The Trump administration has hijacked the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence not only for its crass grifts, but to promote its ideological view of U.S. history. This view rests on comforting myths about the history of the nation that conservatives and many liberals embrace. Two U.S. socialists dispel the myths and tell a history that Trump and his enablers would like to bury.
With a few weeks to go before the start of the Teamsters’ union convention in Las Vegas, a major push is on to deny Richard Hooker the five per cent of delegates needed for him and his Fearless slate to be nominated. While there is still much skullduggery afoot to trash the reputation of Richard Hooker, the first African-American candidate for General President of the Teamsters, most of it is now quite open and increasingly nasty, as he challenges Sean O’Brien, the pro-Trump leader of the union.
By the late 1970s, the rank-and-file rebellion was over, and the “party-building” projects of many groups had collapsed and disintegrated, in many cases with great regrets, anger, and bitterness among people who only a few years earlier had been committed comrades. There are many lessons for today for from this era, both good and bad, but to mine the past requires honesty, sometimes brutal honesty to assess what happened and why, and what were the political consequences.
We oppose any U.S. invasion. We call for an end to the current U.S. blockade of oil deliveries. And we call for an end to the U.S. embargo that dates from the early 1960s. Moreover, if Cubans want to emigrate to the U.S., we welcome them along with all other immigrants who are targets of Trump’s xenophobia.
