Between the Rivers – Report From the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia
By Stewart Acuff
Even on a soft spring sprinkling evening the back roads from my crib to Spring Mills, WV is country beauty at its finest. The small hills and rocky outcrops roll across the valley floor. Still like so many mountain areas, there are wild woods next to pastures, farm fields next to forests.
At least it still is right now. Republican Governor Patrick Morrisey wants to ruin these rural counties in our Eastern Panhandle.
Last Friday night, 500-600 people crowded into the Spring Mills High School auditorium for a town hall meeting held by two local Republican elected officials.
Each speaker added to the list of reasons data centers will ruin lives while we endure constant noise, higher electric bills, threats to our ground water, the loss of natural beauty, valuable farmland, and lowering home values.
Hey, Gov. Morrisey, what about it?
Speakers posed question after question.
Why would any governor jam something on his voters?
Why would local Republicans both blame the GOP Governor and try to protect their party as people across the Eastern Panhandle suffer?
Where will the vast water needs come from?
How far from each operation can you hear their noise?
Why would our GOP elected officials do this to our counties and our people?
Where would the electricity come from? Will it require new generation power plant/s, and how high will our electric bills go?
The longer the town hall went on, the more it dawned on folks that this data center crisis is coal colonialism repeated again. Politicians sell the state’s resources that go to out-of-state corporations profit leaving few jobs, poverty, pollution, ruined creation and dirty water. The land and people poisoned.
Tension had been building in Berkeley County over the news of the data center on its way.
Some folks blamed the governor because he made data centers development his number 1 priority.
Other folks tried to protect the Republican Governor even as they castigated the governor’s highest priority.
We’ll soon see as election season begins that confronting MAGA folks with their own contradictions makes them mad as an “ole wet hen”, as my Momma used to say.
At the town hall meeting, we heard over and over that the data centers near Spring Mills, and others across the state, are the goal and highest priority of MAGA GOP Gov Patrick Morrisey.
Brooke Gibson testified, “Governor Morrisey said this data center would be good for Berkeley County.” Loud murmuring and laughing ensued.
Annie Watson said her family has been on her land for generations. “Look at the coalfields. Thousands of people don’t have drinking water.” Will that be us? “How long before this data center is obsolete?”
Lucia Valentine spoke as a candidate for Delegate from District 97 and a clean water advocate at the legislature: “We need responsible development while we protect the water, the land and all our resources. It is crucial that elected officials work to protect our Eastern Panhandle.”
A well known small family farmer from Jefferson County also spoke. He said his water rights go back to 1732, almost four centuries. “Are the governor and his legislature trying to cancel my water rights?”
No Kings 3 In The Eastern Panhandle
There were at least five protests in the Eastern Panhandle on NO KINGS DAY 3 – Charles Town with 900 people, Martinsburg with 600, Morgan County with 450, Hampshire County and in Harpers Ferry.
March 28 was the largest, broadest, nonviolent deepest demonstration for justice and peace on one day in American history.
We in the Panhandle were amongst the very first Americans to begin the street side sign waving protests.
After more than a year of almost constant protesting we’ve seen support for us grow from passers-by.
We can feel even here in West Virginia the decline in MAGA strength.
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NO KINGS
By Robert Gumpert
On 28 March, 2026 people all around the world marched and demonstrated in “NO KINGS”, protesting and registering their resistance to US and Israeli actions, and the and racist rule of Trump and Netanyahu and their fellow travelers.
In all 50 states 8 million people showed up to 3,300 NO KINGS events to say enough: Enough to ICE. Enough to reckless and purposeless wars. Enough to fraud and corruption. Enough to sexual exploitation of women and children by an elite that think themselves immune because of money, power and their corrupted beliefs.
And in capitals around the world, from Tokyo where several hundred Americans abroad marched, joined by labor representatives and rights organizations; to Paris where a similar number hit the streets, also joined by labor unions and human rights groups. In London the NO TYRANTS march saw 10s of thousands march in pushback to the British version of MAGA.
Here are a few images from the Ocean Beach event in San Francisco, California – All photos Robert Gumpert
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Saying No To The Empire Is Not Enough
By Max Elbaum
We won’t stop US wars, effectively tackle climate change, stave off US-style fascism, or halt the march to a nakedly might-makes-right world order without a vision for a transformed role for the US in today’s interconnected world.
The joint US-Israeli war against Iran puts an exclamation point on the Gaza genocide. It sends a message to the world from the regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv that if you didn’t get it before, you better get it now: We will do absolutely anything that our military strength allows us to do. There are no rules or international laws we are bound to acknowledge, much less respect. You have two choices: capitulate or be destroyed.
Most European governments, all too many regimes elsewhere, and major sections of the Democratic Party leadership here offer at most a few “process objections” to this level of ruthlessness but go with the flow.
This is a road to global catastrophe. It will accelerate a process that was already underway where every government in the world decides that their overriding priority must be increasing their military strength. And, like the US and Israel, they will conclude it is only prudent to crack down on opposition movements within their own countries.
New Thinking for the 21stCentury
To halt and reverse this course, it is essential but not sufficient to build mass opposition to the war on Iran and all the other evils perpetrated by Washington, The US Left needs a foreign policy platform that projects a positive global role for the US and can gain enough popular support to catalyze a broader and deeper resistance to Trump 2.0 and then shape the policy of a post-MAGA government.
Developing that vision starts with facing the reality of an interconnected world where humanity’s very survival is in doubt. Without in the least softening our critique of the US-dominated world order that is passing away, it entails assessing the heightened dangers in the new order that Trump 2.0 is driving us toward. It requires learning lessons from the most positive experiences of longstanding antiwar, anti-racist, solidarity, and climate justice movements.
A valuable step in that direction would be taking a fresh look at a brief period 40 years ago when discussion of global cooperation and de-militarization – including massive cuts in military budgets and complete elimination of nuclear weapons – moved from the margins to the center of global politics. The high point was a 1986 US-USSR Summit during which President Ronald Reagan, an arch-hawk, was forced to seriously consider a pact with the Soviet Union to ban nuclear weapons. This unprecedented development stemmed from both grassroots pressure for peace and bold disarmament proposals and a stress on humanity’s common interest in survival coming from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of “New Thinking” about foreign policy and perestroika (restructuring Soviet society).
In adopting “New Thinking” the Soviet leadership was not breaking new intellectual ground. As Gorbachev put it:
“New Thinking did not come out of the blue. It had its origins in the thought of Albert Einstein [“everything has changed except our thinking”] and Bertrand Russell; in the anti-war movements of the 1950s and 1960s…The core of New Thinking is the proposition that humankind’s common interests and universal human values must be the overarching priority in an increasingly integrated, interdependent world.”
