Busted: How Florida's Rick Scott is ramping up his inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric

Alexandria Jacobson, Investigative Reporter
October 21, 2024

Senator Rick Scott speaks during CPAC Texas 2022 conference. (Shutterstock.com)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. 

From Florida to Washington, D.C., Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has expressed a similar refrain at his recent speaking engagements: Democrats are encouraging illegal immigrants to fraudulently vote in elections.

That’s despite little to no evidence supporting the claim — it’s rare (and already illegal) for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections, which has been proven by multiple studies.

The Bipartisan Policy Center analyzed an Election Fraud Cases database from conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and found just 77 instances of non-citizens voting between 1999 and 2023.

A study from the Brennan Center for Justice analyzed 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election and found approximately 30 instances of non-citizens voting — 0.0001 percent of all votes cast.

Spreading fear around immigrants and people of color replacing white Americans, particularly as a means for Democrats to win elections through demographic change, is a tenant of “great replacement theory, a racist ideology that has been cited as motivation of mass killers, as with the racially motivated Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket shooting, and white supremacists, such as those who chanted “Jews will not replace” us at the 2017 “Unite the Right” valley in Charlottesville, Va.

Florida’s population is about 21.5 million people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. Nearly 5.7 million Florida residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, and about 12.4 million people identify as white.

Scott has been ramping up his election denialism language ahead of next month's general election as he did in 2018, accusing his opponent of election fraud, and in 2020 when he was one of 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election results.

Will Hampson, a campaign spokesperson for Scott, did not confirm to Axios if Scott would accept the outcome of the November election.



"Sen. Scott has always said his goal is 100 percent voter participation and 0 percent fraud," Hampson told Axios.

Scott’s congressional office and campaign did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

Scott began serving as a U.S Senator in January 2019 after serving two terms as the governor of Florida. He is running for reelection against Democratic former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, whom he is leading by 2 points, according to The Hill.


Raw Story compiled six recent examples of times when Scott spread fears about illegal immigrants voting in U.S. elections.
‘They like the idea of people coming here illegally so they can vote’

Scott wrote an op-ed in the conservative news outlet, the Washington Examiner, on Sept. 10 titled, “The SAVE Act is essential in preventing illegal immigrants from voting and protecting integrity of US elections.”


“The Democrats in charge of Washington, D.C., have presided over massive failures while in office, and they have nothing else to run on, so it is only logical to assume they like the idea of people coming here illegally so they can vote in our elections and help Democrats win,” Scott wrote.

The SAVE Act, introduced by Scott and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), calls for proof of citizenship to vote and the removal of non-citizens from voting rolls. States determine their voter registration laws, but most require a driver’s license or a state ID when first registering to vote. Voters must be U.S. citizens age 18 or older by election day.

“We need to mandate citizenship verification because we cannot risk allowing the non-citizens Harris has illegally let into our country to vote in our elections,” Scott continued in the op-ed.

‘They’re happy with illegals voting’

Scott spoke at a Women’s Republican Club of Naples Federated Luncheon on Sept. 13 where he spread the idea that Democrats are encouraging illegal immigrants to vote.

“So, we have a simple bill. But guess what, they're gonna block it. Because guess what? They're happy with illegals voting because they think they're gonna vote for them,” Scott said on Sept. 13 at the luncheon.

Voter identification laws, such as those proposed in the SAVE Act, raise potential concerns about how they disproportionately affect the elderly, minority and low-income individuals given that obtaining identification can be costly and burdensome, ProPublica reported. Rural citizens may struggle to reach ID offices as well.

As many as 11 percent of eligible voters may not have necessary identification, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

‘Intentionally opened the border’

On Sept. 11, Scott, alongside Sens. Lee, Roger Marshall (R-KS) Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), called for adding to the stopgap government funding bill the SAVE Act’s proof-of-citizenship measure to vote in federal elections, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.

“[Vice President Kamala] Harris, [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer, Democrats, they intentionally opned the border and allowed people to come here illegally so they get to vote in our elections. They think that's going to help them win,” Scott said at a Senate press conference on the SAVE Act on Sept. 11.
‘They want all these illegals … to vote in the November election’

In a FOX Business interview on Sept. 13, Scott said, “The SAVE Act just basically says to register to vote in this country, you have to prove you're a citizen. Pretty basic."


"So when the Democrats say they will not pass a continuing resolution if that's in it, what they're saying is they want all these illegals that they brought in across the border over the last three and a half years to vote in the November election," Scott continued. That's exactly what they're saying.”

Congress ultimately voted to pass a temporary stopgap government funding bill, which President Joe Biden signed on Sept. 26.
‘They'll just let every illegal immigrant vote’

Scott headlined the Republican Party of Sarasota County Candidates Rally on July 27 at Robarts Arena, an event attended by hundreds, Tampa Bay-area TV station WFLA-TV reported.

“They won't have to commit fraud on elections because they'll just let every illegal immigrant vote,” Scott said.

‘Imagine what would happen if Democrats allow them to take over our elections?!’

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), spread baseless rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating local pets and fowl, which Scott perpetuated.

"We’ve seen disturbing reports of what’s happening in Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden-Harris admin has allowed 20,000 illegal immigrants to take over the small town. Imagine what would happen if Democrats allow them to take over our elections?!” Scott posted on X on Sept. 9.

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. The fix is obvious: Secure the border. Pass the SAVE Act,” Scott continued. “Will Democrats get on board?”

Haitian immigrants in Springfield are in the United States legally with temporary protected status, according to Al-Jazeera.

Raw Story visited Springfield amid the rumors and found no evidence of the unsubstantiated rumors. Vance still spread the rumors despite being informed they were false by city officials, the Wall Street Journal reported.

 'How sane is he?' Larry Sabato casts doubt on 'unhinged' Trump's election hopes

Tom Boggioni
October 20, 2024 

Larry Sabato (CNN screenshot)

During an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon, noted political scientist Larry Sabato expressed extreme alarm at Donald Trump antics over the past few weeks and said there is a legitimate concern about the former president's sanity.

Speaking with host Alex Witt, the founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia said the polls are still exceedingly tight for the election that is slightly over two weeks away.

Adding that voters need to take a serious "measure" of both nominees before heading to the polls, he suddenly changed direction and expressed concerns about the former president making his third bid for the Oval Office.

