Northwoods Socialist Collective

About 75+ folks attended today's rally in support of the Superior National Forest and Forest Service workers. The jobs of these workers, and the services they provide, are currently under attack by the Federal Government. The protest was held next of the National Forest HQ, which is located between the Riverside and Smithville neighborhoods on Grand Avenue in west Duluth. The event received a fantastic response from passing motorists. Among the unions represented at the event were National Federation of Federal Employees, MN Nurses Association, United Steelworkers and the Operating Engineers. Zenith City Indivisible provided stewards and other volunteers.   Thank you to everyone who attended! At the same time that this protest was going on, protests against the Trump administration were also be held on overpasses up down Hwy 35, from Duluth to the Twin Cities.

I would like to give a socialist perspective on the fight for abortion rights, and the fight for reproductive justice more broadly, and the fight against oppression I want to say from the outset that this is a struggle over who controls reproduction—and along with it, production, because you can’t have production without reproduction. Will it be capitalist elites who control production and reproduction, or will it be working people and oppressed people?

Immigration & Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) conducted another raid in Duluth this week, and on International Workers Day, no less. They abducted more roofers, this time in the Duluth Heights neighborhood. However, unlike last time, ICE was forced to release the two workers the same day when it was proved that they weren't undocumented - one was a citizen while another was an immigrant with work papers. Documented or undocumented, this persecution has to stop! Our reactionary government is trying to sow divisions within the working class. Reject this bigotry.

To the Free Trade Unions in the United States of America and to every free worker and trade unionist fighting for justice, freedom, and human dignity: We salute you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, a day that embodies the unity and solidarity of workers in confronting oppression and exploitation. We raise to you the voice of Gaza’s workers, who today stand at the forefront of confronting the most heinous forms of genocide, siege, and starvation, imposed on our people for decades and continuing to this day with direct support from the U.S. administration under Donald Trump, and previous administrations, in blatant violation of all humanitarian and international laws.

In 1889 the international socialist movement designated May First as a day to honor the struggles and achievements of the working class. This call was in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs: eight workers, five of them immigrants, who were variously imprisoned, deported, or executed for crimes they did not commit in a climate of fierce anti-immigrant and anti-union scapegoating.

If the present wave of repression led by Donald Trump today appears to resemble the mid-twentieth century campaign of fear spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy, it is not exactly coincidental. Trump was, after all, mentored by the rabid anti-commmunist Roy Cohn, who was in turn mentored by McCarthy. In Trump, the ruling class has a figure who comes from a tradition of attack dogs. The broad tolerance for his unprecedented offensive suggests that the ultra-wealthy very much want what they are getting from him.