What distinguished the Soviet initiative was that it was the first time that such a perspective was adopted as the official policy of a powerful state. And in a groundbreaking speech to an unprecedented meeting of Communist and other Left Parties and Movements on the 70thanniversary of the October Revolution, Gorbachev specified the ways the new Soviet policy created more favorable conditions to struggle for democracy, national liberation and socialism:
“[there are] two especially dangerous manifestations of capitalism’s objective laws: militarization and non-equivalent exchange with the developing world. However, they are only possible if they are backed by an appropriate governmental policy. But that policy will continue to enjoy support only so long as fear of the “Soviet threat” remains… and so long as people continue to believe there are ‘subjects’ of world politics and there are ‘objects’ – that is, the sphere of neocolonialism.
“Our perestroika…is eliminating the fear of the ‘Soviet threat’ and militarism is losing its political justification… We will not in any way renounce the genuine values of socialism. On the contrary, we will enrich them, and at the same time get rid of everything that distorted the humanitarian idea of our system. We do not expect our class adversary to become ‘enamored’ by us. We do not need that at all…
“For socialism, this policy secures a merging of its class interests as a system and the interests of all humanity. And for capitalism too there is no other sensible way than coexistence and competition… Joint action alone can lessen and remove the global danger of an ecological ‘heart attack’.”
A positive pole of attraction
Coming off the heightened nuclear fears of Reagan’s “Second Cold War,” audacious disarmament initiatives from one of that era’s two superpowers moved the idea of a nuclear-free world from a utopian dream to a practical possibility. The first World Climate Conference in 1979 had been a major step in alerting the world to the threat from global warming. The notion of global cooperation in building a sustainable and nuclear-weapons-free planet resonated with millions. It linked a vision of a changed international order with the concerns of individuals, families, and peoples for their own safety. In tandem with the antiwar and disarmament proposals from Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, leading forces in the US resistance to Reaganism in the 1980s, these initiatives echoed the internationalist spirit that infused Dr. Martin Luther King, SNCC, and others in the radical wing of the Black-led 1950s-60s Civil Rights Movement.
The prospect of a post-Cold War “peace dividend” to boost economic development and a relaxation of tensions that would provide favorable terrain for popular movements gave the global Left a platform to offer “realistic hope.” Even socialism’s most ardent partisans realized in the 1980s that our North Star goal was not on any near-term horizon, and that goal appears even further away today. A Left that cannot offer any program for a safer and better world short of revolution will remain on the margins in this country.
A product of weakness as well as vision
The New Thinking vision captured the imagination of millions. But it was fleeting. This was because the radical shift in Soviet foreign policy, and the program of perestroika in general, grew out of the USSR’s deep economic and political weaknesses. Gorbachev was frank about this:
“Our country was sinking ever more deeply into stagnation. The economy was, for all intents and purposes, at a standstill. Ideological dogma kept intellectual and cultural activity in a straitjacket. The bureaucratic machine sought total control of society’s life while being unable to satisfy people’s basic needs….
“The militarization of the economy was a big burden for all countries, including the United States and its allies. Yet for our country, this cost was particularly high. In some years, total military spending amounted to 25-30 percent of gross domestic product, i.e., five to six times as much as in the United States and other NATO countries…. However, excessive armament did not make our security more reliable…. It was clear to me that continuing the arms race was not the path to lasting peace.”
While Gorbachev’s initiatives aimed at ending the Cold War made headway, his proposals for economic restructuring failed to yield positive results. The new openness in Soviet society (glasnost) succeeded in fostering a large-scale reckoning with the crimes of the Stalin era. But nationalist, chauvinist, and pro-capitalist movements rose and gained far more strength than working-class-based strivings to renew socialism. As the USSR hurtled toward collapse, Washington quickly returned to policies based on the worst of imperial ambition, using military force to show the world it was the global hegemony (via the first Gulf War) and vigorously pushing its recently initiated neoliberal economic model across the world.
The reasons for the Soviet collapse, which are of course connected to one’s assessment of the Soviet Union before 1985, remain a topic of sharp disagreement on the Left. But whatever one’s views in that debate, the so-far-unique experience of a powerful state taking Einstein’s “everything has changed” perspective as a starting point for a foreign policy stressing nuclear disarmament and environmental protection offers lessons for addressing today’s dangers.
Competing visions as the old order collapses
We’re in a moment when this quote from Gramsci is deservedly popular throughout the Left: “The old order is dying, and the new one is struggling to be born.” The different factions of the elite oligarchy are rushing into this “interregnum” to shape what comes next.
MAGA/Trump 2.0 argues that considering values like democracy or human rights when formulating policy are somewhere between naïve and treasonous, and that international agreements and multilateral institutions are simply shackles on US power. Staying number one in global “lethality” is the road to safety and prosperity for the “heritage Americans” who will dominate the country after solidifying white supremacy and removing or subordinating the various “others” who now live in the US.
The anti-MAGA wing of the US ruling class counters by arguing that the “rules-based” world order of the last 80 years was key to the wonderfulness of the American way of life. We just need to correct some of its “mistakes” (Vietnam, Iraq) to get back on the right track. Let’s preserve the “Western alliance of democracies,” keep China at bay, and use “soft power,” sanctions, multilateral institutions (where the US calls the shots), and “smart wars” to remain the world’s dominant power and bring safety and prosperity to the US people.
The Left has trenchant critiques of the racism and exploitation inherent in both variants of Washington’s imperial project. But we won’t win the majority of people to our side if we don’t go beyond critique to offer a positive vision of what the world can look like if we are in position to shape US policy.
Global cooperation as a powerful starting point
That vision has to address the hopes, fears, and pressing needs of the majority of US people. It has to be compelling enough to counter the American exceptionalist ideology that permeates US culture. Resting on the longstanding position of the US as the hegemonic global power and promoted unceasingly by the political class and mainstream media, the idea that the US is an inherently virtuous nation whose actions are those of the world’s “good guy” has long defined US “common sense.”
Antiwar and solidarity movements targeting Washington’s role in Vietnam, South Africa, Central America, Iraq, and most recently Palestine have spotlighted the destructive role the US has played in each case and at least temporarily won a portion of the population to an overall critique of US imperialism. At times, energetic social movements have convinced majorities of the importance of arms control agreements and aggressive steps to fight climate change. But we have yet to win a durable majority to a structural critique of imperial behavior and support for an alternative world order where all countries are on an equal footing, conflicts are resolved via diplomacy rather than violence, and a rapid transition away from fossil fuels is a worldwide priority. If we fail in that, a new incarnation of racist and authoritarian militarism may come roaring back even if we succeed in pushing MAGA out of power this time around.
