Kshama Sawant: Fight for Trans Rights and Safety for all LGBTQ+ People

A statement by independent socialist candidate for Congress Kshama Sawant:

Solidarity With Everyone Mourning  the Loss of Juniper Blessing

I stand in solidarity with the family and friends of University of Washington student Juniper Blessing. Condolences to all those mourning the loss of Juniper, who was brutally murdered recently in Seattle, while simply doing laundry. While the killer's motivations remain unclear, this horrific act of violence is still another reminder of the dangerous reality facing LGBTQ+ people everywhere, even in a supposed sanctuary city like Seattle. It needs to serve as a call to action to renewedly fight for justice for all our trans and queer siblings. We need to build mass movements of working people to fight back against the right-wing, anti-trans attacks, and to defeat the anti-trans bills being advanced around the country.

I am endorsing the No Hate in Washington State campaign, which is calling for a NO vote on two proposed appalling anti-trans ballot measures that threaten the rights of all children. If passed, IL26-001 would deny basic protections for child abuse victims and IL26-628 would subject girls to invasive genital exams to play sports. It is absolutely crucial that working people and the labor movement ensure these measures are defeated by Washington State voters. The working class needs to stand in solidarity against every form of oppression as well as economic exploitation under the capitalist system. My organization, Workers Strike Back, has also endorsed the campaign. Both Workers Strike Back and my revolutionary socialist campaign for the U.S. Congress will be doing everything we can to support the No Hate campaign. Working people also need to set our sights beyond defending against attacks. We need to fight for major victories for LGBTQ+ people — this is the best way to defend against attacks and prevent them in the first place. The fight for LGBTQ+ people should go hand in hand with the fight to win historic change for working people of all genders and sexualities. Discrimination, oppression, and violence is endemic to capitalism because in order to squeeze billions of people for profit, the billionaires and multimillionaires need to keep the working class divided on gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and ethnicity, and citizenship status. We need to get united as the working class against the attempts of the right wing and billionaire class to divide us in order to keep exploiting us. Working people are being squeezed on every front trying to afford housing, healthcare, and even groceries. Trans people, especially trans people of color, face violence and discrimination that make all those issues even worse. One in five trans people have been fired or denied a job for being trans and one in eight evicted or denied housing. One in five transgender individuals have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. My independent revolutionary socialist campaign for Congress is fighting for and demanding: End anti-trans and all LGBTQ+ oppression. Stop the advance of anti-trans bills, and go on the offensive to fight for full LGBTQ+ rights Free healthcare for all, including full access to all gender affirming and reproductive care and LGBTQ+ counseling services, funded by taxing the rich The Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (including titles II, III, IV, VI, VII, and IX) to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service Living-wage jobs guarantee and the right for all workers to unionize National rent control to stop the price-gouging by corporate landlords, which forces LGBTQ+ people out of their communities by economic eviction Create millions of affordable homes, including free emergency housing for trans and queer people fleeing abuse, funded by taxing the billionaires and the wealthiest corporations   End all military aid to Israel and cut the trillion-dollar war budget to fund housing, education, and other social services AI-related regulations for the rights and safeguarding of queer children and adults. The Republican Party has been the most direct in its attacks on trans people. Just in 2026, a shocking 44 anti-trans bills have already been passed in 15 Republican-dominated states. Hundreds more bills are making their way through the legislatures of states across the nation. President Trump has attempted to carry out multiple anti-trans executive orders. These attempts include denying new passports to trans and nonbinary individuals, eliminating federal funding for schools that promote “indoctrination” based on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology,” stopping healthcare to trans adolescents and young trans adults, banning trans girls from school sports, and erasing LGBTQ+ history by removing public health data from federal government websites, such as decades of HIV research and data on the mental health of girls and LGBTQ+ youth. Defeating Trump, the Republicans, and the right wing, however, will require independent movements with leadership prepared to fight against both the Republican and the Democratic parties. Not only have the Democratic Party Congressmembers failed to defeat Trump, their own betrayals of working people have opened the door to the two Trump presidencies in the first place. Trump and the Republicans have demonized LGBTQ+ people in order to deflect genuine anger working people feel against the billionaires. But Democratic politicians have not fought for LGBTQ+ rights in any meaningful way, and instead have used superficial and performative rhetoric while betraying queer and all working people. Several Democratic Congressmembers pay lip service to LGBTQ+ issues, but they have not won, or led on, any substantive victories. Now, many prominent Democrats have started abandoning even those empty promises to pivot rightward for careerist reasons. In 1996, 118 House and 32 Senate Democrats voted in favor of the anti-LGBTQ+ Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Democratic President Bill Clinton signed it into law. Even in 2008 in his Presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Barack Obama said, "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." In Seattle in 2013, I was the only City Council or Mayoral candidate or elected official who publicly stood with the first-ever