UNITED FRONT Needed today The political resolution of the FSP [“A world to win, a planet to save,” Vol. 35, No. 5] references the need for “united front” action, as well it should. No one socialist party in this nation today can hope to take on and defeat the capitalist ruling elite on any national… Read more »
immigrant rights
From graffiti girl to organizer: my revolutionary education
I am from drive-bys, sirens, and the cries of a desperate mother asking for help. From the city of lost souls, the city of angels. I am from beans, rice, and leftovers to the endless streets of taco stands. I am from Aztec dancers. I am from feminism and activism. I have witnessed first-hand how… Read more »
Germany’s balancing act on immigration policy
Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, is steering a cautious course between two conflicting pressures. On the one hand she must convince the German people to pay — with their taxes and their lives — for NATO’s Mideast wars. This is no easy task because the misery of two world wars has left them with an… Read more »
No welcome here: an immigrant’s saga
If you have not been an undocumented immigrant from Central America making your dangerous way through Mexico only to face vigilante hate groups and la migra at the U.S. border, you don’t know what hell is. Fleeing poverty or persecution at home, you are exploited and persecuted again by Mexican police trying to rob your… Read more »
Immigrants found buried in mass “graves of shame” in Texas
Seventy miles from the Mexican border in dirt-poor Brooks County, Texas, the human remains of hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly from Central America and Mexico, were uncovered in 2014 in a mass grave. Hundreds more are believed elsewhere in South Texas. Desperate people died while escaping police violence, civil war, all-powerful street gangs, and take-no-prisoners… Read more »
Freedom Socialist editorial — Obama’s deportations surge ahead
As politicians in the U.S. call for banning all Muslim newcomers, and in Europe plot to get rid of fleeing émigrés from the Middle East and Africa, the Obama administration ushered in a cruel New Year for refugees from Central America. Federal agents are rounding up these refugees for quick deportation, while unprecedented militarization is… Read more »
Rudd sticks with xenophobic border protection policies: Time to rebuild the movement to end the persecution of refugees
In October 2009, the Australian Customs ship, Oceanic Viking, rescued 78 people from their sinking boat in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait. Sixty-eight men, five women and five children, fleeing Sri Lanka’s genocidal war against the Tamil people, sought asylum in Australia. The Tamils are an ancient nation whose language is one of oldest in the world…. Read more »
Amal Basry’s life inspires hope
When Amal Basry died on the 18th of March this year, all asylum seekers lost a courageous voice. She was one of the survivors of the sinking of the so-called SIEVX (Suspected Illegal Entry Vehicle X) in which 353 people lost their lives. Amal survived the night in the ocean, clinging to the body of… Read more »
What immigrants need: amnesty, open borders, and a movement that won’t back down
The following article is a slightly revised version of a talk given by Eduardo Martínez Zapata at a Freedom Socialist Party May Day celebration and forum in Portland, Oregon on May 6, 2006. When I was nine years old, my family came to the United States because my parents had no other option as they… Read more »
How the Howard Government used refugee policy to attack workers’ rights
Even the Murdoch newspapers called it a “bloody disgrace.” Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident, had spent 10 months in immigration detention. Despite the fact that she was listed as a missing person in Queensland, no attempts had been made to establish who she was. Her use of a pseudonym and a nearly imperceptible German accent… Read more »