The Left has always stressed the common interest of the global majority in fighting imperial exploitation. But in a period when the most dangerous threats to human life – climate change, nuclear war, global pandemics, obscene degrees of inequality – can only be addressed by joint action by all countries, the arguments against American exceptionalism and the way it makes US national sovereignty absolute become stronger and more urgent. This is why taking the concept of global cooperation based on common human interests from the “New Thinking” experience is the key starting point for formulating a radical foreign policy to put before the US people.
Building on that foundation, additional dimensions of international relations need to be addressed in formulating a comprehensive Left foreign policy: Among them are:
■ A framework for global rules for trade, debt, and other economic interactions among countries that tackles global inequality both between and within countries. There are a host of penetrating critiques of the neoliberal model of capitalist globalization to draw upon for this, as well as positive proposals for what Focus on the Global Southcalls “a healthy balance between national and international economies, diversity in economics and governance, and strengthening local and national economies.” (While Focus on the Global South uses the term “deglobalization” to describe such proposals, others offering thoughts in a similar vein use the terminology of “progressive globalization.”) There are also useful ideas to draw upon here from the 1970s proposals for aNew World Economic Order and a New World Information Order put forward by the Non-Aligned Movement at a time when that alignment of governments in the global South had considerable unity and political initiative.
■ A set of proposals for reforming and strengthening international organizations, conventions, and treaties. The damage being done byTrump’s withdrawing the US from a host of global institutions is considerable, but a Left program must go beyond advocating a return to those institutions as they were structured pre-Trump. The demands of ongoing campaigns to reform the United Nations in a way that ends the Security Council veto power now held by the US, Russia, China, the UK and France, and to put the US under the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and others need to be considered and many adopted.
■ Renewal and enforcement of theInternational Convention on the Rights and Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Racist assaults on the rights of immigrants are a key part of the global Right’s drive for political power, and defense of migrants’ rights by figures, organizations and parties of the center and center left has been uneven at best. This is intimately linked to the need for cooperation to mitigate global inequality and the climate crisis, because those are among the strongest drivers of migration. But a positive vision of “new immigration order” also needs to be part of the foreign policy platform of the US Left.
As the last point on immigration indicates, in today’s world the boundary between “domestic” and “foreign” policies is very blurry. They are interconnected, and we will need to continue to make that intertwining visible and concrete for people—for example, contrasting the bloated military budget with gaping holes in programs that meet human needs; looking at the way the global spread of bird flu spiked the price of eggs, pointing out how climate change has intensified floods, blizzards, and fires that have ravaged communities; stressing the way militarism abroad comes back home in the form of militarized surveillance and valorizing a toxic version of masculinity. In that sense, a Left vision for a post-MAGA foreign policy is a necessary component of an overall program for aThird Reconstruction that moves the country toward a durable multiracial, gender-inclusive democracy on a peaceful, sustainable planet.
Amid a continuing genocide in Gaza and a killing-spree-of-choice war against Iran, the numbers of people saying “stop” to the guardians of empire is growing by the day. Fanning those flames of opposition and offering these millions a vision to fight for is the combination needed to accumulate the political power to transform the US role in the world.
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“Saying No to The Empire Is Not Enough” originally ran in Convergence Magazine
Seafarers
By Robert Gumpert
A few headlines from the last few days concerning seafarers marooned in the Straits of Hormuz
“War with Iran strands about 20,000 seafarers in the Strait of Hormuz” NPR 18 March 2026
An estimated 40000 seafarers are stuck on board ships on either side of the Strait of Hormuz … Bloomberg 18 March 2026
Seafarers Trapped By Hormuz Crisis Face Growing Humanitarian Emergency gCaptain 20 March 2026
Trapped in the Gulf: Tens of thousands of seafarers wait with fear and boredom as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Foreign Affairs 23 March 2025
In October 2025 I began work on “From the Hiring Hall”, visiting the Master, Mates, and Pilots halls in Oakland, and Los Angeles.
Even though the following portrait and interview is not about being on a ship in a war zone, Peter Olney and I, co-editors the Stansbury Forum, felt it right to run a piece about the lives of seafarers.
MM&P Hiring Hall, Oakland, California – 22 November 2025
I’m Monique Watanabe. I’m chief mate on a heavy lift ship, the Ocean Giant. I’m permanent, and we go all over the world.
The Ocean Giant is actually Ice Class. We can go all the way up to Greenland, and we can go all the way down to Antarctica. We’ve had the contract, oh my god, since 2013, to go down to Antarctica every year. This is the first year that we’re not going.
But other than that, we go anywhere you can think of. They’re finishing up a run from India to Canada right now. That’s where I’m gonna pick up the ship, in (eastern) Canada.
Then from there, because we’re a true tramp ship, I have no idea where we’re going. I have no idea what is in store. It’s just whatever the next contract comes up.
It’s East Coast Canada so they went from India, and down around the Cape of Africa because they’re not allowed to go through the Suez Canal, and then up to Canada. We’re not allowed to go through the Suez because the company has said that we won’t be doing any Suez Canal transits for a very long time. The other reason is a lot of the cargo that we’re running, it’s a 1.1 D – which is ammo, or dynamite, or other explosives.
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I’ve never been on a fixed route, always tramp. I did car carriers with the U.S. Oceans, C-Corp. I’ve been doing that for a while now. So, I’ve done the Green Bay, the Green Lake, the Green Cove, and the Ocean Giant. Then I did one tour with Liberty on the Liberty Promise – all car carriers.
I genuinely do like tramp trips. It’s very different. You definitely don’t know where you’re going to go next.
The nice thing about the car carriers is they, for C-Corp or U.S. Oceans, they predominantly do NYK charters. So we go to Japan, pick up cars, and then we can go East Coast or West Coast. Or wherever they decide. We do a lot of military equipment, so sometimes we can pick up military equipment coming out of Tacoma [Washington state], and then going down to Hawaii, and over to – the last time I went with them – Indonesia.
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The typical sail time, it can vary. I’ve had one trip that was a hundred, and I want to say, a hundred and sixty days. Almost six months. Then I’ve had as short as 84. I knew I was getting on here in the United States, and then I had somebody come relieve me over in Japan. So, it’s definitely a difference.