"We all know what the standard issues are in this campaign, but another one has been added by Donald Trump, which may dominate the remaining 16 days," he told the host, "Which is, how sane is he? How sane is he? Is he really unhinged?"

He added, "He certainly does appear that way in many of his presentations. He's always done weird things, but in the past couple of weeks, he has not only gone around the bend, he's gone off the tracks."

"And so there's a new issue, and it is bubbling up, and it might actually have an effect," he advised.

You can watch below or at the link

'This is a man's country': Trump supporter warns Kamala Harris is 'gonna meet her maker'

David Edwards
October 20, 2024 

RSBN/screen grab

A Donald Trump supporter attending one of the former president's political events over the weekend warned that Vice President Kamala Harris would "meet her maker real quick" if she did not pray. He also advised her to drop out of the race.

Before Trump's town hall event in Pennsylvania on Sunday, a supporter named Andrew told Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) that he was there "to represent the truth, Jesus Christ."

Despite Harris attending church earlier on Sunday, the man said she and other Democrats had "sold out for the devil."

"They don't want anything to do with God," he said. "I think [Harris] better get on her hands and her knees and start crying out to the one and true living God because if not, she's gonna meet her maker real quick."

"I think she's dumb," he added. "She's one of the dumbest women that could ever run. She shouldn't run."

"This is a man's world. This is a man's country. This... this country is supposed to be run like a business. And that is why that Donald Trump is the one that we need at this moment."

Watch the video below from RSBN or click the link

 

'Steelers legends endorse Kamala Harris': Fox News drops report before Trump attends game

David McAfee
October 20, 2024


Donald Trump is attending the Pittsburgh Steelers football game Sunday night as they face the New York Jets, and Fox News preempted the game with a surprising report about a Vice President Kamala Harris endorsement.

Trump made headlines on Saturday when he confused what day the Steelers game, which he would be attending, was happening. Then the following day, before the game actually began, the conservative Fox News network frequently watched by Trump posted about a major endorsement for Harris.

"Ahead of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's appearance at Sunday's Pittsburgh Steelers game, two of the franchise's legends, and the family of another, have endorsed his opponent," the report states.

It continues:

"Jerome Bettis, 'Mean' Joe Greene and the family of the late Franco Harris all publicly supported Democrat Kamala Harris on Sunday."


Fox goes even further by quoting Bettis, who reportedly said, "I know this city and I love this city – we work hard to make things happen. No hot air. No bull. This is what defines the Steel City – and it’s the opposite of what Donald Trump stands for."

The report also quotes the family of Franco Harris, the late running back, as saying, "Hard work and integrity are the bedrock of Western Pennsylvania and are values my father instilled in me. He taught me that true greatness is achieved by being a part of a team and that leadership is defined by the actions taken to help the whole team succeed. He would be greatly honored to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris because she shares this belief. She champions ideals my father stood for: improving education, building good jobs, supporting labor unions and making sure everyone gets a fair shake."

Read it here.   

 UK

‘Be on the right side of history’: TUC chief calls on MPs to support workers’ rights bill

James Moules   21st October, 2024

© Jess Hurd

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak has called on MPs to back Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill, which is set to be debated in parliament.

The Bill, which brings forward one of the party’s key campaign pledges of a ‘new deal’ for working people, will have its second reading in the House of Commons today.

Nowak said: “We urge MPs from all parties to support this bill and to be on the right side of history. It’s time to turn the page on the low-pay, low-rights and low-productivity economy of the last 14 years.

“Driving up employment standards is good for workers and good for business. It will allow people more control and predictability over their working lives – and stop decent employers from being undercut by the bad.”

The legislation features more than two dozen reforms to employment law, including changes to zero hour contracts and improvements to day one rights for workers.

READ MORE: Employment rights bill: What Labour New Deal policies will become law?

Nowak added: “The Conservatives voted against the introduction of the minimum wage in 1998 – one of the great policy successes of recent times. I hope today MPs across the political spectrum recognise that a vote for the Bill is a vote in the best interests of working people.

“We have too many people in jobs that offer them little or no security. It is vital parliament improves the quality of employment in this country.”

Greta Thunberg: From a Darling of Liberal Media to Public Enemy No. 1

The 21-year-old climate activist has been mobilizing people against the genocide in Gaza. Now, it’s not just the Far Right attacking her — the liberal establishment has joined in the defamation.

Nathaniel Flakin

October 16, 2024

LEFT VOICE



German politicians have been demanding that Greta Thunberg be expelled from the country. When the 21-year-old Swedish climate activist announced that she would be speaking at a protest camp at a university in the West German city of Dortmund, police banned the entire event. The camp had been going on for four months, but cops said they had to stop it because Thunberg — a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize! — was “potentially violent.”

Within just a few years, Thunberg has gone from being the darling of the liberal establishment to Public Enemy No. 1. Spiegel magazine, for example, went from praising the “Person of the Year” in 2019 to denouncing her as an “antisemite” in a cover story just four years later.

The explanation is depressingly simple: Like many young people around the world, Thunberg has been protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and she has joined demonstrations in Leipzig, Berlin, and other German cities.

Hate campaigns against the climate activist originated with far-right media, but have since been taken up by supposedly liberal publications, which spread bizarre conspiracy theories about Thunberg using stuffed animals to send out coded anti-Jewish messages. (In reality, an octopus toy is fairly common for people with autism.)

Like much of the international climate movement, Thunberg has been pointing out the links between imperialism and the unfolding climate catastrophe. Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon, supported by the U.S. and Germany, is not just murdering tens of thousands of civilians — it is also causing “immense” carbon emissions, endangering the lives of billions more in the not-too-distant future.

As Thunberg rose to global prominence after starting her climate strike on August 20, 2018, she seemed like she would be one of the endless stream of sincere young activists who get sucked into the corrupt bureaucracies of the liberal bourgeoisie. She met with Barack Obama, was interviewed by Trevor Noah, and took up on the offer of some dumb aristocrat to cross the Atlantic by sailboat to attend a UN conference in New York.

Yet as I noted at the time, when Thunberg was invited to Davos — the top gathering of global elites — she displayed an unusual unwillingness to pander to an audience eager to applaud empty phrases by a little girl. Unlike well-paid NGO pseudo-activists, Thunberg was naming names:


Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.