Trans Pride march. No Democratic Party candidate or elected official was willing to support it. Last year, Gavin Newsom said it is "deeply unfair" for trans women to participate in women's sports. During the 2024 Presidential election, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, when asked if transgender Americans should have access to gender affirming care, said merely, "I believe we should follow the law." This was in a context in which hundreds of anti-trans bills were being advanced nationally. In a 2022 Financial Times interview, when asked about the "transgender debate," Hilary Clinton said: "We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window. The most important thing is to win the next election. Whatever does not help you win should not be a priority." My main opponent, 29-year Democratic Congressmember Adam Smith pays lip service to LGBTQ+ rights, while his actions have been geared towards attacking working people (including the queer community), promoting war, and serving the profiteering billionaires. Smith was one of 51 House Democrats who voted for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in 1997, as part of Bill Clinton’s Balanced Budget Act. This bill also opened the door to the privatization of Medicare. Under both Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama, Adam Smith repeatedly voted to bail out the big banks after the Great Recession, which plundered the millions who faced home foreclosures and handed over tens of billions of dollars worth of real estate to private equity. This bipartisan robbery against working people is a big reason why rents have been skyrocketing. In 2011, Adam Smith voted to cut billions of dollars from publicly funded rent controlled housing. Smith voted to break the strike of the Railroad workers in 2022. He has voted to create and fund ICE and to fund tens of billions of dollars for the genocide in Gaza. Even a Democratic Party strategist, Charlotte Clymer, who is also a trans activist, admitted in 2025: “We’ve been largely abandoned by the Democratic Party… Looking at the past six months or so, it’s become pretty clear that most federal Democratic lawmakers have no clear or obvious intention in standing beside trans people in this critical moment.” Throughout history, the ruling classes have systematically used a divide-and-conquer strategy in order to keep the exploited masses atomized and subjugated. The early American and European capitalists manufactured the false and destructive racist ideology of Black and indigenous inferiority in order to exploit Black people as slaves, to carry out the genocide of indigenous people, and to keep white, Black, indigenous, and other immigrant workers divided and pitted against each other, diverting the blame for their miserable conditions away from those in power. Similarly, it is in the interest of the billionaires and multimillionaires today to prevent progress on LGBTQ+ rights and to promote bigoted and divisive ideologies. Under the pressure of mass protests, including the George Floyd rebellion, billionaires and big corporations were forced to set up superficial programs of “inclusion” in relation to people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. As movements have lost ground, It’s not surprising to see billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg blatantly roll back even the minimal policies they had put in place. This shows that the liberation of oppressed people or the working class as a whole will never come about via corporate “inclusion” programs that allow a wealthy few to make lucrative careers while the overwhelming majority of the oppressed are left behind. The only way LGBTQ+ and other oppressed people have achieved any progress is through independent working-class mass protests and civil disobedience. The movement for LGBTQ+ liberation was really kicked off by trans, gay, and lesbian working people in multiracial fightback against harassment by New York City police in the historic 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. It was further mass action by the rank and file of the movement that won marriage equality and many other LGBTQ+ rights. The LGBTQ+ movements at the time were strong also because they happened in the context of nationwide labor strike actions and powerful movements to end the Vietnam War and for women’s and Black rights. Many of the rank-and-file leaders of these movements were independent of both the Democratic and Republican parties and identified as revolutionary socialists. Mass action for LGBTQ+ rights today will be stronger if we also build mass movements to end imperialist wars, including ending military funding to Israel, to cut the military budget to fund housing, jobs, and education, and to win free healthcare for all by taxing the rich. The fight for LGBTQ+ rights is also linked with these larger struggles because the disproportionate poverty, housing instability and healthcare disparity faced by queer people can only begin to change if we fight for affordable housing, free healthcare for all, full funding of services, and living-wage jobs, along with anti-discrimination laws. To win any of this, we will need independent mass working-class movements with leadership that will fight the billionaires and both their parties. During my decade as the sole socialist on a Seattle City Council filled with Democratic Party politicians, I consistently used my office to fight for queer and trans working people, often facing the sharp opposition of the Council Democrats. In partnership with the Gender Justice League and other LGBTQ+ organizations, my office hosted a landmark LGBTQ+ Hate Crimes Forum in 2015, attended by hundreds of people, to highlight the surge in hate crimes against the queer community. This forum had so much public support that it forced the Democratic establishment to attend and take steps following the forum. Alongside leaders like Danni Askini of the Gender Justice League and Marsha Botzer of the Ingersoll Gender Center, my office passed proclamations in consecutive years for Trans Pride Day. The movement, with the leadership of trans rights organizations and my office, won hundreds of thousands of dollars for an LGBTQ+ senior center in the heart of Capitol Hill, Seattle’s historically queer-friendly neighborhood, an LGBTQ+ wellness center at NOVA High School, and other trans community services.