But, I mean, the minimum contract for MMP is normally 120 days rotary. Rotary means? Oh my goodness. It’s the standard contract – so 120 days. If it’s a relief job, they typically put what the relief job would be – you know maybe 30 days, or 75, or 80, or 90, depending on what the relief is setup for. That’s usually when you’re relieving someone who’s permanent, or somebody who’s decided that they don’t want to sail for a continuous 120. They can take what we call a ‘trip off’, meaning that they get off in San Francisco, and then they get back on in San Francisco, if the ship does that.
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Choosing a favorite port is so hard. My least favorite area, I’d have to say, is the Middle East. It’s quite a challenge to be working in the Middle East as a female. The longshoremen are definitely a little bit of a challenge to work with. It’s a little frustrating. There’s plenty of ports where I get off and they tell me that I have to have an escort, or I can be arrested. So, I always have to have somebody trotting behind me, usually it’s one of the cadets. If I have a male cadet there, they’re right behind. Or right next to me, so that they can “escort” me. That’s a little frustrating trying to get my job done.
So I never… I’m never alone. I always have somebody next to me. Never a female. Always a male. And you never put yourself in a one-on-one situation. Ever. So always stay out in the open, and make sure you watch your back.
Nowhere else is like that. Japan, amazingly enough, that’s the most respectful port that I’ve ever been to – or country that I’ve ever been to. Korea, no problems. When I was in Australia, absolutely none. The United States, I mean, usually just my stature, unfortunately, you know, I’ve kind of gotten this don’t mess with me stature. Usually I could get around pretty okay and get my job done in a timely manner, no problems whatsoever.
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I have not been to China yet. So that’s one place that I definitely want to go to, just so that I can get time in and see the differences. I mean, I really do enjoy spending time seeing the waterfront; seeing the different types of people that you see, or get to interact with. On the waterfront it’s not your standard typical people. You get a little bit more genuine, you know, feeling of what the locals will probably be like. If they have any complaints, or have any problems with the Americans, you’ll see it – no problem.
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I had a friend who said she had a program that she thought would be really fun for me. It was pretty much working on boats, sailboats and cutters, because I worked on an 82-foot ex-coast guard cutter for a while. One of our benefactors was – he loved boats – he had a heart for old military boats.
So he had the 82, and he actually had purchased a 120 foot ex-coast guard cutter, the Morris. He also purchased a 180 foot ex-coast guard buoy tender, and brought it up from Baltimore all the way to Stockton.
(Anyway), she said you might actually like this. I think you should come down and check it out. And I fell in love. Absolutely just went, I love it. We ended up taking a tour of a American ship, the Liberty Grace, in 2001 when she first was built. She did a round the world tour, and I looked up and went, my goodness, that’s cool, and fell in love with that.
Then Melanie, who is the (MMP) VP here, she went to California Maritime, and she brought me over to show me the campus. I was like I think I figured out what I want to do. (I) ended up going to school, getting through the program, and I was like, well I’ll just keep on going. So, a hobby into a career and I haven’t stopped since.
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I have been sailing professionally since 2010. The Hall has definitely been very … it’s changed. It’s kind of more like my second home. As crazy as that sounds, it really is like my second home. Me and Sean [a friend, a captain, they went to Cal Poly Maritime Academy together], we’ve known each other for thousands of years. And Melanie and I, I mean, we pretty much grew up together, so it’s somewhere that I feel comfortable with, to communicate back and forth with others.
Obviously I feel safe enough to bring my child, and show her what the world, what my world, looks like even though she’s not going to be able to see what mommy does, ever. Maybe one day I can get her on a ship, but she’ll never really see what mommy does. But she gets to know the people that I work with.
So it’s definitely a different place, a different environment. It’s also one of the major reasons why I ended up going commercial. I’ve worked for California Maritime Academy, I did that right after [graduation]. I also worked for Marine Spill Response Corporation, working on their small vessels. If it wasn’t for the Hall, I probably would have never busted into the big ships; the Liberty Grace or the Ocean Giant, or any of the car carriers. So it’s been a big opportunity, and definitely means a lot.
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Family is a loaded subject. My mother always sat here and hoped that me liking the water, and what I do, would just be a quick fantasy. A quick hobby. And then I would turn around and become a stay-at-home mom. Never in 1,000 years would she even think that I would be shipping out and doing what I can.
But family means everything to me, which is one of the major reasons why I like this job. I can take 90 days and tell the office don’t call me. Nothing’s that big of an emergency (that) y’all can’t figure it out, and I’m going to spend time with my daughter, my husband, my parents. And being able to take my parents, and my husband’s parents, on vacation with us to Hawaii is something that I never dreamed we’d be able to do. So, family is everything to me. I love this job because of that, so I can do this.
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Monique Watanabe, Chief Mate
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Photo: Robert Gumpert 29 December 2025
Transcription: Michele Colyer
For more from this project, visit https://robertgumpert.com/seafarers-from-the-hiring-halls
“Show Some Guts”
By Captain Don Marcus
Seafarers Are Not Expendable
The recent bluster from the President of the United States about “showing some guts” to run the gauntlet of the Strait of Hormuz, had to strike a nerve in every merchant seaman, regardless of nationality or location on the globe. As of this writing there are approximately 100 merchant ships and an international community of some 30,000 civilian seafarers stranded in the Persian Gulf. Depending on the source, up to 19 vessels have been hit by missiles or drones and at least eight seafarers killed since the start of the war against Iran on February 28, 2026. One of those vessels was the U.S.-flag Stena Imperative, which was struck by two projectiles on March 2 while in port in Bahrain causing the death of one shipyard worker and wounding two others.
Numerous U.S. citizen merchant mariners, including the crew of the Stena Imperative and other U.S.-flag vessels, are among the 30,000 seafarers stranded in the Persian Gulf. Others are in or near ports outside the Gulf awaiting developments. None of these seafarers could have been assured by the contradictory and sometimes delusional statements of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his March 13 press conference when he said that with regards to the oil trade and the attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz: “we have been dealing with it and don’t need to worry about it.”
“… in virtually every U.S war, declared or undeclared, supported by Congress or the American people or not, the guns start firing first, followed shortly thereafter by the U.S. government’s realization that seaborne military logistics, U.S. foreign commerce and, finally, the U.S.-flag merchant marine and the seafarers that deliver the cargoes have to be taken into account.”
The supply chains of the world depend on transport by sea. Approximately 80% of world trade is carried by sea. Observers of recent events, not to mention students of history, are well aware that global choke points such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Gibraltar and half a dozen other key waterways around the world can have a drastic impact on the world economy if closed to commence.