(I suspect her autism might make her a bit more direct than a neurotypical person, but that’s just speculation.)

When she was still a teenager, Thunberg made appeals to politicians, but now she says much more explicitly that capitalism is responsible for climate change. And that’s not all: Last weekend, while in Italy for a climate demonstration, Thunberg visited the occupied GKN factory in Florence. The former auto parts plant has been occupied by its employees for three years. Where they once produced car components, the workers now have a plan to build solar panels and cargo bikes.

In a post, Thunberg correctly emphasized that climate justice and workers’ rights go hand in hand: “The fight to get to the end of the month is the same fight against the end of the world.”

The example of the GKN workers shows the unstoppable power of the working class in the face of the climate crisis. It is poor working-class people in the semi-colonial countries who are already suffering the worst effects of climate change. It is also workers who produce the cars and run the oil refineries that are destroying the planet. This means it is workers who can radically transform production — something that capitalists are completely incapable of doing, since their profits depend on constantly expanding production.

The working class is made up of billions of people around the world. As Thunberg explained in Davos, climate change is being caused by a handful of capitalist parasites who profit off our labor. If we were organized, we could begin an immediate economic transformation before the day is out.

This is not just a theoretical possibility. In these pages, we have interviewed oil refinery workers in Grandpuits in France who fought to save their jobs, but did not want to keep serving fossil capital, and instead called for an environmental transition. We have reported on workers at Zanon, a ceramics factory in Argentina, who took over their factory in 2002 so they could produce to meet people’s needs, instead of generating profits for capitalists. We have told the stories of workers in a big printing plant in Buenos Aires who occupied their workplace so they could begin serving the community. All of these actions were led by revolutionary militants in the workplaces.

As Greta has been approaching revolutionary socialist positions, there is one thing she lacks: organization. In the United States, for example, the Sunrise Movement is just a lobbying arm of the Democratic Party cynically posing as an activist group. The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement that Thunberg inspired includes many committed activists, but also plenty of careerists aiming for cushy jobs in Green Parties or in NGOs. In Germany in particular, FFF firmly rejects Thunberg’s radicalism, and has aligned itself with German imperialism and its solidarity with Israel.

To struggle against capitalism, Thunberg needs an organization committed to her radical ideas: international solidarity, anti-imperialism, and workers’ control of production. That can only be a revolutionary party based on the working class and the youth, with a program to unite all struggles against oppression and exploitation into one coordinated assault against the capitalist system.

Five years ago, when many radicals believed Thunberg would become another boring liberal, I had a gut feeling she would end up moving toward socialist ideas. Now my gut is telling me that it won’t be much longer until she identifies with the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, and other revolutionaries.

This isn’t just about her as an individual: Thunberg represents a generation watching as the capitalist system lurches toward inconceivable violence, in the form of ethnic cleansing, nuclear war, and climate apocalypse. They have seen politicians make nice speeches but refuse to take any meaningful action. This is because capitalism is fundamentally incapable of dealing with its own limitations. Since elites couldn’t corrupt her, they are now defaming her. She is a great example of how climate activists can resist cooptation, and organize to bring down the system.

Nathaniel Flakin
Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

Berlin’s Left Party Is Attacking Pro-Palestinian Activists


Leaders of Die Linke tried to pass a resolution expressing their unconditional support for Israel. When delegates at a Berlin party congress objected, some members stormed out in protest. Now the right-wing press is attacking Palestinians and Trotskyists inside the party.

Nathaniel Flakin 

October 18, 2024

LEFT VOICE

dpa/Annette Riedl


Germany’s Die Linke is losing one election after another, and it’s doubtful that the party will exist much longer. Last Friday, the Left Party went through another scandal — one that reveals how the party has destroyed itself by betraying every left-wing principle.

At a congress of the Berlin organization, a number of leading members stormed out of the room in protest. This included Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach, former members of the Berlin Senate, and Petra Pau, a vice president of the Bundestag.
Relativization

They wanted to pass a long resolution supposedly directed against antisemitism: “Against every antisemitism — defend emancipation and universal human rights!” As with any bourgeois politician in Germany talking about antisemitism, however, the text made clear they were demanding unconditional solidarity with Israel’s far-right government. As examples of supposed antisemitism, the text pointed to graffiti at so-called “antideutsch” event locations that support Israel. In contrast, the text makes no mention of a wave of police violence against left-wing Jews at Palestine demonstrations. Petra Pau has publicly denounced Jews for not being sufficiently loyal to Israel.

The draft resolution accused leftists of supporting “eliminatory antisemitism.” This term refers to the Nazis’ genocidal drive to liquidate all people they defined as Jewish. As a majority of the delegates at the congress pointed out, using it to refer to demonstrators — including Jewish demonstrators — expressing solidarity with Palestine, is not just factually wrong and profoundly offensive, but represents a relativization or trivialization of the Holocaust. By putting an equals sign between October 7 and the Nazi genocide, German politicians are effectively downplaying the unprecedented barbarity of the Nazis’ crimes.

After the resolution was amended several times, Lederer withdrew it entirely, and stormed out of the room with some 40 supporters.

During more than a year of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, with more than 40,000 confirmed dead and tens, if not hundreds of thousands more likely to die, Die Linke has acted nothing like a left-wing party. Lederer and others from the Right of the reformist Left have energetically defended German Staatsräson: the country’s “reason of state” demands unconditional support for Israel, even when this is rejected by big majorities of the population. Lederer went so far as to explicitly support Berlin’s right-wing government in banning a Palestine Congress half a year ago.

Other, more left-wing members of Die Linke have stayed silent — including former radicals like the party co-chair Janine Wissler. The only German politician who has even slightly broken ranks with the unanimous support for Israel is the social chauvinist Sahra Wagenknecht. On most topics, she is far to the right of Die Linke, but as a lone voice among Germany’s political caste, she has denounced the slaughter of civilians in Gaza and called for an arms embargo against Israel.
Denunciation

After the Eklat (scandal) last weekend, right-wing media in Berlin have launched a vicious campaign of denunciation against “antisemites” in Die Linke — referring basically to anyone who is critical of Netanyahu. The party’s left wing is concentrated in the immigrant neighborhood of Neukölln, and the newspaper Tagesspiegel attacked the Kurdish activist Ferat Kocak, a member of the Berlin parliament whose family was almost killed in a Nazi arson attack.