Through my office, we won Seattle’s Amazon Tax, which raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually for affordable housing by taxing the city’s wealthiest corporations. We also fought for and won an additional $20 million expansion of the tax to fund student mental health services in the Seattle Public School system. Affordable housing and affordable access to gender-inclusive healthcare and mental health services, as my campaign is fighting for now, are disproportionately needed by the queer and trans communities. I am the only candidate in the race with the track record of fighting and winning for LGBTQ+ rights.  I am also the only candidate in this race fighting for demands that would dramatically improve the lives of queer and trans community members. We need a new political party for the multigender, multiracial working class to organize mass struggles against the rich and their political servants. Fighting for our campaign to win our election to the U.S. Congress will be a historic breakthrough towards that goal. Our fight is not only against corporate politicians or the right wing, but against the capitalist system itself that thrives on attacking oppressed communities and all working people in order to further enrich an already grotesquely wealthy billionaire class. Solidarity, Kshama

A Call for Transpartisan Impeachment

 

 

Sam Husseini argues: "Partisan Impeachment Helped Get Us into this Mess. Transpartisan Impeachment Can Help Get Us Out." I encourage anyone looking for a collective way out of the lesser-evillist trap to check out his Vote Pact concept, which allows people across the political spectrum to break from the Duopoly parties without having to worry about so-called paradoxical results. You can also check out Break the Duopoly if you want help finding someone to make a Vote Pact with. Following is his proposal for transpartisan impeachment, written in the same spirit.

 

While Republicans voted to impeach Nixon, illegal war was explicitly excluded from the Articles of Impeachment to the dismay of Rep. John Conyers who was a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the 1974 impeachment inquiry. He would write the piece “Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached” for The Black Scholar. The failure to include illegal wars in the Nixon impeachment helped ensure future wars and hindered future principled impeachments.

A political realignment is long overdue in the US. It has stalled largely because of the power of the duopoly, which is designed to marginalize anti-establishment forces. There are occasional rhetorical flourishes about left-right alliance, and there has been limited cooperation on matters such as the Epstein scandals between Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna.

But left-right cooperation is massively under-utilized as I’ve highlighted with my VotePact.org project. And contrary to popular refrain, left-right agreement is not rare, it’s just repeatedly treated as an aberration even though it keeps happening.