For the U.S. seafarers standing by aboard their vessels inside the Persian Gulf or diverted away from the Gulf by the present war, uncertainty is a given. Since at least the Spanish American War in 1898, in virtually every U.S war, declared or undeclared, supported by Congress or the American people or not, the guns start firing first, followed shortly thereafter by the U.S. government’s realization that seaborne military logistics, U.S. foreign commerce and, finally, the U.S.-flag merchant marine and the seafarers that deliver the cargoes have to be taken into account.
Within the last two years, prior to the attack on Iran, the crews of U.S. and foreign merchant vessels have faced attacks by Houthi missiles and drones in and around another global choke point, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. At least half a dozen U.S. flag vessels experienced near-miss attacks. This key waterway is located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Missiles, drone attacks, gunboat and uncrewed surface vessel attacks in Middle Eastern waters are not a new phenomenon to U.S. or foreign seafarers. The attacks, crew fatalities and vessel seizures in and around the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea have proven to be only a prelude to what is now taking place in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
History Is Repeating
In fact, history is directly repeating itself in the Persian Gulf. Few will remember the “Tanker War” which took place during the closing years of the Iran-Iraq War in 1987-88. During this time the U.S. decided to re-flag a number of Kuwaiti tankers to the U.S. flag to inhibit Iranian attacks on these vessels as they transited the Persian Gulf and its outlet at the Strait of Hormuz. Two of these U.S. flag tankers, the M/V Bridgeton and M/V Sea Isle City crew were attacked and seriously damaged. The M/V Bridgeton was struck by a mine off Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, and the M/V Sea Isle City was stuck by a Silkworm missile fired from the Al Faw peninsula in Iraq which at the time was occupied by Iranian forces. Both attacks were launched by Iran. U.S. Captain John Hunt was permanently blinded during the attack on the M/V Sea Isle City, and eleven other members of the crew were hospitalized. Ultimately, some thirty U.S. naval vessels were engaged, U.S. attacks on Iranian facilities were undertaken which included ground attacks by U.S. Special forces as part of the vessel escort operations. This effort was dubbed “Operation Earnest Will” which is in itself a telling distinction in tone from “Epic Fury.” Operations ended with the peace between Iran and Iraq in 1988, but it should be noted that some 64 seafarers from many nations were killed through the course of the “Tanker War.” Notably, the entire effort was done under sanction of UN Resolution 598 and in conjunction with the French and British Navies.
Military technology has advanced exponentially since 1988. Seafarers remain on the front line of war, however. Today they are more lethally exposed than ever. Seafarers do, in fact, have something to “worry about,” as do shipowners. Whatever their concern for their crew, shipowners will protect their investments. The price of oil may be going up, but War Risk insurance for vessels entering the Persian Gulf is priceless – it simply cannot be had. “Nothing to worry about,” indeed.
Therefore, U.S. merchant seamen in and around the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean and thousands of other seamen, have reason for grave concern. Of course, so do millions of innocent civilians throughout the region. The men and women of the U.S. Merchant Marine, 90% of whom are card carrying Union members, require more for assurance than facile bombast from the current administration in Washington DC. As the motto of the United States Merchant Marine Academy states: Acta Non Verba. “Deeds, not Words,” — least of all imbecilic ones from triumphalist and “merciless” U.S. government officials.
Those who go to sea for a living must deal with the hazards of their job just like firemen or mineworkers do. In wartime, merchant seamen know they are at risk. They must make their personal decisions accordingly.
In making their decisions certain basic needs must be met by all maritime employers. These needs were cogently expressed by the Nautilus Federation, an international federation of over twenty maritime unions representing seafarers from sixteen different countries including the U.S.A. Seafarers must be:
· Fully and promptly informed of all known risks before entering war zones or areas of warlike activity
· Provided unhindered right to repatriation and transit should they decline to enter zones or areas of heightened risk
· Protected from disciplinary action, loss of pay, impact on insurance, or detriment where safety decisions are taken in good faith
· Supported with appropriate security measures, welfare provisions, and access to assistance where voyages are disrupted
· At the very minimum, the protections, including pay bonuses and compensation for death or disability agreed to by the participants of the International Bargaining Forum of which the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is a party to must be met for service in designated “Warlike Operations Areas” which, among other locations around the world, (such as the Black Sea) includes the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman and coast of Israel in the eastern Mediterranean.
What U.S. seafarers need for assurances regarding the performance of their profession in wartime are basic to what any prudent seafarer would logically require before voluntarily putting herself or himself in danger:
· Naval Escort/Convoy and oversight system in war zones: This has been the most effective protective measure from the days of the Spanish galleons to the Second World War, to the 1987-88 Tanker War to recent attacks in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb Strait. It needs to be implemented in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
· Proactive countermeasures against shore-based air attack and naval facilities. This appears to be ongoing.
· Effective Mine-Sweeping capability. The U.S. naval minesweeping capabilities are notoriously limited and under-resourced.
· Secure communications equipment aboard ship and, if required, trained communications personnel with direct access to the appropriate military authorities, escorting vessels and surveillance personnel. This need was apparent in the Red Sea attacks and remains to be adequately addressed aboard U.S. commercial vessels in War Zones.
· International cooperation and pooling of naval assets. It has been repeatedly made clear to U.S. merchant mariners that the U.S. Navy does not have sufficient equipment to prioritize escort and close oversight protection of U.S. vessels, let alone the international merchant fleet that transits the Persian Gulf.
· Sufficient War Risk Insurance.
It may be a bridge too far to expect traditional allies who we have maligned and whose forces we denigrated to pool resources in a war the U.S. and Israel have started. However, if the world economy is to be stabilized and supply chains are to remain intact, seafarers must feel safe enough to willingly ply their trade.
In the words of British Trades Union Congress President and Nautilus International Director Mark Dickinson:
“Seafarers are not expendable, and they must not be treated as collateral damage in regional or international conflicts. The current situation in and around the Strait of Hormuz represents a serious escalation in risk for the men and women working at sea, many of whom are simply trying to do their jobs and return home safely. Their safety must come first, and that means clear information, robust protections, and the unequivocal right to refuse to sail into warlike or unsafe zones without fear of penalty.”
U.S. merchant mariners are overwhelmingly members of unions. They are covered by collective bargaining agreements. They are civilians. Opinions about the war vary greatly aboard U.S.-flag ships as they do in our communities.
Few civilian workers of any type have risen to the occasion more patriotically or consistently than American merchant seamen, who have done so since the first United States ensign was hoisted aboard a vessel in 1775. During the Second World War, American seafarers, overwhelmingly union members, suffered a higher proportional casualty rate than any branch of the U.S. armed forces. Close to 10,000 seamen were killed and over 950 ships were sunk.