The campaign is directed particularly at Ramsis Kilani, a German-Palestinian activist in Berlin who is also a member of die Linke. In 2014, his father and five siblings were murdered in an Israeli attack in Gaza. Tagesspiegel reported that Kilani’s family was killed “according to his version of events,” but there is actually lots of reporting about the massacre, including a moving documentary.

Tagesspiegel has also crudely falsified quotes, claiming that Kliani said: “We will need more than a murder of Israelis.” Kilani has provided screenshots of an exchange with a stranger on Instagram, however, in which he was asked if he wanted to “sacrifice the Palestinian population for a murder of Israelis.” To this he replied that “We will need more than a ‘murder of Israelis'” — a quote that is not just robbed of context but actively distorted by leaving out the quote marks. The Tagesspiegel has already lost court cases for spreading fake news about pro-Palestinian activists — we’ll see if this lie will have legal consequences.
Exodus

This most recent crisis is a reminder that Die Linke is and has always been a party committed to the German capitalist state. Figures like Lederer and Pau not only support genocide — they have also been part of governments that carried out privatizations, deportations, and evictions. In the context of a rightward shift by German elites, Die Linke’s leaders are emphasizing that they can go with the racist flow.

On Twitter, Pau accused Kilani of wanting to “destroy our Left” — but Kilani responded that the leadership has been destroying the party pretty well themselves, currently polling well below the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. This is because a party calling itself “The Left” is — entirely correctly — perceived as part of the capitalist establishment.

Kilani is a member of the Trotskyist group Sozialismus von Unten (Socialism from Below, SvU) that emerged last year after a three-way split in the network Marx21. For 15 years, they worked as part of Die Linke, but they recently took a step back, and now have one leg inside and one leg outside the party.

As Klasse Gegen Klasse, the sister publication of Left Voice in Germany, we have never made any secret of our disagreement with revolutionary socialists working inside a reformist party like Die Linke. All comrades in Die Linke being denounced for their anti-war activism have our solidarity.

But we are also happy that the comrades of SvU are on their way out of the reformist swamp. We think that revolutionary socialists should work to build a clear alternative to Die Linke. The time is right to form a front based on anticapitalism, international solidarity, and class independence. We would like to discuss more with SvU about the possibilities for joint work.

This current crisis will help divide honest socialists who are still within Die Linke from their odious leadership — and it might help create a serious revolutionary alternative that is sorely needed in Germany.



Nathaniel Flakin
Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

The Student Movement Awakes with a Roar in Argentina as Students Occupy Universities to Defy Austerity


Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei’s brutal austerity measures and attempts to dismantle public universities have triggered a massive student mobilization throughout Argentina. With protests, occupations, public classes, and assemblies to discuss the path ahead, students and staff are confronting the far-right government.


Juliana Yantorno 

October 16, 2024

LEFT VOICE

Students, faculty, and staff participate in an assembly at the National University of Córdoba's Law School in Córdoba, Argentina.

When far-right president Javier Milei intervened to veto a Congressional bill to fund public universities and keep his slashes to the education budget intact, he had no idea that he would wake up the sleeping beast of Argentina’s student movement.

Between October 14 and 15, students and faculty held more than 100 assemblies to decide how to organize the fight against the far-right government’s attacks and many voted to occupy their universities. Students are now occupying 72 different schools and departments across the country and they are holding public classes in the streets in 30 universities across Argentina. According to data collected by La Izquierda Diario, more than 100 departments and schools are taking some sort of action to protest the gutting of the public education budget. In the following days, there will continue to be assemblies and possibly new occupations. Organized from below, the students in each occupation and assembly are beginning to prepare mobilizations to the centers of Argentina’s main cities.

It is not yet possible to foresee where this great university rebellion will lead, but it is already taking on historic proportions. It is spreading quickly in the province of Buenos Aires with 26 schools and departments occupied; 12 departments are occupied in the city of Buenos Aires alone. But the protests reach across the entire country, from the provinces of Córdoba, Santa Fe, Tucumán, Catamarca, Chubut, Jujuy, and La Pampa, to Neuquén, Río Negro, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, and Santa Cruz.

There is no corner of the country where this rebellion has not shocked the education community. The University of Buenos Aires (UBA) has been one of the epicenters of the conflict, with the historic occupation of departments such as Law, Medicine, Psychology, Architecture, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities, to which others are being added as the week progresses. More than six departments in the National University of La Plata have been occupied, as well various departments in schools in the Buenos Aires suburbs and in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires, such as Mar del Plata, Tandil, and Bahía Blanca.
A Force to Be Reckoned With

The magnitude of this conflict is the result of structural changes in Argentina over the last 20 years, namely the growth in the number of universities and in the university population. This means that the university system extends to every corner of the country. Public university enrollment has doubled from 28 national universities with 600,000 students in 1990, to 61 universities with 2 million undergraduate and graduate students today. Another 500,000 students are enrolled in private universities. Reality tells a completely different story than Milei, who declared that “the national public university is of no use to anyone but the children of the rich and the upper middle class, in a country where the vast majority of children are poor.”

It doesn’t take much to see through his lies. At least 48% of public university students are poor. First generation university students who come from working families make up around 47.8% of students enrolled in 2022, a deep and growing phenomenon that can be seen particularly clearly in the universities of Greater Buenos Aires and other urban centers throughout the country. This process is uneven depending on the area. According to government data, 39% of students at UBA are first generation; in universities in the Greater Buenos Aires area, such as at the university of José C. Paz, this figure rises to 75%; at the University of Florencio Varela, the figure is closer to 76%; and in Lanús University, 70% of students are first generation. In this way, a new subject has been developing within the student body, namely students who work or come from working families, drawing a more direct link with the working class and its traditional organizations (unions and social movements).

In these places, universities are in close proximity to large concentrations of workers. In other historical moments, this geographical unity generated an important objective basis for tendencies towards worker-student unity, as was the case in Córdoba in the 1960s and 1970s. This context is relevant to the present. New universities are joining the struggle alongside students from more historical and traditional universities such as the University of Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, or Córdoba.

