Talking with Industrial Workers about Genocide in Gaza here ♦ South Africa to Gaza: Fascism Can Be Defeated here ♦
Talking with Industrial Workers about Genocide in Gaza
“Stop Genocide!” “Block Everything!” Let’s all study the September 22 general strike in Italy in solidarity with the Sumud flotilla heading to Gaza. And a follow-up political strike of Italian rail and dock workers on October 3rd (pictured on page one of the last Red Flag).
These were not strikes for communism. And communism is won through armed revolution, not strikes. But can’t we see in these strikes – and in recent general strikes in Belgium, France, and Ecuador –the potential for mobilizing industrial workers for communist revolution?
Comrades in Seattle noted that activist Boeing workers are discussing Gaza. Party work at Boeing in the past has really understood and emphasized internationalism. Gaza is the center of the world right now. The US-Zionist genocide there is a huge attack on our class. Our Party has to lead around that. The fascist government of India suppresses mention of Gaza, but comrades there manage to raise it.
An older comrade remembers when we wrote in 1994 that the Rwanda genocide was an attack on the whole international working class. She had already been a party member for twenty-five years, but the party’s leadership around this made a deep impression.
How are we raising the anti-genocide political strikes in Italy – and the question of Palestine in general – with industrial workers? With garment and maquila workers in Los Angeles, San Salvador, and Bengaluru? With auto workers in Chennai and Gqeberha? What do our friends and co-workers think about Gaza? About the political strikes? About their relation to mobilizing workers for communism?
And with Boeing workers. Boeing Machinists in Missouri (USA) just rejected another contract offer after being on strike for three months. Boeing plants there mainly assemble F-15 and F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. Including the ones that drop the bombs on Gaza. The company website brags that “the relationship between Boeing and Israel goes back to the founding of the State of Israel.” A year ago, the Israeli rulers signed a $5.2 billion deal to acquire 25 more F-15 fighter jets from Boeing.
Could Boeing workers be won to strike for Gaza like the Italian dock and railway workers did? What exactly are our friends at Boeing saying about Gaza? About the strike at the Boeing arms factories in Missouri? How can we give political leadership around this in Red Flag and through personal relationships?
Italian workers raised banners saying, “We wanted to liberate Palestine, and instead Palestine is liberating us.” Let’s see the potential in these strikes – as in the spread of GenX protests – to mobilize masses for communism and to build the ICWP.
—Comrades in California
South Africa to Gaza: Fascism Can Be Defeated
I agree with your analysis that Trump has aided and abetted the genocide in Gaza. And his fascist movement is an attack on the entire working class.
The brutal ICE raids in the US, the targeting and disappearance of workers, and horrible conditions in the prisons, are how capitalists are attempting to restore their profits as the Chinese imperialists take over countries once dominated by the West and the US.
Millions of workers around the world have shown that their disapproval by massive demonstrations. From the US to Europe, Africa, and Latin America the workers have risen. Two million Gazans, in the face of mass starvation, relentless bombing, wholesale destruction of schools, hospitals, and places of worship, have survived. That in itself is an act of revolutionary defiance.
We have an ICWP member in Gaza whom we knew from years ago in South Africa. These are the seeds of change. The working class in the Middle East, from Gaza to Israel, is showing the unconditional truth that fascism can be defeated. Let us recruit everywhere for communism in factories and barracks.
Red salute, comrades!
—Comrade X in South Africa