Especially troublesome has been that impeachment has remained a partisan affair, with each impeachment calcifying partisan compulsions to the point of brain-deadness and effectively immunized presidents from principled impeachment over illegal wars and therefore strengthened the Empire. No transpartisan impeachment as I outline below has been attempted.1 Of course Massie could break new ground and do this now in his remaining time in Congress with any number of Democrats.

Current movement in Congress regarding the illegal attack on Iran has been limited to War Powers Resolutions, now in their eighth round. They don’t capture the public imagination and Trump can just veto them.

I sent the following letter to Ralph Nader on April 8 after attending an event on impeachment that he organized. Constitutional lawyer and scholar Bruce Fein was one of the speakers and is known to be close to Massie. Dennis Kucinich and Robert Weissman were among the other speakers; see clips of me asking questions here and here, which I honestly found less than satisfying but which helped compel me to write the letter below.

Please support this independent work by sharing it far and wide or doing so financially.

Dear Ralph,

Thank you for organizing the thought provoking event today on impeachment.

Coming out of it, I’d recommend the following strategy to overcome the serious hurdles.

• Get a Democrat to make a commitment with Massie: We will together move to impeach any president who does illegal war. The Democrat can be Rashida Tlaib or John Larson or someone else. This would give Massie cover to now back impeaching Trump now.

• Once you have a Dem and a Republican, this impeachment becomes transpartisan. You don’t want to be associated with past partisan impeachments.

• This would be a major step in making real the left-right alliance to confront the establishment as outlined in your book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left–Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

• Making Raskin central to this [Nader spoke of him at the event] makes it a purely partisan affair. And he stated in June 2024: “I have not called for a cutoff of all military aid to Israel.” Does he have a meaningful commitment to stop genocide and US government war crimes, or will he jerk this process around and effectively facilitate the continuation of war crimes?

• Massie and the principled Democrat would be in a position to shame all other members of Congress for being warmongering partisan flacks. They could form the Stop War Crimes Caucus.

• You could Godfather this process, bringing in others like Amash.

• This would help galvanize the Arab American community to help lead the way in breaking out of the corrupt duopoly.

• Constituencies could push Representatives to join the Stop War Crimes Caucus whose members would pledge to impeach any president who commits war crimes. Members could join in pairs, one Dem and one Rep.

• A major argument against impeachment and removal of Trump is that we’d get Vance. But the Constitution specifically states: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Much of the country believes that Trump, Vance and much of the establishment are putting Israel first — i.e., treason.

• If a transpartisan movement builds it can not only move to impeach and remove those guilty of said crimes. It can elect a new Speaker who has not been guilty or complicit in the war crimes committed by the current establishment. That could be Massie or someone else. Following impeachment and removal of the criminal president and VP, they then would become president.

This may seem far-fetched, but a profound reckoning for all the illegal wars, violations of domestic and international law, unending corruption and threat to the very existence of civilization and humanity is long overdue. If the US public is shown a path that people can get behind to use constitutional processes to give a rebirth to the rule of law, defeatism will turn to hunger and the promise of the USA can be fulfilled.

Please let me know if you have any questions or how I can help.

regards,

Usamah “Sam” Husseini

PS: Here’s a write-up of Amash proposing himself as Speaker [in 2022, after he left Congress] … making my proposal seem relatively modest.

On April 17, Nader published the piece “Demands for Firing or Impeachment of Trump Breaking Out Everywhere” which quoted Raskin at length and made no mention of Massie.

 

Show your Support for RCV at Philadelphia City Council

This note from March on Harrisburg:

On May 28, Philadelphia's City Council will vote on a resolution, introduced by Councilperson Nic O'Rourke, in support of Ranked Choice Voting. This is an important step in pressuring the state legislature to take up action on allowing ranked choice voting in Pennsylvania! After this, we will be working with other cities and counties to also press the state for RCV. But first, we need a big show of support when our resolution comes up for a vote in Philly.