These changes show the potential of the new student movement as it breaks out onto the political scene. We cannot use the same old categories to understand it, as if this was just a middle class movement. The phenomenon is much deeper; the students are a political-social subject that can change the dynamics of class struggle at the national level and have an impact on the workers’ movement.

It is not only the education community that has been moved by recent events. Workers in factories across the country are excited by the protests and the students’ willingness to fight back. As one worker at the oil company YPF Ensenada told us:


I get excited thinking that my daughters can study at the University […] Our union should be doing what the kids who are standing up to Milei are doing, we should be in the same situation.

What Milei does not understand is that his attacks crush the hopes of millions of people who dream of their children going to a public university, and now he has awakened the student movement. The defense of the university is a demand that crosses not only the middle class, but also the working class. It has broad and massive support. With that, it can show the way to confront all the government’s attacks.
The Defense of Education and Rejection of Milei’s Austerity

The debates and discussions in the assemblies and among students express a resounding repudiation of Milei’s veto of the university budget, which attacks public education and is another arm of the austerity that affects the majority of working people in the country.

What resounds from below is clear: “we cannot stand it any longer.” In addition to the difficulties of keeping up with classes, students are burdened by increases in utilities, rents, and not being able to pay for travel to and from school. This comes on top of the government’s severe austerity and slashes to pension and healthcare budgets. This is the harsh reality of the majority of people living in Argentina. The outrage at this reality is being amplified and expressed through the voices of students, faculty, staff, and healthcare workers who are converging at the university assemblies, public classes, and protests that have spread across the country.

Faced with the anger of the student movement with popular support, Milei is trying to reposition himself. In response to the protests, he recently said that he is “not going to give in,” but he justified this statement by admitting that the university will continue to be public and that students will not have to pay fees; however, he went on to attack the protests, saying that the protests are “la defensa de un curro” — in other words, a scam by a few to take advantage and make money from the universities. Milei and his allies are getting nervous, faced with a student movement that they did not expect. This is evident in increased tensions at the universities; for example, at the National University of Quilmes (in the south of Buenos Aires Province), members of Libertad Avanza (the party founded by Milei) attacked those participating in an assembly at the university with pepper spray as they discussed the direction of the struggle. At other universities Milei’s supporters took the microphone at the assemblies to carry out provocations. The government’s policy is in crisis.

The argument that we are tired of hearing from Milei’s supporters is that we have to achieve fiscal balance, and that we have to say where we will get the money for the university budget. Who did they ask when the government made a decree to allocate 100 billion pesos for the Intelligence Services? Did they justify where they would get that money from? What these arguments seek to hide are the government’s priorities: in the 2025 Budget, the items for Education and Culture represent 0.87% of the GDP; Science, Technology, and Innovation take up 0.22%; meanwhile the Public Debt Services represents 1.31% of the GDP.

What is being rejected by the movement is that Argentina’s crisis should be paid for by students, retirees, healthcare workers, and all working people who face utility fee increases. It rejects the idea that culture and the sciences should be gutted to pay the IMF while businessmen and financial speculators continue to turn huge profits. What the government should really audit are not universities, but the illegal and illegitimate debt; it should cancel the taxes that favor big business that Milei’s government passed with La Ley de Bases. These are the real scams that have plundered the country for decades to the benefit of international financial capital and big business.

In every occupation and every assembly, students express their weariness for this austerity plan applied by Milei’s government. We fight to overturn the government’s veto, in defense of education and for an increase in the education budget and the salaries of teachers and staff.

But the fight against Milei’s austerity is broader. In every assembly we hear applause whenever a motion is proposed in support of the struggle of healthcare workers at the Laura Bonaparte Hospital and Garrahan Hospital, or every time someone mentions the bravery of the retired men and women who confronted harsh repression to protest pension cuts. In the assemblies we hear harsh criticism of the complicit leadership of the CGT (the main trade union confederation in Argentina) and the demand for a national strike and a plan of struggle to defeat the plan of Milei and the IMF. As students we know that our struggle can be a spearhead that strengthens all the sectors that confront Milei’s attacks.

This was expressed by the testimonies of the students in the different assemblies:


“Our struggle is in response to the cruelty that the government is displaying not only towards students, but also towards retirees and workers”

“Our need for the occupations is to protect the non-teaching and teaching workers, for the working students who do not even have a plate to eat on at lunch so we wait for dinner to be able to eat. The veto was the straw that broke the camel’s back”

“They are taking away from us the possibility of dreaming. For many, the public university is the only possibility of studying. It is taking away our future and we are not going to give it up that easily.”

Our fight cannot wait until Congress discusses the 2025 budget, which will not be voted on until the end of the year and which leaves Milei the power to veto the articles he does not like. In addition, university administrators will try to divide the various fronts in the fight against the government’s austerity, asking for increases in the university budget without caring if the difference is made up by making cuts to pensions or public health and education. The increase in the budget has to happen now! For months the university has been in a dire state, since the salaries of faculty and staff do not exceed the poverty line. We have to give a forceful response now in order to win back what the budget cuts have taken, including the 25% of faculty salaries that have already been gutted. We do not want faculty and staff to live below the poverty line! We also reject the entire 2025 government budget presented by the administration, which strictly follows the demands of the IMF to pay the fraudulent debt.

The student and university movement must funnel our energy into the streets to converge with all the sectors in struggle. For this reason, together with the coordinated actions that have already been voted on in many universities, in each assembly we raise the demand for a Third National Education March in Buenos Aires to make our rejection of the veto undeniable.
We Cannot Rely on Congress. We Trust Only in the Power of the Students and Workers!

These weeks have demonstrated the strength that we students and workers have when we organize and take actions like the occupations and public classes. This is what the workers of the Bonaparte Hospital did when they took over the hospital and managed to reverse the closure announced by the government.

But to keep up our momentum and drive the movement forward means confronting political forces that want to funnel our energies into electoral maneuvers. In particular, this means debating the path forward for the movement with the Peronist groups and leaderships (who represent Milei’s main center-left political opposition) which, depending on their electoral calculations, try to stop the struggle. These groups have not been at the head of developing a plan of action in any department at the university; they do not call assemblies, and in many cases they have voted against occupying the schools. Damningly, they did not participate in the important mobilizations that took place on the day that the university budget was voted on in Congress.