The tradition of service in the U.S. merchant marine: “In Peace or War” is one that American seafarers are understandably proud of. The fact that they are union members and have the personal agency to make their own decisions about shipping out and putting themselves in harm’s way only enhances their pride of profession. This mindset has not changed. It continued during the Tanker War of 1987-88, the first Persian Gulf War and every war since, up through the attacks in the Red Sea and now the war in Iran. The men and women of the U.S. merchant marine cannot be accused of “lacking guts.”
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Today the Forum Presents 2 Ways For You To Participate In The Fight
By The Editors
Webinair: Wednesday – March 18th – 1PM
Labor Solidarity with Palestine
Lessons from Italy and Britain
On March 18th the National Labor Network for Ceasefire and In These Times magazine will host an international webinar featuring trade unionists from Italy and Britain engaged in direct action for justice for Palestinians. On October 3, 2025 the Confederazione Generale Italiana di Lavoratori (CGIL) participated in a national strike for Palestine. The action involved over two million workers and paralyzed transport and logistics throughout Italy. British workers have also engaged in dramatic actions, pressuring both their government and corporate targets, and have had to withstand attacks on their civil liberties in the process. Join the webinar to learn more from unions from both countries and how it might inform the actions of unions here in the United States.
The need for working class solidarity with Palestine did not end with the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” went into effect, and the U.S. government recently sent $6.7 billion additional dollars worth of weapons to Israel, funds that are desperately needed to fund human needs in the U.S.
Header Panelists will include:
Jo Grady, General Secretary, University and College Union (Britain)
Salvatore Marra, International Secretary,CGIL (Italy)
Puneet Maharaj, Executive Director, National Nurses United (U.S.)
Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) (U.S.)
Maria Elena Delia, spokesperson, Global Sumud Flotilla – Italy
The webinar will take place on March 18th and will begin at:
1 PM Eastern Time (USA) and last until 2:30 PM EST
Here is a link to register for the webinar
https://bit.ly/palestine-labor-solidarity-webinar
From Steve Early
Come meet the folks from Barn Raiser
Share a meal and ideas
March 25th
Our friends Justin and Joel (former publisher of In These Times) are doing great work with a new on-line media outlet designed to counter MAGA influence in rural America by covering its politics, history, culture, religion, labor, environmental and agricultural issues from a progressive perspective. See-–https://barnraisingmedia.com/
On Wednesday, March 25, we hope you can join us for a dinner discussion of what’s going on in red states and rural areas of blue ones, like CA. They are particularly interested in meeting potential contributors—journalists, photographers, activists, and academics with an interest in this field. We’ll be passing the hat but no donation required
See details below, including how to RSVP. Please share this invite with anyone else who might be interested!
Steve and Suzanne
For further info, directions, and to RSVP, follow the QR code, email Lsupport@aol.com or contact 617-930-7327. Food and drink will be served!
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Rip van Winkle and the unbelievable breaking news
By Helena Worthen
Rip van Winkle woke up every day and read the paper and said, “Unbelievable!”
Roosevelt gets a third term – “Are you kidding?”
Germans, the country of Beethoven – “What’s with this thing about Jews?”
Military-industrial complex? “Sounds like a mall.”
Someone shot Kennedy? “No way. Why was he in Texas?”
Tanks on the streets of Detroit: “Impossible.”
Both Martin Luther King and Malcom X? “Unbelievable! Why would anyone?”
He thought the Moon Shot was great; he enjoyed that, it was not incredible.
But the photos coming out of Vietnam were “unbelievable.”
Some of it just went over his head. The Kent State killings, for example. Jackson State? No clue.
The volunteer army? “Well, maybe.”
He liked “Morning in America.”
Tax cuts? Can’t hurt.
But his local post office closes – “I can’t believe it.”
The price of medical care? “Unbelievable.”
That 6-lane bridge that fell in Milwaukee: “Are you kidding?”
The Twin Towers – “Why them? They’re not military. They’re office buildings. I don’t get it.”
“What kind of nutcase takes a mortgage with an APR? What’s a tranche?”
Gaza – “Good god, how did we get here?”
And “No more fireflies? What’s with that? There were always fireflies.”
Now this guy – “You’re not going to believe this. Incredible.”
Tell Rip to read this poem backwards. Maybe push it back 150 years. Your assignment: help Rip believe.
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The DisState of the Union
By Stewart Acuff
The con man’s games and tricks
As the nation waited, and took a breath to watch the president hold forth on the State of the Union, Trump was hit with a week’s worth of fresh crises.
We learned last Tuesday, that the DOJ and the FBI have been scrubbing the president’s name from the Epstein files before they’re released to the public. The NYT reported on February 25th that one of those files held back are investigative notes of a 13 year old girl who reported Trump raped her.
That would blow up a State of the Union speech of any other president. But he has no sense of shame or accountability or any boundaries.
June 19th, PBS reported that America’s top Catholic leaders issued a damning statement about Trump’s ICE and immigration policy. They included a number of policy demands and criticisms of both DHS and ICE.
They call for human rights for immigrants, for supporting not destroying immigrant families, for a new immigration policy with a path to citizenship and provide a way to stay for immigrants who’ve made a life here and “work for the common good”.
While he was preparing for his speech, polling from different sources show the alleged pedophile, convicted sexual abuser president has the lowest approval rating of both his terms. His approval rating is below 40%. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of him as president.
He started his speech with a list of data points liberally sprinkled with half truths, bad numbers and outright lying.
He lied liberally about the economy. He blamed (how many times) Biden for the inflation that still plagues us. Of course, anyone who understands economics knows that the Trump tariffs are sales taxes on imported goods that keep prices up, even raising them.
Jarringly, he reported that the US has taken 80 million barrels of oil from Venezuela since the kidnapping of their president. War for Oil?
After bragging about assaulting the environment with huge increases in oil drilling, he crowed his “Drill Baby Drill” chant.
He claimed to have cleaned up several major American cities including Memphis, Washington, DC and others.
The rest of the speech was the con man’s games and tricks. He wrapped himself in glory that he didn’t earn or deserve: introducing military heroes soaking up their applause as though he had ever known the sacrifice, discipline and sheer terror and trauma that comes from all combat and defines what is given and taken in mortal struggle.
I couldn’t help but notice that every time he delivered an applause line he turned his head, preening with his silhouette.
The chamber was obviously more split than usual after the war Democrats have experienced from Trump including trying to prosecute Democratic war heroes like Senator Mark Kelly, basing federal aid on the way a state votes, flooding city streets with corrupt cops called ICE to remove as many brown and black people as possible. The Democratic side of the aisle had many open seats as many boycotted the speech.