Will you join us at the city council meeting on Thursday, May 28? We've been advised to arrive before 10:00 am, and be sure to bring ID to enter the building. Feel free to also bring a sign expressing your support!

actionnetwork.org/events/show-your-support-for-rcv-at-philadelphia-city-council 

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

 

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen From college campuses to corporate boardrooms to the chambers of Congress, the pressure to restrict speech is intensifying, and it’s coming from every direction. Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff have heard every argument for censorship, and they take each one apart in their new book, The War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech―And Why They Fail. Join Fair For All’s Executive Director Monica Harris on Thursday June 11th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a conversation with Strossen, a member of FAIR’s Board of Advisors and former ACLU president, as they dissect the case for censorship and what it will take to defend free expression in an era that is increasingly hostile to it. This webinar will be livestreamed on FAIR’s X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Zoom.

Stop AI Data Centers -- Sunday May 17th

This is the announcement for the upcoming Workers Strike Back monthly meeting.

 

Join Workers Strike Back at Our May National Zoom Meeting. STOP the Data Centers and AI Layoffs! If you’re in or around the Peoria, IL area, join our in-person meeting at the Peoria Public Library, 1312 W Lincoln Ave, Peoria, IL 61605

RSVP NOW Working-Class people around the nation are fighting back against Big Tech Billionaires who are pushing for a massive expansion of Hyperscale data centers. One such fightback recently occurred in Pekin, Illinois, near Peoria, where I live and where I am helping to build Workers Strike Back. Working people in Pekin got organized and fought back against a planned 321-acre hyperscale data center. Workers Strike Back was proud to join the fight! Our movement went up against big tech and real estate billionaires and multimillionaires and also the Democratic and Republican parties. Democratic and Republican politicians alike have shamefully provided tax incentives for Data Centers to developers. In Illinois, Democratic Governor and billionaire JB Pritzker signed a bill in 2019, with bipartisan support, that has provided billionaires with an estimated $983 million in lifetime tax breaks and benefits as “incentives” to build at least 27 data centers. Instead of taxing the rich to fund working-class needs like free healthcare for all, they have tried to do all they can to hold a red-carpet welcome for the AI billionaires. But it shows that the class allegiance of the Democratic and Republican parties is with the billionairess, not with the working class. Working people organized City Hall speakouts, yard sign distribution, and canvassing shifts to oppose it. Workers Strike Back members played a key role in the City Hall speakouts by putting forward a fighting, class struggle approach, and politically explaining to our fellow workers that we need to create a credible political threat to the establishment politicians who don't respond to moral appeals, but instead can be swayed only by the organized strength of working-class movements. A crucial aspect of this was exposing the real role of the Democrats and Republicans during the speakout at City Hall. This meant rejecting the rules of “decorum” that the establishment imposes on working people to try and render our movements ineffective. Because of the mass mobilization of working people and our strategy, the movement in Pekin won! Our movement’s victories to date: We forced Governor Pritzker to put a hold on the tax breaks for new data center developments We forced the Republican Mayor of Pekin, Mary Burress, to announce in March that the city would not be moving forward with the data center project We forced Democrats and Republicans on the Pekin City Council to vote unanimously to stop the sale of public land to the data center developer, Western Hospitality Partners