Máximo Kirchner (son of former Peronist president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner), leader of the organization La Cámpora, supported the different mobilizations and called to build “solidarity” among the sectors in struggle, but at the same time he maintained that,


The veto is a constitutional power of the President and if we could not reject the vetoes, it is because we still do not have the number of deputies that allow us to do so. An objective for 2025 throughout the country is to build an electoral force so that when the president vetoes we have the necessary hands to stop him. There is no other way to do it.

These groups at the university parrot the line of the Peronist party in government: the electoral strategy of waiting for the 2025 elections.

We have seen in the last several months that we cannot have any confidence in Congress. It is in this rats’ nest where Milei has been able to pass his vetoes, with the support of the right-wing PRO (Propuesta Republicana, the party of former President Mauricio Macri) and of the Radical, Peronist, and provincial party deputies. We have to draw a strong conclusion: no confidence in Congress!

We also have no trust in the university officials who, after the great mobilization of October 2, had an official policy of “wait and see,” emptying the streets and putting their trust in Congress.

We are tired of this government, but we are also tired of the deputies of all colors who sell themselves for two pesos. We are tired of the organizations and groups that seek to demobilize our protests and do not organize the struggle.

Our focus is the university rebellion, the student movement that is once again taking up the old traditions of assemblies and occupations, and that has shown with great strength that it can confront this government in the streets. What is new is the organization from below, in assemblies and commissions in each department. In the current context of student mobilization, self-organization has become a fundamental tool to give more strength to the movement, and it is an aspect that we are betting on to develop the struggle. The occupation of buildings, accompanied by public classes and activities, not only make our demands visible, but also seek to bring the whole community closer to the ongoing struggle. In several departments, commissions have even been formed to organize different aspects of the struggle; this includes the organization of public potlucks alongside members of the surrounding neighborhoods and community, generating stronger and broader unity.

The events we are going through now represent the most profound and sharpest process of class struggle in Argentina’s universities in the last twenty years. This progress is also reflected in the creation of spaces such as the “Asambleas Interfacultades e Interclaustros,” which integrate students, faculty, and staff in the construction of a plan of struggle from below. These developments have to function in a democratic way, based on the mandates of the assemblies and taking care that new comrades who are just joining the struggle can express themselves.

While Peronism aims at unity with the authorities and politicians, for us the real unity to defeat Javier Milei’s plan is the unity of the students, workers, and retirees. As Myriam Bregman — member of the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS, Left Voice’s sister organization) and part of the Frente de Izquierda electoral front, said recently:


In our country there are more than two million university students. If they were to unite with the retirees, with the health workers and other sectors that are under attack, their strength would be overwhelming. Unstoppable.

That is what Milei and his supporters fear so much, and this is the path we must fight for in the student movement.

This article was originally published in Spanish on October 16, 2024 in La Izquierda Diario.

Translation by Madeleine Freeman


From the Belly of the Beast, Solidarity with the Argentine Student Movement


Over 80 universities are occupied in Argentina in a struggle against austerity measures passed by right-wing president Javier Milei in the service of paying the imperialist IMF debt. If you are a student or university worker, sign this petition in solidarity with the struggle in Argentina and against the imperialist gutting of higher education.


Left Voice October 17, 2024




This is a statement in solidarity with the student movement in Argentina. If you are a university student or worker, we invite you to sign the statement.

Amid a slew of attacks against public services such as healthcare, airlines, public pensions, and education, the far-right president of Argentina, Javier Milei, vetoed the budget for public universities. This is meant to divert public funds away from education and towards paying off the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an arm of U.S. imperialism that forces semi-colonial countries into debt as a mechanism of control.

Through a series of democratic assemblies, students voted to reject this austerity and occupy over 80 universities, putting a hard stop to business as usual.

As a place of study and discussion, the university has always been a hotbed for organizing, and students have always been on the frontlines of combative struggle all over the world. Those signed onto this statement are students, faculty, and groups affiliated with colleges and universities. Many of us were involved in the encampments fighting for divestment and a Free Palestine and many have been involved in labor struggles on our campuses. Today, we are seeing the combative tradition of students continue in the fight against austerity in Argentina. As university students and workers, we stand in solidarity with this movement in Argentina.

This is a part of a greater global fight by students and university workers against our schools being run in the interests of imperialist domination. In Argentina, we see the increasing privatization of education, including this attack that guts educational institutions to pay off an imperialist debt. In the United States, public universities function via student debt and low wages while universities take endowments from the occupying force of Zionist Israel that bombs universities and kills professors. We see these attacks when our universities, which should be run by the students, professors, and communities, instead sic armies of police on us to crack our skulls and charge us with felonies for protesting a genocide.

Students and workers across the world are fighting back so that our universities are not run like businesses as opposed to institutions by and for the working class. The effect of decades of attacks on public education and privatization is that it is harder to pursue an education and students, faculty, and staff suffer the consequences of degraded living conditions. On top of their studies, students feel the burden of rising rents and cost of living. Most students are workers, often studying and working precarious jobs to pay for their classes and daily life; their job prospects if and when they graduate are increasingly dim. For university workers, between stagnant wages and underemployment, making a living is increasingly unstable.

Therefore, we as students and workers within the United States reject austerity everywhere, we denounce the scholasticide, violence, and repression against students everywhere, and as those dwelling here within the heart of imperialism, we reject U.S. imperialism everywhere, from Argentina to occupied Palestine.

Beyond defending ourselves from attacks, we demand that education be by and for the working class, where education is public and free, run by students, workers, and the broader community.

We as students and university workers in the core of the imperialist leviathan, make an international call to join our hands and hearts in solidarity and with students and workers around the world to not only combat attacks on our institutions, but to win them back against the capitalist that gut and destroy them. We support the student movement in Argentina and stand in solidarity with all those who are right now fighting Milei’s right wing austerity and occupying their universities.

Sign the statement.

Sinwar’s Assassination Unlikely to Reverse the Trend Toward Regional War

Sinwar’s assassination raises a series of questions about the future of the war in the Middle East, but is unlikely to satisfy Netanyahu’s drive for more conflict.

Claudia Cinatti 

October 18, 2024
LEFT VOICE

Photo: LID

Israel has finally succeeded in assassinating Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was at the top of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) target list and is considered the mastermind behind the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

This is a new tactical-military success for the Netanyahu government, which in recent months has accelerated its offensive against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militias allied with Iran.

