left is unable or unwilling to recapture this, it should openly admit it. That way, the last of the wool can be ripped from our eyes, and we can see the task for what it truly is.

MANAGUA—The United States is waging economic war against Nicaragua and the overwhelmingly popular Sandinista government here as the people of the country head to the polls. Just last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the RENACER Act, a slew of additional deadly sanctions, with huge bipartisan support.

The U.S. also continues to make a plethora of attacks on President Daniel Ortega, who is running for a fourth term in office. Washington claims Ortega is a drug trafficker and a dictator, that he imprisoned his political opposition, and even that he has killed his own citizens. The U.S. purports to be a bastion of “freedom” and “democracy,” as a model for Nicaragua, but the opinions of the Nicaraguan people I’ve met the past week differ sharply.

Comparing the U.S.’ approach to other countries in the region suggests some clear inconsistencies in the arguments being used to demonize Nicaragua’s leaders and justify the economic warfare that is at the heart of current U.S. policy toward its people. 

U.S. relations with the Honduran government and its president, Juan Orlando Hernández, are instructive. Following the 2009 U.S.-backed coup against progressive Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, the U.S. proudly supported a succession of right-wing governments there and turned a blind eye to blatant corruption. The brother of Hernández is currently serving a life sentence plus 30 years in a United States prison for trafficking cocaine.

The connections between the current president and his drug-trafficking brother are widely known in Honduras, yet the U.S. State Department has never suggested reprimanding the narco-president, much less his country, for his blatant crimes. This is because Hernández is closely aligned with the U.S. economic and political establishment and has no qualms about continuing to allow his people to be exploited by U.S. multinational corporations and eagerly pursues devastating neoliberal policy.

The Nicaragua-Honduras comparison is similar to that between Venezuela and its neighbor, Colombia. Despite ruling over a country that produces 75% of the world’s supply of cocaine, the Colombian state receives absolutely zero accusations of criminal activity from the U.S. government. Nor does it earn condemnation for the violent suppression of mass anti-government protests and the mass killing of protesters from military gunship helicopters. This is, again, because the Colombian neoliberal government is aligned with U.S. economic interests.

The reason for mentioning these examples—which are widely repeated in the streets of Managua—is not to point fingers and ignore the accusations, but to illustrate the view here that U.S. accusations are hypocritical and ludicrous. The motivation behind the unsubstantiated accusations against their country by Washington is quite obvious to Nicaraguans.

President Daniel Ortega does not fall in line with U.S. economic interests—which would still prefer to see Nicaragua be a neo-colony where U.S. companies can exploit low-wage workers and destroy the environment for profit.

The U.S. State Department and mainstream corporate media have been in a frenzy over the past year, blowing up accusations of “political prisoners” in Nicaragua—accusations that local Nicaraguans find laughable.

The most famous of these “political prisoners” is Cristiana Chamorro, an extravagantly wealthy Nicaraguan oligarch and owner of right-wing news outlet La Prensa. Chamorro has a long history with Ortega’s party, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation Front (FSLN). During the Contra War of the late 1970s and into the ’80s, La Prensa was funded by the CIA and used as a tool for the U.S. government to spread propaganda to undermine Ortega when he was president then. Before that, the U.S. also supported and funded dictator Anastasio Somoza’s terrorist war on the Nicaraguans that killed over 80,000 people.

Nowadays, La Prensa is not funded by the CIA, as far as is known. It is, however, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. front group created to destabilize anti-imperialist governments and impose the U.S.’ political will on poor countries.

Despite the ridiculous lies of Nicaraguan business and corporate media, Chamorro is not imprisoned for being an “opposition candidate.” Interestingly, she was never even officially running for president—even U.S. news outlets have used the phrase “pre-candidate” to describe her “campaign.”

Chamorro’s problems with the legal system long pre-date the current election, however. She was caught laundering money from Nicaraguan non-profits and using the funds (as well as U.S. money) to attempt a coup in 2018 that led to the deaths of over 300 people, the majority of whom were Sandinista supporters. These details seem to have been missed by the U.S. State Department and “accredited” news outlets.

As for the accusation that Ortega is a dictator, the charge is a common one made against any leader that doesn’t fall in line with U.S. hegemony, especially those who enjoy mass support from their own people.

Despite having the overwhelming support of the Nicaraguan people (estimated to be 60-70% in pre-election polls), Ortega is accused of “cracking down” on the very same democratic institutions that were established by the FSLN in 1984. For the U.S., it may very well seem impossible for a leader to have the kind of support Ortega has in Nicaragua. But just maybe he has that support because he has followed through with his political promises and drastically improved the lives of Nicaraguans, with policies like:

• Free healthcare for everyone including cancer treatment (and the building of 20 new hospitals since 2007).
• Free college for all, including indigenous peoples that were previously banned from attending public institutions.
• More than doubling the amount roads throughout the country since 2007.
• Reaching near 100% food sovereignty (meaning almost all the food consumed in Nicaragua is produced/grown here).

These are the crimes of the FSLN. They are also among the reasons why the United States is trying to destroy the Nicaraguan government by making its people suffer through sanctions. But the FSLN has been through this kind of economic war before, and for years it’s been preparing alternatives for its citizens to live without the need for U.S. trade.

Managua campesino, Victorio Potosme, provided the general view among farmers and people here:
​
“No country benefits from sanctions, but despite all the sanctions and struggles, our government has been able to work through it. We have lived for many years under sanctions. During the times of the war, we lived during extremely harsh sanctions. Governments should not get involved in the issues of other countries. We as farmers in Nicaragua don’t get involved in the farmers’ issues in the U.S. We receive guests in Nicaragua with no discrimination. We welcome Americans and their politicians to our country. They can come and visit and do as they please. That is because we do have freedom, not the lie of liberal freedom. But they do not treat us with the same respect. American leaders want the freedom to come to our country, rob our people, and exploit us. That is the “freedom” American politicians want. Our spirit is strong. Stronger than sanctions. We are not worried about sanctions. We will continue to improve, sanctions or no sanctions.”