Congratulations to the working people of Pekin, Illinois! This victory is proof that when working people get organized to fight for our demands, we can win. This strategy - the strategy of class struggle - is needed in every city hall, in every workplace, in every protest. Our methods for fighting back need to be crystal clear that our allies are the working class in the fight against data centers, big tech, and the billionaire class as a whole. Our enemies are anyone who sides with them, like the corporate politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties. Join Workers Strike Back for our monthly national meeting over Zoom on Sunday, May 17th to talk about lessons from the struggles that Workers Strike Back members have been engaged in and how you can get active in the fightback against the AI and data center boom. These data centers are being massively expanded due to the increasing need for corporate data storage and the advancement of dystopian AI technologies that are designed to increase billionaire profits while systematically depriving workers of our basic rights and quality of life. One such instance is the pervasive use of AI in health insurance and the systematic denial of care by corporations like UnitedHealthcare. Sometimes, these technologies are used in even more sinister ways: companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Palantir are all using their data management and AI tools to allow the Israeli military to track and target Palestinians and journalists in the ongoing, brutal genocide in Gaza, and also to help ICE target and detain immigrants in the United States. Not only are data centers used in the most horrific ways by these corporations, they also consume eye-popping amounts of energy. In some cases over 100 megawatts of continuous energy, which could be used to power up to 100,000 small homes. This massive energy demand from these monstrous data centers has led to an increase in utility rates for working-class people in many areas. These massive hyperscale data centers are also consuming hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per hour, and in most cases the energy supplied to power these data centers comes from burning fossil fuels, which is further exacerbating the climate catastrophe. The energy consumed by the largest data centers is equal to the entire output of a medium-sized power plant. The increasing need for energy and water, and the cynical sourcing of this energy by the capitalist class, are going to have a disastrous impact on the climate. The billionaires profiting from these data centers know the real dangers that spring from their actions all too well, and they do not care because they have no regard for our lives and the impact on our communities. The same is true for the Democratic and Republican parties, which are both parties of Wall Street and war. Working people need to fight to take the big energy corporations and big tech companies into democratic public ownership to be run by workers, so that we can democratically and scientifically decide what technologies to use and how to use them, while also protecting the environment. The climate impact of Trump's war on Iran and the deregulation of fossil fuels is further driving us towards climate apocalypse. What we need is a lightning-fast transition to green energy and infrastructure that can only be carried out by a socialist society. Solidarity, Justin Smeltzer Workers Strike Back Peoria, Illinois

Join Workers Strike Back at Our May National Zoom Meeting. STOP the Data Centers and AI Layoffs! If you’re in or around the Peoria, IL area, join our in-person meeting at the Peoria Public Library, 1312 W Lincoln Ave, Peoria, IL 61605

RSVP NOW

What We Stand For: Fight the Rich! End the Billionaire Class & Their System Workers Need a Real Raise — $25/Hour Minimum Wage Good Union Jobs for All Stop the Climate Catastrophe — Take Big Energy Corporations into Workers’ Ownership Fight Racism, Sexism & All Oppression Stop Mass Deportations Medicare for All & Quality Affordable Housing — Tax the Rich End the Genocidal War on Gaza — No Military Aid, No Occupation Bring Down Trump, the Billionaires & Their Two Parties No More Sellouts — We Need a New Mass Party

AMERICAN TRICKSTER: THE HIDDEN LIVES OF CARLOS CASTANEDA (book launch)

I read one of Carlos Castaneda's books in my early teens, was fascinated but wasn't sure what to make of it. A very interesting discussion, especially where it intersects with the story of ethnomethodology, which I read about in another book, The Trickster and the Paranormal, a number of years ago.

https://fstube.net/w/qwBFLVnCYvycAgmC34YgVv

Meta is making Instagram DMs unsafe – what can you do about it?

 

This message came today from EDRi:

Dear friend, Meta is changing something important on Instagram from May 8 and it will affect hundreds of millions of people. We think it’s  important you know about it. From May 8, Meta is stopping end-to-end encryption on Insta- gram direct messages. If you use DMs to stay connected to  friends and loved ones, this matters for you. Without encryption, your messages are no longer secure. They no longer stay be- tween just you and the person you messaged - Meta could also take a peek.  Encryption is crucial for our daily communication, to organise in communities, for journalists to hold power to account, for people to access sensitive healthcare, and for free and democratic societies to continue existing. This is why we are calling on EU lawmakers to safeguard our ability to communicate without intrusion by protecting encryp- tion and banning spyware. You can join us, and thousands of other people, by signing our petition.

Sign the petition: Keep It Safe and Secure

Military Disability Compensation Claims Spike

A FOIA request by the Informed Consent Action Network has revealed an alarming spike in cardiovascular and neurological conditions amongst US military personnel starting in 2021, the first year COVID-19 vaccines were mandated for all branches of the US Armed Forces.