While at one hour and forty-seven minutes, and forty seconds, the address was the longest in history. But not as long as rumors, and leaks, had predicted leading to speculation that some were using inside information to play the betting market on the speech’s length.
In the end the whole effort was about shoring up his slipping base. Of course, that just reinforces the status quo which is a disaster for Trump.
In the upper Potomac Valley we are facing two distinct crises piled on us by the GOP Administration.
Trump and his maga crowd are determined to build an ICE detention center just across the river in Maryland. And here in West Virginia the MAGA GOP Governor wants our state to create the most data centers in our nation. It will soak up our ground water, and suck up electrical power, driving up our electric bills.
It’s happening all over the country. Trump and the GOP are trying to sell the earth beneath our feet as they turn our children and grandchildren into high tech serfs, who only matter for giving themselves to a virtual boss and robotic existence.
Time to turn it around in November.
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Jesse Jackson Was a Labor Leader
By Gene Bruskin
The Reverend Jesse Jackson was a labor leader of the most visionary kind, in the great tradition of WEB Dubois, Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King,
Like Dr King, who identified the “Triple Evils” of poverty, racism, and militarism”, Reverend understood the links between class/race and US foreign policy in a way that few labor leaders do, recognizing that making these connections was essential to building a powerful workers movement in the US and beyond.
I know that because I saw him in action repeatedly in the 2-year period, 1992-1994, that I worked for him at the National Rainbow Coalition as his labor deputy.
In 1988, while helping to build Labor For Jackson in Boston, and prior to my time at the Rainbow, I was inspired by Reverend’s emphasis on peace in the Middle East and Palestinian rights in his Presidential campaigns. This encouraged me to visit the West Bank as part of a labor solidarity delegation sponsored by the ADC (Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee). Palestinians are workers, and I got to see firsthand the incredible obstacles they face to be respected as workers.
In 1990, while Bush was planning a massive deployment of troops to Kuwait, Reverend traveled to Iraq, met with Hussein and brought back a large group of Americans trapped there. Meanwhile, I was helping to form an Anti-Gulf War labor group in DC. This experience helped plant the seeds for the founding of US Labor Against the War in 2003 when the Iraq war broke out. Reverend of course opposed that war even before it started.
In 1992 I became his Labor Deputy as the fight against NAFTA was moving center stage in the US. I watched as Reverend repeatedly educated African Americans in churches about the dangers to all working-class people of a pro-corporate trade agreement that didn’t include them. Crossing borders, like Robeson and Dubois did, we organized two Rainbow sponsored labor rallies on the US-Canada border. One was near Niagara Falls and one in the Peace Park on the Washington State/British Columbia border. Mexican representatives participated in both rallies. Then Reverend sent me to Mexico to attend the Tri National Conference to oppose NAFTA.
In September 1993, I was with Reverend when he led a militant march and civil disobedience action with workers organizing for a union with ACTWU at Earle Industries in rural Arkansas. He then pressured the CEO to allow a vote that brought in the union. As the events there were concluding Reverend rushed off to charter a plane to join the signing of the OSLO accords in DC and meet with Arafat. Reverend was not invited to the signing, despite his years of Middle East peace work, but that didn’t stop him.
In 1993 in St Louis, I did the advanced planning for a city-wide pre-strike janitors rally. At the rally, the excited janitors were disappointed when they saw me coming on stage to read my remarks instead of Reverend. (very embarrassing role for me). At the last-minute Reverend had been asked by President Clinton to fly to South Africa to represent the US at the funeral of anti-apartheid leader Oliver Tambo, a friend of his. Reverend had been to South Africa as early as 1979 and was deeply involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement. But he also cared about the janitors in St Louis.
In 1993, when Nelson Mandela visited the US, Reverend planned a large rally for him in DC. My job was to raise the money for the event from Johnny Morris, the powerful leader of the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters and a big fan of Reverends. At an earlier statewide meeting of the Conference, I watched Reverend exhibit his insight into workers and their union leaders. When Reverend arrived at the podium to speak, accompanied by a loud applause, Johnny reached out to shake his hand. Instead, Reverend bent his knee and kissed Johnny’s ring, embarrassing him and shocking the amused workers in the room. No one did that to Johnny Morris. Then Reverend gave a powerful well received speech. Later Johnny agreed to provide the money as long as he and his team could get a photo with Mandela. My job was to arrange it. It was a great example of bringing solidarity with South Africa from an unlikely labor partner. And of course, it was an honor to watch Reverend and Nelson Mandela interact at this huge event, two great world leaders and friends.
In October 1993 Reverend was invited for the first time to speak at the annual AFL-CIO convention. Walter Johnson, the progressive SF Labor Council President called an outside rally, allegedly one of the first rallies ever held at an AFL-CIO convention. Although AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland didn’t want Reverend to speak, Johnson declared it was his town and his rally. Reverend gave a powerful speech about NAFTA to a large cheering crowd.
Just as Reverend couldn’t resist an opportunity for righteous acts of international solidarity, he couldn’t resist a big worker fight. Another example was in Providence, RI prior to an election for a large unit of service and maintenance workers at the Rhode Island Hospital with the Teamsters, under Ron Carey. With great organizers on the ground (Bob Muehlenkamp, Valerie Ervin and Gary Stevenson) Reverend led a large rally with the workers in front of the hospital. Many of them had walked out to join him. The viciously anti-union CEO came out, thinking he could talk Reverend into a private meeting. Instead, Reverend led the rally into the hospital lobby and sat down with the CEO and organizing committee. He asked them to join hands and began a call and response prayer asking God to assure a fair election and contract for the workers. He then led large entourage through the hospital, promoting the union in every department, while the CEO trailed helplessly behind the workers, begging him to stop and meet alone with him. The Teamsters won the election.
Another big labor issue of this period was striker replacement and the “Cesar Chavez Workplace Fairness Act” in Congress, to prohibit employers from hiring permanent replacements for striking workers. The AFL-CIO showed no interest in working with the Rainbow to promote this new bill, so Reverend asked me to organize a march. He loved marches for justice. In Atlanta, I worked with CLC President Steward Acuff and the legendary civil rights leader James Orange, to organize a two-day march in support of 150 high paid white male printing workers from GCIU in Doraville, GA, 15 miles into Atlanta. The workers had been permanently replaced during a 5-month strike. Reverend brought Al Sharton down to march with us “to give him more experience with labor,” he explained. Along with 1199 SEIU President Dennis Rivera, they marched in the front of this contingent of white male workers ending up in the offices of Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. To this day, the right of employers to permanently replace workers on economic strikes is a major impediment to holding companies accountable.
