International Socialism Project

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.

If some of the largest manifestations of opposition to Trump don’t clearly foreground antiwar or anti-imperial messages, it’s because the political presence of a left that raises those demands is weaker than at any time since those politics won a mass hearing during the Vietnam War.

The sense of solidarity in Minneapolis has spread across the country like wildfire since the deaths of Good and Pretti—with protests and student walkouts and that number from the dozens to the thousands in cities, large and small.

It’s very difficult to predict where the resistance will expand in the future–because it has been a very, very long time since US workers have actually been combative. And during that long time, not only unions but traditions of struggle have been crushed and need to be rebuilt.

The people who filled streets across the country on October 18 were those described above—many new to activism, urgently motivated by the authoritarianism rapidly descending on U.S. society.

Millions of people joined in the protests on June 14th in defiance of Trump’s latest authoritarian power grab, with the largest drawing up to 100,000 demonstrators. A sea of people—most carrying handmade signs—swarmed downtowns in major cities. Many described their opposition to mass deportations as a key motivation to take part.

We are in uncharted waters where Trump is criminalizing free speech even as he has ended Israel’s genocidal war, for now.

The actions sponsored by the left wing of the Democratic Party and the NGOs have been lethargic and unfocused. We are going to have to look elsewhere for viable resistance.

The Teamsters called for strike action at eight locations across four states, that included Amazon centers in Queens and Staten Island New York, Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco, and in Skokie, Ill, where they claim to represent the drivers or the warehouse workers through elections or card check.

The strike is now in its fourth week and appears to be holding the line. Picket lines are lively and well attended. Food, wood, and other picket line supplies are being provided. There is $250 a week strike pay. Members of other unions have been joining the line to express solidarity. The highly technical nature of the work will make finding sufficiently trained scabs hard.

There is something in the air. You can feel it in something as simple as the amount of honking as people drive by picket lines. This was certainly the mood last summer. But this momentum needs new fresh events and struggles to sustain itself.

With the Teamsters and O’Brien coming under heavy criticism, a siege mentality has gripped the union with pressure on well-known Teamster activists to demonstrate loyalty to O’Brien.

It matters whether a particular union leadership is encouraging or blocking a particular struggle. Socialists are therefore not indifferent to different trends in the union leadership and pay careful attention to them in order to chart their possible impact on our fundamental task, the battle with the employers.

There is no indication as yet that pro-Palestinian students will retreat in the aftermath of the repression they have faced—especially as Israeli genocide continues. Repression against dissent can sometimes shut it down, but it also can backfire, by radicalizing students as it did in the 1960s—by exposing the hypocrisy of U.S. rulers who claim to support free speech yet forcibly shut down those who challenge its imperial interests.