 

Workers Strike Back May Day

 

RSVP to join Workers Strike Back on May Day! New York, NY Rochester, MN Normal, IL Detroit, MI Seattle, WA

Many working people around the world will be taking to the streets on May 1st for International Workers' Day to fight back against the billionaire class and their system of capitalism that is depriving working people of basic healthcare needs and escalating brutal imperialist wars. That is why for this May Day, Workers Strike Back is demanding: TAX THE RICH AND FUND HEALTHCARE, NOT WAR! We are supporting Kshama Sawant's independent revolutionary socialist campaign for Congress, which is calling for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich, and an end to all military aid to Israel and no weapons or tech for genocide or imperialist war! Working people are sick of both parties of Wall Street and war and are desperately looking for an alternative. Many of the existing May Day events are correctly geared towards fighting the Trump administration which has carried out relentless attacks on working people over the last year and a half, but many of the organizations and individuals leading these events unfortunately give cover to the thoroughly pro-war anti-worker Democratic Party. In December an overwhelming number of Congressional Democrats, including Kshama's opponent Adam Smith, voted to finance Trump's attacks on Iran and Venezuela by signing a war spending bill that handed Trump more than $900 billion for the bipartisan U.S. war machine. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are completely opposed to any policies that are in the interest of the working class, and they are both capitalist warmongering parties down to their bones. Some of the big May Day protests that Workers Strike Back members will be tabling at are calling for fighting the billionaires and for “No Work, No School, No Shopping”. Unfortunately, most of the existing labor leadership is tied at the hip to the Democratic Party that is funded by and serves the billionaires, and this means that these same labor leaders are completely unwilling to call any type of strike or protest that could damage their cozy relationships with the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, all the people who participate in the action of not going to work or school will be doing so on an individual basis, which will have no significant impact on the profits of the billionaire class. This is part of the failed strategy of business unionism that is employed by the vast majority of labor leaders, who seek mutual agreement with the bosses and their political parties rather than organizing working people into a militant fight back. The rotten alliance that business unionist labor leaders have made with the Democratic Party has led to the major US unions largely sitting on the sidelines while their members and other working class people are being abducted by ICE, and while 300,000 Federal public sector workers were laid off by Trump. The Trump administration has also rammed through massive tax cuts for the rich while the working class faces an unbearable cost of living crisis due to catastrophic wars in the Middle East and billionaire greed. Labor leaders' aversion to class struggle methods has meant that they have stood by while Trump carried out the wars and while the Democrats funded the horrific genocide in Gaza. What we need is organized mass strike action, mass protests, and mass civil disobedience to stop the deportation machine and end all imperialist wars, and to go on the offense for things like free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich. That is why it is important that Workers Strike Back will be present at May Day events all over the country to talk to people about the urgent need for fighting class struggle movements and campaigns like Kshama's independent revolutionary socialist campaign for Congress, and for our unions to break from the Democratic Party. Kshama's example from her decade on the Seattle City Council is unfortunately the only example in recent history of anyone using their elected position to raise working-class demands and then build fighting movements to win them. Kshama led movements to win the highest minimum wage in the nation, the Amazon Tax, landmark renters' rights law, and much more. We need this across the nation. That is why working people should support Kshama’s campaign and fight to elect the first-ever revolutionary socialist to Congress. If you are in the Seattle area join the Kshama for Congress contingent at May Day. Workers Strike Back will also be hosting a rally in Rochester, Minnesota at Soldiers Field, and tabling in Detroit, Michigan; Normal, Illinois; and New York City. Solidarity, Workers Strike Back RSVP to join Workers Strike Back on May Day! New York, NY Rochester, MN Normal, IL Detroit, MI Seattle, WA

What We Stand For: Fight the Rich! End the Billionaire Class & Their System Workers Need a Real Raise — $25/Hour Minimum Wage Good Union Jobs for All Stop the Climate Catastrophe — Take Big Energy Corporations into Workers’ Ownership Fight Racism, Sexism & All Oppression Stop Mass Deportations Medicare for All & Quality Affordable Housing — Tax the Rich End the Genocidal War on Gaza — No Military Aid, No Occupation Bring Down Trump, the Billionaires & Their Two Parties No More Sellouts — We Need a New Mass Party

Get Involved - Join Workers Strike Back!