One last example of many that shows Reverend’s commitment to building a militant labor movement was in collaboration with the highly regarded, president of 1199 SEIU in Connecticut, Jerry Brown. 1199 was staging a statewide strike of nursing home workers and they invited Reverend to join them in blocking the main bridge in New Haven during rush hour and taking arrests.
Enroute to New Haven, at HERE’s request, Reverend led a march through a Westchester country club of service workers who were involved in a tough contract struggle. Reverend marched in the front with an older white woman worker, passing by the refurbished chicken coups that served as the workers’ housing. The women worker marching with Reverend had been the nanny for the now CEO when he was a child.
From there we were driven to the large New Haven rally and greeted by cheering women CNAs. He gave a rousing speech, including one of his favorite lines, “you take the early bus and then you work the late shift,” followed by a group chant “I am somebody.” He understood the powerful capitalist strategy to make workers feel like they are worthless and therefore shouldn’t complain. After essentially shutting down New Haven during rush hour Reverend demanded that the police arrest him, which they did reluctantly, and then escort him out of town to get to La Guardia in time for our flight home. Another day in the life.
Even during the short time I was with Reverend Jackson I witnessed many other dramatic examples of labor and international solidarity. Can you imagine how many of these happened during his lifetime? Jesse Jackson was a labor leader.
In January 1994 my wife Evie and I traveled to St Petersburg, Russia to adopt our daughter for life from an orphanage. As a caring gesture, Reverend wrote a letter for me to carry that essentially said, politely, “To Whom it May Concern; Don’t mess with all the paperwork approvals Gene needs, or you will have to mess with me.” Given his international renown, I knew things would go well.
Long live Reverend Jesse Jackson
Keep Hope Alive
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We Have to Arm Ourselves With Knowledge
By Jorge H Rodriguez
In order to defeat the Chief Nazi leader Stephen Miller, the Gestapo green shirt army, the Fascist KKK Trump Regime and the Deportation Industrial Profit Making Complex, we have to arm ourselves with knowledge. We have to have the courage to take collective actions for justice with each other.
The brutal campaign of violent policies, terror, kidnappings, incarceration in concentration profit making detention centers and the violation of immigrant and American People’s civil and human rights is no way near its apex.
Nazi Stephen Miller has unleashed his personal Gestapo green shirt army of terrorists across cities throughout the USA to inflict fear and terror upon not only Mexicans and other Latinos, who make up the majority of undocumented in the USA, but also Asian Pacific, Middle Eastern, African and Caribbean immigrant families.
Nazi Stephen Miller has made it a point to unleash government controlled violence on its citizens to ensure that his plan inflicts as much physical pain, hatred, racism, economic disparity, damaging the local economy and businesses across the country. He is causing the separation of families, and creating more unemployment and homelessness.
Where are the 1200 people who were housed at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida? The families do not know where ICE moved them.
The Nazi Stephen Miller, who directs the Fascist Trump administration and all of Trump’s murderous cabinet members all need to be arrested, and charged for crimes against humanity, human rights abuses, incarcerating and putting children in cages and for ordering the killing of American citizens and immigrants.
The Deportation Industrial Detention Complex GEO and CoreCivic Companies have detention centers in all 50 States across the USA and have been given government contracts making $40 to $50 million a year in this shadow economy. The GEO Group controls every aspect of the deportation pipeline, from ground transportation to air flights according to ReelNews. ICE is getting ready to contract with the GEO Group and CoreCivic with $50 billion dollars to turn all these warehoused into illegal detention centers
Todd Lyons the acting Director of ICE in April, 2025 at a private prison convention in Mirror, Arizona according to Reels said “ We need to start treating this like a real business like Amazon but with humans”. State Street, BlackRock and Vanguard are the largest shareholders in the GEO incorporation.
The Los Angeles Blue Dodgers and LA Lakers owners group, “The Guggenheim Baseball Management Partners” with controlling interest of Owner Mark Walker are investors in the Deportation Industrial Detention Complex. Mexicans and Latinos make up the majority of Dodger fans in LA and a large portion of the LA Laker fan base.
Mark Walker and other Laker, Dodger investors including Laker great Magic Johnson are fan money to help GEO and CoreCivic the leading companies in the Deportation Industrial Detention Complex.
NO FAN MONEY FOR DETENTION CENTERS!
This is not morally acceptable! Make the call to the Dodger owners to divest and remove the money we pay at the Dodgers and Lakers games from the corporations like GEO and CoreCivic.
We have to call on the AFL-CIO leadership and all the building trade unions to tell their workers- electricians, laborers, cement roofers, pipe fitters, etc., to refuse to work on the construction of these detention incarceration centers. They need to refuse to be part of violating the civil and human rights of children and immigrants in the USA. Their legacy for justice and the fight against Fascism, demands they refuse to work on these sites.
There is no room for neutrality here. The AFL-CIO leadership and its labor affiliates need to find courage and boldly lead the American working people in shutting down this country against fascism. The AFL-CIO must call upon every worker in every industry from AFSCME, SEIU public sector workers to UFCW retail workers, janitors, home health care workers, to the UFW farmworkers in the agricultural fields, to the Teamsters in the trucking and distribution warehousing industry, workers in the packing and slaughter houses, to the Longshore Unions at every port throughout the country, to the Building Trades unions, to municipal and school bus drivers in every city, to the pilots, flight attendants, ground crews, to all the professors, teachers in every school district and college, and calling on all students across the country to take part in a national strike on May 1st 2026.
We have to call on every pastor, reverend, priest, rabbi, Imam, of every religious denomination to preach to their flock about joining the call for moral action in helping to boycott stores and shut down America for justice.
Our moral responsibility is to stop the incarceration of children in cages, separation of families, the violations of human and democratic rights and an end to beating and killing of immigrants and US citizens. The loud call for abolishment and defunding of ICE has to reverberate across the USA. We have to demonstrate by the millions in the streets exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, “ABOLISH ICE”. The loud call for the abolishment and defunding of ICE has to reverberate across the USA with demonstrations in the streets by millions exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.
We have to arm ourselves with our civil and human rights knowledge to educate everyone in our communities starting with elementary, middle, high school, college students, businesses and every neighbor in our communities across the country.
The study of our civil and humans rights is one of many ways that will help our communities to defend themselves.
We have to have a coordinated national boycott against Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon, and Target. These are some of the corporations that contribute to the Fascist Trump Regime and are in every community in the USA.
WE NEED TO BOYCOT THEM NOW!
We have to collectively have the courage and come together in bold action in an American act of kindness by shutting down this country and striking for each other in order to preserve our civil, democratic and human rights today and for generations to come.
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