With the death of Sinwar — and before him Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in Tehran last July — Hamas now has few, if any, leaders with sufficient authority and experience to lead the organization both in military resistance and in the political administration of the Gaza Strip, which has been reduced to rubble in the year since Israel’s genocidal war began.

This assassination is undoubtedly a turning point, but how this will affect the course of Israel’s war — now being waged on multiple fronts in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and soon Iran — remains uncertain.

While for the U.S. President Joe Biden, as well as other leaders of major powers including France’s Emmanuel Macron, it is a window of opportunity for Netanyahu to declare victory and offer conditions for the surrender of Hamas and the release of the hostages, the Israeli prime minister made it clear that in no way will Sinwar’s death put an end to the war in Gaza.

Biden’s urgency in trying to end the genocidal war in Gaza is, of course, tied to his party’s hopes to win the U.S. election in November. The genocide in Gaza has been an albatross around the neck of the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, who is facing right-wing attacks by Trump and Zionist sectors that accuse her of trying to contain or limit the power of the State of Israel. But she is also being attacked from the Left by broad sectors of the youth and the Arab-Muslim community, which could cost her the state of Michigan, and maybe the presidency.

Netanyahu’s warlike persistence is also explained by his own political calculations. With his trained nose, he senses that the successes he has achieved in the last month could mean his survival at the head of the government until the end of his term. And above all, he must wait at least until November 6, when it will be known who will occupy the White House for the next four years, provided that the crisis of the 2020 elections is not repeated — as tragedy or as farce.

But the disappearance of Sinwar or Nasrallah from the scene — as has happened before with other leaders eliminated by the State of Israel — is unlikely to reverse the trend towards regional war, or more precisely, towards direct confrontation between Iran and Israel and the United States. Not only has Israel temporarily shifted its center of gravity towards Lebanon, but the dynamic of the situation is leading to increased U.S. involvement in the conflict, despite Joe Biden’s manifest desire to avoid seeing American imperialism involved in a new war in the Middle East. In just two days, the White House authorized the bombing of Houthi positions in Yemen and the deployment of their missile defense system in Israel along with the dispatch of some 100 troops to operate it.

The region is now in a state of waiting as Israel contemplates its response to the 180 missiles launched by Iran earlier this month. The U.S. government is trying to impose some restrictions on Netanyahu, for example, by telling him he cannot attack Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, which would have an almost immediate impact on the international situation as a whole. But Biden is not only a lame duck. The absolutely central nature of the strategic alliance with Israel, and the very hegemonic decline of the United States, limits his ability to persuade Netanyahu to proceed with more caution. Meanwhile, Netanyahu hopes that a possible Donald Trump presidency will be even more favorable to his colonial interests and facilitate his strategy of establishing a “Greater Israel,” by annexing even more occupied territories and forcing the expulsion of the Palestinian population from Gaza and the West Bank.

But this “final solution” openly proclaimed by his far-right government of settlers and religious parties, is precisely what fuels the Palestinian resistance and international solidarity that has been expressed on the campuses and streets of London, Paris and New York.

This article was originally published in Spanish on La Izquierda Diario on October 17, 2024.

Translated by James Dennis Hoff


Claudia Cinatti
Claudia is an editor of our sister site La Izquierda Diario and a leading member of the Party of Socialist Workers (PTS) in Argentina.

DIRECT ACTION! GETS THE GOODS

Workers and Members of the Community Join Together to Picket Bobcat Bonnie’s

After facing repeated harassment and lack of consistent pay and hours, the workers at Bobcat Bonnie’s in Michigan have started a soft picket.


Kyle Thibodeau 

October 19, 2024

LEFT VOICE


Update: On October 18, workers at Bobcat Bonnie’s ended their picket after winning severance pay.

On October 17, the workers from the recently closed Ypsilanti location of the restaurant chain Bobcat Bonnie’s joined forces with members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the community to picket at the Ferndale location. This action is in response to the repeated mistreatment that workers across the chain have experienced. This includes not giving workers consistent hours, inappropriate comments towards staff, lack of communication between management and staff, and — most egregiously — multiple bounced paychecks. One worker named Erica, who has worked with the chain for the past 3 years, has had difficulty cashing her checks since September 2023. This along with many other examples is why the workers are calling for consistent hours, the end of payment issues, and standardized training.

The context of this action started on October 7 when workers at the Ypsilanti Restaurant and other locations delivered a petition to the corporate office in Ferndale Michigan. The reaction from Bobcat was to close down the Ypsilanti location without giving much notice to the workers. They even went so far as to change the locks and put up security cameras at the location. This did not only affect the workers there but also the community suffered. For instance, the building in which the restaurant was attached houses a local gay bar called the Keystone and had been an important meeting place for the Ypsi LGBTQ+ community. When the workers continued to fight for their right to organize, Matt Buskard, the owner of the restaurant chain, responded by avoiding any negotiations with the workers and downplaying the abuse that the staff at Bobcats suffered.

This type of abuse is unfortunately not uncommon within the food service industry as there have been multiple insistence of harassment, most notably towards female members of staff with over 70 percent of female restaurant employees having experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Furthermore there have been multiple instances of owners in the foodservice industry caught not paying or reducing wages because their employees receive tips. These conditions, along with the industry having some of the lowest unionization rates in the country, have created a situation where workers who have already suffered greatly due to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to do so post lockdown.
The abuse of workers in the food service industry is not unique under the continued exploitation of capitalism. It is, however, a blatant example of the extent to which the owners of capital and “small businesses” will use and abuse their workers for profit. This is why it is important as members of the working class to stand in solidarity with those at Bobcat Bonnie’s who are demanding either the reopening of the Ypsilanti location or two weeks of severance pay, the end of all payroll issues, consistent scheduling, and standardized training. Only by acting collectively, can the real power of the working class be realized.

Mexico’s Transition 2024: Claudia Sheinbaum’s Government Begins under the Banner of “Mexican Humanism”


Claudia Sheinbaum, a follower of Latin American late progressivism, became the first female president of Mexico. Her inauguration speech was full of soaring rhetoric but, in reality, Sheinbaum’s role is to continue Mexico’s subservience to the United States.


Barbara Funes October 19, 2024

LEFT VOICE

Photo Credit: Alfredo Estrella / AFP - Getty Images

On a windy afternoon last week, Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s new president. In her speech at the Palace of San Lázaro, she sought to maintain Mexico’s commitments to the United States and to transnational corporations.

Many presidents and diplomatic representatives from all continents attended this ceremony, including Lula, president of Brazil; Gustavo Petro, his Colombian counterpart; Gabriel Boric, Chilean president; and Miguel Díaz-Canel, president of Cuba. No heads of state from Mexico’s main trading partners, the United States and Canada, attended.

It can be speculated that the United States is focused on the November presidential elections and on the Middle East, with the escalating war in Lebanon. But what is certain is that before the approval of Mexico’s new judicial reform — which includes the popular election of judges, magistrates, and ministers — diplomatic relations were strained between the two countries with the U.S. opposing the judicial reform.

The judicial reform has been endlessly criticized by the right-wing opposition, composed of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, which ruled Mexico for 80 years) and the National Action Party (PAN, which intensified the country’s militarization beginning in 2006, during the government of Felipe Calderón). In making this criticism, these parties are positioning themselves as the best defenders of Mexico’s capitalists, but the reality is that their administrations, which championed neoliberal policies, never achieved the kind of bourgeois legitimacy as did Sheinbaum’s predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
Sheinbaum’s Promises

Hours after the inauguration, in front of a packed Plaza de la Constitución, Sheinbaum announced her government’s many promises.

“We will never submit to economic, political, or foreign interests,” she said. “We will always work for the supreme interest of the people and the nation.” Yet Mexico’s productive structure has been developed to serve the needs of the U.S. supply chain. South of the Rio Grande, assembly plants receive parts mostly from the United States; once the products are assembled, they are brought back to the United States to be sold.

“We will govern based on Mexican humanism, which is nourished by two pillars: the essence of the native peoples and also the fertile history of Mexico,” the new president proclaimed. But in reality, the government has gone on the offensive against indigenous people’s territories and their relationship with the environment. It has done so by developing megaprojects such as the Transisthmian Corridor and the Mayan Train. Even though large sectors of indigenous communities are beneficiaries of social programs laid out by former Mexico president AMLO’s “fourth transition” reforms, programs that help them subsist, structural poverty remains and will not end under the Sheinbaum administration.

In her address, Sheinbaum gave special attention to education, promising to build more secondary and higher-education institutions, and to expand university enrollment — a measure popular among broad sectors. Yet the study centers created by her party, Morena, such as the Benito Juárez and Rosario Castellanos universities, have been sites of struggle for students, workers, and academics, who have challenged their infrastructure deficits and reliance on precarious labor. Sheinbaum has promised nothing for already-existing public universities such as UNAM.

The new president did promise to maintain minimum wage increases and to seek an agreement with businesses to adopt a 40-hour workweek, another incredibly popular policy. On average, people in Mexico work 48 hours a week; together with Colombia, Mexico leads among the longest working hours in the OECD, an intergovernmental organization that includes 38 countries across the world.

Sheinbaum announced that the proposed National Care System will establish child welfare centers to help families with childcare, particularly day laborers and workers in the manufacturing industry in the city of Juárez. This measure, although it will help women, does not guarantee them free time for their full development; rather it gives them more time to rent our their labor to agribusinesses and other companies for wages. Furthermore, these wages, even with the increases from López Obrador’s government, have not managed to recover the purchasing power lost since the 1970s.

Sheinbaum also announced that a National Council for Regional Development will be created to develop new technological poles and 100 new industrial parks. These government measures are being used to develop nearshoring zones that will expand the Mexican working class.

Finally, Sheinbaum promised that semiconductors will be manufactured in Mexico. Touching on the production chain of lithium, copper, semiconductors, and batteries, this measure aligns with the needs of US imperialism in its technological and economic competition with China, a rationale commonly made for nearshoring projects within the United States as well.
Rejecting the “War against Drug Trafficking” and the Denial of Militarization

The new president criticized the “war against drug trafficking,” which intensified under Calderón’s government, leading to disastrous consequences for Mexico. Sheinbaum maintained that “security and peace are the fruit of justice.” She defended the strategy introduced by López Obrador, based on four principles: addressing the causes of drug use, strengthening the National Guard, using intelligence and investigation, and coordinating among different agencies. Addressing causes, she explained, means ensuring the right to education, housing, and decent work for Mexico’s youth.

Sheinbaum emphasized that the National Guard will be strengthened as part of the military with the recent constitutional reform and said it would be wrong to call this militarization. “In our country there is no state of exception, there are no human rights violations. What there is now with the Fourth Transformation is more democracy, more freedoms, and the true rule of law that we are going to build with the change in the Supreme Court and the judiciary. Next week we will announce the national security strategy,” said Sheinbaum.

But Sheinbaum is contradicted by the securitization of civilian life in Mexico, as can be seen in the administration of airports, ports, customs, the Mayan Train, and in public displays of force like the “parades” of vehicles carrying uniformed members of the army and the National Guard in all cities, including the capital. Not to mention the deployment of concrete barriers in the capital’s main square on September 20, when protesters gathered to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the abduction of 43 students from the Escuela Normal Isidro Burgos.
Building an Alternative to the “Humanization of Capitalism”

Progressives often claim that governments like Sheinbaum’s, and that of her predecessor, are “left-wing” because they force certain businesses to pay more taxes. Yet such governments fail to carry out significant fiscal reform or redistribute wealth.

Meanwhile, workers face continued precarity and still lack benefits like vacations, Christmas bonuses, and social security. And when the government ratchets up militarization, this inevitably leads to more state crimes, such as the Tlatelolco massacre and forced disappearances. The working class should not be satisfied with a government that claims to be anti-neoliberal but is unwilling to push back against the interests of transnational corporations and defend its working class.

Those of us who demand justice for the disappeared as well as an end to violence against women, job insecurity, militarization, and megaprojects developed for the benefit of capital must forge an independent path outside the bourgeois parties in government. A party that fights to end Mexico’s subordination to US imperialism while advancing a socialist perspective against all forms of exploitation and oppression.

Originally Published in Spanish on our sister site La Izquierda Diario

Translated by Noah Thurston